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.

NPR really does veer left when it comes to illegal immigration

Sadly, I don't think the Powers That Be at National Public Radio even realize when they've gone into propaganda mode. This saddens me because my spouse and I have been public TV/radio subscribers for decades, and I can't stand to get the news from commercial radio, where ads interrupt the news it seems like every three minutes and last for three minutes. Regardless of bias, it's the constant yelling at me by the ads that made me switch channels.

I've observed that the Left is most blind to their own bias when it comes to illegal immigration. This morning's example was completely truthful--no lies were told. So NPR can tell itself that means it's not biased.

The news item was a Thai kid brought here illegally as a little child who just graduated college with honors and is trying to get into med school. He sounds like a model citizen (apart from not being a citizen).

The Leftist mindset goes "This guy didn't bring himself here illegally. So being here illegally is not his fault. And he's a great guy who'd be a great contributor to our society. Therefore give him citizenship and a scholarship to med school."

What the Leftist mindset doesn't comprehend is the idea that laws are based on principles, not individual circumstances. Or they comprehend this but think it doesn't matter. Patriotism is so twentieth century. We're beyond that now...

There are a fair number of people who are here illegally through no fault of their own. Some of them are like Thai Guy here--college grad, regular boy scout, future doctor. Some of them are gangbangers. Some of them are just high school dropouts who will work menial unskilled jobs the rest of their life, in competition with citizen dropouts whose unemployment rate is sky-high--over 20% I believe.

So the question is not should Thai Guy get a free ride. It's whether every person brought here illegally should get to stay here because it isn't their fault, and get a college slot--maybe a scholarship to boot--if they qualify.

Well, news flash. It's not their fault. And it's not my fault. It's their parent's fault. This country owes them nothing except emergency medical care (followed hopefully by deportation).

Thai Guy isn't "undocumented." He's documented all right--with Thai citizenship papers. He is a legitimate citizen of Thailand, which isn't exactly Aghanistan, and he has all the rights and duties of any other citizen of Thailand.

And his perfect command of English and an American college degree would stand him in good stead in a tourism-oriented nation like Thailand. Thailand also has hospitals catering to medical tourism. Thailand is a valid place to live. I haven't been there personally, but I've been to neighboring Indonesia half a dozen times, and I could live there. It has a lot of pleasing features as a country, and so does Thailand (except for the draconian laws about "insulting the royal family").

I'm fine with Thai Guy applying for a green card from Thailand. I'd even be willing to not hold his current illegal status against him as long as he decamps to Thailand now that he's an adult and knows he's here illegally. I'd also be willing to give him a big plus on his application for being totally fluent in English and a college graduate and familiar with our culture. In the world of would-be immigrants, all those things would place him high on the waiting list in my book.

I'm just not willing to let him stay here along with all the far less desirable people I'd have to let stay with him if I made an exemption for him and thus let his parents off the hook.

And see, there's the biggest reason for making Thai Guy go home to a home he knows nothing about (as I knew nothing about Indonesia the first time I went): letting him stay tells aliens who want the best for their kids and don't want to wait their turn...to come here illegally, knowing that America will eventually let their darling child(ren) stay here without making them wait their turn.

Does it steam you if you're waiting in a long line for something you need and some punk cuts in line in front of you and everyone else? It happened to me last 4th of July. We were on the beach waiting for the fireworks and I had to use the PortaPotty. Long lines. After I'd waited there in line for a long time, dancing from one foot to the other, a pair of teenaged boys swaggered up and just popped into the PortaPotty. This happened several times in fact.

Now imagine how amnesty for Thai Guy would make people who'd waited ten years to come here feel.
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NPR does this kind of "human interest story" time after time after time. Never--well, once in the past ten years, in my regular listening experience--do they cover anyone but illegal alien saints with sob stories. The low lifes and criminals and unskilled laborer high school dropouts? Nada about them. And the sociologists and economists and immigration specialists and legal immigrants Thai Guy wants to cut in line in front of get no air time on NPR, to balance the story out in some way. Instead they quote militant advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Conference or The Race when they want authoritative figures and arguments.

As I said, not a single lie was told by NPR this morning about Thai Guy. That's better than them just lying about everything, like Mitt Romney does routinely, every day, and never corrects or apologizes for even when his lying is definitively revealed, He just keeps on lying, with that patented Concerned Citizen look on his face.

I guess Dr. House was right (from the TV show that just ended): "Everybody lies." But I expect it from Republicans. I don't from NPR, which has made such an over commitment to veracity. Very, very disappointing.

Self-deportation

NYTimes liberal columnist Maureen Dowd, writing about Mitt Romney, alluded to his "inane suggestion that illegal aliens engage in 'self-deportation'.”

And here, in one phrase, is the essence of how the Democratic Party has thrust so many American working stiffs into the eager embrace of the Republicans.

"Self deport" just means "going home" if your home is in another country. Why would anyone do that? Dowd, by calling the idea "inane" is saying nobody would.

Well, they would if they couldn't get work or social services. They couldn't get those things if we adopted India's cheap, highly workable national biometric ID system, using iris patterns instead of counterfitable cards. We can use it as a virtual border fence to prevent trespassers from cashing in.

This idea is only "inane" if it's impossible. So a 3rd world country can do it but we can't? I find that assumption to be the inane one. Every single illegal doesn't have to self-deport for it to work. If a quarter of 12 million people went home, that would still be a huge improvement. And the knowledge that it was so difficult to get by here without being here legally would help dissuade others from coming, while amnesty has had the opposite effect every time we've tried it.

And the idea that America is preferable to, say, Mexico, is soft jingoism. Mexicans love many things about Mexico--it's their culture, their people, their language, their village. Very few say they came here because they reject any of those things. Many say, actually, that they don't like American culture, people, or language. They only come because they have trouble getting ahead back home (mainly due to Mexico's extreme overpopulation crisis overwhelming the Mexican economy's ability to provide jobs for all those people).

And Dowd is summarily dismissing one of the very few ideas Romney advances that aren't bogus, when he presents so there are so many fat targets presented by him every time he opens his mouth--why? Dowd doesn't realize how out of touch this makes her look, not him.

Here in the Southwest we're drowning in illegals who don't even have a high school education. Dowd's job is safe. So's her neighborhood. Her wages aren't being driven down. Her union isn't being busted. And she wonders why blue collar Americans are voting Republican?

I'm voting for Obama because the GOP is even more delusional than the Dems. But it's not because of illegal immigration, where Romney's right and Obama's wrong. It's because of the GOP being so destructive to our economy and our civilization in nearly every other regard--and it won't really act on illegal immigration anyway, as the Bush era proved. They just talk about it when they're out of office--because the GOP's billionaire patrons love illegal immigration.