Required Reading
George Will on conservative immigration reform:
Facts, a conservative (John Adams) said, are stubborn things, and regarding immigration, true conservatives take their bearings from facts such as those in the preceding paragraph. Conservatives should want, as the president proposes, a guest worker program to supply what the U.S. economy demands — immigrant labor for entry-level jobs. Conservatives should favor a policy of encouraging unlimited immigration by educated people with math, engineering, technology or science skills that America’s education system is not sufficiently supplying.
And conservatives should favor reducing illegality by putting illegal immigrants on a path out of society’s crevices and into citizenship by paying fines and back taxes and learning English. Faux conservatives absurdly call this price tag on legal status “amnesty.” Actually, it would prevent the emergence of a sullen, simmering subculture of the permanently marginalized, akin to the Arab ghettos in France. The House-passed bill, making it a felony to be in the country illegally, would make 11 million people permanently ineligible for legal status. To what end?
If I spoke too harshly earlier about last weekend’s demonstrations, now you know why. Read the rest.
Personally, I find this sort of sentiment objectionable, and counter to the principles of our country:
“…a guest worker program … immigrant labor for entry-level jobs… unlimited immigration by educated people with math, engineering, technology or science skills…”
So, let the mexican construction workers visit our country a while, let them work their asses off but don’t give them citizenship. And only let the educated (read: already wealthy) stay permanently. To put a very fine point on it, this is elitist crap, and it is unamerican. Does George Will (and do conservatives) wish to tear off the plaque on the Statue of Liberty in order to replace the poem with something more current?
Give me your well educated, your technologically skilled etc.
This is ridiculous. America’s strength rests in its guts. In its CONTINUED willingness to take what the rest of the world casts off (both the educated and the uneducated) and bringing those individuals into our family, strengthening them and letting them strengthen us. We have as much to learn from the uneducated hard-working farm laborers as we do from the college graduate software developers who choose to come to our shores from abroad despite the challenges.
I’ll remind people that Andrew Carnegie came to this country as an ordinary entry-level factory laborer and yet he became one of the richest men in the world and transformed America. We do not need an elitism which holds less-skilled laborers as 2nd class citizens. There is a strength of will in all immigrants that our country needs, indeed I would say that it is such strength that our country is founded on.
Robin, America’s strength rests in it’s guts, but only insofar as those guts are composed of people who want to be Americans, and are willing to abide by the laws of the land.
What do you see in the pictures here?
People who want to be Americans? Or something else?
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004869.htm
Quite frankly what we are seeing is more of the same crap that has been
going on for the last 30 years. We had an amnesty in 86′ and were promised that we would crack down, nothing happened. We had a string of amensties in the 90′ particularly in 96′, with the promises that we would
honest to gosh, crack down, guess what, nothing happened. And here we are in 06′ and what do we have, same old same old. The ploiticians will talk tough, but in reality nothing will actually be done. I predict by 2016 we will be re-drawing the borders of the US a little bit to the north of where they are today. Basically this is the Republican party telling the American people, f*ck you, we heard you loud and clear you voted time and time again when given a chance that you want immigration reform that stops illegal immigration and doesn’t grant amnesty, we have seen the polls showing 60% don’t want a guest worker program, but guess what, we don’t care what you want, we are going to do what we want and what we want to do is capitulate to the democrats and create a new block of voters that will vote democrat. That’s a pretty brilliant way to give away your majority.
Hey Robin,
I’m willing to bet Andrew Carnegie was a LEGAL immigrant. What is it about ILLEGAL people don’t understand? Is it so odd that a nation has a set of rules for foreigners to come and join us?
And after reading what’s on the Statue of Liberty, those immigrants went to Ellis Island to be LEGALLY emigrated. Argh!
You are missing the point Robin. When Carnegie showed up here he was legal AND he was willing to adapt to the society rules of America. Today we are talking about illegal immigrants pouring across our borders that DO NOT want to adapt to America society. They want to take advantage of the system by getting free health care, free education,paying no taxes, and not learning to speak the language.
I like the way President Roosevelt put it in 1907.
Much as it pains me, I must disagree with Mr. Will. The sullen, simmering subculture is already here and in place. Upping the penalties will cause no more sullenness or simmering. We can lessen the subculture by controlling the border and enforcing the law. I guess I’m a faux conservative but I cannot see how continuing the current mess with a few cosmetic changes will help. Legalization and guest worker programs will simply convert the present illegals into legals and invite millions more for the next amnesty.
I agree with George Will and I think that the Republican Party needs to be more pragmatic about this problem.
It’s too late to force the principle of the thing. Yes, people who break the law should be punished, but I don’t hear Republicans in an uproar about all the people who cry/talk their way out of speed tickets. I could argue that rewarding them for breaking the law is encouraging speeding and endangering lives.
Rounding all of them up is not realistic. Building a massive wall on our border is stupid. We get more oil from countries south of the border than from the Middle East. Making people spend a year in prison for breaking immigration laws, which are administrative in nature not moral, short sighted. Our prisons are already full.
I’m typically not a pragmatic person, but we are dealing with people who by in large simply want live, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and went about it the very wrong way. They should be fined, forced to pay back taxes, not allowed any welfare until they are caught up on the back taxes, made to learn English, and expected to become Americans not claim that America should belong to Mexico. Go back there if you think it is so great.
I’ll take an illegal worker who is happy to be here and works hard over some legal left-wing moonbat American who cannot remember when his family came to American, thinks that Bush is akin to Hitler, and says “he hates” America. To bad we cannot give the moonbats to Mexico.
Check my words again guys, you will notice I never once use the word “illegal” or “legal”. You’re reading things into my words that are not there. I suggest you read it again and concern yourselves with the main points. Why should the LEGAL immigration of low-skilled laborers be limited while the LEGAL immigration of educated and rich folks be unlimited? That sort of two-tiered treatment of people is very unamerican, to my eyes. Also, I note that a lot of people bring up this point of assimilation, but rely utterly on anecdotal “evidence” to support the idea that there is a majority of latino immigrants to America who are refusing to assimilate. Personally, I see a whole hell of a lot of latinos assimilating and I’d like to see some hard statistics on the prevalence of anti-assimilationism (especially compared with similar statistics for, say, the Irish, Italians, Chinese, etc.) before people start relying on that “fact” as a matter of policy.
Robin, we always chose the best and brightest and allowed them in.
We never let anyone in w/typhus or other contagious diseases.
No more dual citizenship. No bennies whatsoever for 5 years, enforce their sponsor taking care of them.
And haul their ass into Immigration unexpectedly w/proof of same.
The demonstrations clinched it for me: no amnesty or whatever euphemism you want to use. This is pretty much what the wingnuts like Michelle Malkin said it is, an invasion, and if the ethnic idenity groups and Congress thought this would somehow help with the reform package they must have been insane.
Immigration appeals to the heart (it does and did mine) but the head cannot deny what its eyes see and its ears hear. These aren’t vibrant future citizens but vandals, thieves, thugs, and ingrates. Thank you, La Raza, for the glimpse of how things are rather than what we want them to be.
Wait a second. Economics 101 says that more supply lower price and at lower price producers produce less. So by importing “educated people with math, engineering, technology or science skills” we lower the wages of such people thus depressing our internal generation of such people.
Who wants to spend four years in college to get a job that pays less than your local union wage garbage or police man which requires much less training?
Hey–I was on percocet this week too. I agree with your old post…don’t understand how anybody gets hooked on that stuff. I haven’t taken it for a day and still can’t shake the fog. Stimulants, now, I can see (and have never tried any of the good ones for that reason)
a large guest worker program only really works if you want to depress the wages of the unskilled laborer. Here in the south, that’s the blacks right after they get out of the lousy public schools–which are lousy only because they refuse to enforce discipline, and refuse to expect black kids to learn anything. If I were a black parent, I’d be enraged, but that’s another topic. Or perhaps they are enraged, but pointing the rage in the wrong direction.
So Brian’s got it right on the highly educated workers, and the same principle applies to the unskilled. I remember grad school where I was the only American student in the lab. Trust me, the Chinese, Indian, and S. Korean students worked twice my hours and thought the pay was fine. We’d rather not go there.
My program is this: Let anyone here apply for guest-worker status. “Amnesty” is beside the point – we haven’t made an honest effort either to 1) control illegal immigration (we need the workers), or 2) reform immigration laws (union and “guild” – e.g., IEEE – opposition). Greatly expand the number of people admitted under the current H1B program – highly skilled people in very limited supply worldlwide – and simplify the damned paperwork. Anyone here for 5 years with a clean record either as a guest worker or a green card holder is eligible to apply for naturalization. Anyone with a criminal record, a record of non-payment of taxes, etc. etc. gets deported. Period.
Generally, anyone who wants very badly to be here, and is willing to work their butts off and keep a clean record, is likely to make a good and valuable citizen. This is particularly true of people with rare skills and rare talent. This isn’t elitist bullshit, this is simple reality.
Oh, and no “bi-lingual” education – that is a recipe for creating a permanent underclass that liberal politicos, or those of any machine persuasion, can mine for votes.
Best regards, and happy drinking