Katie’s Dad 2.0

Mr. Crook, a ‘recent immigrant’ himself waxes idiotic and irritating about our immigration problems. I was just going to comment on a small piece of his exposition, but this priggish dolt strays so far from the path of sanity I can’t do this justice without deconstructing the whole fricking imbecilic exposition.

It’s time to put on my Fisking gloves:

WEALTH OF NATIONS: The Baffling Politics Of Immigration

As a recent immigrant, I find the politics of immigration in this country even more perplexing than the visa requirements — and in case you are unfamiliar with those rules, that is saying something. The issue throws up some strange arguments and alliances, some peculiar and memorable images.

One I won’t forget is the sight of Christopher Hitchens, like me an Englishman by birth, celebrating his new American citizenship last week by having Lou Dobbs fasten an American flag pin to his lapel. The scourge of idle orthodoxy — who but Hitchens, peace be upon him, could be driven to rage by Mother Teresa and righteous compassion by Paul Wolfowitz? — meets the solemn tele-champion of populist demagoguery, a man who before much longer will be sporting epaulets and calling for Mexican heads on pikes all along the southern border. Dobbs himself expressed some doubts about the occasion. “I can imagine viewers right now asking, ‘What is Dobbs doing, talking to Hitchens? What is Hitchens doing, taking on God?’” (Point of clarification: He wasn’t referring to himself in that second part, I think, but to the subject of Hitchens’s new book.)

Well, put my reaction down to envy.

If I ever meet the stringent requirements for citizenship — and did I mention I will do whatever it takes? — I want Dobbs to pin my flag on, too. Anyone can dream, can’t he?

Only if he pins it deeply through that greedy and ignorant heart of yours would it be worth the watching, Clive. I’ve not ever thought much of the National Journal, mostly because it exists to be more interested in profit than it does ‘nation’ - and it doesn’t see the irony in that fact at all. I suppose ‘Greed Journal‘ wouldn’t sell very well, even amongst the most self-aware of the greedy bastard class.

Of course, those of us in the know are aware that you and all disciples of economism favor profit over everything, including sovereignty, family and culture. What we acknowledge, but you don’t, is since it gives no charter to ideals like sovereign nations, distinct cultures and family attachment to heritage, your profit based life can do no better than devolve into the idolatry of cash. Economism at its apex promises a base existence in which you can have everything but it means nothing; a small, cloistered elite is just as much a slave to its shrinking world as are the legions of serfs required to sustain it.

I’ll take a less filthy-rich but richly-heritage-proud existence over that any day. It gives such a great sense of purpose and place on this earth. Can you get that from money?

Democrats are split on immigration, Republicans are split, the unions are split, and the pro-business types are split. Are unskilled immigrants pushing down wages, taking American jobs, overburdening the schools, straining the public purse, slowing traffic on the freeways, and driving up crime? Yes, all of that and worse, say Dobbs and the other get-tough people. Are they indispensable to the American economy, doing jobs that no American would want, holding down prices, and generally paying their way? Yes, all of that and more, says the other side. The disagreement cuts through every ideological alignment, setting brother against brother, activist against activist, corporate spokesman against corporate spokesman.

Clive, old chap, I can tell you one bloc through which there is no cleavage: The Children, Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution and others who have and respect their deep roots in this nation. My conversations with Americans who cherish heritage are, with near unanimity, virulently opposed to the current state of immigration policy and enforcement.

I suggest you get outside the Beltway. You’ll find that there is still a vast ‘majority of the majority’ American ethnicity that if given the choice between making a buck and saving their nation’s heritage would choose the latter. Finding this truth for yourself would surely comes as a shock.

The Heritage Foundation, for instance, a think tank that usually stands for freedom and enterprise (and which publishes each year the indispensable Index of Economic Freedom), is part of the get-tough crowd. One of its economists has just published a detailed analysis concluding that unskilled workers in general and immigrants in particular impose a heavy fiscal burden on the American taxpayer. If only unskilled workers could be entirely eliminated, and illegal immigrants shipped home, it seems to argue, we wouldn’t need taxes and we’d all be tens of thousands of dollars a year better off. On the other hand, think what it would cost to get your house cleaned.

Ah, house cleaners. There’s a ‘need’ with which so many of America’s economic majority, the middle class, can identify…right? Sadly, I believe you actually think this point is salient. Of course, instead, it might be that every so often The Heritage Foundation has an actual interest in ‘heritage.’ But amidst the idealogical morass that is political correctness, I doubt even a group with such a name could come right out and state truthfully that it has an interest in preserving America’s cultural legacy.

It took the bleeding hearts at the Immigration Policy Center (”Mi casa, su casa”) not only to point out that illegal immigrants have no entitlement to the benefits discussed in the Heritage paper but also to teach the free-market think tank a bit of classical-liberal economics — starting with the proposition that a person’s value to society is not confined to his net position in the public-sector accounts.

Clive, baby, haven’t you noticed that illegal aliens also have no ‘entitlement’ to be here in the first place? Has that stopped them from coming? Do your really think that illegal aliens, especially those dropping anchor babies, do not abuse and game our social welfare programs to the tune of billions each year? Whenever I read tripe like yours, I’m reminded that nearly half of those formerly illegal aliens granted amnesty by the Simpson-Mazzoli debacle used fraudulent documentation to get permanent residency status and, today, are proud, illegitimate citizens. Their taking the oath was an insult to those of us who have ancestors who bled and died to earn rightfully the same thing.

Further, if you want to start talking seriously about a person’s ‘value to society,’ no holds barred, then please explain to me how granting amnesty to 20 million people who offer to add nothing but an average 85 IQ and cultural antipathy for education to America’s classrooms is a net positive for our nation. Then tell me again how it will be a benefit when these same people are allowed to bring their extended families here, adding 40 to 60 million more a mere decade or so from now? Are you one of those who believes it is bigoted, racist and xenophobic for this nation’s traditional majority to do anything but sit idly by as it is politically, culturally and economically reduced to a mere plurality?

That’s what we’re expected to do: Sit quietly as our birth and blood legacy is carved up and handed out to interlopers who have affirmative action to prop them up and give them preference over the great white male across every strata of government and business.

We’ll that’s bullshit, Clive. It scares me that you want to be a citizen…and that you might get what you want. We have enough people here already who are ignorant to what it took to make this great nation. You don’t appear to offer much.

The intraparty splits on Capitol Hill make it difficult to say what legislation on the issue, if any, Congress will eventually enact. At midweek, Arlen Specter emerged from tortuous negotiations in the Senate on immigration reform legislation to call for more time. Majority Leader Harry Reid had set a deadline of Monday for producing a consensus bill; if the talks between opposing sides have yielded no agreement by then, Reid said, he might put last year’s Senate-passed bill on the floor for debate. In that case, Specter seemed to say, a filibuster was possible. Given more time, however, a “grand bargain” was within reach.

We do appreciate the warning, Clive. The phone batteries are charged and our faxes are on stand-by. You do know that Congress is scared shitless of us, don’t you?

If the measure he sketched really is a breakthrough “grand bargain,” please don’t show me any squalid phony compromises. The senators appear to be focusing their attention on a show of standard punitive elements (a much bigger Border Patrol, sanctions on employers of undocumented immigrants, etc.) to prove they are firm on the subject, combined with a series of institutionalized delays (called, in an Orwellian flourish that Hitchens would enjoy, “triggers”) to ensure that matters such as the status of the immigrants already here will not be addressed in the foreseeable future. Above all, let there be no talk of amnesty — a notion that now seems to encompass any measure that contemplates “legalization opportunities.” We have millions of illegal immigrants, and whatever else happens, they are going to stay illegal.

Clive, I’m going to assume you weren’t here to witness the 1986 “last amnesty ever, we promise” being shoved down our throats, then never enforced. Here’s the only thing you need to know: The only part of that legislation actually implemented was the ‘amnesty’ part. So, we don’t care about ‘triggers’ or guarantees either if they are ensconced within a bill that gives business what it wants. We don’t trust government to be honest in determining when such triggers have been met. The only thing we have reason to believe about our government in regard to immigration is that it isn’t capable of enforcing the law. So, we want to put it on double secret probation by making it clean its room, forgo amnesty and show that it can manage both the border and employer sanctions for quite some time before it is ever allowed the keys to the room where they talk about guest worker programs and increased immigration numbers.

Harsh? You bet. Ben Franklin’s challenge about our keeping the republic sometimes requires our being harsh when the government elected to serve our interests forgets its charges.

The strangest thing of all, of course, is that this gathering moral panic about immigration is happening in, of all places, the United States — a country that offers definitive proof of the strength and vitality of a nation powered by immigrants. The country needs to look no further than its own history to see that the principal fear aroused by the incomers — namely, “they are taking our jobs” — is false. Yes, millions of new immigrants, legal and illegal, are in the country. But look at the unemployment rate. What is the problem?

You almost served up that dreadful ‘nation of immigrants’ drivel. But what you wrote might be somewhat worse, so screw you anyway! This nation has never, ever, been ‘powered by immigrants.’ It has been powered by Americans from day one. Those of us whose ancestors were Brits before Lexington and Americans after Concord take offense at your slighting our forebears as ‘immigrants.’ And your follow-up of that old canard about how we have historically been fearful of newcomers and this will all pass rubbish is insulting to anyone with a modicum of intellect. It takes just two points to bury that crap: 1) This nation has never proved capable of assimilating any group from any culture that did not originate in Western Civilization; and, 2) historically, there was never a huge social safety net to entrap or entice immigrants. However, history does show pretty clearly that those who could not assimilate in the past were not here for very long, soon repatriating. America’s ‘not as tolerant as you want us to believe’ historical majority made life here impossible for them. That’s the truth, Clive.

Here’ s another: Nothing…and I mean NOTHING…in this world ever reaches greatness without being selective about its components. To posit the notion that Americans have not historically been selective about ‘membership’ is the biggest lie ever perpetrated upon the masses; raising this one fallacy to truth is integral to the foundation of political correctness. ‘Equality of condition’ - Egalitarianism - is an artifact of the French Revolution, not ours.

As far as the unemployment rate is concerned, why is it that folks like you never like to talk about the under-employment rate? Again, venture outside the beltway, get away from the guys with spreadsheets and find the truth. There are vast numbers of well-educated, hard-working Americans making the same or less than they were 15 years ago in un-adjusted for inflation dollars who never expected to be shat upon by corporations that until very recently took pride in affixing ‘made in America’ labels.

What ought to be the easiest point to grasp always gets overlooked: The number of jobs in the economy is not fixed. As the population has grown, the number of jobs has grown with it. This is not a lucky coincidence, something that could have gone either way. New workers add to the supply of labor and, owing to the fact that they spend their incomes, to the demand for labor as well. To a first order of approximation, every new worker creates the demand for one new job. That is why the working-age population of immigrants and nonimmigrants alike can soar, while total employment soars right along with it.

Yep. More people means more jobs. More low-skilled workers working means more jobs too. But it also means more profit for a thin-sliver few who benefit from the whole economic spectrum of society having to pitch in to make up for the economic drain that each newly imported low-skilled worker creates. The marginal benefit to Joe Lunchbucket is less-than-zero with each new imported low-skilled worker becoming part of an horrific economic disincentive for innovation across the board. So, in the short-term the elite gets the bucks at the expense of what very well could be wildly greater profits in the future…if only the elite haircuts would be willing to skip a manicure now and then.

Why? Well, if we have innovations today that lessen the need for low cost labor but create a new need for higher skilled technicians who can do the work of many, then in short order there will be higher profit margins for everybody.

Plus, American citizens don’t have to educate, provide health care to or incarcerate machines.

Such are the attractions of the United States as a place to live and work, some controls are necessary. An unimpeded surge of immigrants really would pose problems. And it is right that once controls are in place, they should be enforceable and enforced. The fact remains that politicians of both parties are vastly exaggerating the difficulties.

Golly. If it isn’t so hard to enforce the border and police corrupt businessmen, then why has it not been done? Look at the National Journal’s subscriber base, Clive, old buddy. Look at the pompous greedy haircuts you suck up to. Of course our politicians are exaggerating the difficulty! If they admitted the truth, they’d have too much explaining to do regarding why they haven’t done anything yet.

Compared with other countries, the United States has a huge advantage: It succeeds, to a very unusual degree, in assimilating its immigrants and putting them to work. European countries find it difficult to do either — for cultural and historical reasons, presumably, in the first case, and because of overextended welfare states in the second. If America moves to a regime that makes it harder for people living here to become American, and that makes it more difficult for immigrants to get work, those advantages will be compromised. America’s immigration problem will start to look like Europe’s, which is not a good idea.

We are no more capable of truly assimilating immigrants than any other nation. Our being somehow ’special’ in this regard is just another big load of crap that folks like you want average Americans to believe. So you just keep repeating it. Jefferson, Jay, Washington, Franklin and a host of other founding fathers all wrote in admonition to future generations that America should be wary of having incompatible masses imposed upon it. Look it up in Federalist Paper Number 2, Washington’s Farewell Address and Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia. You, like so many who come here and are quickly mis-indoctrinated, seem to think that we have some immunity to balkanization, or that we somehow can all just get along despite being engorged with diasporas and their allegiance to nations and cultures with whom we have no real historical experience - and that just might want to see us fall.

Your contention that our making it harder to become American would be bad policy is the most absurd claim you make in this article. Historically, the fact that it has been difficult for any immigrant to become truly American is the only reason why immigrants have not defined us and instead we have redefined them. The sorry state of affairs we have reached, dictated by political correctness and mandated by diversity, has banned the very prescriptions that have made us capable of bringing only willing assimilants into the fold. Your suggestion that we stop having hard expectations for potential immigrants actually conceals a hidden call for our own destruction.

Aside from creating their own demand for labor, immigrants also meet a pre-existing need for low-skill workers. To get a sense of the tonic that a crackdown on illegal immigrants would be for the economy, look at the other end of the labor market — the market for highly skilled immigrants.

Such people work in formal settings visible to the authorities, so illegal immigration cannot expand to meet excess demand. Controls are tight. The standard permission for a highly educated worker to sign on with an American company and reside in the United States is the H-1B visa. Numbers are severely restricted, and the annual quota typically kicks in each year in a matter of weeks. Once the quota is filled, there is no more immigration that year (except for a lucky few, through an even more demanding application process, but don’t get me started on that). It is a strict regime with very little evasion — just what the get-tough people want to see across the board. Do the results look good?

Ask Microsoft, or any number of other high-tech American enterprises — ask the very companies on which America depends for its competitiveness and future economic prospects. They are in despair over this restricted immigration regime. They simply want to hire the best engineers and other skilled personnel they can find, regardless of where they come from. Piling absurdity on absurdity, many of these sought-after employees have been trained in American universities, partly at America’s expense. Give them Ph.D.s and then make them leave. How’s that for industrial policy? What could make more sense than to let those people stay and work — not to mention (Heritage Foundation, you will like this part) pay lots of taxes?

If there were no way for globalist companies to outsource or insource high-skilled and technical work, then Americans would rise to the task Just seven years ago, tech training schools were filled with Americans working to become certified in computer programming and other high-tech job classifications. But thanks to visa programs and the proliferation of unpatriotic assholes who run outsourcing businesses, those folks paid thousands of dollars for certifications to get jobs that ended up not paying enough to cover the cost of the classes and tests. I know. Many of my former sub-contractors were driven out of business for this very reason. It’s just another variation on the false meme, ‘jobs that Americans won’t do.’ Of course Americans will do them…but it has to be at a fair wage for the skills they have acquired. What current American high-school student in his or her right mind would look at high-tech as a worthy career goal when Mr. Government has been so eager to kiss Mr. Elite Haircut’s ass that he’ll sell out this nation’s children just to get a nose near the crack.

The most vile thing that Work Visa Programs impose is the idea that there are things that America, and Americans, cannot do. An ‘I can’t’ mentality did not make us, and it may well destroy us.

If they cannot come in, a mixture of two things will happen. America’s leading companies will be put at a disadvantage in global markets — or else they will take the jobs to the workers they want, by moving parts of their engineering and other leading-edge activities to new units overseas. In fact, this is happening. It surely ranks as one of the stupidest errors that American economic policy makers have ever made. And that, again, is saying something.

Thanks for wrapping your economism-bullshit sandwich up so nicely. Global markets this. Globalism that. Nations aren’t worth a damned any more. Not a word about respect and honor for the very nation that gave most of these ungrateful corporate entities a chance to become what they are.

Typical.

Yes, Clive, you’re an asshat. What else are you trying to soft sell that won’t stink like hell and take a hose to wash off my shoes?

**UPDATE 5/13/07 **

Patrick Cleburn has been kind enough to mention and quote this Fisking at VDare.

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American History, Culture, Globalism, Immigration, Outsourcing, Political Correctness, Politics, Racism, Sovereignty