Immigration response followup

One reader (Sean) raised some questions about the immigration essay below. I thought it was worth addressing them here rather than in Comments:

1. Biometric ID--useless to bring up because it'll never be adopted. So "I feel that using this as an arguing point as a cure to illegal immigration is like arguing for the invention of cold fusion to solve pollution."

A: There's a humongous difference between cold fusion and biometric ID: the former is not possible with current technology (and probably never will be, for that matter); while biometric ID is not only possible, but is being adopted in other countries today.

Second, security experts seem to agree that sooner or later Islamofascists will succeed in carrying out another 9/11-scale or larger attack in this country. Biometric ID is the only way we can track everyone here, so while it's much more important for immigration control in the larger scheme of things, adopting is in the aftermath of a second 9/11 is more likely.

Third, Americans are in denial about the extent to which we're already being tracked--how many databases we're on today. The only people not on these databases are illegal aliens. It's possible that honest citizens will eventually wake up to the fact that the privacy enjoyed by our forbears in the 18th century is gone whether we get biometric ID or not, and today the only people whose privacy is actually being protected by not having biometric ID are criminals.

However, the far right has been fomenting antigovernment paranoia--at the behest of their billionaire patrons--for so long that it would be well nigh impossible to give up on this, even though it harms their constituents. This is just another example of how so many politicians serve their paymasters first and voters last.

And of course left wing demagogues also foment antigovernment paranoia, spurred on by people who belong to groups that have been the target of government plots against them in the past--especially blacks and Jews, whose ancestors had legitimate complaints.

Which leads to my fourth reason for championing biometric ID: it allows you to confront partisans with their own hypocrisy. I once lost the more or less friendship of a far right conspiracy theory type (we'd met scuba diving) when I pointed out to him that by opposing biometric ID he was supporting illegal immigration, since nothing less will stop it.

Right wingers are constantly prattling about how we need Law Und Order--yet they balk when doing just that actually includes them. It's hypocritical and worth pointing out to them when you're discussing politics with them.

And with left wingers it's a perfect example of the saying "A cat who's sat on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again--but he'll never sit on a warm one either." That is, the fact that the ancestors of many leftists suffered from government persecution doesn't mean that all governments always persecute everyone who's in any kind of minority. They're fighting shadows of the past.

And you can also point out to each that they sound just like the other--there's nothing a right winger likes less is being told he sounds just like a Lib-er-ul--and vice-versa.

BTW biometric ID doesn't require an ID card with a fingerprint that you'd have to keep track of. For example, for years Fujitsu has been marketing a palm reader. You hold your hand over it and it reads the unique, un-fake-able pattern of veins inside the palm of your hand. Link the reader to a database in the cloud and you've got something you could have in every police car, at the counter of every hospital and Dept. of Motor Vehicles office etc.

Lastly, I have to believe that at least some of the opposition to biometric ID stems from ignorance and letting its opponents frame the debate. So the more that sane people bring it up and champion it, the more likely it is of being adopted someday.

After all, e-Verify is in use today on a limited basis, in the face of ferocious opposition by Tea Party types and ACLU types--people I call privacy delusionists--and biometric ID is just an extension of e-Verify.

2. Blaming the Catholic Church for Mexican overpopulation. "Accusing the Catholic church of causing Mexicans to breed like rabbits isn't nearly as easy as accusing scientists and doctors for cultivating an environment where people don't die as quickly."

A. It's true that technology advances made population explosions possible. But that technology is even more available in the more advanced countries, from Japan to France to Russia--and in those countries middle class people aren't having huge families, by and large. And yes, some of them are Catholic--including France of course--but in these countries the Catholic Church is hanging on by its fingernails, with the majority of its nominal adherents not following its leader's dictates--particularly where birth control/abortion are concerned.

That's true in this country. The only sizeable group of Catholics in America who follow the church's dictates are Latinos--legal and illegal. The Catholic Church in North America has become rapidly latinized, in exact proportion to the dropping average educational level of adherent.

Mexico's small middle class doesn't follow church dictates either--hence Mexico City legalizing abortion.

So what you need is uneducated people with access to modern medical technology--and the Catholic Church telling them condoms are murder. That's the toxic combo you get in Latin America (and Haiti, for that matter).

For example, last year in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo a 12 year old girl whose stepfather had raped and impregnated her was forced to carry the fetus to term at the insistence of the Catholic Church officials there.

That's typical where the Catholic Church dominates.

Islam is just as bad, in general. Muslim countries are famous for gigantic families--which fact give Israelis heartburn every day.

But our illegal immigration problem isn't with Muslims--as it is in Europe--it's with devout Catholic Mexican (and some Salvadorean and Guatemalan) peasants with less than an American high school education moving here in droves, illegally (and legally too in large numbers, due to our culturally suicidal legal immigration policies).

If Mexico weren't Catholic it would still have had a population explosion, though I'm guessing not as big as it's been. And the Catholic Church in Latin America has gotten laws passed that general ban abortion, condoms, the pill--everything you can use to stop procreation, along with a church-dominated government that actively interferes with any kind of family planning (any kind that works), even where some forms of birth control are nominally legal.

As a consequence Mexico's population has exploded from 20 million in 1940 to over 100 million in 2000, and is continuing to explode. Moreover, that explosion is occurring disproportionately among the poverty-stricken bottom half of Mexico's demographics.

Today technology makes it possible to have vast numbers of babies--but also to not have any babies, if people so wish and the law allows. Technology is as good and as evil as a hammer--it depends on what people choose to do with it.

And the Catholic Church, which has trended rightward over the last several decades, has chosen to ignore the dire effects of its policies on this planet.

So I do blame the Church and not the technology the Church uses selectively to pursue its unintentionally ecocidal goals.

3. "Repatriation isn't easy." Actually repatriation is a snap. You don't have to round up illegals who aren't committing felonies. You just have to make it impossible for them to make a living here and to access the social welfare system. Then many will leave the same way they came--on their own hook.

A. It's true that both parties are terrified of the swelling Latino vote. But it's equally true that a solid majority of Americans are dead set against any kind of amnesty--not just crusty old Republican men, but a substantial portion of Democrats (like me) as well. That's why the Republican leadership's attempt to pass an amnesty "reform" that Bush vowed he'd sign never got to him--the voter reaction was so powerful they didn't dare.

I agree that no one should be "living in the shadows." But I argue that the solution is to eliminate the shadows--with e-Verify to start with--and to try to get our very right wing Supreme Court majority to agree that the 14th Amendment doesn't cover the offspring of illegals (personally I think the Constitution's language does legalize them, but the Court's right wing majority is so activist and so indifferent to stare decisis that they might go for such a ruling).

The trick is to keep banking of the Republican leadership to listen to its constituents' powerful feelings on this topic, and for Democrats like me to confront the internal contradictions between Democratic Party founding principles and its hypocrisy in trying to help citizens of other countries grad the American Dream that they're taking away from their own Democratic constituents (including Latino Americans) in doing so.

Always work on making people live by the values they themselves espouse. I can argue for shutting out illegals from both a Democratic and Republican perspective.

And that's the take-away. Whoever you talk with, tell them why their own values mandate opposing illegal immigration. As long as they believe in nations, and in a nation's first obligation being to its own citizens, you can make this argument.

Especially in a massive, drawn-out recession with no end in sight and the worst-hit being the working class Americans whose earning power has been sapped by competition from citizens of other countries.

A job given to an illegal is a job shipped abroad.

Note to movement Republicans re illegal immigration (another way of saying the preceding post)

In many mainstream media comment threads, Republican partisans try to change the topic from illegal immigration to the Democratic Party, blaming the latter entirely for the former, along with rank and file Democrats, all of whom are described as lib-er-uls (apparently the worst thing you can call someone).

This is beyond stupid. Don't you realize that about half of registered Democrats are on your side of the immigration issue--and that much of the Republican leadership is against you?

We'll all get farther in our efforts to stop illegal immigration--and to NOT give amnesty to those already here--if we make it a bipartisan groundswell. Only grassroots efforts will get us what we want, since both parties are terrified of losing Latino votes.

If you just take this issue as an opportunity to talk about how Obama is a foreign Muslim terrorist so-shul-ist yada yada, you push away all the Democrats who, like me, are on the same page as you about illegal immigration.

And you're nuts if you think the Republican leadership is with you, no matter what they say. Talk is cheap. I judge what the Republican Party is willing to do to stop illegal immigration by what it actually did do from 2000 to 2006, the six year period when it controlled all three branches of government.

And what they did do in that period is....talk. Some sporadic fence building, a few symbolic prosecutions of businesses--and the biggest wave of illegal immigration into this country in United States history.

That's what the Republicans did for us.

I'm not saying the Democratic leadership is any better. You'd better believe they're trolling for Latino votes for all it's worth.

However, Obama does seem to be making vigorous efforts to grab illegal immigrants who are felons, and they have increased border efforts, though not remotely enough.

Nearly all of us Democrats disagree with you about health care reform and Wall Street reform. I can't paper that over, hold hands and sing kumbaya with y'all.

But we can work together on this issue. And those of us who live in the territory of La Reconquista are especially likely to agree with you, because we've seen it firsthand, and we know from personal experience that virtually every word in every pro-amnesty article is outrageous propaganda.

Now here's the hardest part: the need to adopt a universal biometric ID system, which both liberals and right wingers oppose almost hysterically.

I don't propose giving up any of my privacy lightly. But nothing less will really deal with this crisis, and you surely must agree that it is a crisis.

Because regardless of what we do at the border, that won't help with the illegals already here, however many there are--10 million? 20 million? 30 million? No one knows, but we do know there are A LOT, and they're concentrated here in the Southwest, such that many outside the war zone don't fully realize how dire it is here.

Moreover, large number of illegals come here on visas and then let the visa expire. Border patrols won't nab these either.

And this is the only way to shut up the anencephalic Al Sharpton school of political screamers constantly accusing everyone opposing illegal immigration of racism.

A biometric universal ID can be used to efficiently screen every single person whenever they interact with any government agency, from schools to hospitals to polling places to the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, plus private employers.

You don't even need a card (that can be lost or faked). For example, Fujitsu makes a palm scanner that instantly reads the pattern of veins inside your palm. Can't fake that!

Every cop car can have a scanner, linked to the database with wifi.

It will catch anyone of any race or nationality, any way they turn.

This is the only way we can discover and control who's in this country, and catch all those who are here illegally. And palm vein patterns don't depend on skin color.

Regardless of your party, please join me in advocating this. It can build a virtual wall throughout our country, not just at the border.

And remember--there's not a prayer of it happening unless it's a grassroots bipartisan effort. Neither party in Washington is going to stick their necks out on this one.

You can't hear the loudest voice in the immigration debate

The illegal immigration debate has three sides: one for amnesty for illegals, one for denying illegals entry, employment, and social services, and one for the status quo. The first two don't matter, even though they're the only ones you hear about in the news--both the mainstream media and alternative news sources.

The third only speaks in private, and only to lawmakers and elected officials, and it represents only a few thousand Americans. But they're also the richest Americans, and the largest contributors to campaign coffers. This group wants a steady flow of illegals so they can drive down wages for blue-collar work and bust the unions. They don't want them legalized; nor do they want them stopped.

You don't need access to those private conversations to figure out whether what I'm saying here is true. Just look at the news. You see lip service paid to public pressure groups for and against illegal immigration, but the people keep coming, in enormous numbers. It's ridiculous to say that we can't stop this. Just have the National Guard guard the nation--deploy them across the southern border, with rules of engagement appropriate to the fact that most illegal immigration is now managed by the drug cartels, using militias armed with automatic weapons. And have employment filtered through a national biometric ID--also well within our technical capabilities now. But everything gets slow-walked if it's even tried. Look at Bush's pathetic "efforts" to build a border fence mandated and budgeted by Congress. Look at the draconian federal prosecution and incarceration of border agents Ramos and Campeon--guaranteed to demoralize other Border Patrol officers. There are numerous other examples.

So don't let anyone tell you this is a two-way debate...well, except it is: the public debate, which provides the illusion of representative democracy, and the private non-debate, which is really just marching orders issued by the wealthiest Americans to their dedicated, hardworking servants, otherwise known as Congress and the Executive branch.

Richard A. Clarke says biometric ID a necessity

"In the absence of a secure border and verifiable biometric identification systems, preventing terrorists from getting in to this country and setting up sleeper cells here is almost impossible. Maybe we will get serious after the next attack. "

--from a New York Times op-ed piece by Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, & author of “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.”