Groundhog Day, aka Amnesty

Distribution of 12M Unauthorized 'guests'

Here’s the controversial Arizona law, SB 1070.  The following is just the first paragraph; the actual statute is 17 pages long.  What’s important to note, though, is that in the public conversation about this, THERE IS NO LAW; there is only the perception of a law.  The perception varies widely depending on group identification.  Opponents of immigration laws claim they are inherently racist because, well, their sponsors are racists.  A charge of racial profiling follows, borrowed from the worst experiences of African-Americans, who are not, in fact, illegal immigrants.

The problem is that linking historical racial strife with the word “profiling” delegitimizes the act of profiling, which has been an essential part of legitimate police work forever.  An explanation, here, from author Paul Schlicta, writing for The American Thinker. Since there was widespread public concern that the law permitted some form of racial profiling (by being ambiguous), a second draft allayed those fears.  There will always be lingering doubt, do to the human factor, but the law very closely parallels existing Federal legislation. Here’s an excerpt – regarding the changes to the law – from the PolitiFact blog, in case you wish to read in its entirety:

Critics had said that the original version of the law permitted racial profiling. But the changes signed by Brewer on April 30 were intended to blunt those charges.

The new version of the law says: “A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.”

The prior version had said that an official “may not solely consider race” in such circumstances.

(“Solely,” above, was removed in the final bill.)

S.B. 1070

- 1 -

1 Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:

2 Section 1. Intent

3 The legislature finds that there is a compelling interest in the

4 cooperative enforcement of federal immigration laws throughout all of

5 Arizona. The legislature declares that the intent of this act is to make

6 attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local

7 government agencies in Arizona. The provisions of this act are intended to

8 work together to discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of

9 aliens and economic activity by persons unlawfully present in the United

10 States.

MEXICO’S TREATMENT OF IMMIGRANTS

And here, as described by investigative journalist Michelle Malkin, is how immigrants and visitors can expect to be treated in Mexico.  Note that everyone, native-born or visitor, has to carry ID; it’s jail time for failing to do so. (For obvious reasons, tourists are left alone.)  Political demonstrations are totally forbidden in Mexico.  Read the whole thing for perspective – then skip to the bottom of this post for the skinny on how Mexicans view our national sovereignty.

IMMIGRATION LAWS ARE NECESSARY.

If you want to make sure there are enough jobs for all Americans, you have to carefully control the number of people who come here for jobs.  America has been called a “beacon,” usually meaning for liberty, but certainly for financial opportunity as well.  We have the largest job markets, and we hire on ability.  If you can pool together a little money (family, friends and credit cards are the usual paths for beginners), you can start or buy a very small business and build it through hard work and imagination.  People from all over the world clamor to get from where they are to here, and we have formal national procedures for controlling this demand.

In other words, there is no possible way to not have immigration laws and procedures, as well as quotas and qualifications.  Many are waiting for visas and “green card” work permits, others for their approval for citizenship.  If people find a way to enter the country illegally (many overstay their visas and disappear into the population, for instance), they disadvantage all of those others who use our legal procedures. We are, indeed, a land of immigrants…legal immigrants, most of whom have become citizens and were proud to assimilate into American culture.

They didn’t do this to derogate their former culture which, after all, still remains in the land of their birth, but to celebrate, with us, the idea of  belonging to a nation dedicated to the protection of the individual from the state.  And the idea of free markets, where the individual chooses a  job, a career, a business to start.  Where a single human being’s idea can be owned and developed into a product or service that provides a livelihood for that person, as well as opportunity for anyone hired, and more choices for their customers.   Something that could be grown and shared. Or a job as a career path or stepping stone/learning experience.

They now could belong to a country, and a culture, that extends or withholds permissions to their government, not the other way around; not as in the country they left.  This is why immigrants gain citizenship and assimilate into our culture, and they want others to follow the same rules.  (I’ve heard that the actual bureaucracy that controls this is awful,  and the waiting times and screw-ups are legion, but that’s a subject for another post.)

So… there’s not just some arbitrary rule that say’s “Don’t cross our border without permission,” there’s a principle that precedes and underlies the rule:  ”We need to provide for our own citizen’s safety and opportunities first.  Also, by knowing who has entered our country, and for how long, our police and homeland security agencies have essential investigative information in case of a serious problem.  By knowing how many have entered, we can keep an eye on the job markets, as well as a fair distribution of visas for visitors from anound the globe.

It follows from the above that we simply have to control our 2,000 mile long border, determine our quotas, issue work permits before admitting non-citizens, and supply procedures for obtaining US citizenship.  Would it were so.  The border is porous, quotas and work permits become meaningless among a flood of illegal entries, and people who take the legal route are forced to wait many years to become citizens.  EXCEPT –anchor babies.  A child born in America is an American citizen, regardless of whether the parents arrived legally.  There are legal interpretations of this, but for another discussion.

Like the drug war, something as screwed up and persistent as this can only survive when it has a lot of active beneficiaries.  And that’s not even counting the illegal immigrants.  If you’re reading this for a solution, move on – we are way beyond solutions. (I’ve often been taken by the thought, expressed elsewhere, that it is impossible for most of us to accept that there are some problems for which there is no solution.)  In this case, the can has been kicked down the road so many times – by the governments involved – that to do something timely and effective is no longer possible, a situation that undoubtedly gladdens the heart of those benefiting from the gridlocked status quo.

THE ONGOING DILEMMA

It would be nice to have a complex description of all the sociological factors which contribute to the lack of gainful employment in the Mexican economy, but that’s not what this blog is about.  We’ll have to settle for the explanation that a lot of semi-literate, rural Mexican peasants see no opportunities in their own communities or, indeed, in their own country.  A parallel, more contemporary and probable explanation is that most illegals simply left a low wage Mexican job for a higher wage in the US.  American wages are high enough, apparently, to offset the risks involved in illegal border crossing, as well as the expense of paying a Coyote to facilitate the trip.

We can assume that most Mexican villagers by now are aware that you can be killed or seriously injured, and still find it a risk worth taking.  The reward is grinding work and deprivation in the US while sending money back to the family in Mexico. (Remittances are said to be about 2% of Mexican GDP, and the third largest source of foreign exchange, after oil and manufacturing.  The linked web site incorrectly states in its text narrative that remittances are 2nd largest.)

The map above is self-explanatory, with approximately 7 million of the total originating in Mexico.  There are a lot of reasons for the Mexican laborer to come here, including the complicity of his own government in laying off their economic and political problems on the US, and the US government tacitly helping business, as well as eventually broadening their base of voters.  (Both parties vie for the Mexican votes, and each is afraid of offending that community, even when some of the offended are officially criminals!)

But that doesn’t explain why, in a country with a 10% or higher unemployment rate, there are so many jobs available for the illegals to fill.  The Western US agricultural jobs that fostered the creation of the Braceros programs are the oldest and easiest to understand, and are probably the source of the canard that Mexicans fill jobs that Americans won’t take.  Well, if we’re only talking about stoop labor in the fields in a modern economy in which farming is only a tiny, but vital, part – no problem.  But what about all those manufacturing, construction, landscaping and service jobs scattered all over the country?

I can’t answer that here, but we can get some valuable help from the sources I’m excerpting and/or linking below.  We will have to return to this topic, as there are too many salient aspects to be covered in a short post.  I particularly want to explore more of what is happening on the other side of the border to exacerbate and perpetuate this dilemma. Meanwhile, a Cato Institute study shows that immigration has no negative impact on American job markets, and a study at Australia’s Monash University argues that increased legalization of the immigrant work force will benefit American workers higher-up in the job market, and grow the economy.  Here’s the Executive Summary of their report (below).  The entire report can be read on Cato’s site, here, and is 24 pages in length.

Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform

by Peter B. Dixon and Maureen T. Rimmer

Australia's Largest University

Peter Dixon is the Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor and Maureen Rimmer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University in Australia. Their USAGE model of the U.S. economy has been used by the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, and Homeland Security, and the U.S. International Trade Commission.

By the latest estimates, 8.3 million workers in the United States are illegal immigrants. Proposed policy responses range from more restrictive border and workplace enforcement to legalization of workers who are already here and the admission of new workers through a temporary visa program. Policy choices made by Congress and the president could have a major economic impact on the welfare of U.S. households.

This study uses the U.S. Applied General Equilibrium model that has been developed for the U.S. International Trade Commission and other U.S. government agencies to estimate the welfare impact of seven different scenarios, which include increased enforcement at the border and in the workplace, and several different legalization options, including a visa program that allows more low-skilled workers to enter the U.S. workforce legally.

For each scenario, the USAGE model weighs the impact on such factors as public revenues and expenditures, the occupational mix and total employment of U.S. workers, the amount of capital owned by U.S. households, and price levels for imports and exports. This study finds that increased enforcement and reduced low-skilled immigration have a significant negative impact on the income of U.S. households. Modest savings in public expenditures would be more than offset by losses in economic output and job opportunities for more skilled American workers.

A policy that reduces the number of low-skilled immigrant workers by 28.6 percent compared to projected levels would reduce U.S. household welfare by about 0.5 percent, or $80 billion. In contrast, legalization of low-skilled immigrant workers would yield significant income gains for American workers and households. Legalization would eliminate smugglers’ fees and other costs faced by illegal immigrants. It would also allow immigrants to have higher productivity and create more openings for Americans in higherskilled occupations. The positive impact for U.S. households of legalization under an optimal visa tax would be 1.27 percent of GDP or $180 billion.

Ralph Peters of the New York Post has spent a lot of time on these issues.  All of us are aware of the state of siege Mexico seems to be under by the narco-gangs who are killing their own citizens by the thousands and have been emboldened to kill some of ours, lately.  He has a lot to say about that, here, in an article entitled Border Disorder. His piece on the Arizona immigration law dilemma is called Blaming the Citizen, which I’d encourage you to read, here, or stay here for some Ralph Peters advice:

As the left’s blame-the-citizen demands for special privileges for all immigrants only intensify an anti-immigrant backlash, let’s apply some commonsense maxims:

* It is always the responsibility of the immigrant to conform to the laws and social norms of the host society. It is never the responsibility of a society to alter its traditions and values to please immigrants.

* The primary responsibility of government is to protect its citizens and territory. That demands robust border security.

* Illegal immigrants are entitled to basic human rights, but have no civil rights: no right to an attorney, trial or “sanctuary.”

* Washington must remove current incentives to illegal immigration. This means relentlessly pursuing both those who hire illegals and illegals themselves,  doubling sentences for illegal-immigrant offenders, and a constitutional amendment eliminating the automatic citizenship granted to children born on our soil to illegals.

* At the same time, we must reform our legal immigration system to recognize the need for temporary workers, as well as for qualified new citizens.

* Turning 10 million illegals into US voters is not the answer.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/blaming_the_citizen_RXEVoCdMKmfm5mPSxqBWfL#ixzz0myGFYnEn

Here’s a quick summary, and access, to a 26 page immigration proposal put out by the Senate Democrats.  It has a peculiar provision for a permanent immigration commission that bears an eerie similarity, in intent, to the Health Insurance Exchanges.

Democrats Unveil Outline for Amnesty

The proposal, which the Senators dubbed the REPAIR (Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform) plan, did not come in the form of a bill, but a 26-page narrative describing what would be the main components of so-called “comprehensive immigration reform.”

The plan contains many of the provisions that made up the 2007 Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill (S.1639). It contains a mass amnesty program (called a “broad-based registration program”); a guest worker program with a path to citizenship; AgJOBS; the DREAM Act; an employment verification proposal based on a biometric social security card; and massive increases in legal immigration.

Unlike S.1639, the Reid proposal includes a commission on employment-based immigration to recommend policies that promote growth “while minimizing job displacement and wage depression and unauthorized employment”- a description that seems to concede that these are the natural result of our current immigration system.

This commission would be able to declare immigration emergencies, meaning a situation in which our employment-based system “is either substantially failing to admit a sufficient number of workers for the needs of the economy or is substantially admitting too many foreign workers.” After declaring an emergency, the commission would submit recommendations for changes to Congress and Congress would then be required to approve or vote down the recommendations. (See pp. 21-22 of the proposal).

Finally, we’d be remiss in not putting up the proposal by the two Arizona Senators.  Enjoy.

SENATORS McCAIN AND KYL ANNOUNCE BORDER SECURITY PLAN

10-Point Plan To Better Secure The U.S.-Mexico Border In Arizona April 20, 2010 Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) were joined today by Arizona Sheriffs Larry Dever, Cochise County and Paul Babeu, Pinal County in introducing a 10-point comprehensive border security plan to combat illegal immigration, drug and alien smuggling, and violent activity along the southwest border.

Senators McCain and Kyl’s Ten Point Border Security Action Plan:

1) Immediately deploy 3,000 National Guard Troops along the Arizona/Mexico border, along with appropriate surveillance platforms, which shall remain in place until the Governor of Arizona certifies, after consulting with state, local and tribal law enforcement, that the Federal Government has achieved operational control of the border. Permanently add 3,000 Custom and Border Protection Agents to the Arizona/Mexico border by 2015.

2) Fully fund and support Operation Streamline in Arizona’s two Border Patrol Sectors to, at a minimum, ensure that repeat illegal border crossers go to jail for 15 to 60 days. Where Operation Streamline has been implemented, the number of illegal crossings has decreased significantly. Require the Obama Administration to complete a required report detailing the justice and enforcement resources needed to fully fund this program. Fully reimburse localities for any related detention costs.

3) Provide $100M, an increase of $40M, for Operation Stonegarden, a program that provides grants and reimbursement to Arizona’s border law enforcement for additional personnel, overtime, travel and other related costs related to illegal immigration and drug smuggling along the border.

4) Offer Hardship Duty Pay to Border Patrol Agents assigned to rural, high-trafficked areas, such as the CBP Willcox and Douglas Stations in the Tucson Sector.

5) Complete the 700 miles of fencing along the border with Mexico and construct double- and triple- layer fencing at appropriate locations along the Arizona-Mexico border.

6) Substantially increase the 25 mobile surveillance systems and three Predator B Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in place today along the Arizona/Mexico border and ensure the border patrol has the resources necessary to operate the UAVs 24 hours a day seven days a week. Send additional fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to the Arizona-Mexico Border.

7) Increase funding for vital radio communications and interoperability between CBP and state, local, and tribal law enforcement to assist in apprehensions along the border.

 Provide funding for additional Border Patrol stations in the Tucson Sector and explore the possibility of an additional Border Patrol sector for Arizona. Create six additional permanent Border Patrol Forward Operating Bases, and provide funding to upgrade the existing bases to include modular buildings, electricity and potable water. Complete construction of the planned permanent checkpoint in Arizona. Deploy additional temporary roving checkpoints and increase horse patrols throughout the Tucson Sector.

9) Require the Federal government to fully reimburse state and local governments for the costs of incarcerating criminal aliens. Start by at least funding the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) at its authorized level of $950 million.

10) Place one full-time Federal Magistrate in Cochise County and provide full funding for and authorization of the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative to reimburse state, county, tribal, and municipal governments for costs associated with the prosecution and pre-trial detention of federally-initiated criminal cases declined by local offices of the United States Attorneys.

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OH, BY THE WAY… THE MEXICANS WANT ALL THOSE SOUTHWESTERN STATES BACK, AND THEY HAVE A PLAN.  DO YOU?

Shores of Aztlán

As an important footnote, and possibly the subject of future posts, it’s important to note that many Mexicans feel quite strongly that a good portion of the American Southwest (all/pt. of 10 states) was stolen from them by the Gringos.  They don’t feel that our presence in those states is legitimate, or that there should be a border at all.  Their goal is to have many children, flood the area with their own people over time, and reclaim – in deed – what was supposedly taken from them.

The land they are slowly reclaiming is called Aztlán. Legend has it they originally migrated South from there, a spot that has been identified as on the border between Utah and Arizona, near Lake Powell (pictured,left). Their migration stopped near current Mexico city.  They like this story a lot, because it gives them a sense of provenance as an indigenous people that preceded the Europeans that ‘stole’ their land.

They call their plan for re-occupation of the Southwest the “Reconquista,” the re-conquest. I mention this as a clue to the seemingly irrational behavior of people who we have declared illegal.  They regard us as irrelevant; a passing nuisance.  Here’s a map of Aztlán – temporarily occupied by the United States of America.  Note the flag on the lower left designating the map as the “United States of Mexico.”  (This is not some peculiar cult; it’s embedded in Mexican culture!)

Reclaiming their "stolen" land

From the “Gringo” side of this equation – and border – we regard the Southwest territories depicted above as the spoils of war, ceded to us in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo(1848), following Mexico’s loss to American forces (1847) in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848.)  If every nation on the planet gave their country back to the original (conquered) indigenous peoples, a) nation-states would cease to exist, and b) You would spend a lot of time trying to determine the legitimate descendants, if any, of civilizations long gone from the planet.

You can only take the idea of “roots” so far.  It wouldn’t be unfair to compare the above map to the Palestinian map that is notably absent the existence of Israel.  It’s a cultural fantasy that is dangerously shared by the Mexican Mafia (here) and Latin gangbangers everywhere.  In other words, an ignorant, heavily armed and violent force that exists in large numbers in the US.  You can click to read a large database regarding gang activity in the US, including Mexican gangbangers.  This was a 2009 collaborative effort between the National Gang Intelligence Center and the National Drug Intelligence Center.

Here’s a summary of their findings:

National Gang Threat Summary

Gangs pose a serious threat to public safety in many communities throughout the United States. Gang members are increasingly migrating from urban to suburban areas and are responsible for a growing percentage of crime and violence in many communities. Much gang-related criminal activity involves drug trafficking; however, gang members are increasingly engaging in alien and weapons trafficking. Additionally, a rising number of U.S.-based gangs are seemingly intent on developing working relationships with U.S.- and foreign-based drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) and other criminal organizations to gain direct access to foreign sources of illicit drugs.

So, here – for your delectation…is the Treaty that got us the great American Southwest.

Spoils of War

In case you’re disturbed at the thought that you can’t really read this document and, in fact, have no way of knowing what’s behind the elegant red cover, you can see the document itself in the National Archives, here. You can also read the history of the Treaty and the war that preceded it.

Filling the Government Void

Since I’m not yet out of pictures, I’ll close with this one, that probably reflects the frustration of the 70% or so Arizonans who approve of the new immigration bill, and are tired of the really serious problems that come with being a border state and not being able to get the Federal Government to do its (non-exclusive) job of protecting the borders and enforcing immigration law.

Politicians are notorious for their fecklessness and opportunism, but sometimes they go further than citizens are willing to tolerate.  That’ll do ’til next time.

Thanks for reading this far.