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May 18, 2007Immigration, the right and time constraints -UPDATEDAs I mentioned somewhere in the comments of some post, yesterday, I’m looking at 4-5 exceedingly busy days and anticipate having little time to blog about anything or to answer many emails - so I will respond to some of them here, but please note I’m mostly unavailable for back-and-forths, right now. If you’re commenting, remember that comments are moderated, and since I’m super busy this weekend, that may take a while. I know many of you are very angry at me for taking a dissenting view from many conservatives on the Immigration Bill - I can’t help that, nor what I think about the issue. Thankfully, we live in a world where decent people may disagree and still be decent people…or at least I hope we still live in that world. I will be very sad to see the right turn into the same bunch of screaming reactionaries the hard left has become, brooking no dissent. But I won’t be moved simply to be accepted. I should think all of you conservatives who stayed home last November “on principle” (and in doing so helped us get to where we are today) would respect that! Please know that I have no intention of engaging in intra-blog warfare, and I’m not going to fight with anyone. Folks are entitled to think what they like about anything (and about me - all I ask is that you quote me accurately). If you can’t abide visiting my little blog anymore, because you disagree with me, well, I’m sorry to see you go, but we all do what we feel we must. Like everything else, any immigration reform bill will only be as effective as its enforcement. One things seems very clear to me: dreaming of legislation that had little chance of passing to begin with, while refusing to vote or casting a “teach a lesson vote” is a very poor strategy. Simply doing nothing - for another year and another year - while waiting for the perfect confluence of events and elected officials, is no longer an option. If we can make some moves toward reforming the INS, grandfathering into citizenship the respectable people who have been here a while - we’ll make headway. Then we’ll see what works, and what doesn’t work, and we’ll adjust. Once you have something constructive happening - which we finally do - instead of stagnation, momentum will build and hopefully folks in leadership will see what needs doing and do it…but we can’t hold our breaths for that. In the meantime, I wonder if my friends who support the surge in Iraq and understand that it needs some time to be fruitful will be as understanding and patient about the implementing of these policies. Change never happens overnight - at least positive change does not…and sometimes - as we well know - things get a little worse before they get better. In the comments section of this post I wrote the following: “I know there are a lot of terrible stories out there and real concerns of folks - I also know there are a lot of illegal immigrants who do not behave that [threatening and disorderly] way. Just as our soldiers all get a bad rap when some go bad (as do all of our priests suffer for the bad ones) these stories make the whole issue more difficult for everyone. As a famous fellow once said, “here I stand; I can do no other.” UPDATED: I have about a dozen emails - some of them needlessly nasty - saying “doing nothing is better than doing the WRONG thing.” Okay. But what you consider the “right” thing (the only thing you’ll accept) will never get passed. While you’re sitting around dreaming about it, the situation you abhor - that you say is destroying the country and cannot go on - will go on, and get worse, every day - and your “doing nothing” will have contributed to it. Do nothing for a few more years while you wait for the congress that will do what you want. I predict you’ll wait a long while. Related: http://theanchoressonline.com/2007/05/18/immigration-the-right-and-time-constraints/trackback/ 26 Responses to “Immigration, the right and time constraints -UPDATED” |
May 18th, 2007 at 5:09 am
I recently visited a relative in the southwest who was having some work done on his house. He was complaining about the immigrants, but when the crew showed up and it turned out that a couple of them were Mexican…he did not throw them off the propeerty. After telling me how all these folks are part of a conspriacy to steal back the southwest he did not say boo when it came to getting the work done. That is the problem with the hardliners. They rant and rave about this, call all the illegals criminals, but the truth is a lot of these people are here to work. And they are working for us.
May 18th, 2007 at 6:21 am
Hard core conservatives picking up their marbles and going home doesn’t solve the problem and only makes them look as petulant and deluded as the hard core left. Nobody promised that life would be FAIR and anyone who expects that is just being foolish.
As to my comment on the prior post about another illegal driving drunk and killing a chld - this has been happening a lot and NO, they don’t get deported. And even if they ARE deported, they just come right back, so border security should be the primary goal we should be looking at.
May 18th, 2007 at 9:12 am
My two concerns, as they have always been, are 1) Border security - why can’t we just agree to build the whole fence; and 2) The rewarding of law breaking behavior. We are (in theory, I suppose) a nation of laws. If I am rewarded for breaking some laws, what is the incentive for not breaking others?
My third concern (I guess I lied)is the question of incorporation. Are these individuals who are here truly interested in being Americans, or are they here as essentially expatriates making an income? One will eventually strengthen the union, one will balkanize it.
- TB
May 18th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Thank you Anchoress. I may disagree with you on many points, but you always think out of the box, and I applaud you. Thanks for not just falling in line- with ANYONE!
May 18th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Web Reconnaissance for 05/18/2007…
A short recon of whats out there that might draw your attention….
May 18th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Terrye,
I just had a Texas wind storm blow down my fence. I spent $1000 more than I could have in order NOT to use illegal aliens to rebuild it. Your argument is interesting, but in order to abstain from using illegals a person would have to do what? Never eat in a restaurant again? Never buy another vegetable?
Anchoress is quite right that we need to start somewhere. But rushing a bill through that never sees the light of inquiry is a frightening thing. If you look at the link provided in the previous post (which I did not insert as a link, sorry) We were promised in ‘68 that that bill then would not change ethnic composition of the country, would not result in massive influx from third world, and many other lies. Since the author of this bill is the same liar, why would we believe him now? Particularly when the bill is being shoved through without letting anyone take a look at what is actually says?
This is the major source of my outrage. I acknowledge we need to do something. But given the lack of will to enforce the law we currently have, I fear that we will get half this bill actually enacted. All the amenesty and benefits will be conferred, but no enforcement will take place. And the economic repercussions will be so major we cannot recover from them.
May 18th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Sorry to disagree on this one,
This bill is worse than the one in 1986 and lets look at the mindset of the congress and Bush:
In the last couple of years, this is what we thought we were getting
700 miles of fence —–> 1 mile built.
2000 additional border people —–> 200 budgeted for by Bush
SS benefits —–> close to passing an agreement that will send $400-800MM/yr to Mexico
ICE bureaucracy —> New well run government agency?
In committee, the good that you think you are getting with this bill will be stripped out in the name of compromise and getting along.
What do you do then? Cry that it’s not right?
How many times have conservatives won anything when we compromised with the other side? These gutless republicans don’t even bring a knife to a gunfight because they just want to be liked by their esteemed brethren on the other side (apologies to Sean Connery in The Untouchables). Their base can go to hell because where else are they going to go, to the dems?
If the teeth in this bill are not stripped out, then it may be tolerable.
But I suspect the bill in its final form will be toothless or non-workable in a practical matter. So what have we accomplished? In short, you will get the bone without the meat and be told by the butcher, this is the best we can do.
I agree that we are in a worse shape than before the 2006 elections. But let me ask a simple-minded question. If the existing republicans in power did not receive a wake-up call in 2006 from their base and its business as usual, how do you build a fire under them? Win, lose or draw, they simply don’t care what their base thinks. Why should I believe anything they say? Why should I support them in 08? And I would rather stand and say No on principle, than say yes and have another toothless bill with only negative results. Same effect in the end but they at least they can’t say it was consensual. Enough said.
Do I know what the anser is? No. But I can’t in good conscience go along and be told later that it was consensual. So I vote NO! and have conveyed that to the miscreats that are suppose to represent me.
May 18th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
[Deleted by admin - duplicated post. Please note comments are moderated and post will not always show immediately.]
May 18th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
I know we’ve disagreed on this point before, and it pains me to do so again, but…
Please explain to me how this bill secures our border? Explain to me how it will keep the next Albanian terrorists from crossing our border on their way to Ft. Dix.
I understand you concern for the people of Latin America, but they aren’t the only people pouring across the border. Until we secure that border we can’t know how many terrorists are coming in.
By giving the Open Border Industry what they want you insure that nothing else will be done for twenty more years. The cheap labor lobby gets their workers without fear of punishment. The Left gets their reams of illegal voters to skew elections and expand socialism. And our border remains an open wound admitting every pathogen known to the American body politic; drugs, crime, terrorism.
Please show me the 60% we’re getting, because I’m just not seeing it. The “path to citizenship” only opens when the border is “secure”, but who says any of the interests pushing for this legislation even care about the “path to citizenship”?
Industry wants cheap labor, not citizens. The Left wants second-class people they can champion. And they both want an open border. Security will never come, only more drugs, more criminals and eventually, more terror.
Sorry to be so negative :-/
I do believe in the big tent and am not trying to write you out of the movement, just trying to sway your thinking a little on the need for border security…
May 18th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
[...] up.) I’m still not sure what I think about it, especially since it’s so polarizing. But The Anchoress, as usual, proposes a deep breath and calm reflection. Like everything else, any immigration [...]
May 18th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
When it comes to immigration, the parable of the rich man and the spider comes to mind.
If he had not selfishly pushed the others away - he would have reached heaven.
If we truly have faith, God will help us find the way.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Back when he was a teenager in the mid-eighties my youngest brother, whose paternal grandfather was a Welshman and not, unlike that of his four siblings, a wetback (Grandfather Careaga forded the Rio Grande in 1916 without benefit of legal formalities, which were not particularly stringent at that time), liked to drive with friends through the agricultural districts of southern Ventura County CA and, when they spotted phalanxes of farm laborers, pull over and shout “La Migra!” before driving off convulsed with mirth. When he recounted this to another brother and me one Christmas we two exchanged pained looks and told him gently that as we saw it he was merely adding a bit of gratuitous anxiety and unpleasantness to lives that were already short on comfort and security and long on miserable toil. He seemed genuinely surprised by this. I assume that whether or not our opinion made a difference, he has since outgrown the practice.
*
For what it’s worth I think that the “melting pot” concept was and remains a good idea (I leave myself some wiggle room as to how it’s best implemented), and that “identity politics” is not, particularly. Of course, whenever we set about to draw a charmed circle we contrive to leave ourselves at or near its center, and so as the culturally-assimilated son of a man who spoke Spanish as a child before he spoke English, I am predisposed to hold assimilation as an unqualified good.
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Opinions have long differed as to the fitness of assorted categories of immigrants to blend into the national stew. The Irish, the Italians, sundry Eastern Europeans, the “Celestials,” the Japanese, the Mexicans, the Asians again and, latterly, the Muslim Hordes have all loomed large in the consciousness of “normal” Americans. I suspect that the recent surge in anti-immigrant sentiment may have something to do with the surprising spread of the Hispanic diaspora to quadrants of the country where they were unknown a generation ago. Here in California we’re used to Mexicans—hell, they were here when we stole the place—but I can appreciate the consternation that Wisconsonites might experience.
*
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, less a melting pot than a bouillabaisse of ethnicities and cultures, and somehow we all contrive in the main to get along. I can’t speak for “FARWESTMOM’s” experiences, but as to “urinat[ing] and poop[ing] right on the sidewalk in broad daylight,” I have to say that I’ve only witnessed white (albeit grimy) male thirty- to fiftysomething alcoholics engaging in this conduct in the San Francisco Financial District.
*
Economic globalization is a fact, dear friends. This is the fissure that runs through both parties but deeper and more lethally, I think, in the GOP. It doesn’t matter how dearly the Disney vision of Main Street USA might resonate with the popular base—capital seeks maximum profit and minimum cost. Global capital will export jobs where it can and import labor where it can in the service of these ends, and it will do so with no more malice—and no more remorse—than a shark will feel or display in maintaining itself—nor, indeed should it be held to a greater moral accountability than we would apply to any other predator, be it lion or hawk or jackal.
*
And as the Anchoress observes, and as many of her critics forget, these are human beings we speak of here, many of them doing miserable jobs for little pay. Lawbreakers they may be, technically, but they’re harvesting the produce and, lately, slaughtering the livestock that go to make up your dinners. Perhaps domestic laborers could be found to fill those functions once we round up and deport every Tomas, Ricardo y Enriquez. Are you certain that you want to pay the literal price?
May 18th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
I am a new poster–and wanted you to know that EVERYTHING you have posted I have agreed with 100%!!! I tell my sister all the time that you are my “soul mate” blogger! From your posts on our WONDERFUL President W (not perfect–but oh so compassionately human–I tell my children that maybe their children will actually get to read a history book that honors this honorable man… As far as the immigration issue–You again are RIGHT ON –If we are so hardlined we actually get nothing done–as has happened for more than a decade–then we accomplish NOTHING! It is a Start–not perfect–but a beginning–Let me just add–there is one person in the Bush Administration that I admire more than anyone in politics today–and that is Tony Snow! #1. If Tony Snow did not believe in our President–he had an excellent oppportunity (however difficult) to easily bow out–but even with battling cancer and taking chemo treatments–he has returned to help and to serve This President. #2 If Tony did not believe in this Immigration policy– he would not be out there fighting the good fight–
So here’s my take–Two very good honorable men with strong values and integrity suppport this–then I am siding with THEM!!
Thank you, Anchoress, for sharing your God-given gifts with us all–For those of you who no longer want to visit–there are ten times as many that are visiting 10 x more often!! God bless you and your family!!
May 18th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
I may disagree with you on the Immigration Bill, but it is indeed a problem of very long standing. This may be the only chance we have to do something - anything - to begin to get a handle on the problem. So I will wait to see how it shakes out.
Why would I, a right-winger, not come back to this blog? How foolish would that be of me? Sheesh!
Keep the Faith, Baby!
May 18th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Amen Anchoress
I am pretty tired of this debate. I am mostly tired beause some of the names that people have been called who believe in Comprehensive reform. Traitor, Spineless, and having my relgion insulted has not been fun.
Rush was on the radio saying these people will never vote Republican and we shall ahve one party rule forever. I wish Rush would interview the Congressional Delegate from Puerto Rico. They send one person to Congress(delegate) and guess what he is Republican. There are many others. But we are about to destroy ourselves with the hispanic vote forwever unless this vile stops. THere is a lot of it out there and it is all based on fear I think. Hispanics are starting up businesses at a rapid rate. We are the party of small business. I think our ideas are right and are appealing. I am sort of shocked that others don’t think that. Bush has shown us that Hispanics will vote GOP. We have a latino as head of the party. He has appointed numerous hispanics. Now we are about to destroy all that.
I don’t get the politics that people are playing here. I begged for a compromise last year but certain Hardliners made sure that didnt happen. Now we are in worse position and yet we got some common sense stuff in this bill. IF we fight this tooth and nail that stuff might go away and then a more liberal bill will pass. We will go down as the party that feared hispanics(THAT IS THE WAY IT WILL BE PLAYED AND REMEMBERED WHETHER RIGHT OR WRONG).
I wonder if some people don’t want to be bothered.That they might have an inkling that we shall play a role in assimilating these folks and people just dont want to deal with it. I a conservative, a republican, and a Catholic Christian. My faith will not allow me to embrace this hate. PEople say they don’t hate but I am seeing alot of it on the net. It appears there is something more than the fact they are “illegal” going on.
It is now time for leadership. THis so reminds me of the Social Security debate. Remember Bush di that tour of the COuntry. HE pleaded with us to do something. ANything because the system was going broke. We ignored him and the cost of ignoring him goes up every year. Just like immigration
JH
LOuisiana
May 18th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
[...] the Immigration Pipe Dream” Immigration, the right and time constraints -UPDATED Tony Blair converting to Catholicism? Immigration bill is a start Hitchens’ [...]
May 19th, 2007 at 10:10 am
The proposed law is simply awful. Undermining family unification.
No real guarantee on improving border security.
$5000 fee may keep many in the “dark”
Coming for 2 years, then having to leave - yeah, that’s gonna work.
Etc.
Then again, the whole second term of Bush has been one huge disaster, so this fits right in.
May 19th, 2007 at 10:23 am
lsusportsfan writes: the cost of ignoring [Bush] goes up every year. I wholeheartedly agree that the president has been in effect ignored for far too long. It is gratifying indeed to see that the workings of his administration are finally beginning to receive the kind of scrutiny and oversight that have been unjustly denied them hitherto.
May 19th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Open Borders…
Lastly, two proponents (or at least not raging opponents) of the still yet to be written bill from a couple of level-headed conservatives: The Anchoress and Ed Morrissey.
…
May 19th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
The problem is that so many rightfully believe they are being lied to. Again.
And we ARE being lied to. The government has not demonstrated the will, capability, or competence to enforce much of anything let alone this bureaucratic boondoggle. The government cannot even cope with student visas six years after 9/11.
The gimmick this time around is ‘triggers’. So one so-called ‘trigger’ doesn’t get met and the whole program shuts down? We’re supposed to believe that? I sure don’t.
Based upon all the evidence we have up to this point, this bill will solve absolutely nothing of tangible benefit. It will only reset the counter for the next wave of illegals to run up. (little numbers are less damning, so the pols will declare victory).
It seems like some want grant forgiveness and absolution when there is no sign of repentance or contrition. Fool me once shame on you - fool me thrice, shame on me. In doing so these compassionate souls perpetuate the United States’ role as the enabling pressure relief valve for a corrupt Mexican government - and the wreck of an economy it has produced.
I completely understand why so many Americans and legal immigrants feel betrayed, insulted, and angry. It is justified.
May 20th, 2007 at 8:28 am
The bill is written in the worse political language I have ever tried to read. Fortunately Hugh Hewitt has interpreted it for us and hopefully he has read it correctly. The basis for the triggers seems reasonable, but if Mr. Hewitt is correct there is a way to bypass them built into the bill, this bill is a travesty. My main concern is establishing border security to make this the last amnesty necessary; an amnesty it is in another name.
Representative Hunter has stated that only two (2) miles of southern border fence have been built of the 700+ miles promised last year. The Minutemen have built 10 miles of state of the art fencing on private land in AZ with private donations in the same time frame. Yet I am expected to believe that my government will have an immigration bill trigger at 370 miles to start the citizenship process for illegal immigrants while the bill (supposedly) has built in bypasses of the proposed conditions required to trigger the citizenship process. Why do I think that the fencing milestone will not be met and the bypasses will kick in due to political pressure? I have no confidence that even if enacted the requirements to achieve citizenship will be enforced; no more than border security has been enforced for the 20 years since the 1986 compromise which promised border security if amnesty was enacted.
Apparently we have a new victim class, undocumented immigrants whose civil rights are being violated. Congress and the president have forgotten what is best for all of America.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
May 20th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
skeeter:
Yes, I expect people to not go in that restaurant if they feel that these people are all criminals. If they can call me a traitor or a dupe or a fool or any other number of names for supporting a compromise bill then they take some responsibility in their daily lives to deal with it. They say it is a crime, fine, if they saw someone robbing a bank they would not drive the car for them would they? They would not aid the criminal would they? But they do it with this issue every day. The hardliners have become impossible to deal with when it comes to this. They are paranoid and spiteful…so yes, I expect them to do something other than attack people like me who disagree with them.
May 20th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Totally agree, Terrye. The rhetoric used by the hardliners is way, way over the top, hyper-emotional to the point where all reason and clear thinking is completely lost. And that’s not even including the YES, BIGOTED language used by so many. They don’t even realize they’re doing it, it seems. (NO, not all are bigots, but there’s a large segment of them who are and don’t even realize how they sound.)
I want immigration reform, too. I don’t like that we have such a problem with illegal immigration and never have–this is hardly anything new. These stories I see about this-and-that in the border states, used as arguments–these things were the situation at least 20 years ago when I lived in Arizona, and were as such before then. And what about the Canadian border? What ABOUT the Fort Dix Six? They didn’t come through the Mexican border at all. So why the focus SO much on Mexico, if the argument is that it’s a national security issue? Why aren’t the other illegal immigration routes in focus from the hardliners? All I hear is how our “national identity” will be erased. (I’d like to hear someone explain clearly what our “national identity” is, by the way–I’m sure tens of millions of native-born Americans would be interested to find they aren’t part of it.)
We need reform, but it doesn’t need to come at the expense of our humanity or common sense. Some of the things being demanded are simply NOT feasible, and all the laws passed before (those which the hardliners continually brandish as their weapons) have proven that it’s not easy, even when it’s moderate reform.
I’m sick and %$#@ing tired of the Bush-bashing, as well. Bush has no political capital to use, and it’s not because of the Democrats; it’s because of the weak-kneed conservatives who will abandon him at the drop of a hat, and do nothing at all on issues where they agree with the President. (Social Security, as mentioned above, is a perfect example; the war is a crucial example.) And it PAINS me to say “they,” because I am a conservative–I’m just a realistic one, unlike the ones we hear screaming for Bush’s head.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:19 am
This bill will not begin to be debated in the Senate until today (Monday).
Already everyone is mad because they can’t get everything they want, but admit they don’t have a solution to the problem either.
How can the Republicans prevail on this when they are in the minority of both Houses of Congress?
A compromise satisfies no one completely but is a concensus. Before we whine about what a terrible bill this is let’s see how it gets changed.
Since so many conservatives stayed home in 2006 my guess is they will get a bill less satisfactory to them than what was proposed then, but hey, let’s stay home again in 2008 and certainly don’t vote for Bush, who knew we had this problem since he was a little boy and should have had the magic solution when he entered the Oval Office.
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Beth, check here:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/007489.htm
3 of the Ft. Dix six DID come across the Mexican border.
It isn’t racist to focus on that border, that is where the vast majority of the illegals enter this country. It’s all nice to talk about the Canadian border, but it represents less that 10% of the problem.
So let’s secure the 90% and then worry about the rest.
And that’s what the vast majority of “Hardliners” want (if I may speak for them). We only want the border secured BEFORE the next amnesty, however defined, so that we can be sure it will be the LAST amnesty. Granting legality now, with a promise of enforcement later is exactly the bill of goods we were sold in the 80’s.
It’s not about racism, it’s not about anger, it’s about a serious concern for America’s future.
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
With all due respect, lrn3, for some (let me be clear, not ALL, but definitely for SOME) racism IS part of this screamfest. Were it not, I would not be getting emails addressing me as “Miss Mexicali Rosita” telling me I should live in Mexico and send my 14 kids out to sell Chiclets to tourists while I nurse two of ‘em - not one, but two - in public (gosh, if life is like that over there, it explains why they’re hot to come here).
I don’t care what anyone says, when that’s the way you respond to a discussion on this issue…there’s some racism at play. It’s a minority of folks, I know…but to say it doesn’t exist is wrong.
My bottom line: Patrol the borders, check, enforce things, check but dammit, lets overhaul the absolutely broken, stagnant and utterly useless INS, which makes it so difficult for people to work through the system legally. If the INS were a building, it would be condemned and taken down. That sounds about right. As I said in another piece, how about we create an Ellis Island West?