Securing America's Borders (Finally)
Antimulticulture
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19972
By John Zmirak
October 28, 2005
Given that the terrorist assaults of September 11, 2001, were conducted by
foreigners on our soil, you might have thought that one of the central
measures the U.S. government would have taken would be to tighten up its
borders, to establish strict security both at our airports and all along the
numerous crossing points into the U.S. from our two contiguous neighbors.
Progress was indeed made when it came to detaining, interrogating, and
deporting illegal entrants at international airports, but along the U.S.
land borders, especially the border with Mexico, the situation has remained
one of lightly supervised chaos. Immigration reformers and residents of
Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas have been complaining of the
inadequacies of border patrol for many years - to the point where patriotic
volunteers, the Minutemen, organized and volunteered to help the overwhelmed
professionals of the U.S. Border Patrol. Their efforts met with resounding,
if temporary success - and provoked the squeals of multicultural activists
and employers addicted to cheap, illegal labor. Following a tired script,
Open Borders advocates screamed "racism" and "xenophobia" at those who want
to enforce our laws. But such attacks have begun to ring a little hollow,
now that two generally open-borders U.S. governors - of New Mexico and
Arizona - have declared the border situation in the their states are
"emergencies" demanding federal attention.
At last the Bush administration appears to be waking up to the crisis, and
to its constitutional responsibility to enforce American laws. Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a recent Senate panel that his
department intended to take measures to ensure that, going forward, all
illegal immigrants arrested at the border would be deported. Using rhetoric
much tougher than we have come to expect from this administration, Chertoff
said:
The President believes - and I agree - that illegal immigration threatens
our communities and our national security. The ability of undocumented
individuals to enter our country represents an obvious homeland security
threat. Flagrant violation of our borders undercuts the rule of law,
undermines our security, and imposes particular economic strains on our
border communities. When we do not control our borders, we also risk entry
into the U.S. of terrorists or others wishing to do us harm.
Chertoff also noted:
Nearly 900,000 Mexicans who are caught entering the United States illegally
are returned immediately to Mexico. But others parts of the system have
nearly collapsed under the weight of numbers. The problem is especially
severe for non-Mexicans apprehended at the southwest border. Today, a
non-Mexican illegal immigrant caught trying to enter the United States
across the southwest border has an 80 percent chance of being released
immediately because we lack the holding facilities.
Who are these non-Mexicans who are being turned loose to disappear into our
country? At least some of them hail from Middle Eastern countries which
harbor anti-American terrorists, according to news reports. In 2003, U.S.
authorities cracked an immigrant smuggling ring in Mexico which specialized
in transporting Arabs into the U.S. - and which included among its
ringleaders a former Mexican consul to Lebanon. Terrorist groups already
present in Mexico include Hezbollah - the group that killed 241 American
servicemen in Beirut in 1983. In a country as loosely governed and afflicted
with official corruption as Mexico, with growing numbers of converts to
Islam, terrorist groups are likely to be a growth industry; indeed, our
southern neighbor may well prove to be to the U.S. what Morocco is to
Spain - a transmission belt for enemies who wish to infiltrate the country.
For this reason if for no other, Congress should support and improve upon
the newly proposed enforcement initiatives coming out of DHS, which include
hiring 1,500 new Border Patrol agents, and using unmanned aerial "drones" to
watch the border for unauthorized crossings. Chertoff noted that thanks to
recently signed DHS Appropriations Bill that department "now has $940
million in new resources for DHS law enforcement agencies to further
strengthen border security and enforcement. This includes more than $890
million alone for CBP and ICE, our primary border enforcement agencies.
These increased resources will support a full range of critical border
security needs, including 1,000 Border Patrol agents on top of the 500 new
agents added last year. The bill also permits further expansion of detention
capacity by as many as 1,920 additional beds, provides 250 additional ICE
investigative agents, and adds eight new fugitive operations teams to track
down individuals ordered to leave this country, but who instead absconded."
It seems unlikely, however, that these measures will be sufficient to
achieve Chertoff's admirable goal of completely eliminating "the 'catch and
release' enforcement problem, and return[ing] every single illegal entrant -
no exceptions." To achieve that, much more needs to be done, and the
administration knows it.
Unfortunately, the additional measures being proposed by the president do
not include a greater military presence on the border - for instance, the
use of state National Guard units to patrol entry points. Given that the
governors of two states have described their immigration problems as
"emergencies," that might make sense. What else is the National Guard meant
to do, if not address emergencies that threaten national security? The U.S.
armed forces have gained valuable experience attempting to secure the
borders of Iraq; it might make sense to apply some of this expertise closer
to home. There is no need to completely militarize our border as if Mexico
were an enemy, rather than a friendly (if chronically somewhat lawless)
country. But some enhanced military presence along the border - especially
given the growing number of armed "coyotes," or immigrant smugglers, and
dangerous immigrant street gangs such as MS-13 - makes common sense. If
National Guardsmen with rifles aren't out of place in New York's Grand
Central Station - I see them there all the time - then they belong on the
Rio Grande as well.
Instead of using force sufficient to enforce the law, the Bush
administration is proposing to create loopholes designed to help those who
want to evade it. In Chertoff's statement, he said that one of the three
pillars of securing our borders was the Temporary Worker Program President
Bush proposed - to widespread derision - two years ago. As he said at the
time, "[I]n order to take pressure off the borders, in order to make the
borders more secure, I believe there ought to be a temporary worker card
that allows a willing worker and a willing employer to mate up, so long as
there's not an American willing to do that job, to join up in order to be
able to fulfill the employers' needs."
There are several things wrong with this idea. Most obviously, Bush's
stealth amnesty plan would do very little to diminish the demand for illegal
workers; employers who hire aliens (for instance, to build houses at $8 per
hour) don't just want cheap labor, they want invisible labor - workers who
can't unionize, won't call the police, can't file workers' compensation
claims, and are afraid to sue in U.S. courts. In other words, the next best
thing to slaves.
It isn't just immigrant workers who are hurt by uncontrolled immigration.
American victims include our least privileged citizens - for instance black
Americans, who once looked to entry-level jobs to work their way out of
poverty. By importing millions of compliant illegal laborers to staff the
meat-packing plants, Wal-Marts, and restaurant kitchens of America,
pro-immigration Democrats are effectively giving up on poor Americans -
pulling up the ladder which once provided access to the middle class for
families such as my own, which rose from malnutrition in the 1930s to
working class stability in the 1950s, and the Ivy League in the 1980s.
Ironically, members of minority groups who attain legal status immediately
qualify for Affirmative Action - gaining the same privileges as the
descendants of American slaves who toiled here for centuries, at the expense
of other citizens whose parents fought alongside American blacks in this
country's (not Mexico's or Pakistan's) wars.
You'd expect, in saner times, a protest from union leaders, who once
championed attempts to reform immigration. But labor leaders have, on this
issue, abandoned the interests of American workers. The leaders of the
AFL-CIO now see incoming immigrants as potential members in need of
patronage and political organizing. Besides, the manufacturing sectors of
organized labor (for instance, the once-conservative Teamsters and United
Auto Workers) have been shrinking for decades; the "growth industry" in the
labor movement now resides in far-left government unions such as the SEIU -
which directly benefit from importing social problems which must be managed
by ever-expanding government programs. To these leftist entrepreneurs of
bureaucracy, new immigrants amount to new clients and cheap votes.
The dominant factions among the Republican Party - by which I mean the
large-dollar donors - see in the helpless economic refugees who risk their
lives to enter America nothing more than strong backs and busy hands.
Agricultural interests have come to rely on illegal immigrants to harvest
our vegetables and fruit. Computer giants such as Microsoft avoid paying
competitive wages to American software programmers by abusing guest worker
programs such as the H1-B Visa - buying political cover by hiring lobbyists
such as Grover Norquist to push for ever-laxer immigration policies in
Congress. The "Temporary Worker Program" revived by President Bush would
codify and legitimize such practices - granting anyone anywhere the right to
come to the U.S., provided an American company could offer wages too low to
attract an American citizen.
"These are jobs no American would take," the cheap-labor addicts complain.
To which the right response is, "Not at that wage." If business leaders
believe in the free market, then they know that a limitless supply of a
commodity (such as labor) lowers the price, while scarcity raises it. By
forcing U.S. workers to contend against the entire population of the Third
World for those jobs not already outsourced to China, these policies have
caused wages to fall precipitously. Candidate Bush campaigned as a
"compassionate conservative." It's hard to see how that squares with
proposing a massive pay cut for America's poorest citizens.
In purely political terms, opening the borders is long-term suicide for the
Republican Party - as Peter Brimelow once documented. So it might surprise
us that so many business leaders favor it. It shouldn't. It has been a long
time since businessmen were dependably Republican, much less conservative.
It's been even longer since businessmen like Henry Ford made sure to offer
their workers a wage high enough that they could buy their products, since
Metropolitan Insurance Company built model communities for their employees
to inhabit. As corporations have been driven by short-term numbers such as
quarterly growth in stock price or earnings, longer-term investments and
social responsibility have been almost forgotten. It's refreshing to visit
Starbucks for a coffee - knowing that the company provides health care and
401k plans for its part-time workers. Why? Because its founder, Howard
Schultz, has a conscience; he was inspired to found his company by reading
Small Is Beautiful, penned by the Catholic social philosopher E.F.
Schumacher. Similar sentiments can be found in the work of free-market
stalwarts Adam Smith and Wilhelm Röpke, who knew that a free society and
free economy depend on social stability and the hope of upward mobility for
one's children. Conversely, revolutionary socialists from Marx to Lenin
dreamt that "capitalists" would seek out newer ways to squeeze and exploit
the working class, thereby goading it to disaffection and disloyalty. "The
worse it gets, the better it is," Marxists have always said. "Capitalists
will sell us the rope with which we'll hang them."
[Ed. Hasn't happened yet. No matter how bad things get people don't want to
live in communes with some mentally deficient lefty despot implementing
"Five Year Plans" while the population lives on a bowl of rice a day, if lucky
- such stupidity has to be imposed on the majority...]
For those of you with long memories, the Reagan administration's amnesty for
illegal aliens was also festooned with promises that "this won't happen
again," and elaborate schemes for punishing those who employed illegal
aliens. These efforts collapsed in court, and were soon abandoned. The
original catastrophic "reform" of U.S. immigration policy in 1965, crafted
by Teddy Kennedy, was also presented as a modest attempt to rectify
injustice, with few long-term consequences for the country. The
"family-reunification" provisions were presented as minor concessions to
humanitarianism. We all know how that worked out.
Advocates of national security should welcome the administration's belated
offer to perform its constitutional duty and defend America's borders - but
should not give in to the political blackmail which accompanies it: the
demand that we reward lawbreakers with amnesty, leftist politicians with
more disgruntled ethnic voters, and sweatshop owners with pliant laborers.
[Ed. In addition to illegal immigration reform, we must look to LEGAL
immigration reform - just accepting anyone from anywhere without quality and
compatibility control is as dangerous as giving Osama unrestricted use of
the Pacific Fleet for the week...]
--
Jim
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Western_Nationalist
Union Against Multiculty
"Abolish Multiculty and String Up The Traitors!"