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Missing the Point on Illegal Immigration?

by Conservativity Staff,
Originally Posted: 4/10/2006 2:40:42 PM

Are conservatives who support the strict House Immigration Reform bill missing the point?  Are the hundreds of thousands of people in the streets waving American (and, before the organizers asked them to stop Mexican) flags right?  No.  They are wrong and the House, whose bill expresses the will of a strong majority of the people, are correct.

First of all, as a preamble, three of four of my grandparents, and six of eight of my great-grandparents, were immigrants to the United States.  Legal immigrants who respected our country enough to obey our laws.  My paternal grandfather, Peter Tamburo, was a respected citizen of Des Moines, Iowa, and was eulogized upon his 1949 death as one of the city’s "oldest pioneers."  One document he held especially dear was his naturalization certificate, showing that he had become a citizen of this country.  He did not take our benefits for granted, or arrogently demand that he be permitted to flout the law.  He worked his rear end off and rightly was proud of a substantial achievement.  I support legal immigration to the maximum extent permitted by law.  Provided our security needs are properly met, I support more legal immigration.  I am neither xenophobic nor racist; those who use those terms are resorting to ad hominem to mask the paucity of their amnesty arguments.  And yes, I realize that I just criticized President Bush.

The Senate’s wrong-headed "compromise" seems to be a ploy designed by the Left to continue to attack our President, who ironically is on their side in this fight.  It also is designed to harm the GOP in Congress, which is why the wimpy Republicans in the Senate (with notable brave exceptions like Cornyn, Hutchison, Allen, Kyl and a few others), are falling over themselves, apparently to kiss up to people who cannot even vote.  Actually, these senators are compromising our security as a nation in order to line their pockets from corporate contributors, whose money is trying to buy a semi-slave underpaid workforce.  This is naked corporate greed, and by sucking up to these people, and embracing the notion that there are jobs that Americans "just won’t do," these Senators are living up to the left’s oddball stereotype of the GOP as big business sycophants.

I thought the labor unions were with us, until I heard that Mr. Sweeney of the AFL-CIO is speaking at one rally as a guest of the ultra-leftist Teddy Kennedy.  Something tells me that Sen. Kennedy did not invite Sweeney in order to give him a stage to criticize the protestors.  Labor unions have the most to lose in an amnesty program.  If they think that they’ll be able to organize these underpaid illegals into new union membership, they’re missing the point by a country mile!  Big business wants the illegals because they keep wages down.  Unions are interested in getting fat raises in salaries for everyone, and then getting their dues.  If business starts to see the "guest workers" organize, that will be the necessity, instead of a tough law against hiring illegals, that will force automation into their industries.

The left sees amnesty-legitimized illegals as a new trove of votes that they can leverage to steal power, and impose their failed policies, anew and with greater breadth, upon an unconsenting people.  Getting the illegals to be legal is but step one in the quest to give them the vote before they can be citizens.  They figure that, if they go to bat for these people, they’ll be loyal like other constituencies.  They are wrong.  How loyal are selfish lawbreakers going to be?  Moreover, they are kicking their most loyal constituency right in the teeth.

This brings us to the Democrat’s biggest constituency, Black America.  Black people, for good reason, do not like the idea of illegals suddenly being given a pass.  Illegals represent more competition for jobs that they have historically been discriminated against in getting.  Black people resent the language, history and icons of civil rights, a real struggle for freedom, being applied to people who broke our law just to get money.  When Rosa Parks refused to yield her bus seat, it wasn’t for selfish pecuniary gain.  She held her seat to promote her equality as a person.  Those who waved the Mexican flag and stomped upon real civil rights heroes just want to keep their snouts in the gravy train, and in so doing are also driving black families of citizens into poverty and dependence.  And every politician who is not for strict enforcement is effectively practicing anti-black racism.  Ironically the chargfe is being led by those who disingenuously say that they have the black man’s interests at heart, when all they want is votes, any way they can get them, loyalty or decency be damned.

It is not the responsibility of the United States of America to provide the citizens of Mexico with jobs, government-paid healthcare, education or anything else.  Mexico’s government, in assisting these greedy people to break our laws just to get their hands on American dollars via Western Union, is effectively waging economic and physical war upon the United States of America.  I am saddened that our President does not see this issue as clearly as he sees the evil in the Middle East.  What we need right now is a strong physical barrier, severe punishment for illegal occupancy in (of?) the united States of America, and the removal of birth citizenship for children of illegals born here.  Give the illegals one chance to get out without consequence.  If they leave, great, they can apply to come in.  If not, then 10 years hard time, deportation, and a permanent ban on being in America.  Put up a 200-foot-tall, 30-foot-thick concrete wall with razor wire tunneling sensors, guard towers, and armored patrols.  Ban the wire transfer of money to Mexico unless the transferor can show that he is legally in the United States of America.  $1 million fine per illegal worker for companies that willfully hire illegals.  Absolute immunity from civil rights litigation for employers who carefully verify right-to-work documents supplied for form I-9.

Do that, and they will get the point.  And, if the politicans get guts and do that, we’ll know that they do as well.