Copyright by John T. Reed
Laws should either be enforced or repealed. Leaving unenforced laws on the books diminishes voluntary compliance with all laws because it sends a message that the authorities may or may not enforce a given law depending upon current politics.
At present, the U.S. is not enforcing immigration laws.
Why not?
Politics. Specifically, the Latino vote. Democrats think immigrants from Latin America are more votes for them. Republicans are afraid that enforcing the immigration laws on our southern border will cause present and future Latino-American citizens to vote Democratic.
Here is a paragraph from an article at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center Web site:
Ballot initiative results can sometimes have unintended political consequences. The Latino vote in California over the past 20 years has been greatly influenced by two particularly controversial and divisive ballot initiatives. Ronald Reagan and other Republicans in the state had as much as 40 percent of the California Latino vote until the 1994 governor's race in which Pete Wilson, then the Republican incumbent, championed Prop. 187, which sought to deny public services to illegal immigrants. Although Wilson won, the Republicans' share of the Hispanic vote in California has hovered between 20 percent and 29 percent. Experts attribute this to the political effect of Wilson's association with this controversial measure.
Republicans do not want to make that mistake again, although it may be too late to shut that “barn door.”
The talk show hosts and Minutemen and screaming talk-show call-in people will have no effect. They are wasting their time.
What will work is a third-party presidential candidate who truly champions enforcing the immigration laws.
Remember Ross Perot if you are old enough. He was a third-party presidential candidate in 1992. At one point, he was ahead of the Democrat and Republican nominees in the polls.
Analysts say that Bill Clinton won that close election because Perot drew votes mainly away from the Republicans. They are right about that.
But remember what Perot’s issue was. He advocated balancing the federal budget.
He got 19% of the votes in the election. The major parties were aghast. And guess what they did about it?
They damn well balanced the budget. In 1998, Clinton submitted the first balanced budget since 1969. The two major parties were terrified that the voters might punish them in future elections if they did not.
Would the third-party candidate win the presidency? That’s unlikely, although Perot had a shot had he not pulled out of the race for several weeks in July, 1992. With an attractive candidate and enough frustration with politics as usual, it could happen.
More likely would be a Perot-like result: the third-party candidate throws the election to one of the major parties getting 20% or more of the vote and thereby scares the hell out of the major parties—enough to get them to start enforcing the immigration laws, at least until they perceive the heat is off—as they now have with regard to balancing the budget.
Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera got into a screaming match at each other over whether the Virginia Beach drunk-driving fatalities were caused by lack of enforcement of immigration laws or excessive alcohol consumption. Virginia Beach had proclaimed itself a “sanctuary city” that does not bother illegal immigrants. The illegal immigrant who killed two teenage girls was driving drunk. The immigrant also had three prior drunk-driving convictions.
In fact, the girls would still be alive if either of the following things had occurred:
O'Reilly blamed the deaths on the failure to enforce the immigration laws. He was right, but that was not the whole story. Rivera blamed the deaths on the alcohol. He was right, but that was not the whole story either.
Drunk driving is a scandal in this country. Back in the 1970s, as I recall, the U.S. Department of Transportation held a contest to create a device that would prevent drunk drivers from operating motorized vehicles or equipment. The winner flashed a four- or five-digit number which then disappeared. The operator had to then enter the same number into a keyboard within a certain number of seconds.
It worked great—and was never heard from again. I assume the car makers opposed it and killed it. Had it been adopted, the two Virginia Beach teenage girls and millions of others who were since killed by drunk drivers would have lived.
We have enough trouble in this country with our own drunken citizens and drunken green-card holders (legal immigrants). We should not be letting illegal immigrants enter the country or remain, in part, because they are criminals like the Virginia Beach drunk driver. Are they all criminals? Actually, yes. They are all violating the immigration laws. Some violate additional laws like drunk driving laws.
Geraldo seemed to regard O'Reilly's position on Virginia Beach as racist. Bull! O'Reilly is not in favor of illegal Latvians coming into the U.S. from Canada and killing U.S. teenage girls while diving drunk. O'Reilly is Irish and his and my Irish ancestors were also the targets of illegal immigrant agitation. The Fort Dix terrorist group included some illegal immigrants none of whom were Latino.
The fact that most illegal immigrants nowadays are Latino is a temporary situation that is irrelevant to the issue of whether immigration laws should be enforced. In the past, they have been Italian, Irish, etc. The issue is not ethnicity. It is legality.
The big argument you always hear is that Americans refuse to do the sort of work that the illegal immigrants do. There is obviously some truth to that, but the response is easy. Start deporting them and keep it up until the American people say, “Stop! We can’t find a maid (or gardener or flat roof installer, or whatever).”
Then, you will hear no more complaints about illegal immigrants. But at present, we are letting them ALL in because the Democrats think they are future Democrat voters or relatives of current Democrat voters and the Republicans are afraid of losing Latino votes if they enforce the law.
In other words, sure, we need many of them because they do necessary work Americans do not want to do. But it is equally certain that we do not need all 11 million of them, especially the drunk drivers and terrorists among them. The insufficient-manual-workers problem will take care of itself. To the extent that it is correct, the American people will call a stop to the deportations when they have deported enough of the 11 million. Thus far, they have not.
The late Cesar Chavez became famous by organizing immigrant grape pickers. He generally got the laws he wanted passed. But the grape growers basically could not afford to pay what Chavez demanded because their customers would not pay the necessary higher prices for grape products.
Also, Chavez being a typical union idiot, overpriced the workers he was “saving.” Because he raised their compensation and benefits so high, farm machinery makers were able to create and sell a tractor that picked grapes. They had to grow the grapes on wires rather than wood and space the rows a little farther apart. Now, when you go by a real vineyard (not the retired rich guy vineyards), you will see that the grapes grow on wires. The tractor taps the wires with a metal wand that makes the ripe grape and only the ripe grapes fall off into a bin at the bottom of the vine.
With friends like Chavez, the immigrant workers don’t need enemies. And if deportation of immigrants raies the cost of some goods and services because of the need to pay higher wages to atttract American citizens to the work, no doubt additional automation will occur. For example, during a June, 2007 visit to Disneyland, I saw a vacuum cleaner robot that vacuums your house during the hours you prescribe and returns to plug in and recharge itself whenever its batteries get low. It looks like a big frisbee and has been sold in stores for years.
Roofer labor can be reduced by switching to permanent roofs that only need to be installed once. There is a principle in economics called substitution. Sweaters can be substitued for heating gas. Working at home by Internet can be substituted for gasoline-powered commutes. Etc. Etc. America has long since automated gas stations, parking lots, car washes, and so forth because of excessively high labor costs. Stopping illegal immigration and deporting the illegals already here would just accelerate automation.
The 2007 immigration bill says exactly what everybody expected, if enough people from a particular ethnic group violate our immigration laws, we will grant them amnesty every twenty years or so.
Like I said, only a third-party candidate will make any progress on solving this issue. The two major parties are essentially both campaigning for the future votes of the illegals and the current votes of their friends and relatives and fellow Latinos who are citizens of the U.S.
The American people, including many Latino citizens, love the U.S. law on immigration. Not the proposed bill, but the long-existing law that says you may not come into the U.S. illegally and if you do, we will search for you and deport you when we find you, period.
The problem is not the lack of a good immigration law. It is the illegal refusal of the federal executive branch, supported by both parties in Congress, to enforce the long-standing existing law.
It is an impeachable offense, but the President is in a conspiracy with the other party to commit this “high crime or misdemeanor” so there will be no holding him to account except at the ballot box. And that cannot happen without a third-party candidate.
Tony Snow, Bush's spokesman, said that trying to deport the 11 million illegal immegrants would shut down the federal law enforcement system so we have to let the 11 million get away with their illegal entry.
That is really annoying considering that those of us who want the existing laws enforced have been complaining to the federal government for year—decades actually. It was obvious all along that this was their plan. They ignored us throughout that period and now cite their own negligence as a fact that lets them off the hook. It’s like the guy who murdered both his parents then demanded mercy because he was an orphan. It’s also reminiscent of all those goverment guys who threaten to close the Washington Monument to tourist whenever they are threatened federal budget cutbacks.
I supggest we bring the troops back home from wars we do not seem to be able to make much progress winning—like Afghanistan and Iraq—as well as from wars we won long ago—like the tens of thousands of troops in Germany and Korea. That would give us the federal manpower and money to defend America against real criminal residents rather than “defending” us against foes that we vanquished 50 or 60 years ago and more recent foes whose 9/11 attacks were done by immigrants here, not roadside bomb makers over there.
I expect that deporting the illegal aliens here now would eventually cause the American people to say enough both with regard to loss of needed workers and with regard to overloading the federal legal system with deportation actions. But in the meantime, the American people have said this is what they want. We supposedly have a demmocracy. If the American people want the illegals deported, deport them. Probably a bunch of them would leave on their own if we started doing that. We could streamline the deportation process.
The fact is deportation is what the American people want and we are a democracy. Start doing it and we will deal with the cost and effect on product and service costs as we go.
John T. Reed