A Glimpse of Europe's Future

Ceuta is a Spanish enclave on the coast of Africa.  It has been a Spanish enclave since 1415.  The population is somewhere around 80,000 people.  This week, tens of thousands of Moroccans flooded into the area, overwhelming border enforcement and leaving residents in panic.  Thanks to the new law passed by the Spanish government, these folks can claim asylum.  If that happens, the flood will continue until Spain is destitute and no longer Spanish.  The seriousness of the situation is clear in that fellow Schengen Zone members are closing their borders to Spain.

Where some European countries (e.g., Denmark, Sweden, Italy) have begun to push back against the continuing waves of non-assimilating immigrants, others have left the borders open (e.g., U.K., Spain, Ireland).  Unlike the United States, which is not a country based on an ethnicity, most Europeans are.  Thus, though a person from Japan could become an American, he could not become English, French, or Swedish.  Rudyard Kipling may have been born and raised in India, but he was always an English.  On the current path, Europe is doomed.  The immigrants are having far more kids.  Without remigration in the very near future, much of Europe will suffer a similar fate to Ceuta.

Citizen Vigilante (2026)

Somewhere in Europe, a mother shopped with her son.  As they left the store and walked toward home, a black man with a knife stabbed the mother in the neck.  She bled out on the ground.  Michael Sanders (Armie Hammer) was an American who had come to Europe upon his father's death.  He found the situation intolerable and was only too happy to explain how things should be.  Though he owned rental property, he refused to let the government use any units to house immigrants.  He lectured a trio of rowdy youths about proper behavior, warning them to clean up their act; the next time he met them, there was no warning.  Judges who released criminals became his targets.  Then there were the criminals themselves; he was not forgiving.  Much of the populace celebrate his vigilantism and he is regularly discussed by the evening news.  Chief Henry (Costas Mandylor) was determined to end his reign of justice.

As a Uwe Boll film, it is badly made.  The same scene will be filmed from three angles and he will use the complete footage.  For example, the cop approached the door and set an explosive charge on the lock.  Different angle, the cop approached the door and set a charge on the lock.  Third angle, the cop approached the door and set a charge.  At another point, several police are mowed down in automatic gunfire.  It looked like 2 dozen men were killed but there were about 8 bodies on the floor when the action ended.  Yes, different angles again.  Then there is the non-linear filming.  At another scene, the police are carrying out bodies from an apartment building.  What is this about?  It is the site of Sander's massacre of a Muslim family, which proved to be the finale of the movie.  Boll must be trying to ape Pulp Fiction.

The news reports are astonishingly wooden, as if the female newscaster was reading the script for the first time.  Because much of the acting is wooden, Hammer comes across as an old pro.  Of course, it isn't a demanding role.  Sanders is intensely serious and takes no guff.  He explains to most of his victims why he is punishing them and how they deserve it.  He is Death Wish and the Punisher mixed together.  Mandylor proved to be bland, speaking with an unidentifiable 'European' accent.  The rest of the cast are unknowns and have tiny roles.

The point of this movie is the message.  Citizen Vigilante is an answer to the dramatic rise in crime across Europe and the various governments unwillingness to address it.  One of the storylines in the movie echoes a real incident: a 14-year-old girl was raped by 7 teens who were given suspended sentences.  Sanders claims that he will provide justice until the populace learns to provide it for themselves.

The movie is poorly made, poorly scripted, and full of holes, but the message is explosive.  Where most movies and TV shows will paint the white majority as a bunch of intolerant racists and the immigrants as entirely worthy, this movie flips that narrative.  The movie is a call to arms, a demand that the politicians reverse course, and perhaps a standard for the abused populace to gather behind.

Recommended.

Population Bust

A hundred years ago, the main way of planning for your retirement was to have children.  Often, this was a case where the parents' farm would be handed off to one of the children and the parents would live there.  With the population moving to cities, this scheme no longer worked.  Elderly in poverty became a clear issue and Social Security was suggested as a solution.  The idea was that the government would force everyone to save for retirement, setting aside a portion of each paycheck to be returned after age 65.

Ida May Fuller had worked as a school teacher and legal secretary.  She began paying into Social Security in 1937.  In 1939, at age 65, she retired.  Though she didn't expect much from this new-fangled system, she did apply for her retirement benefit.  Her first check - which also happened to be the first one issued by the Social Security Administration - was for $22.54 ($471 in 2022 dollars).  It should be noted that her total contributions were $24.75.  Her first check paid 91% of the funds she had paid.  Ida lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1975.  During her retirement, she collected $22,888.92 in benefits ($478,000 in 2022 dollars), or 925 times the amount she had paid.  Here is one of the greatest investments ever.  Of course, as with all Ponzi schemes, early investors always get the best returns.  It should also be noted that Ida May Fuller was never married and had no children.  So who paid her benefits?

Again, one of the reasons to have children was to provide for one's dotage.  But with Social Security, the government would - like in the case of Ida Fuller - force other people's kids to pay for the retirement of those who didn't have kids.  Ida barely contributed to her retirement account and did not provide workers for the next generation.  During her life, she didn't have to spend time or money on raising those who would pay for her retirement.  It was the best of both worlds!  Enough people have figured out that their retirement will be paid by someone else's kids that we are now in a population bust.  Europe, having adopted these policies earlier, started down the path of bringing immigrants to fill in the missing generation.  That the immigrants haven't assimilated and don't seem interested in assimilating is a different problem.  The US has also gone down the immigration path to boost the population and keep those Social Security benefits flowing.  It too has found that the immigrants aren't so keen to assimilate.  Rather than the melting pot of old, it is now the tossed salad of Balkanization.  Japan, also suffering a population collapse, has not resorted to immigration but rather is investing heavily in robotics.

The government-run retirement system contributed to a drop in fertility which then led to a call for immigration which has brought Balkanization and cultural collapse.  The West is committing suicide through these good intentioned cradle-to-grave programs.  What to do?

Sadly, this is insolvable.  Social Security cannot be repealed.  The most reliable voting demographic won't allow it.  It must collapse of its own insolvency, which is unlikely to come before the tipping point of cultural collapse.  A cohort of young immigrant workers will rise up against the oppressive taxation that supports the retired elite.  If this happens to several European countries before it happens in the US, there may be the political will to reform the system.

In some distant future, a James Madison-like figure will talk about the failures of a government-run safety net and explain why it is explicitly forbidden in the founding documents of the next great republic.  Then again, Jefferson had already argued that the government that governs least, governs best.

Return to Sender

Therese Patricia Okoumou immigrated to the United States from the Democratic Republic of Congo and joined the Social Justice Warriors the next day.  She has filed multiple lawsuits against employers and now she is a regular on the #Resist circuit and wants ICE to be abolished.  She is the poster child of why we need better screening for immigrants.  Her latest antics had her on the Statue of Liberty on the 4th of July.  This was not her first time getting arrested.  With all this resisting and complaining, one wonders why she migrated here?  If the USA is so bad, go back to Congo.  Or pick a different country.  With immigrants like Okoumou, is it any wonder why Americans have soured on immigration?

DACA

 [The president] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed

U.S. Constitution, Article 2 Section 3

The Dream Act, which was first proposed in 2001, was legislation that would allow those who are brought into the United States as minors to be granted a conditional amnesty.  Though technically illegal immigrants, they had no say in the matter and have spent the majority of their lives as Americans.  The Act has been debated repeatedly but never passed.  That last point is significant.  There was no law passed for the president to faithfully execute.  When President Obama pushed for the Dream Act, Congress declined to pass it.  Therefore, immigration law treats 'Dreamers' no differently than any other illegal immigrant.  The president takes an oath to faithfully execute the laws that have been passed, not laws he wished had been passed.  However, limited resources often mean that a president must chose where to put emphasis.  DACA was more than that.  President Obama implemented an executive amnesty that not only told prosecutors to ignore Dreamers but also granted legal status via work permits.  The president was not only being unfaithful to the laws that Congress had passed, he was enforcing laws that they did not pass.  Yet another impeachable offense by President Obama.  Of course, impeachment is pointless in our era and the Republicans were too spineless to use the power of the purse.

 

DACA is unconstitutional and should be revoked.  This is something Congress must legislate.  President Trump has provided Congress with 6 months in which to pass the Dream Act.  Let's see if they pass it this time.  If not, let the deportations begin.  Enforce the laws or change the laws but don't ignore the laws.  That is the path to anarchy and collapse.

Two-Faced Speaker

Having said all of that, there are people who are in limbo. These are kids who know no other country, who were brought here by their parents and don't know another home. And so I really do believe there that there needs to be a legislative solution.

Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House

Yet again, the speaker is showing his true colors.  When President Obama put forth the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) as legislation in 2012, the Congress - notably the House - shot it down.  Despite lacking any legislation, Obama directed the executive agencies to enforce immigration law as if DACA had passed.  Now that President Trump is proposing to enforce the laws as the Congress has written them and past presidents have signed them, Ryan has an about face.  Oh, he was only too happy to let Obama ignore the law while he could claim the moral high ground.  He was just fooling the rubes in flyover country.  It looks more and more like the two parties have been engaged in Kabuki theater, giving the impression that they oppose one another when they have really been working in concert.

 

Never trust a politician.

Sane Immigration Reform

Last year, I proposed some ideas for immigration reform.  It looks like Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue may have perused my considered opinion and offered a more merit-based system of immigration.  The big problem with a merit-based system is that those immigrants will consume less government than the current unmerited immigrants.  Sure, that may sound like the preferred situation but that is like a business turning away customers.  Government provides services.  The more customers it has, the better.  Self-sufficiency is the bane of government.  Vast bureaucracies require 'customers.'  If everyone was self-sufficient, the government might have to scale back the nanny state.  Oh, hell no!  Thus we get the Tsarnaev brothers who receive welfare and college tuition from the taxpayer while planning the Boston Marathon bombing.

 

If an immigrant can't support himself, he needs to be deported back to his country of origin.  Don't import liabilities.  Duh.  Because this is patently obvious, I am virtually certain it will never get through Congress.

Donald Trump, Soothsayer

Trump has been subject to criticism recently because he had implied that some sort of attack took place in Sweden on Friday night.  A reasonable person would conclude that he was referencing an attack that did not happen.  Clueless.  In fact, he was referencing a news report he had seen Friday night but a listener would have no way to know that.  He tweeted the following clarification:

My statement as to what's happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden.

 

That caught a lot of fire and criticism itself, being cited as an example of Trump blaming Fox for his repeating fake news.  The attacks hardly slowed.  Like Milo, Trump had said something that was easier to criticize than to explain.  Until last night.

 

In the wake of last night's riot in a Muslim suburb of Stockholm, it is safe to say that further criticism of Trump's assessment of the situation in Sweden will vanish.  Did Trump foresee the burning cars and hurled rocks?  No, not really.  It doesn't take a prophet to predict that Muslims are going to riot or go on a killing spree.  Much as US law enforcement isn't advertising how many crimes are committed by illegal aliens here, European law enforcement is mum about how much crime is attributable to Muslim immigrants.  In both cases, the truth would not benefit the Church of Multiculturalism.  Gosh, it might even suggest that some cultures are better than others.  The horror!

 

A Trump faux pas has resulted in his critics having the rug pulled out from under them.

The Coming Hypocrisy

At this very late date in the Obama Presidency, Ron Grossman of the Chicago Tribune suddenly sees a problem with bypassing Congress.  An admitted liberal, Ron expresses concern that Donald Trump might use exactly the same actions that Obama has employed during his tenure.  How can Ron demand that Trump not bypass Congress or the Constitution when he has not made such a demand of Obama?  Well, that is a quandary.  Thus we have this 11th hour article that takes Obama to task for his actions.  Now, if a President Trump or his minions challenge Ron's double-standard, Ron can point to this article and claim that he did criticize Obama's executive action.  He has seen the light just in time to oppose Trump.

 

More such articles will be written by media figures who have cheered as Obama enforced laws that Congress did not pass and failed to enforce laws that Congress did pass.  Obama rewrote the Affordable Care Act several times without Congressional involvement.  No media outcry.  Obama enforced the Dreamers Act that Congress expressly did not legislate.  Obama took the United States to war in Libya when the Congress did not authorize it, clearly abrogating the traditional interpretation of the War Power Act.  Who cares?  These same actions on the part of a President Trump will provoke media firestorms.  Grossman needed to make a sacrifice to fairness and equality and this mild (and far too late to matter) rebuke to the outgoing POTUS is his offering.

Common Sense?

If you go to an American political rally and wave the flag of another country, you are in the wrong country.

If Hillary's gender makes you more or less likely to vote for her, you are a sexist.

If Obama's race makes you more or less likely to support his agenda, you are a racist.

If you overlook misdeeds committed by your allies that you would vociferously condemn when committed by your opponents, you are a hypocrite and contributing to the ugly political landscape that you decry.

 

These are axiomatic.  They are tautological.  Ponder that.

Marco Poll Low

As of this writing, Marco Rubio has managed to finish a very weak 4th in the two biggest races of the day.  Compared with the support he was getting just last week, his campaign has collapsed.  The successor to JEB is proving to have about the same traction.  A one time darling of the Tea Party, Marco beat the establishment candidate for Senate then went to Washington to join the establishment.  That may be a bit harsh but it is how a lot of the base feels.  In a year when immigration is the hot button issue, a pro-amnesty candidate who sided with the other party against his base is going nowhere.  At least, not in the Republican party.  Rubio may get some delegates tonight in Idaho or Hawaii but he will be much further behind both Trump and Cruz.  Heck, Kasich will have gained ground on him.  The only reason to stay in the race is to force a brokered convention.  Every delegate he gets will give him more sway in that event.  However, if he loses Florida, which is looking likely, he will damage himself for future efforts.  Cruz won his home state and, if he falls short this year, can try again, but if Rubio loses Florida, his prospects will dim considerably.  If he bows out in the next day or two, he can remain viable for a future run.  I suspect he will stay until he loses Florida, then he will have to bow out.

Immigration Reform to Benefit Americans First

What would immigration reform look like if it was more concerned with the welfare of American citizens than it was with immigrants?  We want enough immigrants to help grow the economy but not so many that they will displace Americans by working for substantially lower wages.  We would want immigrants who could readily assimilate, adopting the Western customs of the United States and speaking English in short order.  We would want people who add to the economy, not detract.  With these notions in mind, what policies might we implement?

1. Only citizens can receive government welfare benefits.  This would include food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, housing assistance, Earned Income Tax Credit, and so on.  If you can't support yourself, go back to your nation of origin.  It is folly to allow someone to enter the country and then become a drain on those who are productive.  If it is going to cost me money for you to be here, I don't want you.
2. Immigrants must speak rudimentary English.  Why bring in someone who is functionally illiterate and cannot communicate?  You want to come to the US?  Take some English classes in your home country.  There is an application process that is quite long.  Spend some time learning the language of the country where you want to live.
3. Educated applicants go to the front of the line.  If given a choice between a high school dropout and PhD, take the PhD.  We have more than enough native high school dropouts.  Let's not import more.  Let's sweep up the best and the brightest and leave the underachievers where they are.
4. There are no anchor babies.  The very idea is just an invitation for pregnant women to wade across the Rio Grande.  One of your parents has to be a legal resident of the United States in order to confer citizenship.  And even if the Supreme Court decides that birth on American soil confers citizenship, the parents still go home.  You can leave your citizen kid behind to be adopted but you aren't staying.  Stop rewarding the behavior and we'll get a lot less of it.

Immigration needs to benefit American citizens first.  It did not benefit the computer technicians at Disney who trained their H1-B Visa replacements.  It did not benefit the unskilled American teenagers to have vast waves of low-skilled labor flood the market.  It did not benefit Americans to have the Tsarnaev brothers here and on welfare while they planned the Boston Marathon Bombing.  Either you can support yourself when you get here or your application is rejected.  Implement these rules and immigration will become a boon.

Trump and the Immigration Issue

What if Trump had not entered the Presidential Race?  Would the remaining candidates have even thought to raise the immigration issue?  I think it is highly unlikely.  If not for Trump, we might have seen Jeb and Rubio discussing comprehensive immigration reform.  Rand Paul would have been generally all right with that.  Really, most of them wouldn't have wanted to take the Trump position because it would make them a target for accusations of racism.  Trump was willing to take the heat and hasn't wavered on this core issue.  It is the foundation of his popularity.  Who else would have suggested a halt to Muslim immigrants/refugees?  Oh, they asked for better vetting but no one dared turn off the spigot.  Except for Trump.  And once Trump blazed that trail, Speaker Ryan echoed it.

 

Immigration has been a raw nerve among the average voter for a long time, getting more sensitive with each passing year.  It does not help matters that the Washington elites from both parties keep talking about comprehensive immigration reform and paths to citizenship.  No establishment politician has advocated against the current transformational immigration.  Democrats want the voters and Republicans want the cheap labor.  How about what the American voter wants?  Too bad, so sad.

With that in mind, what will happen if Trump crashes and burns in Iowa like Howard Dean did in 2004?  Will the new frontrunner seek to acquire Trump's supporters by adopting his stands on immigration or will the issue fade into the background?  I think most of the field would be only too happy to see the immigration debate go away.  Even Cruz, the person most likely to move into the lead, would probably put immigration on a backburner.  Jeb "Illegal immigration is an act of love" Bush and Marco "I wouldn't reverse Obama's executive order on immigration" Rubio would take it off the stove altogether.

 

With no other candidate who can credibly pick up the immigration baton, Trump is going to have staying power even if Iowa doesn't go well.  Other candidates will drop out as donor cash dries up but money is not an obstacle for Trump.  As long as he pushes the immigration issue, he can collect delegates all the way to the convention.  If he doesn't win outright, he will still have the option to be a big factor.  However, that depends on if he would stick around once he is mathematically eliminated.  Should that come to pass, will he shrug and say, "I gave it a shot" or will he stick around to influence the party platform on immigration?

Distrust the Candidate

Immigration is one of the biggest issues of this election season and most of the Republicans are on the wrong side of the debate.  Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton have essentially the same view on immigration despite being from rival parties.  Marco Rubio, who is in the process of unseating Jeb as the establishment's preferred candidate, tried to get amnesty passed several years ago but has since disavowed it.  Sort of.  He has declared that he would not reverse Obama's Dreamer Act; that would be the one that Congress declined to pass into law but the president enforced it anyway.  Hey, faithfully execute the laws is so passé.  Basically, Rubio has shown his cards.  He is going to claim to be a border hawk and against illegal immigration until - should he win - he is inaugurated.  Then, hello amnesty!  Too many Republicans have a short-sighted view on immigration.

 

The fastest growing immigrant group is Muslims.  Islam is entirely incompatible with the First Amendment.  Rather than forcing new immigrants to live under the rules that they knew existed when they chose to immigrate here, we are seeing self-censorship of anything that might upset Muslims.  Those who don't practice self-censorship are the bad guys in most media reporting.  "If you hadn't drawn that cartoon of Muhammad, you wouldn't have been shot.  It's your own damn fault!"  There will come a time when an area is majority Muslim and it will vote for Sharia law.  This is a when, not an if.  Muslim immigration has done wonders for Paris and Stockholm but I'm sure it will work out much better for us.

 

Rubio probably thinks that because he is Hispanic, he will benefit from an Amnesty.  He is delusional.  Amnesty is Republican suicide.  Ever notice how the Democrats are so concerned that Republicans will never win the White House again if they don't change their views on illegal immigration?  If the other party were ruining its chanced to compete with mine, I certainly wouldn't mind and absolutely wouldn't give them advise that might harm my party's chances.  Sure, the Democrats only want what's best for Republicans.  BS!  Republicans, being stupid, have swallowed this nonsense and are prepared to give millions of votes to the Democrats by passing some form of amnesty.

 

Amnesty is an existential threat to the party and yet most of the candidates are in favor.  Few have learned from history.  Republicans lost California thanks to the last amnesty.  Lose one more big state and their presidential prospects will vanish for many years thereafter.

 

This is why Trump still dominates.  Carson and Cruz are on the same page with him but Trump is the one who trail blazed the issue and he may ride it all the way to the Presidency.

Importing Voters

With about 8.8 million legal residents in the country who are eligible to become citizens, White House officials said they were trying to make it easier to complete the final steps to citizenship.

The officials said they had started the campaign this week because Thursday is Citizenship Day. But the White House is also aware of federal figures showing that about 60 percent of immigrants eligible to naturalize are Latino and about 20 percent are Asian, both groups that voted overwhelmingly for President Obama. Nearly a third of legal permanent residents eligible to naturalize are Mexican.

New York Times

 

Why try to convince the citizens that your prescriptions for the nation are best when you could just import more voters who are inclined to your viewpoint?  This is why the Democrats are not at all troubled by illegal immigration.  Look what happened to California.  Here was a state that was regularly electing Republican governors and was often in the Republican column in presidential elections.  Now the state doesn't have a single Republican in statewide office and it is in the Democrat column of every presidential election.

 

From 1820 to 1960, 80% of all immigrants came from Europe.  The majority of them were from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the UK.  Only 14% came from the Americas, the vast majority of those from Canada.  Only 3% of all migrants from 1820 to 1960 were from Mexico.  Also during that 140 year period, only 3% of migrants were from Asia.

 

From 1960 to 1990, the pattern was turned on its head.  Europe only accounted for 17% of all migrants in that period.  Asia rocketed to 32% of all migrants while the Americas now accounted for 48% of immigrants.  No longer were Canadians the biggest portion of that group; Mexico took the top spot, providing 4 times as many immigrants as Canada.  In fact, Mexico alone accounted for more immigrants (2.7 million) than all of Europe (2.6 million).

 

This shift in American immigration was not by chance.  As noted by the New York Times, Latinos are more likely to vote Democrat.  The more Latinos that can be imported and made voters, the better the election returns are for the Democrats.  Again, witness California.  From 1952 to 1988, California voted Republican for President in all but 1 election.  From 1992 to present, it has gone Democrat.  It is no coincidence that this shift occurred after Reagan had signed an Amnesty in 1986 with promises of border security and immigration enforcement that have worked out SO well.

 

In much the same way that Europe is transforming into Eurostan thanks to a huge influx of Muslim immigrants who are far more fertile than the native populations, the United States is on a similar path of transformation by a different set of migrants who are more fertile.  If a nation doesn't control its borders, it ceases to be a nation.  The elites who live in gated communities are sadly indifferent to cultural shifts brought about by such uncontrolled immigration.

 

The voters understand this.  It is why they crushed George W. Bush's Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (i.e. Amnesty) in 2007.  It is why Trump, who founded his campaign on opposition to illegal immigration, is so dominant.  The legal immigration is bad enough, why exacerbate it with illegal immigration?

Security Breach

A man jumped the fence and made it into the White House.  How could that possibly happen?  That is a failure of such a magnitude that I have a hard time believing it.  I would sooner have thought someone had gotten into Fort Knox and run off with a few gold ingots.  With this kind of failure, there had best be a handful of firings at the Secret Service.

This is a timely breech of security.  Access to the White House is controlled to make sure that no one who intends harm to the President is allowed to enter.  By the same reasoning, we have borders and immigration laws.  It has been reported that Middle Easterners have been captured crossing the southern border.  Most likely, those who have been caught - and the inevitable fraction who slipped through - are only seeking a better life.  But we don't know for sure.

Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

Back in 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (also called the Simpson-Mazzoli Act) was passed into law and signed by President Reagan.  It granted amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants while also enacting measures to prevent future illegal immigrants.  Voila!  The immigration issue was solved!

Today, we are talking about a new plan to resolve the vastly worse (11 million illegal immigrants) problem with a 'Path to Citizenship' combined with stronger border enforcement.  Hmm, this is sounding familiar.  In 1986, we got the Amnesty but didn't get the enforcement to prevent a huge flood of new immigrants.  Now Congress is assuring us that this time it will work.  Trust us just one more time.  Oh, and ignore that report from the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) that says the bill will only cut illegal immigration by 25%.

I've had a lot of good will toward Marco Rubio, the putative architect of this current immigration reform but he's lost me on this.  When he first started pushing for this, he was adamant that border security would happen before any path to citizenship could kick in.  That is no longer the case.  Border security is secondary while amnesty (euphemistically call 'legal status') is instantaneous.  Sounds like a replay of 1986.

 

Why is this so urgent now?  Republicans seem to think that Hispanics hate them and that passing Amnesty will perhaps win some to the cause.  Really?  Why didn't the last Amnesty - signed into law by a Republican - give the Republicans a larger share of their vote?  The history is not favorable but they're going to try it again.  I see why Pat Caddell calls Republicans the Stupid Party.  Hispanics vote Democrat and the Republicans are trying to get millions of more voters for the other party.  Stupid.

 

But the new law will stop the flow, right?  No.  Congress passed a law to build a border fence.  The law of the land says there is to be 700 miles of fence.  Law!  Passed by Congress and signed by the president in 2006.  Only 37 miles were built and the project abandoned.  If that law can be so readily ignored, what makes anyone think that a new law promising border enforcement will be obeyed?  Recall Simpson-Mazzoli?  We already have laws on the books that aren't enforced.  The Federal Government sued the state of Arizona for attempting to enforce some of those laws!

 

Actions speak louder than words.  Every action shows that the Feds don't want the border secure.  The only purpose of this bill is Amnesty.  Everything else will be ignored after the fact, just like Simpson-Mazzoli, just like the border fence.  And 30 years hence, we'll do it again.

Immigration Reform

The Boston Bombers were on welfare last year.  Really?  In an earlier post about immigration, I suggested that we should not import costs.  You don't let an 80 year-old immigrate so you can pay the end of life expenses.  You don't import the homeless so they can be a drag on our economy rather than a foreign economy.  You don't let criminals come here.  Can we have a rule that if you are an immigrant, you are ineligible for public assistance for life?  I am all for immigration but I want immigrants to support themselves.  If they can't, let their home country deal with them.

 

Here we are spending three and a half TRILLION dollars a year for this government and it can't keep an eye on a guy it has already identified as a potential threat?  Here is a Muslim who traveled to the war-ravaged Caucus region for months but the government seemed not to notice.  Secretary Napolitano said the system 'pinged' when he left but the alert had expired before he returned so he slipped through.  What?!  Maybe we could give extra scrutiny to all persons coming to the US from places like Afghanistan, Dagestan, Pakistan, etc.  Having experience as a database programmer, I can tell you that this should be painfully easy with even outdated computers but our massively funded Homeland Security Department has failed to do so.  Heck, they posted Jihadi stuff online and had already been interviewed by the FBI.

 

The government let them come here, paid for them with public assistance, knew Tamerlan had gone to Dagestan, and let him back in unmolested.  So, the system worked.

Rational Immigration Reform

Years ago, I watched one of those Sunday political programs and there was a debate between two people on immigration.  This may have been during the uproar about Pat Buchanan saying something along the lines of Europeans can more easily integrate into American society than Zulus so we should give preference to Europeans.  The two guests were pitted against each other, one arguing for open immigration and the other for limited immigration.  When the debate began, I was entirely on the side of limited immigration but by the end I was mostly on the other side.  What happened there?

People are capital.  More people equal more capital and more production.  The brain drain from Europe to North America after WWII was a boost to our economy for exactly that reason.  Thus, immigration is wealth migration.  At least, it should be.  This is where we run into another side of the argument.  If immigrants had to completely support themselves, there is no question that open immigration would be the policy to choose, arguably limited only by the ability of the country to absorb and assimilate them.  However, thanks to our numerous government assistance programs, many low-skilled immigrants and even citizens do not support themselves and instead become a drag on the economy.  Instead of being assets, they are liabilities.  Why import liabilities?

Many would argue that these immigrants do jobs Americans won't do.  Even if that is so, the money they earn in these low-skill jobs often does not make up for what the immigrant costs in healthcare, education of their children, etc.  If immigrants paid these costs, I would open the floodgates.  Come on in, the water's fine.  So, it is not a matter of racism as the Democrats paint it but a matter of cost-benefit.  Who hires an employee for $20 an hour when they only produce $10 an hour of product?  That's a $10 an hour loss.  The same argument applies to immigrants who often earn less housecleaning and doing yard work than they cost in social services.

My preferred immigration policy would be to abolish government welfare programs and then allow immigrants to come in droves.  Those who make it will add to the country while those who don't can migrate back to their home country and not become a liability to us.  For those who still want an influx of non-self-supporting immigrants, I would not prevent them from writing a check to the charity of their choice and thereby privatize the safety net.