🚀 go-pugleaf

Antimulticulture@somewhere.com wrote in message news:<02110323.1058@somewhere.com>...
> Stopping illegals
> William F. Buckley 
> November 2, 2003 
> 
> The subject of immigration is vigorous on the airwaves. Most
recently the contest was between an ardent commentator who had served
with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and a retired general
who sounded like George Patton. The general said that illegal
immigration could be stopped as simply as by giving him (and the
required enforcers) authority to do so. The INS alumnus said that the
general was talking about an absolutely impossible assignment, 2,000
miles of frontier that couldn't be regulated by neck-and-neck balloons
hovering over the border.
> 
> Both sides exaggerate, of course. And in any event, whatever doubts
one has about an iron curtain that would screen out the illegals, it's
hard to doubt that an iron curtain is there in Congress that says, DO
NOT STOP ILLEGALS, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW (NO DETENGA ILEGALES DEBAJO LA
LEY). There are about 7 million illegals. Using figures for legal
immigrants and extrapolating them, we deduce that one-half are
Mexicans, the other half shared by Indians, Chinese, Filipinos and
Vietnamese. The big question reduces almost always to Hispanic
immigration.
> 
> Why can't we enforce the law? The INS analyst has a point, that the long, permeable boundary does not permit a wall, plus checkpoints, as in divided Berlin or the West Bank. Such analysts are prepared to treat immigration law as in the nature of Prohibition: You can't enforce it. 
> 
> Next is the argument that U.S. employers would not tolerate genuine
sanctions. "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice," says the inscription
near the tomb of Christopher Wren, the l7th-century architect whose
splendid achievements include St. Paul's Cathedral, where he is
buried. If you want a monument to Wren, all you have to do is look
about. That translates, in modern idiom: If you wonder where illegals
are working, look about. They are everywhere.
> 
> Some commentators tell us that if illegals were actually shipped
home, there would be nobody here to till the fields or sweep out the
offices -- i.e., that illegals are necessary to the functioning of our
economy by acceptable measures. Sure, if we were starving to death and
there were no Mexicans to do the agricultural work, it would still get
done, but a head of lettuce might cost $30, if tended by Ivy League
graduates.
> 
> The next vantage point is of course political. Theoretically, illegals do not vote. In fact, many do. And they certainly influence the voting patterns of resident legal immigrants, whose vote is very heavy in California, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey and Illinois. They tend to vote in blocs, and are sensitive to any proposed legislation that they deem xenophobic in spirit. 
> 
> Finally, there is the allied question: How do you treat illegals
once they have got into the country? This is not by any means disposed
of by saying simply that illegals are non-persons. You run into
moral-philosophical questions: If the pregnant lady coming to term is
an illegal, is there a computer mechanism by which that petitioner can
be ignored, or shipped quickly to a Mexican-bound airline? If the
child is hungry, is he fed?
> 
> Now these complications are arresting, when thus stated. The
increase in the Mexican-illegal school population in California is
marked, and getting the child and parent aboard a southbound bus is a
doable thing, but it is also a work-intensive bureaucratic proceeding,
involving lawyers, immigration police, transportation requisitions. A
slightly removed way of putting on that kind of pressure is to harass
the illegals. That is happening in California by use of the supreme
sanction in the civilized world. Withholding a driver's license comes
just this side of dumping the offender into a pit of hissing cobras.
> 
> The primary use of the driver's license, obviously, is to permit
that which almost all Americans absolutely require. But that license
does not bring only mobility; it is a key instrument for banks,
credits cards, insurance and voter registration. Governor-elect
Schwarznegger is committed to withdrawing driver's licenses from
illegals. What will they do? Return to Mexico? That is unlikely. And
if pressures mount, sufficient to repatriate a half-million Mexicans,
can we simultaneously keep another half-million from seeping in?
> 
> A market pressure not mentioned among possible sanctions is the tax. Suppose an employer were taxed $5 for every hour an illegal put in? If enforced, that would hugely change the economic picture, requiring employers of illegals to pay much more -- and to charge more for their services. 
> 
> Would the U.S. public then vote to repeal such a tax? We'd see how far the rectifications of the market would actually take us.

House by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, town after town, a
plague of aliens who are not going to be assimilated. Who only
increase our population, increase crime, and increase the level of the
inevitable social conflict. But our political types line up to fondle
them for their votes.

Larry