Your population is aging. Your extravagant government social programs cannot sustain
themselves as more people retire and fewer people are in the active workforce. What do you do?
If you are France, you open your borders to citizens of Middle Eastern dictatorships and oligarchies in exchange
for their promises to furnish oil to your economy. Let the labor of immigrants pay for your pension.
You wind up still beholden for energy and with unassimilated, un-skilled violence-prone enclaves surrounding your
cities. The cultural enclaves are so lawless that your police force is afraid to enter. They govern themselves
by their own rules and not the law of the land. You have lost your sovereignty. You have sentenced your nation
to gradual extinction. As vigor fades, absorption by an inferior culture advances.
In the United States, we have the French example to study. Our Left, so desirous of the good view of Europe's elites,
proposes the same program. Persons illegally in our country should be treated as if they were legally here. There
should be no upper limits on the entry of favored groups. Unfettered immigration, history shows, equals uncontrollable
poverty. Lack of education equals low wages. Low wages equals a lack of opportunity to get an education for probably
three generations. In the meantime, the low-skills family is dependent on welfare.
As we debate the issues in the Congress, the International ANSWER types who organized the various mass demonstrations
are now quietly working to overturn the Electoral College state-by-state, to eliminate identification requirements
for voting and to allow non-citizens to register to vote. Their efforts are both legislative and judicial and targeted
to the next two elections in 2006 and 2008. Lusting for votes, Liberals will pursue a program of open borders,
amnesty and quick citizenship for those already here.
Into the fray steps our President George Bush this past Monday night. He seeks, as a president should, to co-opt
the middle ground. The theme of his talk is that the United States is a welcoming society and a nation of laws.
Both can be accommodated. What his party fails to explain is exactly how a law-abiding society welcomes law-breakers.
If you cross our borders illegally and find work with false credentials, you are, by definition, a continuous law-breaker.
It doesn't matter how nice or how needy you are, you are at best a scofflaw, cheating others of their place in
line.
Just as Europe has no regard for democracy if it means that the rabble get to speak, the American Left also is
pursuing any ways they can think of to suppress free speech. They find particularly disconcerting the effective
speech of their opponents As a result, the current debate on both sides is particularly rabid and filled with cascading
falsities.
As usual, a part of the confusion is created by the partisan misuse of words. Legally, what is being proposed is
not amnesty but a plea bargain. The alien is supposed to admit illegal action and suffer a reduced sentence. Part
of the punishment is going "to the back of the line." The manipulative part is that there are two lines.
Line A is the short line. It is for people already in the United States. That is the line politicians want to include
in the legislative language. The other line, Line B, goes back to the attaché offices all over the world.
There, people line up for years just to get a chance at a visa that would get them into Line A. Some five million
people all over the world but not from Mexico have been waiting, too. They do not expect to become victims of pro-Mexican
preferential treatment policies.
Amnesty is not the 800-pound guerilla in the room. That honor goes to the 600 plus page Comprehensive Immigration
Reform Act (CIRA S.2011) also known as the Hagel-Martinez bill. It tilts the criteria for acceptance away from
skills and education and towards poverty. The kind of legal immigrants accepted would not be those able to immediately
contribute to the United States. They would be the under-educated, low-skill workers who would become immediate
burdens to society.
Historically, legal visas have been slanted towards the skilled and educated. Currently, about 60 percent of legal
workers are in the professions or have demonstrated abilities. Less than ten percent of legal visas are set aside
for unskilled laborers. Under Hagel-Martinez, the professional group would be cut in half to 30 percent. The unskilled
labor group would triple. What's more, barriers to remain in the United States would be kept for skilled workers
but unskilled workers could "self-petition" to establish themselves for permanent residence.
The annual legal flow number would be doubled as well to about two million. The guest worker program would be in
addition to these quotas. The bill also includes escalating caps for annual upward adjustments. The bill is an
exercise in multicultural nation-building written with no regard for economic need or impact.
For example, the definition of extended families that a legal immigrant could include has been widened greatly.
There is no anticipated change in the baby rule. Persons here on temporary status become the parents of a U.S.
citizen if they have children who are born inside the United States. At that point, they become part of the extended
family of a U.S. citizen. A recent Census report indicates that 70 percent of the growth in the nation's birthrate
is attributable to Hispanic women.
From the political Right, the rant and roar is for border protection only - the fence first, all else some other
time. Heated rhetoric aside, the tighter border programs will only be passed in conjunction with some kind of answer
for the 12 million illegals already here and the other 12 million ready to come.
Once the bills get to a joint conference committee, they can be completely re-written, even thrown out and replaced
with something else. Over the summer, the Right may have to choose between no bill at all and some kind of a combined
approach. The trick will be to maximize the fence and minimize the French aspects of the bill. Some bi-partisan
compromise will be necessary to have any bill at all.
In spite of the romantic recollections of (legal) immigrants from our past, the concern is (illegal) immigrants
today. The bluntest fact of all is that desperate people want to leave Mexico because their oligarchs take all
the energy, mining and tourism dollars and there is no hope for them back home. Immigrants that are returned will
try again. Home is too miserable. The shameful combination of incompetence, systematic corruption and unshared
natural wealth has every prospect of remaining. The bottom 60 percent of the population receive just 23.4 percent
of the national income.
On July 2nd, Mexico goes to an election. The two leading contenders are conservative Felipe Calderon, who favors
good relations with the United States and a radical Andres Lopez Obrador, who is influenced by Hugo Chavez and
Fidel Castro. A communist regime allied with Latin American socialists on our borders is way unattractive and very
dangerous -- think narco-terrorist havens for a start.
The $25 billion in annual remittances to Mexican families from U.S. workers has now become Mexico's largest source
of revenue -- eclipsing oil. Any action that threatens the remittances helps Obrador.
The purposes of the Republican Party can best be served by quick passage in the Senate of a bill that then gets
to wallow around in the joint committee through the summer. The key to the fall election is not immigration but
energy. Within sight of Florida, Cuba has granted drilling rights for Outer Shelf oil to India and China. They
prepare to drill while Republicans afraid of environmentalists dither.
UPDATE. France’s National Assembly passed on Wednesday a revision of their immigration laws. Major features
included an immigrant contract with the government to study how civic institutions function, to respect the nation’s
principles of governance and to learn to speak French. Immigrants wanting to bring family members into France would
have to prove that they have sufficient personal resources to support them without help from the state. Government
could specify and assign quotas for the type of skills, experience and level of education that were needed. French
Socialists and Communists immediately opposed the bill and promised street protests.
05/19/06
