"Blinding the country to solutions"
This blogging thing is really easy when others say things considerably more eloquently than I can.
Today's NY Times editorial:
Meanwhile, NPR this morning had an excellent piece on the plight of farmers and the lack of labor.
Andy in Harrisburg
Today's NY Times editorial:
Think of America's greatest historical shames. Most have involved the singling out of groups of people for abuse. Name a distinguishing feature — skin color, religion, nationality, language — and it's likely that people here have suffered unjustly for it, either through the freelance hatred of citizens or as a matter of official government policy.
We are heading down this road again. The country needs to have a working immigration policy, one that corresponds to economic realities and is based on good sense and fairness. But it doesn't. It has federal inertia and a rising immigrant tide, and a national mood of frustration and anxiety that is slipping, as it has so many times before, into hatred and fear. Hostility for illegal immigrants falls disproportionately on an entire population of people, documented or not, who speak Spanish and are working-class or poor. By blinding the country to solutions, it has harmed us all.
Meanwhile, NPR this morning had an excellent piece on the plight of farmers and the lack of labor.
Andy in Harrisburg
Labels: immigration
posted by ACLU of Pennsylvania at 10/22/2007 09:27:00 PM
9 Comments:
Chuck said..........
We are heading down this road again. The country needs to have a working immigration policy, one that corresponds to economic realities and is based on good sense and fairness."
Fainess by whose standards? Fairness to the employers who took the easy way out instead of availing themselves of the H-2A visa program, and are now whining that they're being called to account? The law violator has a different perspective of what's fairness as opposed to the law abiding citizen. The applicant for citizenship may have a different perspective of illegal immgration than the illegal alien advocate and his constituency. Good sense? Whose good sense? The illegal alien advocate's good sense that the citizens should cave to his will? From my perpective, it is being fair to the citizen to have his constitutionally valid immigration laws which he enacted enforced. From my perspective good sense is discouraging further illegal immigration by workplace enforcement and deportations (self-deportation by attrition, of course). Amnesty is just another invitation for further illegal immigration. Remember when Ted Kennedy announced that his 1986 bill will be the last amnesty and would control further illegal immigration? It didn't work then and none of you pathetic whiners have come up with a solution to satisfy the electorate. There is no reason to believe that an amnesty or guest worker program will stop illegal immigration. When our limits to handle guest workers is reached, they'll still come and work under the table. It is always easier to hire an illegal alien who works under the table because the employer doesn't have the need for all of that paperwork and costs that legitimate employers have to put up with. The ACLU will continue to put a roadblock in front of every effort to discourage illegal immigration, as it does today. And the idiots of the judiciary will be happy to impose standards of 100% perfection to databases used to verify immigration status, despite such an impossibility.
"But it doesn't. It has federal inertia and a rising immigrant tide, and a national mood of frustration and anxiety that is slipping, as it has so many times before, into hatred and fear. Hostility for illegal immigrants falls disproportionately on an entire population of people, documented or not, who speak Spanish and are working-class or poor. By blinding the country to solutions, it has harmed us all."
You seem to claim a self-righteous arrogant superiority that puts your opinon above that of the good sense of the people. Illegal alien Hispanics are getting the flak because they are marching in the streets and they make up by far the greatest proportion of illegal aliens, not because they are Hispanic. This claim of racism works out well for their advocates, because they can disingenuoulsly claim that this is a race issue, when it is actually an economic and fairness issue. It's not working this time, because citizens will not be cowed by guilt this time. Our national sovereignty and the right to control immigration and our borders are at stake and we are not inclined to listen to the whining and railing those would pose to be our national conscience, but are in reality the weak pathetic defeatest pimps of Mexico.
Andy,
The onus is on you and your advocacy groups to prove that 12 to 20 million people living on subsistence level wages will never become wards of the state, if only partially so, by eventually taking advantage of our welfare programs. Data shows that these people will utimately take more tax revenue out of our treasury than they put in. Without satisfying this burden of proof, you won't get very far in obtaining support of the taxpayer.
As "Anonymous" shows how well the "blinders" work
Good stiff response, James. If only there were more lines between which we could gather your meaning.
A WIN!
http://www.kotv.com/news/topstory/?id=138916
BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: Judge Denies Preliminary Injunction Motion
AP/KOTV - 10/31/2007 10:33 AM - Updated 10/31/2007 7:12 PM
TULSA, Okla. (AP) _ A federal judge denied late Wednesday a request by Latino groups to block the implementation of a new state law targeting illegal immigrants, paving the way for the bill to take effect in a matter of hours. In a two-page ruling, U.S. District Judge James H. Payne wrote that the plaintiffs failed to introduce evidence in support of their motion.
The Latino groups sought the preliminary injunction to stop the new law, which would bar illegal immigrants from obtaining jobs or state assistance and make it a felony to harbor or transport illegal aliens.
Payne threw out an earlier attempt by the group to stop the measure, saying the plaintiffs could not show they were harmed by a law that hadn't taken effect yet.
In its second filing, the group added several unidentified illegal immigrants who have been told they must move from their rent homes because of the new law.
Both sides assembled outside the federal courthouse for an often tense news conference following Wednesday's hearing. The Hispanic leaders were interrupted at least twice by residents who supported the new law, and a driver in one car yelled an ethnic slur at the group.
The Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, said that a decision to prevent the law from taking effect would help bring calm to the Latino community. Rivera also pledged to fight the law to the U.S. Supreme Court if he had to.
``I know 25,000 or more of my Latino people have been afraid and they have left this state,'' Rivera said.
He said the eyes of the nation are watching to see what action the state takes regarding the new law, which is billed by its backers as one of the toughest anti-illegal immigration laws in the country.
Hispanic activist Victor Orta said, ``Our families have been receiving eviction notices that, beginning tonight, if they cannot prove their status here, they will be evicted.''
Orta also said he was astonished at the silence of other Anglo churches on the matter.
Supporters of the new law said state legislation was needed because federal authorities had failed to act.
``They want to move Mexico here. They do not want to assimilate. I have a problem with that,'' said Tulsa resident Dan Howard, a former Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper.
Howard began his news conference by saying he would address the crowd in English, because ``I'm standing in the USA.'' Hispanic leaders earlier spoke to the audience in English, then Spanish.
Carol Helm, director of Immigration Reform for Oklahoma Now, said the bill restates the importance of following labor and tax laws.
``It just seems that every month, the rate of illegals just continues to grow, and that's a stated fact by the Hispanic organizations,'' Helm said. ``Common sense says how many, how much, what is the break-even point which the state can absorb?''
Immigrant rights groups have long decried the legislation, saying it unnecessarily repeats federal law, dehumanizes people and panders to people with racial biases. They say tens of thousands of Hispanics have already fled Oklahoma ahead of the law taking effect.
Some churches have also come out against the law. On Tuesday, a representative of Catholic Charities delivered more than 1,000 signed pledges of resistance to H.B. 1804 to Gov. Brad Henry's office.
Nina Perales, Southwest regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said there was more puffery to the law than substance.
Even so, she said many at the community level are concerned it will unleash immigration raids, increase racial profiling and split up families.
``It is a ridiculously redundant piece of legislation,'' Perales said. ``These are all federal laws that are already on the books.''
The Rev. Luis-Carlos Sanchez, vice president of the Coalition of Hispanic Organizations, said the bill has already ``opened the doors for every kind of prejudice and every kind of racial profiling.''
``If we call them criminals, we can abuse them and take advantage,'' he said. ``We have done this with the Native Americans, calling them savages, and African-Americans, calling them less than whites, and we are doing this again.''
The bill's author, Republican state lawmaker Randy Terrill, has said the people of Oklahoma support meaningful immigration reform and repeatedly stated he was confident it would hold up if challenged in the courts.
Chuck:
I heard about this on NPR and there was something that caught my eye was when the Housing Contractors were reporting a lobor shortage.
Seems that this is the "Elephant In The Room" that many people ignore. The continuing demand for cheap, exploitable, labor.
But then, this same demand lead to the globalization that may be fueling this too.
But folks like Tancredo and Barletta ignore these.
And once there's some evidence of harm, I'm sure this law will be overturned--likley with help from the ACLU.
BTW: I still don't see how these fall under the ACLU's aegis.
How ironic that those who service illegal aliens, i.e. aid and abet them by making life comfortable here, expect to win a suit designed to defeat the will of the American people, as expressed by our immigration laws. Ultimately, the politicians will concede to the popular will and the law, and expell our millions of tresspassing foreigners.
Chuck:
Keep swallowing what comes from the "Disinformation Machine" as this site so correctly calls it.
As it seems that far too many Americans have.
Amazing what can happen when you have a CEO-controlled media
James,
Keep putting out that nonsense that countenancing illegal immigration will discourage further illegal immigration, and that 20 million people living at the economic margins will not avail themselves of our welfare system. The people have come to understand what you seem not to, that this is an invasion sponsored by corrupt corporations who worship at the alter of the profit and ethnocentrists whose only goal is to accelerate their steadily increasing political power.
The first thing the poor do when gaining political strength is to vote themselves a transfer of wealth to their own kind. It is imprudent to adopt 20 million new welfare clients. We have no moral obligation to make these people citizens but we have every legal right under international law to evict them. And that we shall do, if it takes ten years.
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