“Language is the keystone to politics. This past week I gave some lectures about illegal immigration. I noticed how the supporters of open borders so often prefer to demonize their opponents as “anti-immigrant”, hoping to reframe the debate into Americans’ supposed animosity against individual arrivals, legal and illegal. And why not when a rational defense of illegal immigration is indefensible? “Undocumented worker” is another favorite. But with 25% of all illegal alien households on entitlements in California, it is hard to think that all aliens are working or simply forgot their documents at the border. “The borders crossed us” is yet another deliberate misnomer, when the vast majority of Mexicans and Mexican-American in the United States cannot trace their family lineage in America past three generations. You get the picture: when an argument is indefensible then language is contorted to do what reason cannot”. –Victor Davis Hanson
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When people claim to be “not anti-immigrant, just anti-illegal-immigrant”, I immediately suggest that we solve illegal immigration by dramatically increasing legal immigration from Mexico. After all, if we allowed for the legal migration of large numbers of Mexicans than there would be no need for them to cross illegally. Right?
Their reaction to this modest proposal lets me know pretty quickly whether or not they were telling the truth when they claimed not to be anti-immigration, or whether they were just posturing. Ninety percent of the time its just posturing.
It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for most of them to start raising issues such as language, culture, and the supposed strain on education and social services - all of which apply equally to illegal and legal immigrants.
Bottom Line: When someone makes that claim, usually I assume they’re not being truthful.
The US already gives 35% of the legal immigration quota to Mexico, far more than any other single nation. I don’t have a problem with that nor would I have a problem of a greatly expanded work visa program. But, when the PEW Hispanic poll says that 45% of the Mexican population wants to come to the States, I would ask Laurence if he would put any limit on immigration from Mexico? At what point would it be easier to simply annex the rest of Mexico?
All of politics nowadays is about branding. Tremendous amounts of money are spent on focus groups to determine what to brand your issue so that it will resonate the best with voters and make an issue fit more easily into how you want to present it to the public.
Even though the tax on estates is cited hundreds of times as an Estate Tax for decades in the Internal Revenue Code as as “Estate Tax”, opponents of this tax refer to it as a death tax.
republicans have even taken to renaming their opponents party as the Demcrat party so that one does not associate Demcracy with the democratic party. Ir reminds me of how East Germany referred to itself as the German Democratic Republic and China refers to itself as the People’s Republic of china when neither coutry was a Repblic or Democratic or gave arats ass about its people.
People sell important issues like they sell soap. it
Angelo,
First, I just want to say that yours was probably the most well-reasoned response I’ve ever had to the question. Thank you.
In answer to your question (and to confirm my status as an extreme loon), I don’t have any real problem with returning to the pre-1967 policy, which effectively placed no limit on immigration from the Western Hemisphere and seemed to work pretty darn well.
That having been said, I don’t necessarily insist that someone agree with me to be “pro-immigration” - I only require that they actually believe that immigration levels remain the same or increase (even modestly). I believe that’s the definition of pro-immigration. If someone doesn’t believe this, then I think its perfectly reasonable label such a person as “anti-immigration”, don’t you? And so the interesting question is: What percentage of “anti-illegal-immigration” folks would qualify as “anti-immigration”? I suspect the vast majority.
the people i’ve met on the border and are attempting crossing were husbands and wives bringing all they got along with them. young boys looking for their moms who jad left them many years ago to make some money. in the end, they were mainly regular people force to hardship. the problem of the border is not a question of good guys and bad guys, but the problem set by the border fence itself, that situation leads to many deaths.
a great example that transcends the question of the border and immigration is the town of tijuana, although a us economical vaccuum that sucks the blood of mexicans, tijuana has become and is a city of its own right. it’s not mexican or usa, for the people leaving there tiuana is its own thing. people on both sides crosses this city to work, live there to work, culture is great, counter culture too. the best movie that has portraid this reality is the feature film Tijuana Makes Me Happy directed by Dylan Verrechia. this is someone that has understand something greater about the individuals living there, above stereotypes and condescending storytelling, but seeing some people in tj like true individuals.
to anyone who is willing to open up to other people, i say go to tijuana, people will respond greatly.
Hold on a minute. That’s just a load of deceptive bull. Between 1924 and 1965, US Immigration Policy and enforcement was governed mostly by the Johnson-Reed act, which enacted a quota system for allowing legal immigration based upon the proportion of the heritage origins of citizens of the United States from all countries in accordance with their proportion in the 1890 census. It was specifically designed to return to and maintain the nation’s traditional ethnic mix and to keep the future influx at such low levels that assimilation was easily enforced. In a few of the subsequent years, the level of emigration surpassed the level of immigration. The only reason the Western Hemisphere “good neighbor” provisions remained was that there was virtually no immigration from those nations at that time. Based on the tenor, scope and intent of the 1924 law, it is disingenuous to posit that we should return to the “good neighbor” policy because it “worked pretty darn well.” There is no legitimate comparison between the realities of 1924 and those we have today.
If you want to revise the idea to bring it in line with the very-low numbers and culture-preserving intent of the law, then I’m with you. But I know better than that. As a result of that act, our population fell from about 13% foreign born in 1924 to less than 5% foreign born in 1970. In 1965, the Hart-Cellar act (also partially authored by Teddy Kennedy) passed and set the stage for the vast influx of aliens from the Western Hemisphere, which began in earnest in about 1970.
I’ll sit back and just read a lot of the pro-open borders tripe; it gives me the boost I need to keep faxing, calling and otherwise hounding Congress about their stupid, heritage-killing ideas. But when someone so devious floats a doozy like that one, I’m going to wade in and correct it regardless of the venue.
I have no qualms about calling myself “anti-immigration” because I know for a fact that our current situation is out of line with this nation’s history and would not be appreciated by my ancestors who fought, bled and died to get this grand experiment started. I’d go so far as placing a permanent limit on the percentage of the population that is allowed to be foreign-born. And I’d place it somewhere between seven and 10 percent; history shows that every time it breaks into double digits we have the same sort of problems and debate we are having today.
I am anti-illegal immigration. Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about the millions of Americans that have been murdered, raped, and molested by illegal immigrants over the past 10 years? I say, come here legally, or don’t come at all. Foreigner who are willing to break the law by crossing the border illegally are not inclined to follow any other laws.