Guard the Borders Blogburst

by Heidi at Euphoric Reality

WHAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT SENATE BILL S. 2611

The new immigration bill (the most "sweeping reform in 50 years") S. 2611 is an amalgam of petty causes, illogical provisions, unstructured "solutions" with zero allowances for implementation, and self-contradictory language. Despite the mess, it was passed by self-righteous politicians who repeated the mantra "it's better than doing nothing." This from the same gaggle of do-nothings who outright rejected the House's law enforcement bill.

The Senate bill has our President's full support - this same bill is a derivative of one structured by Ted Kennedy and John McCain, and supported in full by the majority of Democrats. That alone ought to give one pause - President Bush, a Democrat?

Peggy Noonan says, "The disinterest in the White House and among congressional Republicans in establishing authority on America's borders is so amazing--the people want it, the age of terror demands it--that great histories will be written about it."

She opines that it is possible that..."the administration's slow and ambivalent action is the result of being lost in some geopolitical-globalist abstract-athon that has left them puffed with the rightness of their superior knowledge, sure in their membership in a higher brotherhood, and looking down on the low concerns of normal Americans living in America.

I continue to believe the administration's problem is not that the base lately doesn't like it, but that the White House has decided it actually doesn't like the base."

S. 2611 is less about law, and more about a weird, mutant agenda that melds licentiousness with an utter disregard for the end result. There are quite a few details in S. 2611 that the media has ignored and that the legislators would rather you know nothing about. Some were provisions germane to the original Kennedy-McCain bill or the pseudo revision of Hagel-Martinez, the rest are amendments that required separate votes to accept or reject. Here's what you need to know about the Senate's fiasco.

NATIONAL SECURITY

The Senate failed to pass an amendment that would've made amnesty contingent on effectively securing the border. Their priorities are completely opposite those of the American people, who have repeatedly made it clear that our borders must be secured before anything else. Furthermore, buried in Arlen Specter's manager's package, an amendment proposed by Dodd makes it mandatory for our government to consult with Mexico before taking any security action along the border, to include building any barrier or any enforcement along the border. This includes everything from federal troops, and state-mobilized National Guard, down to local law enforcement. In other words, even if a county sheriff mobilizes a posse to guard the border, he must clear it first through Mexico. This effectively gives the Mexican government veto power over our national security concerns!

We've heard a lot about the 6,000 National Guard troops, assigned to help with back-up duties in order to free up Border Patrol agents. Unfortunately, that will make only 500 additional agents available to apprehend and detain lawbreakers at the border.

The White House adamantly insists that Guard troops take no role in law enforcement, even though, so long as they are under the command of their governors—as they will be under the president’s proposal—they are allowed to do so. Republicans worry that when the Guard shows up for duty, Lou Dobbs’ cameras won’t be far behind, recording their impotence as they merely alert border agents to the whereabouts of entering illegal immigrants whom they must passively watch.

"Merely alert border agents to the whereabouts of entering illegal immigrants?" Sound familiar? The National Guard will, at most, be performing Minutemen duties. But wait! I thought the Minutemen were "vigilantes", Mr. President.

A tiny concession to border security was passed (Sessions, R-AL, amendment #3979) which allows for the increase of fencing and vehicle barriers along 370 miles of the southwest border of the United States. Unfortunately, existing hardware - including rancher's broken cattle fences - would be counted towards this paltry total.

What's most appalling is that a Democrat tried to push through an amendment (Leahy, D-VT, amendment #4117) that would revise the existing ban on granting refugee status to aliens who have provided "material support" to a terrorist organization! Fortunately, the motion was killed, but the fact that it was even considered and proposed is deeply troubling! Who can take these guys seriously?

EMPLOYMENT

Ted Kennedy passed an amendment (#4066) that makes it unnecessary for any illegal alien to have an employer attest that they are employed when petitioning for permanent legal residence, and "self-employment" is sufficient. Plenty of room for fraud and corruption there!

Now here's where the whole argument for "cheap labor/doing jobs Americans won't do" flies out the window. Barak Obama (D-IL, amendment no. 3971) passed an amendment that extends the Davis-Bacon Act's "prevailing wage" levels to all temporary guest workers. That puts them ahead of American workers, who have this protection only on federal job sites:

So guest-workers (but not citizen workers) must be paid Davis-Bacon wage rates for jobs in the private sector if their occupation is covered by Davis-Bacon. Presumably because Senate Democrats' union bosses thought this provision too modest, an amendment by Senator Barack Obama, approved by voice vote, extended Davis-Bacon wages rates to all private work performed by guest workers, even if their occupations are not covered by Davis-Bacon.

There goes their precious "cheap labor" - this provision will effectively price many guest workers out of the market. "Guest workers" will have legal status and visas that entitle them to real wages, overtime, deductions like unemployment and social security, and workers’ rights that legal workers now enjoy. Illegals will still be cheaper. Thus, twenty million illegals will be amnestied right out of the job market. Then what do we do with them when millions of new illegals flood into the country to take their place?

Now enter the litigation factor: foreign guest farm workers, admitted under the bill, cannot be "terminated from employment by any employer . . . except for just cause." In contrast, American ag workers can be fired for any reason.

TAXES

We've been assured time and again that newly amnestied "guest workers" will have to pay back taxes for the years that they lived here illegally - except that they really won't. A loophole in the new bill provides that only two years of back taxes will need to be filed. I don't know any American citizen that can just choose not to pay taxes for years! Additionally, the Senate has now provided for illegal aliens to apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Our government will end up paying them!

SOCIAL SECURITY

Senator Ensign (R-NV) tried to remove the provision allowing illegal immigrants who receive legal status under the legislation to receive retro-active credit for Social Security benefits for time that they worked before receiving legal status. Arlen Specter killed it. The bill allows illegal aliens to receive Social Security benefits for the years that they worked illegally, even if they paid into Social Security under a false number or using a stolen identity! As an American citizen, if I were caught stealing someone's identity or forging documentation to avoid paying taxes, I'd go to jail. Not so illegal aliens! There are NO penalties for breaking those laws - only retro-active rewards. The longer they broke the law, the bigger the pay-off.

VOTING

Senator McConnell (R-KY) sought to add to the bill a requirement that all voters in federal elections be required to present a valid photo identification.

"It is nonsense to suggest that somehow a photo ID for one of our most sacred rights should not be protected by a requirement that is increasingly routine in almost all daily activities in America today," said the Kentucky lawmaker, second-ranking Republican.

But Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., likened the proposal to a poll tax or a requirement for voters to pass a literacy test. "Now is not the time and this is not the place to consider an amendment that may disenfranchise a million or more poor, minority, disabled, and elderly voters -- all of them American citizens," he said.

The proposal barely passed on a vote of 49-48, but unfortunately, it remains in limbo, evidently doomed by arcane rules now that the Senate has voted for cloture.

What the bill DOES provide for is a Bureau of the Census report to Congress on the impact of illegal immigration on the apportionment of Representatives in Congress. Of course, they need to count them - they are, after all, their newly bought electorate!

"GUEST WORKER" STATUS - NOT TEMPORARY AT ALL

Here is a perfect of example of self-contradictory language within the bill itself. The bill supposedly protects American workers by ensuring that new immigrants will not take away jobs. However, the bill's own definition of "United States Worker" includes temporary foreign guest workers, so the protection is meaningless.

Senator Kyl (R-AZ, amendment #3969) attempted to ensure that temporary workers stayed temporary by removing the bill's provision allowing guest workers to apply for permanent residency. The Senator from his own state, McCain, killed the amendment.

Also, thanks to Senator Santorum (R-PA) the bill expands the visa waiver program (Immigration and Nationality Act, Sect 217) to numerous additional countries. At this point, why even bother with a visa? Waive it all!!

BUDGET

Senator Allard (R-CO), concerned by the incalculable administrative costs of implementing S. 2611, raised a point of order about the budget. Such a move is allowed under the Budget Act when the projected cost of legislation under consideration exceeds a certain level. If the point of order is upheld, the legislation cannot proceed. The Senate irresponsibly waived the protective rules under the Budget Act, rejecting the point of order 67-31. Apparently, no cost is too great.

THE "GO BACK TO THE END OF THE LINE" FALLACY

Bush's former chief economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey blows the whistle on the "end of the line" fiction being used to sell the Bush/Senate immigration reform:

At present, there are hundreds of thousands of people around the world who are waiting to immigrate legally to America. They have already waited in line to get their first appointment, then to submit the paperwork, then been called back to answer more questions. And still, they wait. In places like Hong Kong, the waiting time may be as long as 15 years. Most of these people have relatives--cousins or grandchildren, for example--who live and work and pay taxes in America and even have become American citizens.

While the process isn't pretty, there is no good alternative. Permission to reside in America is very valuable....

Comprehensive immigration reform promises that people already in the United States illegally can apply for citizenship, but requires them to "go to the back of the line." But a key question is, the back of which line? The reform bill before the Senate doesn't require illegal immigrants to go back home--to, say, Hong Kong, to the end of the 10-to-15-year line there--to get a green card. Instead, it allows the current illegals to receive their green card immediately--having, in effect, jumped the line at the U.S. consulate abroad. Then, like other green card holders, they will be able to work here, collect government benefits like food stamps and Medicaid, and travel as freely as if they had a U.S. passport.

The line the current illegals will go to the back of is the citizenship line. Under the proposed law, current illegals, newly minted green card in hand, will have to wait six years, then get in line to apply for citizenship. But even after six years, they will be years ahead of many people who have gone through the legal process and are waiting overseas for a consular official to let them come here. Once those who have been playing by the rules all along get here, they too have to wait six years before getting in line for citizenship.

If we really mean "the back of the line," that should be behind everyone who is already in the pipeline to come here legally.

Let's be real: this bill allows those who come here illegally to gain a huge advantage over those who follow the rules. This, in effect, creates an irresistible incentive for others to ignore the rules and come here illegally. Fast track it by going illegal - there's no reason not to!

ZERO PROVISIONS TO MAKE IT ALL WORK

Lindsey has further concerns about the utter non-viability of the Senate's bill:

In 2004, the INS issued 946,000 green cards and naturalized 537,000 people. The proposed immigration reform anticipates giving green cards to up to 11 million people [likely closer to 20 million] in one fell swoop and making them eligible for citizenship six years later. It is inconceivable that the INS could handle an eleven-fold increase in its workload. Do we really intend to pass a bill that purports to document these 11 million people without setting up a system capable of providing them the promised documentation? If we don't, everyone else who is already here legally but needs a visa update, or has adopted a foreign-born child, or wants his aging mother to join him in America, will get swamped by the tsunami of newly legalized people seeking documentation.

VDare concurs and says that the guest worker program is an administrative catastrophe in the making: "Already, there are backlogs of millions of applications with CIS [Citizenship and Immigration Services] for the various immigration benefits. If any guest worker program or amnesty is enacted, the sheer amount of work in processing, receiving and vetting applications and the assorted work that goes with them (interviewing, fraud investigations, verifying documentation) will without a doubt delay any application already pending—even if additional staff are added. This includes, of course, those innocents who bothered to apply to enter the U.S. the right way." No wonder, legal immigrants are so upset with this whole thing!

I do not understand how the Senate has been so willfully blind to the will of the people and so determined to ignore the future costs of their folly:

The approved bill would send the U.S. population skyrocketing towards a billion people by the close of the century -- with no analysis done of the impacts of this mass population explosion on housing, congestion, overcrowding, education, the environment and the overall quality of life. Local communities have not been consulted, and virtually no preparation has been undertaken to provide for the enormous burdens this legislation would entail. It reflects the degree to which the Senate is completely out of touch with the average American.

Nor does the bill take any serious steps that would improve immigration enforcement -- especially in the interior. It merely continues a cycle of rewarding lawbreakers and clothing a loss of border control with the patina of legality. Rather than face the reality of today's immigration crisis, the Senate has enacted a terrible bill that once again puts the interests of the American people last. The bill's cost is staggering, the administrative burdens crushing and the consequences for the cohesion of the future American nation -- no longer bound by a common destiny of the rule of law -- are severe.

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This has been a production of the Guard the Borders Blogburst. It was started by Euphoric Reality, and serves to keep immigration issues in the forefront of our minds as we’re going about our daily lives and continuing to fight the war on terror. If you are concerned with the trend of illegal immigration facing our country, join our Blogburst! Just send an email with your blog name and url to euphoricrealitynet at gmail dot com.

'...the preservation of our liberty'

As this Memorial Day closes, as we commemorate our fallen soldiers, it's fitting to reflect on the state of our Republic. And in so doing, it's hard not to question whether we are still the great and free country that generations of our forefathers fought to establish and defend, and for which many of them gave their lives.
As I write this, it seems to me that our country is in dire peril. Our traditions, our way of life, which are uniquely American, are now being undermined and eroded. Our sovereignty is under attack. I could go on enumerating the challenges we are up against, but we know them all too well, those of us who care deeply about our country and our people.
But the biggest danger sign to me is that we seem to have lost our representative form of government. It appears as though 'we, the people' are no longer the repositories of power in our country. 'Our' leaders apparently no longer answer to us; they seem not only to be operating outside the will of the American people, but in open and brazen defiance of the will of the people.
There is no better evidence of this than the current borders crisis, in which 'our' leaders defiantly refuse to control our borders and enforce the laws of the land. The fact that they have forced this 'amnesty' atrocity on us, and our seeming helplessness in trying to stop the open borders juggernaut, suggests that our elected officials have gone rogue. We no longer seem to have representation, except for a few isolated voices in Congress. And one wonders if even these voices in the wilderness will eventually 'compromise' away what is left of our sovereignty. There is less faith in our system and our 'leadership' than at any time in my memory.
Since we, the people, seem no longer relevant to our electeds, who exactly are they beholden to? Whose bidding are they doing, since they are obviously not doing ours? There are many possible answers to that question. Without wandering into 'tinfoil hat' territory and indulging in conspiracy-theory-mongering, it's hard to explain the behavior of our electeds.
The great Thomas Jefferson said, in 1787, 'The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.'
It is so important to remember this; we can't expect the government to solve the problem when it seems that our leaders are compromised, and they are part of the problem.
But if Jefferson was right (and he usually was), then it's up to us, you and me, America.
And the good news is that more and more of us are awakening to the crisis the Republic is facing. The bad news, however, is that many of our people are so afflicted by this dread disease called 'Political Correctness' that they are debilitated and rendered helpless by it.
Unfortunately these are the very people who are the only real hope for America.
Read any commentary by a patriotic American: most of them are sounding the alarm about the borders and sovereignty crisis, but they are hindered by their obvious compulsion to heed the rules of Political Correct discourse, and they render their words useless by injecting all kinds of PC disclaimers, protestations about their motives. An example is the popular requirement that the commentator say 'I'm all in favor of any and all legal immigration' or 'I'm no racist; Mexicans are hard-working, good-hearted people' and so on. The air of defensiveness is palpable. The same mealy-mouthed discourse is heard on TV discussions, even on such hard-line shows such as Lou Dobbs. Someone, usually the conservative present, will mouth these formulas, as a kind of incantation to ward off the accusations of 'xenophobia' or 'racism'.
Visit any message board or forum where illegal immigration is discussed: you will find a lot of tough-talking people saying the same apologetic statements, which nullify all their bluster and tough talk. Everyone, even the 'hard-line' conservatives and patriots, seems hypnotized by the PC spell. Everyone is intimidated, and afraid to utter the wrong words.
On some patriotic forums, even slang words like 'wetback' (which hardly seems to me worthy of such censure) are forbidden, and their use will cause great consternation and probable banning of the offender. On such forums there are people who claim to be of Hispanic ancestry who will race-bait anyone who veers too close to the line, as in criticizing legal immigration (only illegal immigration may be criticized, because someone somewhere has decreed that to criticize legal immigration is prima facie proof of 'racism'). Criticizing Mexican culture or behavior is also proof of 'racism' according to the rule-makers. In essence, these 'conservatives' who participate are being compelled to accept one of the main premises of multiculturalism: the idea that all cultures are equal, and that to prefer one's own culture is 'racist'. Also implicit is the leftist idea that all peoples are interchangeable, and that it doesn't matter who immigrates to a given country; all peoples are the same, with the same potential for compatibility with other peoples. Of course this all flies in the face of common sense, and real life experience, and even more, it is at odds with what our Founding Fathers believed and stated when they founded this country.
It's creepily similar, this constricting of our discourse, this enforcing of arbitrary limits, to the system that prevailed in the old Communist countries, where people denounced neighbors, co-workers, even family members for deviating from the accepted party line. Offenders were publicly castigated, and at worst, packed off to a re-education camp. So far, we don't have 're-education camps' but we do have mandatory 'sensitivity training' and 'diversity education.' It's all the same, and it's all wrong. Yet most of us meekly acquiesce to this curtailing of our freedom of thought and speech.
As long as we do so, what hope is there that we can defend our country, if we are afraid to offend with mere words? We are in essence putting manacles on ourselves, and leaving ourselves vulnerable. We would sooner give up our country and our way of life, it seems, than be called 'xenophobic' or 'racist' or 'nativist' or whatever other schoolyard taunts resorted to by our intellectually-impoverished enemies. If we perish as a country, and become just a province of Mexico -- or perhaps a part of some soulless 'North American Community' we will have allowed it because we have become a timid, PC-whipped people.
The late, great Balint Vazsonyi, who was a writer and concert pianist who immigrated from Communist Hungary many years ago, wrote in 'America's Thirty Years' War' about the encroachment of Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, and about how this was weakening America. He warned against this creeping leftism and its crippling effects. But did anyone take his warnings to heart? He knew totalitarianism when he saw it, coming from a Communist regime. And he valued American freedoms, having known their lack in his country of birth. He knew what he was talking about, and I hope Americans will wake up from the PC trance and stand up for our freedoms and our sovereignty, before it is too late.
To do less is to dishonor the brave soldiers we are remembering on Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2006

Taps

"Fading light dims the sight
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.
From afar drawing nigh -- Falls the night.
"Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky.
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

"Then good night, peaceful night,
Till the light of the dawn shineth bright,
God is near, do not fear -- Friend, good night."


Composed By Major General Daniel Butterfield,Army of the Potomac, Civil War

CIRA: '...the worst bill ever'

According to John Derbyshire at NRO, the 'Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act' passed by the Senate last week, just might be the 'worst bill ever.'
After having read many analyses of it, especially that of Robert Rector, it's easy to agree with him.
A couple of quotes from his piece at NRO's 'The Corner':

The stupidity and rottenness of CIRA is really beyond the ability of a single human mind to encompass it.

... I will not even vote for any politician who agrees to go into conference on this horror. How big are Capitol Hill garbage bins? That's the only place this heap of dreck belongs.

I agree with Derbyshire; I agree that the House should not even agree to go into conference on this monstrosity of a bill.
Read the Derbyshire piece here.

What's next?

What happens next with the amnesty bill?
If the majority of commentators and pundits are right, the bill in its present form has practically no chance of getting through the House. But suppose the minority who think some form of amnesty will be approved are correct? Most of us who oppose the idea of amnesty in any way, shape, or form refuse to consider that dire possibility, but it is certainly a possibility.
If there is amnesty granted, and if the provisions for increased legal immigration go into effect also, voila! We will suddenly have millions (how many? 12 million, or maybe more like 30 million) of new citizens-in-the-making, with millions more to come.
I wonder what this will do to the anti-illegal cause; the vast majority of people who have been the most ardent opponents of amnesty have positioned themselves as being opposed ONLY to illegal immigration. Will there be any opposition to the transforming of America via legal immigration then? Or will those who have so vocally opposed the influx of illegals suddenly feel warm and 'welcoming' towards the same number of legal immigrants?
For various reasons, mostly due to the modern Western phobia of being called a 'racist', immigration restrictionists have loudly proclaimed their support for all forms of legal immigration, asserting that only illegal immigration is unwelcome. Very few pundits and commentators have refrained from jumping on that 'I'm-no-xenophobe' bandwagon, with the exceptions being the VDare regulars, and a few others like Ilana Mercer, and, somewhat surprisingly, Ramesh Ponnuru of NRO. Ponnuru is very moderate but he does at least approach the subject of legal immigration. Are these people simply the only ones who can see clearly enough to recognize that mass immigration is a problem, not just illegal immigration? By limiting the discussion to criticism of illegal immigration only, by chastising and marginalizing and in some cases banning from web forums, those who criticize legal immigration, the right has played into the hands of the open-borders zealots. While not wanting to give the open-borders pharisees too much credit for intelligence, I do think they are shrewd enough to know that if they succeed in painting all opposition to open borders as 'racist' and 'xenophobic', they will have won half the battle. When those on the right who want to enforce our laws are forced to fight the battle with one hand tied behind their backs as it were, the battle is no longer a fair fight. If we have conceded the terms of the debate to the open-borders fanatics of both left and right, then we are at quite a disadvantage. If and when an amnesty bill is made law, and if and when our borders are opened wider to those tens of millions of new legal immigrants. the restrictionists will be left speechless. If those now opposing illegal immigration are confronted with the new reality of wide-open legal immigration, with all the concomitant problems, how can they respond, having already agreed that legal immigration is good, and that to oppose it is racist? They will not have a leg to stand on. Has anyone even stopped to consider this?
Actually on one immigration-related web forum, a lone poster posed this question on a thread: what will happen when and if all the illegals are made legal? What will we do then? When last I viewed that thread, there were no responses. Not a one. Zip; zero. It was sad, but I think the members of the forum are so inculcated with the idea that only illegal immigration is a problem, and that to deny that is racist, that they cannot consider opposing legal immigration no matter how problematic.
One other web forum which deals with illegal immigration announces that it is a forum " strictly for those Americans dedicated to the political civic processes that are not motivated by racism." [Emphasis mine]
While I don't doubt the good intentions of the site owner, it seems to me that this is Politically Correct in the extreme. Of course it is wrong to allow comments which are ugly or which incite to unlawful acts, and I suppose it is good PR to disavow 'racism', how does one determine motivation? That, it seems to me, is getting into Orwellian territory: trying to seek out 'thought crimes'. And it is essentially bowing to the censorship of the left (and the PC right), which has essentially proscribed ALL opposition to immigration, even illegal immigration, as being 'motivated by racism.' To the PC zealots, who thrive in both parties, one is a racist or a xenophobe by definition if one is an immigration restrictionist, or anything other than an open-borders believer.
By the definition of the Politically Correct commissars, the Founders of this country were 'racists' and 'xenophobes' and 'nativists' and 'isolationists' because they believed, first of all, in borders; they did NOT believe in allowing anyone and everyone into the country. They believed that America was a country based on blood ties and kinship, on Anglo-Saxon traditions and culture. They did not believe that all men are interchangeable; they recognized differences among races and ethnicities. For instance, Alexander Hamilton said:

In the recommendation to admit indiscriminately foreign emigrants of every description to the privileges of American citizens, on their first entrance into our country, there is an attempt to break down every pale which has been erected for the preservation of a national spirit and a national character; and to let in the most powerful means of perverting and corrupting both the one and the other.

Now according to the cultural Marxists whose views are dogma for many today, these views are 'racist' and 'ethnocentric', and should be outlawed and punished. (How that kind of thinking is compatible with our First Amendment is beyond me.) Nevertheless, the PC enforcers have succeeded in cowing most of us into submission, even those on the 'right'. The result is, freedom of speech and freedom of thought are becoming more and more circumscribed by the 'need' to appear unprejudiced, tolerant, sensitive, and inclusive. So we are now a timid nation, careful of every word we speak, lest someone brand us with the dreaded R word.
So those of us who are rightly and justifiably concerned with preserving our country, our way of life, our language, our culture, our traditions, our freedoms (or what's left of them) are hamstrung in our self-defense because of this tyranny of Political Correctness. We have to break free of this PC spell and re-discover the now-radical idea that it is natural to act in our own self-interest. It is our right as citizens of this sovereign nation to consider what is best for American citizens, for ourselves, our families, our neighbors, before we consider the wants of others. This is not only natural and normal, it is morally legitimate, just as it is to put our families ahead of total strangers when there are choices to be made. Our ancestors took this as a given; it is only in our present leftist-dominated age that we have come to feel guilty for acting in our own self-interest, or in our national self-interest. We have let ourselves be browbeaten into feeling guilty for this, to question the very legitimacy of it. We have got to reject this PC conditioning to which we've all been subjected.
So when and if our treasonous, venal 'leaders' wave their magic amnesty wand, and open the floodgates to the huddled masses yearning for freebies, what will we then say to defend ourselves? Will we be reduced to silence, because to oppose the influx would be so intolerant and Politically Incorrect?
We are on the verge of having to face that situation; will our patriotic feeling and our natural, primal instinct for our nation assert itself? Or will we hold our tongues, and acquiesce to the loss of our nation?

Senate Amnesty Bill: Crunching the Numbers

Here is a lot of useful info on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, S 2611, also known as the Amnesty bill, via the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector.
An important paragraph here:

The Heritage estimate that 103 million immigrants would gain legal status under S.2611 explicitly included: legal immigrants who would enter the country under current law; illegal immigrants currently residing in the U.S. who would receive amnesty; and the increase in new legal immigration that likely would result from the bill.

Also there is much good information in Ben Johnson's piece, Amnesty Intranational from FrontPage Magazine:

The concluding paragraph says

This Senate bill will comprehensively change our country and alter the dynamics of our workforce. Perhaps the House will comprehensively overhaul the Senate bill. Otherwise, the Republican Congress will soon experience a ''sweeping'' of another kind.

Scamnesty Hall of Shame; GOP liberals

23 of 55 Republicans voted yes on S 2611, the amnesty bill:

Republicans who voted Yes (23):

Bennett (R-UT)
Brownback (R-KS)
Chafee (R-RI)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Craig (R-ID)
DeWine (R-OH)
Domenici (R-NM)
Frist (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

Think about this: members of the political party which has the reputation of being 'conservative', and which constantly claims to be the 'patriotic' party, voted for this abomination of a bill which would utterly transform America as we have known it.
How can members of a party which claims to be fiscally responsible vote in favor of a plan which is guaranteed to cost billions of dollars, minimum, vote for this proposal?
How can a party which claims to care about 'the American people' and to stand for the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the founding principles of this country, support in any way a measure which would defy the will of the American people, undermine the rule of law, and fly in the face of the principles of our Founding Fathers?

We completely expect the Democrats to be in favor of radical measures, since they style themselves 'progressive' or 'liberal', and they unfailingly side with special-interest groups against the American majority. And they, of course, have traditionally been the party which believes in big government and in a paternalistic government which saves the downtrodden of the world. So their support for open borders and amnesty is a given.
But what is wrong with Republicans? The only possible conclusion is that they are just what their opponents caricature them to be: the capitalist's party, the party of the rich and the privileged, the party of exploitation. Many people who agree with many of the Republican positions on various issues are driven away because they have heard that the GOP is not for the 'common man' or the 'little guy' , and for Republicans to side with illegal immigrants supports the impression that they are simply enabling exploitive employers to have plenty of cheap labor.

Another explanation for the illogical votes of these Republican traitors is that they are to some extent captives of Political Correctness.
Again, traditionally the Democrats have been the promoters and enforcers ot the Pharisaical code of Political Correctness; it's they who usually race-bait, and bully everyone who does not toe the liberal line, accusing them of 'racism', 'bigotry', 'hate', and lately, of 'xenophobia' and 'nativism' if they dare to oppose the PC open-borders dogma.
But now the PC plague has become endemic on the so-called 'right', also; we have no shortage of Republicans who have become fluent in the cant of Political Correctness, and who publicly denounce those who deviate from the PC pieties. Case in point: Condoleezza Rice and President Bush calling skeptics of democratization in Iraq 'racist'. Or, more recently, John McCain and his race-baiting remarks on the immigration issue.
Even those who are considered farther to the right than these admittedly liberal-leaning Republicans are guilty of toeing the PC line. Just read any column by a conservative pundit or commentator, or any 'conservative' message board online: many Republicans and independent conservatives are unthinkingly repeating the PC party line; it is seeping into our discourse on the right end of the political spectrum. Look and listen; liberalism and its various dogmas are now the dominant ideas in our society, even among those who style themselves conservatives. It has now reached the point where varying shades of liberalism are the only 'respectable' opinions in our public sphere. Anyone who is a conservative of a more traditional stripe is discredited as an 'extremist'.
Some of this liberalizing tendency is simply osmosis; we are so inundated with liberal/leftist ideas that we absorb them without realizing it. But some of this liberalizing is engineered. There is a widespread campaign by GOP political operatives on the internet, for example, to marginalize old-fashioned conservatism (not just 'paleoconservatives', so-called, but traditionalists as well). There is an effort to spread the liberalized variety of 'conservatism', and to contain the debate within acceptable liberal standards.
But the backlash from this latest travesty in the Senate, which is coming from people of both parties and both ends of the spectrum, reflects an awakening of many otherwise apathetic people. Many of us are now suddenly aware of how disconnected our 'representatives' and elected officials are from the average citizen's point of view. We are newly awake to the fact that though they purport to represent us, they in fact do not; they are serving other masters. And we are aware, painfully so, that traditional America as we have known it is now 'Politically Incorrect' according to the liberal dogmas which both Democrats and Republicans seem to embrace.
Our treasonous officials apparently have pledged their allegiance to this borderless world, and to some kind of abstract universalism which has nothing in common with the America our ancestors created and passed down to us.
If our representative system of government is to survive, and to truly align with the will of the majority as it was intended to, then we need a whole new set of leaders who share our beliefs and our views, and who have our interests at heart. This present crop of opportunists and venal sellouts must be replaced. The political parties as they now stand should also be replaced, because they both appear to be tainted, not only by the corruption and the lobbying scandals which are now in the news. but because they are frauds; they are simply two sides of the same liberal coin. There is little real choice between them.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Banishing 'America'

The latest salvo from the anti-America forces out there: this op-ed piece, by Michael Warren, from the Detroit News describes the censoring of the word 'America' from Michigan schools.

Censoring the word "America" from our own schools is something Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden would never have thought possible. Michigan has done it without a whimper.

In perhaps a well-intentioned, but pernicious example of political correctness, the Michigan Department of Education is attempting to ban the "America" and "American" from our public schools. Even though the word "America" appears in the department's own civics and government benchmarks, the department's style protocol for the Michigan Education Assessment Program requires that "America" and "Americans" be expunged from our testing and grade level expectations. Last week, the department ordered that our hard-working teachers not utter the words.

The Michigan Education Department mandarins have decreed that the word 'American' must not be used in reference to us, the citizens of the United States of America; after all, Canadians, Mexicans, in fact everyone in both North and South America are 'Americans.'

Further, the American Revolution is now the 'North American Revolution'. The idea, say the Politically Correct commissars who created this idiotic policy is that it is 'internationally friendly.'

The writer of the piece, Michael Warren, goes on to say:

That we would sacrifice our language to the altar of internationalism is a betrayal to the American spirit. Indeed, the whole idea of America is to be a beacon of light, a shining city on the hill, which inspires the rest of the world.

The word "America" is the most important word of all in learning about the history of the United States and our civics. America is an inspiration and an aspiration for generations of souls who strove, and continue to strive, for freedom and liberty.

Now some people are simply dismissing this as more of the usual PC lunacy, just a lot of harmless liberals trying to show their 'tolerance' and 'inclusiveness.' But as Warren so rightly says, the word 'America' and the history that goes with it are vital; if we surrender even our very name, the name which is so full of rich associations not just for us but to people everywhere, we are essentially surrendering our identity.

Who could have imagined that we would see such a relentless onslaught against our history and our national identity in our lifetimes? It's all happening so fast it makes the head spin.

And this calls to mind the recent low-profile news stories announcing the plan for a 'North American Community' which will essentially be the EU-style merging of all the countries on the North American continent. Every sign indicates that this is in fact the agenda; how else can we begin to make sense of the effort to destroy our borders, our national identity, and to forcibly blend the populations of Mexico and the United States?

Meanwhile, Americans (there's that forbidden word!) are distracted with 'bread and circuses'.

But there are encouraging signs that a number of people are sensing that things are going seriously off track in America, and many people are beginning to be very disaffected and angry. And no matter what some PC pharisee or Orwellian bureaucrat says, this IS and will always be 'America'; you can't steal our identity.

Update:

Following the referenced article was a rebuttal by Michigan State School Superintendent Mike Flanagan, in which he attempted to downplay or dismiss the original column by Michael Warren.

Another editorial appeared, entitled 'Keep our schools safe for Americans', which upheld Warren's story, and implies that Flanagan was engaging in some revisionist history himself in his rebuttal. The latest op-ed piece rightly calls the PC school officials on their policies:

"His department should restore the use of "America" on the social studies MEAP test. And perhaps he should keep a better eye on what his officials and consultants are up to when they think no one is looking."

Amen; chalk one up for the good guys. These things need to be exposed and challenged.

America's 400th anniversary: Where do we go from here?

This week is the beginning of the '400th Anniversary of America', a series of events which commemorate the founding of the first permanent English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. The replica ship 'Godspeed' will sail to six east coast cities over the coming months.Governor Timothy Kaine of Virginia gave the order to begin the voyage of the Godspeed with the accompanying festivities and ceremonies.

This Anniversary is an important moment not just for Virginia, but for the entire nation," said Governor Kaine. "So much of what defines America began at Jamestown, including our traditions of free enterprise, representative democracy and cultural diversity. And what's really exciting is that research enables us to tell the Jamestown story like never before with a greater understanding of the contributions from the three cultures -- American Indians, Europeans and Africans -- that came together at Jamestown.

I applaud the fact that any attention is being given to the history of the founding of America; usually those 'dead old white guys' are slighted if not derided and insulted; our history has been so revised and PC-ized to assure 'inclusiveness' that it is a wonder there is any original American history still left that has not been shredded and pureed by the Politically Correct pharisees. But notice the phrase I have italicized for emphasis in the quote above: 'cultural diversity' is now added to the sacred canon of our original American traditions.

Diversity seems to be an imperative in all these modern, PC re-creations of history. The events which will be part of the festivities apparently feature a hip-hop song, as well as a show 'Ba-baah and the Windigo', told from the 'Native American' point of view. The lead producer says that the 'songs are original with a focus on historical accuracy and diversity.'

Diversity is apparently the one and only sacred principle in the brave new America we live in.
The implicit message in this giving of 'equal time' to blacks and 'Native Americans' is that they were equally represented numerically in the colony; according to this rewritten history, Jamestown was not an English colony with an essentially English culture, but was some kind of multicultural microcosm of the world.
Now from the lists of the original settlers of 1607-1608, it appears as though almost all of the settlers were English, with a few Welsh, Scots, and perhaps Irish. For 1608, the list mentions 'eight Dutch men and Poles, with some others.'
The 'Native Americans' did not live in Jamestown, so the 'diversity' seems to be limited to a handful of Dutch and Polish men, most of whom no doubt intermarried with the English and assimilated. The blacks who were brought by a Dutch ship as slaves arrived a decade or so later. So to say that Jamestown embodies 'diversity' is a huge distortion of truth, but for the ideologues who rewrite history to suit their ends, truth is a small inconvenience, and soon nobody will be aware of the actual truth, that is, if they have their way.

Go to the original, primary sources of the time for the history of Jamestown, not to these PC-sanitized, agenda-laden revisions.

America, as we near our 400th anniversary, our country hangs in the balance. We are a people who have lost much of our real history, and the time has come to reclaim our history and our identity as Americans, while there is still time.

To quote George Orwell, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past "

Guard the Borders Blogburst

by Heidi at Euphoric Reality

Our Open Borders Will Be The Death Of Us Yet

I live in Texas, and sometimes I think people don't truly grasp the fact that the chaos on our borders is not a border state issue - it threatens them directly, no matter where they live. The fact is that our border chaos is directly linked to our national security. Terrorists already have and continue to illegally cross our border, blending in with illegals from Mexico and Central America, or brazenly crossing over with an armed escort of gang members or even the Mexican military.

Watch this video of an ongoing investigation done by the news team from KGRV TV serving
Harlingen-Weslaco-McAllen -Brownsville, Texas. (Video will open in your media player - it's a news segment.) It is part of an ongoing series highlighting the culmination of months of investigative research into the flow of terrorists over our borders. Fred Burton, a counter-terrorism expert of Stratfor, was interviewed on camera. He stated that now is the perfect time for terrorists to sneak across the border. Escalating violence and an unprecedented flood of illegals is distracting law enforcement and stretching it thin. Zapata County sheriff, Frederigo Gonzales Jr. says that as for WMDs, it is not a matter of "if", but "when".

About one in every 10 caught border jumpers is an Arab. I don't think I need to point out that if they are sneaking into the country illegally, they fit the profile and are probably terrorists. Unfortunately, we only catch about 25-33% of the flood of illegals, and estimates are that we absorb 3 million illegals (Time Magazine, September 2004 and Bear Stearns July 2005) that do make it through each year. That could mean that about 10% of the illegals that DO make it across are possible terrorists. Do the math: that's potentially 300,000 terrorists making it into our country free and clear. Let's get really skeptical and downgrade that so we feel better about it - let's say only 1% of those that make it through are possible terrorists. That is only 30,000 - per YEAR. Is that OK? Considering it took 18 terrorists to wreak the terror of 9/11, is 300,000 or even 30,000 terrorists OK with you?

If that's a reasonable risk for you, then consider the percentage of potential terrorists that have already crossed the border and are living among us - sleeper cells in our own neighborhoods. The low estimate of illegals inside our border is 20 million, the high is 29 million. What's 10% of that figure? Is a few million potential terrorists a reasonable risk?

For some strange reason, the smaller number of 30,000 is almost scarier to me. Maybe it's just easier to grasp a few thousand insane killers bent on our destruction, instead of an army of millions. Maybe it's because we can do still something about thousands - IF we act swiftly and ruthlessly - but a few million is an almost insurmountable...and it's possibly far too late. Fred Burton agrees with that assessment - he said the numbers of terrorists that have been caught is nothing compared to those that have made it through - those numbers are huge.

If you are an open borders type and think it's wrong to build any barrier along the border, or in any way militarize our border; or if you think illegal immigration is just about nice, poor people who want jobs, you need a wake-up call. Let's look at some of the issues raised by the investigation in the video above as well as some others I've written about in the past year.

1. Several months ago, according to KGRV TV, two IEDs and components for 33 more were discovered in Laredo. It won't be long before we face here in America, what our brave soldiers face every day in Iraq. And IEDs may be the least worrisome. If it's a simple matter to smuggle 3,000 pounds of drugs across the border, as the sheriff mentioned, how much easier is it to carry across a suitcase bomb - a dirty nuke?

“Several al-Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons,” Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Admiral James Loy testified on February 16 before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “At home, we must prepare ourselves for any attack, from IEDs (improvised explosive devices) to Weapons of Mass Destruction…from soft targets like malls to national icons.”

2. A terrorist jacket, with patches depicting an Arab military and 9/11, was found in Hebbronville, TX. Finding terrorist garb is nothing new. In 2005:

Ms. Garner, who grew up here in Naco, population 7,000 says..."It is more dangerous and pernicious, with a growing number of people of different nationalities coming across the border, including from the Middle East, India, and Afghanistan."

The evidence of that comes in Islamic prayer rugs found in the desert dust, Arabic literature left by still-warm campfires, and Afghani head garb caught on cactus quills. The FBI also recently found a drug tunnel beneath the bedroom of a schoolmate of one of the Garner girls, with $250,000 cash hidden inside.

3. In November 2005, a confirmed al Qaeda operative was arrested near the Mexican border and turned over to the FBI. He had been living in Mexico for six months and making notes of the movement of people and police officers.

4. Also in November of last year, A congresswoman from NC went on the record as noting that three al Qaeda operatives were being held in a jail in Texas, after being apprehended on the U.S.-Mexican border.

5. In 2005, in southern Texas alone, 51 suspected terrorists were captured while crossing the border [from the KGRV news report]. They came from countries such as Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan, and were arrested on various charges of gun smuggling and illegally wiring large sums of money. We do not know where they are today. That's a problem.

6. In 2005, 10 Egyptians were arrested in Douglas, Arizona.

7. In 2004, a high-level al Qaeda operative (comparable to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11) was arrested in McAllen, Texas attempting to make her way to New York after illegally crossing the border by swimming the Rio Grande. Though she was on a terrorist watch list, she had illegally entered into America at least 250 times before being caught!!!

8. In September of 2004, Action 4 News in Harlingen, Texas, learned that Al Qaeda cells - each group having from seven to fifteen suspected terrorist members were found just across the Rio Grande Valley in Mexico.

"We know from intelligence reports that there are middle easterners that are making their way in our direction," said U.S. Congressman Jim Turner during a news conference at the Veterans Memorial International Bridge in Brownsville.

"We don't know their purpose, but we do know that they are there and those reports are coming in increasing numbers. So it should be a wake-up call."

9. In July of 2004, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, a high-ranking Al-Qaeda leader and one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, was spotted in Honduras meeting with members of the MS-13 gang. By August, he had may his way north and was spotted in north Mexico.

By the way, if you need proof that al Qaeda is working hand-in-glove with Latino gangs, go here - there's plenty of reading.

10. In October of 2004, an intelligence report supplied to the Department of Homeland Security by Russian security services said that a group of 25 backpack-carrying Chechen terrorists - all white - illegally entered Arizona by way of Mexico last summer.

11. In September 2001, 10 Yemenis were arrested by Mexican police before trying to cross from Agua Prieta into Douglas, Arizona. They were released and they returned to Agua Prieta to try again, where they were joined by several other unidentified Arabs.

12. In November 1998, over 100 Iranians were apprehended in Arizona because of a tip called in by a border rancher.

Those are just a few examples. Our border security is non-existent, and our enemies are well aware of that fact.

While entry into the U.S. is their primary goal in establishing a base in Latin America, Islamist terrorists -- well-aware of the allure Marxism once held for many south of the border -- also see the region as a potential breeding ground for Islamic converts due to its poor economic and social conditions and corrupt governments.

For instance, the Shia terrorist group Hezbollah wields a strong presence in the tri-border region, a lawless, crime-ridden area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay intersect. Both Osama bin Laden and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are also said to have spent time there, during the 1990's.

It was Mohammed who in 2002 encouraged alleged dirty bomber Jose Padilla to 'enter the United States by way of Mexico' in order to carry out attacks on U.S. targets, according to Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

Ironically, before converting to Islam and volunteering his services to Al-Qaeda, Padilla belonged to the Chicago chapter of the Latin Kings -- like MS-13, a violent Hispanic criminal gang.

Although U.S. agents were able to collar Padilla before he could carry out a terrorist attack, the U.S. border strategy, as presently construed, may one day soon yield a much less savory result.

Hm, do you think so???

Nevertheless, as stated in the KGRV news report, our government does not want us to know of the terror threat flowing over our border. Homeland Security refused to respond to KGRV's requests for an interview on the subject. And the government is doing everything they can to shut down the citizens who were once the greatest intelligence asset to to the Border Patrol in stopping terrorists crossing the border: American ranchers living along the border.

Perhaps the most valuable asset that the Border Patrol has is the aid of rural Cochise County (AZ) citizens. Many have attempted to help, in accordance with Arizona law. Through that legal process, landowners may execute a citizen’s arrest for individuals or groups trespassing on their property. However, even that has been nullified.
[...]
Rural citizens here have met with savage recriminations for exerting their legal rights. Immigration advocacy groups howl in protest, as does the Mexican government. Their lawyers have demanded that the ranchers be prosecuted for false arrest, kidnapping, intimidation, criminal assault and violation of civil rights...Illegal immigrants have now sued some Cochise County citizens in American courts.
[...]
Ben Anderson, a retired U.S. Army colonel who lives in Sierra Vista, Ariz., has made a detailed study of the border danger since the flood of illegals began through Cochise County in 1997.

“There is only one way to handle this,” the colonel says firmly. “In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices and chemical weapons like Sarin gas, we must militarize the border. There is no other way to stop the flow.”

Congressman John Culberson (R-TX) concurs:

FBI Director Robert Mueller had previously "confirmed" in testimony before [a Congressional] committee "that there are individuals from countries with known al-Qaeda connections who are changing their Islamic surnames to Hispanic-sounding names and obtaining false Hispanic identities, learning to speak Spanish and pretending to be Hispanic immigrants."

"And these are clearly Arab terrorists," Rep. Culberson added, "from countries like Yemen, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. They're crossing the border, pretending to be Hispanic immigrants, and then disappearing."

Rep. Culberson said news of al-Qaeda’s penetration of the U.S.'s southern border has him worried that the next terrorist plot could involve setting off simultaneous truck bombs in major urban centers.

"The day they blow us up," he predicted, "the border will be sealed tighter than the Berlin Wall and you'll have armed United States military forces" enforcing immigration laws.

That will be too late.

_________________________________

This has been a production of the Guard the Borders Blogburst. It was started by Euphoric Reality, and serves to keep immigration issues in the forefront of our minds as we’re going about our daily lives and continuing to fight the war on terror. If you are concerned with the trend of illegal immigration facing our country, join our Blogburst! Just send an email with your blog name and url to euphoricrealitynet at gmail dot com.

The stalled 'debate'

If there is an immigration 'debate' in this country, it's stagnant, stuck. And what has been passing for debate is merely a lot of rote phrases, emotion-based cliches, and name-calling from the open-borders side (which dominates the media, the blogosphere being the only exception), answered by an inhibited set of arguments from the restrictionist side, who suffer under the handicap of political correctness. The restrictionist side is constantly on the defensive, trying to disprove charges 'racism' and 'xenophobia', and trying vainly to fend off the name-calling which is the stock-in-trade of the open-borders coalition.
The mainstream media work tirelessly to push the pro-open borders agenda, and each and every day there is a spate of formulaic articles which I call the 'Jose and Maria stories', always about some poor-but-honest 'undocumented migrants' driven northward by poverty and want, and suffering various trials in the 'Promised Land'; confronting racism, heartless bureaucracy, and the other tribulations of 'seeking a better life.' The MSM have a stock set of propaganda pieces that they employ repeatedly; surely they must be embarrassed at repeating themselves so much, but the stories just keep on a-coming. I suspect that even the more gullible among the American readers are getting somewhat jaded and inured to all the heart-rending sympathy pieces. We are all suffering from sympathy fatigue, I think.

Apart from the touchy-feely stories, there are pieces like this one by Mark Helprin in the Washington Post, in which the writer assumes a superior, detached pose, and feigns objectivity by dismissing both sides from on high.
Mr. Helprin, unfortunately, resorts to name-calling ('febrile militia of Willie Nelson look-alikes ' - alluding to the Minutemen, whom he also calls 'armed geezers'), along with the typical slurs such as 'nativist' and 'xenophobe'.
I would ask Mr. Helprin for his definition of 'nativist', and I would expect him to explain why exactly favoring the interests of one's own country and countrymen is a bad thing, in his eyes. I would ask him, if nativism is a negative quality in his opinion, then what is the positive opposite of a nativist? And were our Founding Fathers 'nativists'? I say they were, and I choose to be on their side rather than on the side of bloodless intellectuals who have no love of country or their fellow citizens. As Sir Walter Scott wrote, 'Breathes there the man with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said/This is my own, my native land?' Scott, were he alive today, would be surprised to see many such soul-dead men, usually of the intellectual 'world citizen' type, who disdain those rednecks who cling to their backward patriotism. Helprin's description of 'armed geezers' smacks of perceived superiority.
And while Helprin can find no flattering words for those 'armed geezers' and 'febrile' defenders of America, he positively fawns over immigrants. Good Lord, can anyone write an immigration piece these days without resorting to that cheap cliche 'nation of immigrants' or without praising the 'hard-working' 'new Americans'? This hackneyed set of phrases should embarrass the speaker or writer who resorts to them. They are just worn verbal counters, lacking any real meaning. The only purpose for uttering those words is to attempt to establish one's 'non-racist' bona fides. However, to me, it establishes only that the writer or speaker is a Politically Correct pharisee, saying 'I thank you, Lord, that I am not as other men', that I am not a xenophobe or a hater.
Helprin actually says:

Of course everyone in the New World is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants, and immigrants have built America and continue to do so. Legal or illegal, they are almost universally good people who work to better their lot and that of their children.

Now we should be convinced, he hopes, that he is not one of those Willie Nelson lookalikes, nor a sympathizer with those distasteful 'armed geezers' he disdains. But as for his repetition of that cliche about 'almost universally good people who work to better their lot' -- I say, prove it, Mr. Helprin. Where is the evidence for that, or is it just another way of establishing how 'tolerant' and unbiased you are? Where are the statistics to show that the immigrants are 'almost universally good people'?

Mac Johnson writing in Human Events, December 5, 2005 said

...a simplistic good-faith estimate is that illegal aliens kill between 1,806 and 2,510 people in the United States each year. We have just passed the much-vaunted 2,000 deaths mark in the invasion of Iraq, a necessary endeavor. In that same 32 months, there have possibly been between 4,800 and 6,700 deaths in the invasion of the United States by illegal aliens, a corrupt endeavor tolerated in a frivolous pursuit of cheap labor.

The PC pharisees with their cant phrases about the 'universally good', 'hard-working' immigrants are partially responsible for this harm to American citizens. Their need to appear 'fair-minded' and non-xenophobic is more important than the safety of Americans, apparently. Combine their need to feel good about their tolerance and openness with the cheap labor lobby's need to 'fumble in a greasy till' and increase their profits, and this is the result.
America is under siege, from an ongoing invasion, from a terrorist threat, and from our own homegrown leftists. Our intelligentsia, especially in the media, are complicit; they are dithering and pontificating as our country slips away from us, more concerned about how they look to the world than about the fate of their country and their neighbors.

'Keeping the population in balance'

According to Hispanic apologist Cindy Rodriguez of the Denver Post, we should welcome the invasion of our country because 'Latinas keep the population in balance.'

The most recent stats available show that in 2003 Latinas had an average of 2.79 babies, compared with 2.04 for women of Asian descent, 2.03 for African-American women and 1.85 for Caucasian women. (American Indians have even lower fertility rates.)

Without Latinas, Haub said, the fertility rate in the U.S. would be lower than 2, just below the sustaining level. But average in Latinas, and the rate rises to 2.1 - the perfect balance.

Their babies will enter the labor force in the next 15 years in time to offset the retirement of the first of the baby boomers.

Rodriguez loftily says that these facts are something that we Americans don't understand, because 'it's complicated' . Gee thanks, Cindy, for your confidence in the intelligence of us gringos. We can't understand this complicated fact that Latino birthrates are making up for the babies we slow-witted 'Anglos' aren't having.
Our elites keep telling us that Latinos are 'just doing the jobs Americans won't do,' so I guess Miss Cindy, in that vein, is telling us that the Latinas are 'just replacing the population that Americans won't replace.' And she is right in that white American birth rates (and American Indian birthrates) are lower. But Cindy, maybe you don't understand this because it's 'complicated. Look: our elites have been browbeating us since the 1950s to use contraception, to have fewer kids because there was, it seems, a 'population explosion.' So the pill was popularized, and abortion was legalized. And along came the feminists who shamed women for wanting to follow traditional roles, such as housewife and mother; these same feminists convinced women that they were slaves to domesticity, and that they could not be fulfilled unless they had a 'real' career, a paying job outside the home. Additionally, men were lured into the Hugh Hefner 'Playboy' philosophy of life, which saw marriage as a prison for men; Hefner glamorized the urge to be promiscuous and uncommitted to any one woman.
Add all this together, with constant warnings that overpopulation would destroy the world, and voila, lower birth rates. Yet who says that a constant increase in population is absolutely essential? What happened in earlier ages when plagues and epidemics and warfare wiped out large numbers of people? Did the human race vanish? It seems that birth rates have always fluctuated, so why assume that a constant increase is essential?
In time, maybe the Western first world countries would have awakened from their leftist delusions and returned to more normal fertility patterns. The idea that we have to transport millions upon millions of people from one country to another to 'balance' the population is some kind of modern madness; I think it is unprecedented in history, although Ms. Rodriguez seems to regard it as natural, and right as rain.
I also dislike how she smugly implies that the mass invasion of our country is somehow altruistically motivated; these Latina women are somehow giving birth to 'save' America. If this is not arrogance at its worst, I don't know what is.
As for providing a 'comfortable retirement' for gringo baby-boomers, I am not so optimistic that these Latino children she says are saviors of America will be interested in taking care of a generation of old Anglos, given the amount of hostility they are displaying towards Americans and our history. For an illustration of this hostility, check this quote, from Jose Angel Gutierrez, Professor of the University of Texas at Arlington:

We are migrants, free to travel the length and breadth of the Americas because we belong here. We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It's a matter of time. The explosion is in our population."

And from Augustin Cebada, of the 'Brown Berets':

We're here in Westwood, this is the fourth time we've been here in the last two months, to show white Anglo-Saxon Protestant L.A., the few of you who remain, that we are the majority, and we claim this land as ours, sit's always been ours, and we're still here, and none of the talk about deporting. If anyone's going to be deported it's going to be you! Go back to Simi Valley, you skunks! Go back to Woodland Hills! Go back to Boston! To back to the Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims! Get out! We are the future. You're old and tired. Go on. We have beaten you, leave like beaten rats. You old white people, it is your duty to die. Even their own ethicists say that they should die, that they have a duty to die. They're taking up too much space, too much air. We are the majority in L.A.

I know that the willfully blind among us 'gringos', who insist on pretending that we live in Mister Rogers Neighborhood, will dismiss those quotes as just the rantings of a 'tiny minority of extremists.' Fine; if denial helps you make it through these troubled times, then pretend. But there are more such quotes where those came from. Read and listen, if you are prepared for the hostility there.

But suppose we play the liberals' game, and assume that the Latino 'reconquista' is really just a lot of humble, hard-working 'folks' here to make a better life. Fine; we'll assume that, if you insist. But let's look at the issue of population.
Contrary to what some stubborn conservatives say, there was something to the argument that unlimited population growth is a danger. Many conservatives sneer at those they call 'neo-Malthusians' who argue for population control.
Yet even they can't deny that our country is experiencing strains on resources due mostly to immigration. There is a serious water supply problem in many areas of the Southwest, the area which has seen the most growth due to the influx of illegals. All the pieties about hard-working folks won't solve that problem. And there can be little doubt that gas prices go up due to the increase in demand; adding 20-30 million people to a country in a decade or two will have effects in many areas of life. Then there are the strains on infrastructure, and all the rest of our resources.
As Ms. Rodriguez points out, Americans are not having children at a replacement rate, so the explosion of growth in most areas is immigration driven.
So this immigrant baby-boom that Ms. Rodriguez boasts about as a great boon to America will more likely lead to a decline in quality of life in the future, unless the immigrant birth rate drops to a level approximating the native 'Anglo' birthrate. Half a billion people in America will not be good, unless Calcutta or Mumbai are one's idea of paradise.
All growth is not good; surely the problems inherent in excessive population growth should be evident to any thinking person. Unless, of course, one is an ethnic partisan with a 'reconquista' agenda.

But we can't send them home...

We have heard so often, in what passes for discussion on the illegal immigration issue, that sending the invaders back to their home country would be impossible. Not just logistically impossible (although they claim that, too) but morally unthinkable. Sending them back? You mean deporting them? That would be inhumane; it would be fascist-like, Nazi-like. Inevitably, at that point in the 'discussion', the bleeding-heart opponent (whether Republican or Democrat, they come in both varieties) will bring up words like 'cattle-cars' and 'Gestapo.' What, all of these horrific loaded words in response to sending the illegals home?
Here's Joe Guzzardi's take on that subject from VDare.com. Joe has a way of getting to the heart of things.

The whole question of why it is seen as cruel not just to repatriate the illegals, but indeed, to stop anybody who wants to come to America is a complex one, but a big part of it is the myth we have created around our country. Somehow America has been reduced to just a set of ideas and ideals, basically to an abstract notion of 'freedom'. Freedom, of course, is interpreted very differently by different people from various cultures. But somehow the phrase 'a free country' has come to mean 'free' as in: having no restrictions, no limitations, no standards for admission, no settled culture or character. It has also, thanks to the welfare state, come to mean 'free' as in 'gratis' -- we are supposed to provide materially for the destitute or the just plain greedy who come here. The old national personification of America, Uncle Sam, is now apparently mutated into just Santa Claus's lanky brother, the dispenser of goodies to one and all. And whereas old Saint Nick gave presents only to 'good girls and boys', Uncle Sam has no such discriminatory standards; he will pony up for anybody who succeeds in getting into our country, by fair means or foul.
So since America is said to mean nothing more than 'freedom', and that freedom is supposed to be equally available to all, we in America have no right to restrict entry, because doing so is depriving them of their 'freedom'.
Now I have a deep gratitude to our Founding Fathers, and to my own ancestors who helped make this country. I don't mean they 'built it' as everyone now says 'immigrants built America'; no, they came as colonists and built from the ground up. At least two in my family signed the Declaration of Independence; several were original Minutemen in colonial times; many fought in the Revolution and in all wars since. Many gave the ultimate sacrifice, and I bless them all. But did America invent freedom, and do we have a monopoly on it? Are we the only repository of freedom in the whole world? If so, then I suppose we are morally obligated to let everybody in the world enter our country. After all, how can we hoard such a precious thing as 'freedom' especially if it only exists in our country?
It may be true, sadly, that today more than ever, freedom is a scarce commodity. And even more sadly, it is growing scarcer in our troubled and divided country. But I think it is possible for people to live satisfactory lives in many places in the world; this is not the only livable country in existence, and if we let in tens of millions more, it will surely not be the great, open country it was.
And as Guzzardi points out, Mexico is not a country without potential.
America has been a great and unique country, but it is not the only country where freedom can exist. And can freedom flourish in a polyglot, balkanized, crowded country of half a billion?
And is it our responsibility to take care of the world, either by welcoming them willy-nilly to our country, or is it up to us to 'fix' their own countries for them? Did anyone 'fix' America for us, or bestow our freedom on us? No; we had to do it for ourselves, and ultimately every people has to be responsible for themselves; help from outside can't do it all.
We have responsibilities to our own people; our families and neighbors in America. We can't be the saviors of the entire world.

A neglected aspect of the illegal invasion

Amid all the verbal sparring about 'guest-worker' plans, English as the official language, and all the rest, there is one aspect of the illegal invasion that is often overlooked: damage to the environment, especially in the border states.
This story by Michael Clancy in the Arizona Republic concerns damage to archaeological sites in Arizona, specifically three monuments: Grand Canyon - Parashant, Vermilion Cliffs, and Agua Fria.
Although the article does not allude to illegals as being the cause for the damage, and no doubt some would say I am making an unjustified connection, we can certainly speculate, based on other such incidences of damage.

Here, NPR has a piece called 'Environmentalists: Nature in Crossfire of Border War'.

Here is another, more extensive report on damage to National Forests and Monuments in Arizona. The piece mentions that illegal aliens and drug smugglers/human smugglers are causing the damage. But one particularly shocking factoid was the sheer numbers of people who are overrunning this area of Arizona:

This inadequately protected area in and around the small ranching towns of Bisbee and Douglas were inundated last year by 1 to 3 million illegal aliens most of whom escaped into the interior of the United States. Only one half million were apprehended by border patrol agents.

And think about this: 1 to 3 million in that area alone! And we are supposed to believe that we have only '12 million' in the entire U.S. now, after 20+ years of the invasion since the last amnesty? How stupid does our government think we are?

Some responses to the shamnesty proposal

The mood of heaviness that seemed noticeable on the heels of the president's speech seems to be lifting, as a few sane voices are heard over the usual MSM noise and blather.
Diana West, a reliable voice of sanity at the Washington Times, writes a piece called 'Too little, too late'.

I wonder how many Americans, listening to President Bush bringing his too-little, too-late immigration address to a close, felt like he ran out of track when he concluded: "We honor the heritage of all who come here...because we trust in our country's genius for making us all Americans, one nation under God," end of speech. Every allegiance-pledging American, of course, on hearing the phrase, "one nation under God," automatically adds "indivisible," not to mention "with liberty and justice for all." The president did not. It's likely that Mr. Bush simply didn't wish to sign off with the final words of the Pledge of Allegiance, which would have been out of place. Still, he invoked the pledge, and ended up omitting "indivisible." Purposeful or not, the omission is apt. We -- if I may say "we" to indicate the United States of America -- are anything but "indivisible" at this sorry point in history, and, as a perilous result, we think and we act less and less like a "nation."
A nation has borders and defends them. "We" do not. Otherwise, building a fence against an unprecedented invasion by Mexico wouldn't be considered a harsh and radical position in the political mainstream. A nation has laws and upholds them. "We" do not.'
'...A nation defines itself as a nation. "We" certainly do not. We are, as we are endlessly told, a Nation of Immigrants, a concept that blows to smithereens the unique nature of the "nation" to which immigrants have traditionally assimilated: the European-derived, mainly Anglo-Saxon polity, born of the Enlightenment and extraordinarily blessed by Providence, which the current president is now rapidly phasing out. '
'I have this terrible feeling I finally understand what a "compassionate conservative" is: an emotional train wreck. It's time to get a grip and build a fence -- a pledge, possibly, to become indivisible again. '

Amen to that.

And the stalwart Dimitri Vassilaros at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes a lighter piece 'Dubya's Mexican disconnect'. He makes the sensible though implausible proposal that Bush threaten a punitive tax on remittances to Mexico unless Vicente Fox acts to stop the flood of illegals. I think Vassilaros description of the Bush-Fox duo is hilarious though accurate:
'Bush seems so comfortable playing Johnny, the surreal thumb and index finger hand puppet, to Fox's Senor Wences.'
Funny, but sad at the same time. But sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.
(The allusion to Wences, who was a Spanish ventriloquist with a very strange though funny act, might be lost on the younger generation, though.)

Finally, Ann Coulter's wry comment, 'Read my lips: no new amnesty' also displays some humor as well as a no-nonsense approach to the amnesty question. I like this bit:

Instead of a moratorium on new immigration, I'd settle for a moratorium on the use of the expression "We're a nation of immigrants." Throw in a ban on "Diversity is our strength" and you've got my vote for life.'

Although Ann injects some needed comic relief into this distressing subject, she obviously means business. When one reads Mark Steyn, for example, on the immigration issue, one gets the impression that he is completely detached; his tone is flippant and cavalier. There is no indication of real passion there, and no hint that Steyn has any partisan feeling on the fate of the West. Coulter has only lately started to address the immigration issue, but she at least seems to be emotionally engaged, unlike the elusive Steyn.

As long as we have a few sound-thinking and lucid people to argue our case, as long as there is still the old-fashioned American spirit as displayed in these articles, maybe we Americans still have a chance.

Borders burn-out

Lately, with the depressing speech by President Bush and the even-more depressing weak media responses to it, I have been feeling burned out on this whole debate. The whole situation is so profoundly frustrating. Seeing the swift slide downward of my once-strong country, and the seeming betrayal by the powers-that-be is very demoralizing. And feeling so much ire and righteous indignation for my country is tremendously draining over the long term.
I can only hope that this present wrangling over amnesty will somehow re-galvanize patriotic Americans, in the wake of this propaganda blitz meant to wear down the opposition to open borders.The boilerplate being put out by the MSM and the party hacks is much like the wartime propaganda, when one side drops pamphlets telling the enemy to 'surrender; you can never win; your cause is hopeless.' That's what we are hearing from the media, and there is an air of torpor in some quarters.
We who are patriots need something to re-energize us, to rally us. Above all, we have to resist letting the enemy wear us down.
Our opposition has no good arguments on their side; all they have is relentless repetition of various slogans and agitprop, (a 'nation of immigrants', 'hard-working people', 'out of the shadows', and so on ad nausaeum) and various 'big lies' which they keep hammering on: '12 million undocumented', 'forced to come here to survive', 'solid family values' and so on).
When these emotional catchphrases and cliches and half-truths and whopping lies fail, there is always name-calling and accusations. The trusty race-card is tattered from its frequent use.
I've also noticed how often the Latino apologists resort to excessive emotion and hysterical-sounding rhetoric, as in this quote from a guest on Lou Dobbs today. Miguel Perez said:

what do we do? What are we saying, then? Are we saying basically, "Look, we're going to just sit around and keep the 12 million people, who we don't know who they are. We don't know where they live." And then the argument, we're not going to deport them. It's illogical to deport them. OK, so what the argument is then is that we are going to starve them out of the country. I wouldn't do that to an animal.

These histrionics were accompanied by a raised, shrill voice and gesticulations. This seems to be the preferred style with many of the Latino spokesmen. Is it politically incorrect to notice? I have yet to see a Latino apologist or pundit give a cogent, objective, calm argument for their side. And I have yet to see one who was willing (or able?) to see the bigger picture, as in what is best for America as a whole, for everybody; instead, it's all about their people, and oddly 'their people' are always their ethnic kin, not their fellow Americans. Perez, for one, is apparently a naturalized American who has lived here since age 11, for 40-odd years, and yet he seems to feel more kinship with the illegals from Mexico than with his American adopted countrymen. The same holds true for many other prominent Latinos. Case in point: Geraldo Rivera, American-born and bred, seemingly aligning himself with the illegals. Similarly, Latina 'conservative' Linda Chavez, also pro-amnesty. These people are not isolated examples.
America is dividing up into ethnic camps, but only 'generic Americans', who identify solely as Americans, are supposed to be objective and self-sacrificing. We are supposed to step aside and defer to all the other rival ethnic groups with their particular, insular agenda, while we must be all-tolerant and accommodating. This situation is highly unnatural as well as being grossly unjust; it can't obtain forever.
At what point will we Americans be granted the same right to look out for our interests? When hell freezes over? Or when we finally say 'not no, but hell no' to Political Correctness?
To paraphrase that old line about war, we've got to end liberalism before it ends us.

Mixed responses to Bush's speech

There has been quite a flurry of MSM commentary on Bush's amnesty-which-is-not-amnesty.
Much of it has been disappointing. For example, one stalwart on the issue has been Tony Blankley of the Washington Times, but his editorial today, 'The price of secure borders', counsels surrender to the amnesty plan. It's a reasonable price to pay for border security, says Tony.
Is this the way it is going to go, with conservatives being bought off by Bush's insincere talk of enforcing our laws? It seems to be a trend, judging by the op-ed pieces I have been reading.
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, one of the supposed dissenters in the sell-out Senate, has been striking a tough pose, but in his op-ed piece, also in the Washington Times, he seems to be sounding very conciliatory, and not as tough as we have been led to think.
I am beginning to think that much of the tough posturing we have been hearing in recent days was just for show, and when push comes to shove in the Senate, they will all fold like cheap tents and go along with the president and with McCain-Kennedy.
Richard Brookhiser, writing at the New York Observer, is surprisingly critical (for him) of the president and his amnesty scheme. But unsurprisingly he says some rather inane things, like this passage:

We may thank God that we share our border with Mexico, not the Maghreb. Profound differences divide the cultures of the United States and Mexico, and Chicano radicals talk of the Southwest in irredentist terms, as if hoping to refight the battle of Buena Vista. But they are not suicides or homicides or innocent-killing, virgin-craving holy men. Even as the illegal aliens among us are many times more numerous than our terrorist enemies, so they are many times less dangerous.

This particular bit of reasoning, saying that illegal Mexicans are to be preferred to crazed suicide bombers from the Middle East, is heard among the Bush supporters, who are prone to grasping at straws in defense of their hero's irrational policies. As a compliment to Mexicans, it's rather left-handed; just about anyone, presumably, is a better potential neighbor than an exploding terrorist. But have I not read somewhere that more people are killed in our country by illegals than have been killed by 'insurgents' in Iraq? I will have to look up the statistics on that. Be that as it may, this argument that illegal Mexicans are at least not Islamic fanatics is a particularly unpersuasive argument for welcoming them; it's cold comfort, in my book. It seems to imply some inevitability; a kind of resigned fatalism and passivity; sort of 'well, we can't stop our country being invaded, so at least Mexicans are more compatible invaders.' What kind of flaccid response is that? Why can't we protect our borders and preserve our country, or are we reduced to choosing merely who will invade and conquer us?
Brookhiser does admit that unchecked immigration is a danger, but in true neocon fashion. puts his ultimate faith in the good old engine of assimilation; everybody succumbs eventually, so we are told; they will all fall prey to the MTV/Hollywood/hiphop/American Idol pop culture juggernaut. And that promise is supposed to cheer us up.

Finally, a slanted little article from USA Today, 'Center ties hate crimes to border debate', by Kevin Johnson, slanders anti-illegal activist groups as being 'racists'. The authority cited in the headline is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a radical, extreme leftist group which is very free in designating others as haters and 'racists'. Funny, the article and the SPLC make no mention of hate groups like La Raza, MEChA, the Mexica Movement, the Voz de Aztlan, and the rest of the Latino hate groups. It's typical of the MSM to apply the 'hate' label selectively, always towards majority Americans and patriotic groups, never towards the Latino extremists. I suppose this follows in line with the Politically Correct dictum that only white people can be guilty of racism.
It's this kind of PC totalitarianism that is putting Americans at a huge disadvantage in defending our country. As long as any kind of self-defense is condemned as 'hate' and 'racism' what chance do we have? The only chance is to reject this rigged game which liberalism has set up, and to refuse to play the game any more.
While our media and political elites seem to be ready to surrender, I still see some spirit of defiance in the real people of the country. We are not all as easily fooled or as easily bought as our supposed leaders.