Children brought here illegally are already citizens

In the comment thread to a talk show on children brought here illegally, one commentor said:

"An adult should not be punished for a crime his parents committed while he was a minor. We need amnesty and a path to citizenship for people who were brought into this country illegally as children and raised as Americans."

 My response:

How is returning someone to the nation they're a citizen of "punishment" ? It seems remarkably jingoistic to assume that living in any nation on Earth other than America is an awful fate.

And while a child is not responsible for crimes his parents committed, neither is a nation of which the child is not a citizen. If a child is, say, a citizen of Jamaica, then Jamaica is responsible for that child--just as Jamaica is not responsible for you and me.

There is much injustice in this world. The plight of illegal aliens brought here as children is one of them, but it's minor compared to the injustices inflicted on a billion humans every day by their own nations.

Today there are many thousands of children and teens being held as slaves in America, right under our middle class noses. Juveniles being trafficked sexually, who can't even go to the police, who generally arrest them instead of their captors.

That's the kind of injustice we should be focusing on. Citizens of other countries brought here illegally as children can do very well in the tourist trade of their home country, since they speak English idiomatically and understand our culture.

I've seen this personally in many 3rd world nations I've traveled in, from Indonesia to Mexico. Repatriating such people is not throwing them under the bus--and like the other 6.8 billion people on Earth who are also not American citizens, they are not our direct responsibility, though we should of course hope for the best for them.

Obama's new immigrant initiative wrong, but Romney not right

Today President Obama announced that he'd quit automatically deporting illegal aliens who'd entered the country before they were 16, had no criminal record, had graduated high school, and who weren't 30 yet. Stuff like that. And he'd give such aliens a 2 year residence permit, renewable indefinitely every two years.

This is a perfect example of just what the American President can and cannot do. He can't grant amnesty with citizenship. He can't just flout Congressional legislation (though Bush II did pretty much do that with his strange "signing statements" time after time after time). And the next President who isn't him can rescind this dictum on his first day in office.

I've no doubt that the President had a political motive in this announcement (you think?), just as Citizen Romney had a muted doublespeak response to the announcement: namely trolling for the Mexivote.

But let's take everyone at face value. What's wrong with Obamnesty has nothing to do with whether the 800,000-odd people involved wouldn't make good immigrants for America. I'm sure a lot would. For one thing, nearly all of them speak/write good English. And by definition at least graduated from high school. There are a lot of native-born high school dropouts I'd happily trade in for this lot.

What's wrong with Obamnesty is that it dangles a big fat carrot in front of the nose of every alien who loves his kid(s), but doesn't think he or she could get a permanent visa (or doesn't want to wait). Now again I like the idea of LEGAL immigrants who love their kids and want the best of them. But I don't love the idea of the message President Obama just broadcast to the world: "Come on down! We'll let your kids jump the queue--no problemo."

Also, as with all such policies and proposals, it includes a soft jingoism: the assumption that no other country on Earth is worth being a citizen of.

I recall the last time I was in the Philippines, in the Puerto Galera area of Mindoro. I ran into a young lady from Los Angeles, CA, of pure Philippino extraction. She'd grown up in California and didn't even speak Tagalog when she visited relatives in Manila. A few years later, she'd become the manager of a scuba diving shop in Puerto Galera. She know how to deal with foreign divers--95% of the clientele--was attractive, knew the Philippino culture too because that was her family.

That's a life course many of these illegal immigrants to America, brought here as kids, could follow. I've been in 17 countries as a tourist, and I've seen how much demand there is for people with a foot in the home country culture and the cultures of the tourists.

And Puerto Galera isn't some crime-ridden slum. It's a lovely place. Google it--you'll see.

So deporting the illegal aliens who President Obama expresses so much empathy for hardly consigns them to a garbage heap in Bombay. Not when they have an American education. I bet a lot of them would wind up staying happily in their home country when they discover what their opportunities are there.

I'd give them a one year delay in deportation in order to learn their home culture/language, and once they're there, allow them to apply for a visa to come here, along with everyone else who wants to come here, and give them points for their mastery of American culture/language in considering their petition. Unless they stayed here beyond the time limit--and then all bets are off.

But I'm not running for office in a country that's now 14% Hispanic, most of which is the result of previous amnesties for illegals.

And that's why even someone as overtly hardline on immigration as Romney gave such a low-key answer.

When it comes to illegal immigration, conservatives don't understand liberals' motives

To conservatives:
In comment threads you call liberals stupid, anti-American, cynically trolling for Latino votes.

It's more complicated than that.

There are groups--ethnic, racial, religious--that were persecuted once--and not just by others. By the authorities. By the law. Blacks, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, to name a few. And many more in a somewhat grayer area--basically, anyone who looked/acted different than the majority--people with various handicaps, people who are extra bright or extra slow, even redheads (in England, where they're called Gingers), or just people who are homely or have too many zits, or are extra shy.

Plus there are individuals who may have been none of the above, but who had terrible, tyrannical family lives--usually a father who saw himself as the god almighty of his household, but sometimes a mother like that. Or whose parents treated them abusively because they were alcoholics or dopers.

Such people often develop a hatred of oppression and an identification with whoever they perceive as the underdog.

And those whose tribal identity (religious/ethnic/racial/national) is historically linked with persecution get a double of this underdog-o-philia.

They become liberals, who see what they see as oppression for any as oppression for themselves.

So they defend crazy people as "alternatively mentally enabled" and press lawsuits to get them out of the nuthouses and onto the streets. They argue that homosexuals have the same right to be married as anyone else. And they demand amnesty for illegal aliens.

I'm not saying my armchair psychology here is the only motive liberals have about illegal immigration. But I've known such people for many decades, and it fits what I've seen as an underlying motive, apart from other aspects.

And with those who have, as a group, suffered from government oppression, they may feel that they have to defend what they see as everyone's civil rights in every situation, or they fear that they'll lose their own rights.

I'm against amnesty for illegals myself. So none of this is a justification for amnesty.

I just think it's really, really helpful to understand what makes your opponents tick.

Pulitzers for propagandists?

Today's New York Times features a rant by their Supreme Court reporter (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Linda Greenhouse, titled "Breathing while undocumented," about--surprise--Arizona's new get tough on illegal immigrants law. Here's my response:

However you feel about illegal immigration, you should object to Linda Greenhouse trying to sway you with propaganda instead of persuasion. For example:

1. She calls Arizona a “police state,” thus equating it with the regimes of Burma, North Korea, & Iran. This isn’t just hyperbole—it’s a grotesque insult to the political prisoners of real police states, trivializing their plight by the comparison.

2. She equates Arizona’s proof of legal residency requirement with the Soviet Union’s rigid internal passport system. But we all have to show valid ID all the time—to buy something with a check or credit card, if a cop asks for it, if we’re carded in a bar or a liquor store. And when you travel abroad you have to show your passport in a variety of circumstances, pretty much daily.

Soviet internal passports were part of a system that decreed where legal citizens could live or even travel. Arizona places no such controls on legal residents, so it isn’t comparable--and again belittles those who suffered under totalitarian oppression.

3. She redefines illegal aliens as “undocumented” people. Iillegal alien” is the term you see in all legal documents. Ot clearly denotes their illegal status—which in this country is a misdemeanor--a crime. Not a felony, but a crime nonetheless. Redefining them as “undocumented” is a legal fiction that purposely obscures their status as petty criminals, & equates their status with yours if you’d lost your driver’s license & a cop stopped you & asked for your ID. In that instance you’d be “undocumented.” Otherwise it’s a legally meaningless term.

Suppose Linda Greenhouse took a vacation, came home & discovered me living in her home. She orders me out. I say “Why? I’m just undocumented.” Think she’d call the cops & have me arrested?

Not one country on Earth has laws allowing you to enter their country on the excuse that you’re “undocumented.” Why do Leftists want America to be the sole exception?

Besides, the term implies that these people just dropped out of the sky. But these people are—every single one of them—citizens of another country. A country they were born in, mostly with documents from that country. So they aren’t “undocumented” at all.

Calling them undocumented is a framing device—a way to tilt the conversational playing field in your favor. Instead of arguing that they have a right to be here, leftists like Greenhouse use words like this to slip the assumption in without bothering to make a case for it. To be fair, right wingers do the same thing (“activist judges” comes to mind) all the time.

It’s yet another example of how ideologues have more respect for their ideas than for you as an individual; they believe sliming you is justified by their noble ends, forgetting how ex-Communist Emma Goldman observed that “the means reveal the ends.”

4. She claims that it is illegal to treat an illegal alien as if they’re illegal, in the name of civil liberties, calling it “a new crime of breathing while undocumented.” Um, a trespasser is a trespasser as long as they’re trespassing. Actually, legally they’re still guilty of the crime of trespass even if they leave where they trespassed—just as you’re guilty of speeding even if you slow down later.

Of course what she’s implying with that cutesy turn of phrase is that Arizona cops will stop anyone who looks Mexican & lock ‘em up if they can’t prove they belong here. That is illegal, but it’s not what the law actually says, & it’s not what Arizona police departments say they’ll do.

Which is to look for people who look like they’re smuggling or being smuggled. Like a Ford Econoline van stuffed with 20 ragged men, women & children, along with backpacks & milk jugs full of water. Or a file of 50 such people in the middle of the desert, half a mile north of the border. Or a residential house with 50 such people camped out inside it.

Now if they look Mexican and/or don’t speak English, that’s another clue. But mainly it’s situational—which is what cops do if they’re trying to do their job & stop crime.

5. She calls this an “anti-immigrant spasm.” Here she conflates legal & illegal immigration. Again, no argument supporting that assumption, making it a classic dirty trick.

6. She refers to a 1975 Texas law as “a law to deprive undocumented immigrant children of a free public education.” But you could as easily call it “a law to require citizens of other countries not here legally to obtain social services—including educational ones—from their own country.” Here again, Goodman’s language presumes that illegals dropped out of the sky, absolving their own countries of any responsibility for them.

Finally, she never mentions that the primary reason Mexicans come here illegally is Mexican overpopulation (from 13.1 million in 1900 to 111 million to day, an eightfold increase). Leftists avoid this fact because it’s not America’s fault…so it can’t be true.

What Mexico needs isn’t an American overpopulation escape valve—it needs China’s one child law.

Start immigration arguments with verifiable facts

Whether you favor or oppose illegal immigration, you must admit the truth of the following facts:

1. Mexico's population in 1940 was around 20 million.

2. Mexico's population in 2000 was over 100 million.

3. Mexico's population growth has not come from immigration to Mexico--it has come from Mexicans having many, many babies. Mexico's dominant religion is Roman Catholicism. The Catholic church fiercely opposes the use of any form of birth control device or drug, including condoms. Catholic social policy dominates Mexico.

4. America's Latino population in 1940 was 1/2 of 1%. Which means, among other things, that the American Southwest was not populated by Mexicans when the Americans arrived. It was populated by American Indians, such as Navaho, Hopi, Puelo, Plains Indians etc.--for whom the few Mexicans there were no more or less than foreign invaders.

5. America's Latino population today is over 14%--more than self-identified blacks at this point. Much of that huge increase stems from two previous amnesties, which at the time were presented as the last amnesty ever, because new enforcement provisions would prevent further illegal immigration. In each case what ensued was real amnesty coupled with fake enforcement. The last such amnesty was in 1986.

6. America is in the depths of its worst recession since the Great Depression.

7. Unemployment for American unskilled laborers is over 20%, and promises to remain so for the foreseeable future. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment for Hispanics who are American citizens is 13%; for blacks, 15%; for teenagers, 26%. Most Mexican illegal immigrants are unskilled laborers. Liberal economist Paul Krugman states that large unskilled immigrant populations always drive down wages for unskilled labor--by around 5-25% today, depending on job and location.

8. Over the last decade Californians had a chance to vote on several initiative measures that sought to restrict government benefits to illegal aliens and make English California's official language. California has a substantial majority of Democrats (i.e. relative liberals). Yet these measures passed, and exit polls indicated that they had the support of around a quarter of Hispanic Americans as well as about 40% of Democrats.

Those are the facts, all of which can be verified independently. And they show that many assertions about illegal immigration are canards. Starting with the so-called American "job magnet."

Mexicans want to move to America because there are too many Mexicans. Mexicans weren't sneaking into America in 1950, despite a booming American economy, because there weren't yet too many Mexicans for Mexico's economy to accommodate. Few people want to leave their town, their country, their culture for a foreign one.

Of course now they don't have to. California has become Mexifornia. For example, the most-watched TV station in Los Angeles (American's second-largest city) only broadcasts in Spanish. Nearly all legal materials, signs, commercial customer support phone systems etc. are delivered in Spanish as well as English. Many storefront signs are in Spanish only. You can live your whole life in Mexifornia without having to speak a word of English. And of course, by law, all ballots are delivered in Spanish as well as English. Many radio and TV stations broadcast only in Spanish.
And from being a miniscule minority in California in 1940, Mexicans with American citizenship will be a majority of the state's population by 2050, as long as it continues to increase at the present rate.

Now it's one thing to welcome in thousands or even millions of people from one foreign country/culture. It's another for one of those foreign immigrant groups to become the majority in your state, making everyone else, combined, a minority.

That's the conquering of one country by another--a (mostly) unarmed invasion.

And it makes any American supporting this invasion...well, what do you call someone who works to help a foreign country conquer one's own country?

The New York Times published yet another editorial proposing amnesty for illegal immigrants, along with asserting that illegals have a right to conduct their day-to-day activities here without fer of prosecution, and that local law enforcement should do nothing whatsoever about illegal immigration. You can find this editorial at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/opinion/26wed1.html?_r=1

Here's my response:

This editorial argues by anecdote. Anecdotes can illustrate an argument, but they can't prove it.

For every anecdote of illegals as innocent victims of Americans, you can find an anecdote of Americans as innocent victims of illegals. None of those anecdotes finds its way into this editorial, however. Nor does a single statistic. Nor does empirical reasoning.

All of which makes this editorial pure propaganda, playing on readers' heartstrings through a one-sided sob story treatment of a difficult issue, using loaded language to tilt the playing field even further. (Such as renaming illegal aliens "undocumented immigrants", which strips away the taint of trespass.)

It all works because even among the college educated, many get their BAs without any real exposure to scientific logic, quantitiative analysis, or training in how to spot propaganda and avoid being manipulated by it.

Once you scrape away the propagandizing, here's what this editorial claims:

1. The nation is inundated with hate crimes against illegals. (False—the FBI reported 7,622 hate crimes last year, meaning that 0.003% of the population is committing such crimes; and that number is down from 2006.)

2. Illegals are afraid to talk to police for fear of being deported, so crimes against them going unpunished. (Plausible, but also due to illegals coming from countries where police prey on you instead of helping you, and from countries that don't speak English; moreover, the offsetting value of local law enforcement helping rid America of illegals isn't even considered.)

3. Illegals are here to stay; we're powerless to expel them; therefore we must give them citizenship to avoid creating a permanent underclass. (The Left hopes that people will come to believe this trope through sheer repetition; but in fact, adopting E-Verify universally would make it impossible for illegals to work here other than as pick-up labor in front of Home Depots; and adopting a universal biometric ID system would force most illegals to go home the same way they got here.)

4. It's immoral to "tear families apart." (By this logic we mustn't arrest thieves with families; and of course illegals' families are welcome to leave with them. Moreover, those families are the product of the decisions of the illegals themselves, not us. It's called "responsibility." Look it up.)

5. Illegals have rights, just like the rest of us. (They have basic human rights, but they don't have the right to be here, nor to be paid for their labor, because it was illegal for them to do that labor for money in the first place. Nor do they have the right to "congregate in public places without fear" because, again, they don't have the right to be here, because they're trespassing.)

7. Local law enforcement should concentrate on keeping "off the books businesses from eroding pay and conditions for all workers." (You bet—but the easiest way to do that is through E-Verify and a universal biometric ID system, neither of which you mention or advocate, and without which local law enforcement is denied its best means of accomplishing this.)

This editorial's emotional appeal betrays total callousness towards the main victims of illegals: working-class Americans of all races and ethnicities, whose already low wages have been driven below the poverty line by competition from illegals.

For shame.