John T. Bennett:
George Will and Hugh Hewitt, despite the mounting evidence that almost no Democrat will enforce existing immigration laws, are still plugging amnesty for the latest wave of illegal aliens. Glenn Beck, for his part, handed a talking pointto Dick Durbin. Where are these (usually) conservative figures coming from?
The way Hewitt recently pitched amnesty is to share his wishful thinking with Politico. He’s bought the nonsense that we face a “refugee crisis.” There are extremely dangerous cities in Central America, but can’t the illegal aliens find a safe place somewhere in the rest of their countries? If not, why wouldn’t they simply stop in Mexico, if they were just worried about their safety? The fact is they come here because they think they’ll be allowed to stay, a misconception that was fed – in part – by Republican pandering after the 2008 election.
Hugh Hewitt should know better. He broadcasts from California, where illegal immigration (and even legal immigration) has fundamentally transformed that state into a one-party regime with strong resemblance to a Third World economic model. Some in Hewitt’s position, as a conservative in California, may think it’s time to make the ultimate pander, in a last-ditch effort to curry favor with a population group that has never embraced conservatism. But that only makes sense if you’ve essentially given up on immigration enforcement. Instead of signing up for the same fate that befell California, many Americans would choose to take a different path and prevent the California model from impacting their states.
To get a sense for Hewitt’s grasp of the situation, here is his proposal for the older “children”:
Those 17 and 18 should be offered a choice: English school followed by the military for four years or a ticket home.
I’m sure the military would appreciate being the alternative to deportation for tens of thousands of people whose backgrounds and motives, not to mention national allegiances, are completely unknown. Hewitt’s piece is worth reading to see just how permissive some conservatives are willing to be in the face of rampant disrespect for our nation’s laws.
George Will also floated a few bad ideas. In a smoke and mirrors trick that would make Nancy Pelosi blush, Will said, “We’ve handled what Emma Lazarus called ‘the wretched refuse of your teeming shores’ a long time ago, and a lot more people than this.” Will is extremely misleading in saying that America handled “a lot more people than this.” The graph below shows that the foreign-born percentage of our population is approaching an unprecedented level.
It does not do justice to American history, or to the American people, to compare those who entered illegally with those who entered legally.
Will also tosses in a bit of statistical legerdemain. “We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 per county,” he says. Here, Will is deceiving with statistics. Will knows that the illegal aliens will not be distributed evenly across all of the thousands of counties in America. Rather, they will be dumped en masse in a small number of cities and towns. Some of those towns have fought back, when they’re given notice that they’ll be used as a storage area for illegal aliens.
Will also, for some bizarre reason, uses the word “assimilation,” even though there are very few people in a position of influence advocating assimilation — not in political, academic, legal, or media circles. “The idea that we can’t assimilate these eight-year-old criminals with their teddy bears is preposterous,” he says. Will is evidently too isolated or self-deceived to grasp what assimilation means today. It is, first and foremost, an affront to multiculturalism, which is a state-promoted dogma that commands complete obedience. How dubious for Will to speak as if the process of assimilation is still a vivid part of the immigrant experience in America. The few people who push for assimilation will not be the ones educating or socializing the newly arrived immigrants. Besides, Will would never live anywhere near the illegal aliens, so he has no inkling of the impact that they will have on any given community.
Will seems curiously unaware of what kind of country we have today. Modern immigrants benefit from affirmative action, “civil rights,” and the welfare state, so why on earth would they choose stingy pasty white conservatism? Why would they choose assimilation when that would stifle their diversity? I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Diversity is our strength.” I don’t hear as many say, “Assimilation is our strength.”
Aren’t we reducing our military forces and culling out our more-costly, longer term, most experienced personnel? Following that plan, what would be left with? Tens of thousands of illegal immigrant soldiers motivated by surviving their stint and earning magic-citizenship? Brilliant.
Will seems unaware that at the time of our peak immigration (the legal variety), we had no welfare, food stamps or subsidized housing programs. Those immigrants had to have marketable skills and abilities to enter and have a chance of contributing and taking care of THEMSELVES. Amnesty to the 12 million illegal immigrants we now have would instantly (with the stroke of a pen) and 12 million to our already swollen government dependents rolls, for it is awfully hard to pay the high costs of goods and services in the USA and survive while sending 50% of wages back home (cash from Mexcian illegal immigrants going home is Mexico’s largest import and 3rd largest revenue stream).