Redstate

the fact we own all 3 house.

Yet nothing gets done.

Thats the fact, jack.

On immigration, you could argue that no action is desirable, moreso than say on spending or entitlements.

Let me break it down for you. You must live in one of the states not being invaded by illegals to not get it.

"You mock the "jobs Americans won't do" argument. Pray tell, where is this epidemic of native-born unemployment as a result of markedly higher levels of illegal immigration? Take a step back and look at the big picture. How have the 12 million illegals hurt the American economy? Specific examples please."

Try any intercity African American community. Low end jobs once held by those with few skills, and any young people are now snapped up by illegals. We are breeding a generation of hard core unemployed with no hope of every finding a job. Why hire some intercity kid for a job, pay the taxes put up with training and maybe some work issues, when you can hire an illegal off the books and hold calling INS over his head to get what you want.

In California, our schools are full, are roads are clogged and our public hospital and trauma system is broke and getting worse because of the large number of illegals flooding the state. Now the flood of illegals would not be a problem if they were paying taxes into the system, but a large percentage, maybe 70 percent are in the underground economy not paying state, local, or federal taxes.  The economic impact on California local government is staggering, after all you don't add 5 million people, probably more like 10 million, without increasing taxes and not having problem. So the taxes to pay for services to illegals are on my back and climbing every day.

MS13, Hispanic gangs in general. Something like 30 percent of inmates in California are illegals. I don't have the figures, but probably 50 percent of the low level street crime is attributable to illegals. By the way, we have the LAPD and a special order which prohibits going after illegals  gang bangers.

So maybe in your state you don't have the influx of illegals so you don't see it as a big problem, but for us living in the invasion zone, it's a darn big problem.

We need action because the tide of illegal immigration is putting huge strains on state and local governments and is in fact driving up the cost of government.

But the anger is because the GOP wants to give away the house and let the Dems add 12 million more votes and STILL not enforce our laws.

My feelings exactly.  The rage on this issue, I just don't get, other than from people who live near the border and have trespassers constantly trampling their property (they, at least, have reason to be irate).  I'm grudgingly coming to favor a wall myself, but really, how did this end up as one of our biggest priorities?

The Bush Administration has given a lot of pretty good things to social conservatives and the hawks are feeling warm and snuggly all over.

However.

The fiscal conservatives are blowing a gasket.

The Paleocons and Libertarians? Fuggetabowdit. (For pretty much opposite reasons, mind, but both groups are slackjawed at what they see as the excesses of the administration).

Immigration is the one area where Conservatives of any stripe can say "THIS IS NOT WHAT I VOTED FOR!" without feeling like they're somehow betraying their core values. Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Conservative Libertarian, Neo-Conservative, and Moderates Who Dislike Democrats More Than Republicans can all agree:

The current Immigration setup is (insert whatever past tense verb you want here). While the Hawks may not have felt comfortable to criticize some parts of the management of the Iraq war and the Fiscal Conservatives may not have felt comfortable criticizing some parts of the PATRIOT ACT, and some Social Conservatives may not have felt comfortable criticizing the Farm Bill... Everyone can come together about immigration and just start yelling.

I can't speak for machiavel, but I live in NY and we have plenty of illegals here, albeit a much more diverse group of illegals (Irish, Chinese, Polish, etc. in addition to many stripes of Latinos).

We can refer to it as nativism or some other pejorative term but it is, simply put, nationalism.  Some are in no rush to confer citizenship on a great number of people, others find people flaunting the laws of this country repugnant.  Some are concerned that America will cease to be a 'European' (white) country.  These sentiments are more emotive than rational, but that does not make them abhorrent or evil.  They are the feelings of a sizable percentage of the American populace, perhaps even a majority.  

in the first six paragraphs you enumerated the reasons and still claim not to understand?

that the Hispanics are not from a wholly alien culture and they do not espouse a religious tradition of which we ought be wary (even if our ancestors were one very wary of that particular relgion). However they are still (mostly) low-skilled and poorly educated and we already have a surfeit, perhaps an excess, of such people in this country already. Europe's mistake is not importing Muslimns: it's the creation of a permanent helot-like underclass with little hope of advancement or assimilation. That problem would exist if Europe were being overrun by millions of Latinos from south of our border. That is the mistake we ought not make. I am not opposed to immigration on the whole, but I think we need to make sure that we are not overrun by such numbers of people that we cannot assimilate them, and that the people coming to our country have some skills and knowledge to contribute. I now live in an area (S Florida) with an astonishingly large number of Spanish speakers. ot does not bother me in the least to hear "Buenos Dias" in the grocery store or more Sopanish than English in the offiec wher I work; but most of these Hispanics are educated, middle class people and that makes all the difference.

If the media is reporting 11 Million illegals, the true number is probably around 20 Million.

Of those, I'd say that LA country where I live has something like 3 to 5 Million counting illegals and their families. All added over the last 10 years or so. They are not local paying taxes, we have not added infrastructure to keep up and the quality of life is starting to show it. On top of which, we are not adding highly educated skilled workers, we are adding low skill low educated people who place an even higher burden on society.  

So I don't know about NY, but LA has a problem.

Hey, I understand why people in a handful of affected areas are upset (although the number of conservatives in LA isn't exactly a big chunk of the Right).  The question is why people outside of the border areas and a handful of metro areas like LA and Miami are so steamed by this.

poor issue for Republicans in 2006.  It's a good issue for stirring up the base but only if you're going to try and satisfy them!

You have House Republicans generally playing to the base.  The President is basically playing to moderate to liberal sentiments on the issue.  Senate Republicans are lost between the positions espoused by the House and those of the President so they will basically aggravate everyone.

Given that Republicans (as a party) pretty much control the political agenda in Washington, which mastermind decided this was the issue for '06?  I'm confused to see the disarray.

I do think the issue is fraught will all kinds of reasonable and antithetical arguments, hence, it seems like the sort of thing that Washington would dodge in an election year.

Agreeing with the Democrats and media, these Conservatives are behaving as if there will be no more 9/11 s on U.S. soil and they all may be correct. They all, in addition, do not want their telephone usage to be involved in efforts  to detect and prevent future 9/11s. Their primary concern about the legal status of immigrants is convincing proof of their belief that the GWOT is over, and that the U.S.A. is the winner. Historically, Conservatives have been the nation's leaders in immediately slashing the military's budget after all of its wars. Their concern about the Mexican border is also purely "economics". All through American history the Conservatives' motto has been: "It can't happen here", and history keeps repeating itself.

"THIS IS NOT WHAT I VOTED FOR!"

This is exactly what I voted for.  President Bush's vision of pro-market solutions to SS, trade, and immigration is a major reason I prefered him to Senator Kerry.

I think Tancredo is the problem, not the President.

You could at least get the description of fellow conservatives who disagree with you right.  Its anti-illegal immigration, and/or anti-mass legal immigration.  Very few want a system where noone is allowed in, so anti-immigration is a false description.

And being pro-free market does not require one to support unending mass immigration.  

And before people make too many assumptions.  There are many of us who aren't yelling who believe that there is a conservative argument for immigration.  And there are many pro-market types who believe that allowing more legal immigration would help alleviate the pressure of illegal immigration.  Hopefully, the Senate and the President can compromise with the House and get an enforcement/Guest Worker program.  They go together as a good compromise, but I'm afraid the House won't let it happen.

cannot be mainainted without a sovereign state.

12 Mill more voters. Most are going GOP anyway.

Its just the complete inaction that matters.

It not like we have a plan anymore?

people's anger comes from the fact that it is so easy to solve, yet congress is not listening. Secure the border. Period. France and Britain (and most other European countries) are vigorously debating cutting back legal immigration, and we can't even decide to close off ILLEGAL Immigration. We can't even decide who to let in. Secure the Border, then let's decide what to do about the 12 million that are here. Once you secure the border, hell, let em all become legal over time.... who cares. But, the conservatives know about letting em become legal, promising to secure the border and then getting bamboozled....Secure the border. Build a wall. Just do it and the debate ends. The 12 million issue doesn't grow into a 30 million people issue. We can then decide who to let in, and god bless them, I love the hispanics who love to work... increase the legal quotas, open the floodgates.... but know who they are, and make them legal and they will appreciate being here... that is why people are pissed. Secure the Border... really  simple

between being a free market conservative and a nativist, even allowing for it's pejorative use?

    Effectively we have become a nation without borders.  I kind of like borders, they come in handy, sort of tell you where you are and where the other guy is, in a small way they help identify and preserve all we have, make a small contribution to helpful things like constitutions, laws, customs, language, little things like that.

     Now I can see why some people want to turn America into a free trade zone for Humanity, it having been pointed out that for a few of us it's easy to love Humanity than the real thing.  But still borders have a kind of practicality to them, and I'd hate to see them go.  I hope that doesn't make me xenophobic, the $.25 cents word for nativist.

"Build a wall. Just do it and the debate ends. The 12 million issue doesn't grow into a 30 million people issue. We can then decide who to let in, and god bless them, I love the hispanics who love to work... increase the legal quotas, open the floodgates...."

Wall for increased legal quotas.  I think that could pass the House and Senate and get Presidential support.  I still think people would get a better reception if they called it a fence.  Wall seems offputting, fence sounds neighborly.  I'd bet it plays better in suburbia.

believe that if those 12 million became citizens and vote (or more vote without become citizens) they will vote Republican? Those are potential (some percentage are actual) Democrat votes.

I think the question is, are we still a sovereign state if our border enforcement is spotty at best?  I say yes.  In fact, I'd suggest to you that most sovereign states, for most of history, had no more control over their border than we have today, and that rigid control of the borders has been the exception rather than the rule in American history.  Certainly the current situation with illegal immigration has been going on for two decades, at least.  

I can guarantee that if you cross that border going the other way the Mexicans will make d*mn sure you understand which side you are on!

For some reason it is only America that is not allowed to have and enforce sovereignty.

The upside down flag.

But wait, there's more.

I want to speak English, read English, and not have to look past the other languages on street signs, product packaging, and voting instructions. But that's a nit I can get over.

Mostly, I want to believe that America is the Land of Liberty, not an employment agency.  It's a nation, with borders, a flag, and laws, different laws from anywhere else.  If we don't enforce those laws, it will cease to be different.  It is not just another part of a borderless world.

that 12 million people will all vote the same way, do you?

President Bush won 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004.  He won 49% in TX and 56% in FL.  If the 12 million break Democratic at 60%-40% and 50% actually vote then presuming the next Republican is less successful than President Bush at winning that vote, there will be 3.6 million Democratic votes and 2.4 million Republican votes.  The last election was 61 million to 58 million just for reference.

However, if Rs upset 80% of the Hispanic community by seeming xenophobic then the breakdown would be more like 4.8 million to 1.6 million which could flip a 3 million vote difference.

But will the Senate go for it? I don't see it happening. Even the house fence provisions are very weak. 700 miles is not the unfenced portion of the border. I guess it is necessary to leave regular gaps in the wall so people can still cross. Maybe if we call it a high speed rail line we could get them to vote for it.

I support amnesty on a timetable that is linked to and triggered on immigration enforcement goals. I support increased quotas for permanent immigration. I do not support guest worker. Guest worker, even if it came with a fence, is not acceptable. It would completely undermine our enforcement activities.

They would probably call the General on the phone and tell them the courier is here to pick up the drug shipment for el Norte.

but the vast majority of those are legal immigrants or second + generation Americans and  Florida is not largely Mexican immigrants obviously.

But I believe that surveys indicate that large majorities of legal Hispanic immigrants and second + generation Americans of Mexican decent don't want the illegals here either so I don't see the harm to Republicans from taking a hard stance.

And when one finds ones self with a choice of expedience or doing the right thing once upon a time it was considered honorable to chose the right thing.

Does anyone know if France requires voting ballots, labeling, government documents to be made available in san skrit or farsi?

People like "Pop", Malkkkin, the Freepers, etc. are not going to come around. They feel they have the power in the party and want to glom onto this as a reason to sink the party. Problem is, temper tantrums such as this only serve to embolden your enemies, further marginalize your movement and keep you in minority status for a political generation (at least 20 years).

Yeah, you may "send a message" by sitting out and letting Pelosi ruin the country, but the childish behavior of the Malkkkins of the world will never lead to them getting control.

the polling numbers for strict border control as significantly more than self-identified Republicans. Well over half of repondents want control and that has to include people of all political stripes, certainly not just the hard core conservatives.

Latino populations that have been here 2-3 generations will more likely vote (R) than (D).  Take Florida as an example.  Many are single issue pro-life voters, and the successful entrepenuers are obviously (R) pickups.  Linda Chavez sites evidence that the population is more entrepenuerial than average:

[http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/lchavez/2006/lc_03241.shtml]

second + generation Americans, I'm talking about those 12 million illegals. I contend they are likely to vote for the people who "reward" their ability to avoid being deported long enough to get amnesty.

"Malkkkin"?  You're a demagogue.  Please explain your apparent belief that a Filipino-American would fit in with a white racist group.  Oh, but everyone who wants the laws enforced is a racist, right?

Was a ploy that Paleocon Bush Hating Bitter Matt Drudge used to demagogue the issue.  HE had that darned flag up a day and a half.  The ration of regular flags to upside down ones was probably 1000 to 1 and good old drudge, cheered on by his friends Coulter and Malkin, purely damagogued the issue.

We need a bill before 2008 folks.  If this 2nd rate issue is still on the table we'll eat our own in '08 and Hillary will get 300+ EVs.  Sign a bill, and get over it.

Conservatives have "the power in the party". That sure explains what's been going on in DC for the last 5 years. All these nutty right wingers got their prescription drug plan, increased spending, bridges to nowhere, torture bill, and CFR passed, and now they are looking to get their way on immigration as well. They just think they can have it all.

I agree.  And that is exactly why I support the President's general plan.  It is not a populist position.  It is the right thing to do.  Help those who believe in working hard to make life better for their families.  Open the doors to those who are willing to be a part of America and contribute to the country.  Do the right thing.

I live in Texas and by 2010 ill be overuned by illegals,

our schools are full, public hospital overcrowded ,Hispanic gangs are everywhere I'm sick and tired of having to press 1. for English or listen to Spanish every single day. What kind of a WOT are we fighting when our border is wide open and Osama could walk in every second. I have to pay for everything they do or want. I don't live in a mansion like John McCain I live in a real world, and I don't want CFR to set the agenda for this country.

I've had enough

Of the evil "paleocon" conspiracy seem to grow every day. We only need a bill if it's going to be a good one. The steaming pile the Senate has been stirring up does not qualify.

then we can argue about further legal immigration. As it stands right now discussion of legal immigration is pointless because no one really needs to bother with that route. The present situation is that only the chumps are following the law.

I have nothing against immigration, my mother was an immigrant and my wife is an immigrant. I want liberal legal immigration into this country, people who want to become Americans, not people who just want to recreate Mexico in Texas.

It makes no sense to favor Bush over Kerry because Bush is more "pro-market" on immigration.  Bush and Kerry are the same on this issue.  The only difference is that Bush is more willing to lie about it.  Which would make Bush, if anything, more conservative: At least Bush pretends that illegal immigration shouldn't be encouraged or rewarded.  (Yet, he says, it's necessary.  So it's necessary but we shouldn't encourage or reward it?  Bush must have a very low opinion of conservatives.)

By the way, I object to the equation of conservatism with free-market principles.  Conservatism has never meant economic libertarianism.  Conservatives overwhelmingly oppose illegal immigration.  The George Bush types who think that all immigration is good immigration are in the distinct minority (oops, bad word).  The Tom Tancredo types speak for the vast majority of us.

Simple, the tide is coming to the rest of the country and people are not so stupid as to not figure out that the invasion will eventually hit them too.

Towns in Iowa, Nebraska and others are feeling it too. Meat packing jobs, farm jobs and others that went to US citizens are being filled by illegals, at lower wages to boot. Saw some numbers the other day that a meat packing job from the 80's that paid $19 /hr on average are now paying $9 to $12.

I doubt those that hate the minimum wage and any increase of it want to see wages suppressed by business using cheap illegal labor....or do they? Big business, Agra-business does not want an immigration crack down for sure. Watch what happens when the Feds continue the limited crack downs on employees that have been going on lately to see the power of the big business.

on this thread, but initially I'd like to put two questions to you;

First, I'd like you to explain why you use the term "nativist", in the derogatory context you do, when the premise of your article is that you don't know why it is so important to us. If you don't know, how can you ascribe it to nativism?

Secondly, who are "we" and how are "we" different from "the rest of the conservative movement? For whom do you speak?

Interesting first post.

the straw that broke the burro's back...so to speak.  Right now the mindset of alot of republicans and all conservatives is one of confusion, anger and uncertainty.  Many of us are dumbstruck, given we have the House, Senate and Presidency, at the lack of progress in many areas we hold important.  The inability of the administration to give a loud voice to the truths we believe in from the war to Social Security.  We see mostly those Republican Senators, not all, but alot as weak and unable to work together and most of all oblivious to the voice's of their constituents.  Our President, who we put so much hope in, seems to be dropping the ball and even when he's not other Republican Politicos are abandoning him, further weakening him. And now the uncertainty about who's gonna take it from here, will they do what we ask. It's like the Left has the entire main stream media spinning untruths and half truths for them, working against the country, and we can barely get a squeeky voice to say, " Uh that's bad, would you mind not doing that.....Please."  It's like the right, at this moment, is a lone voice crying out in the middle of nowhere.

Then on top of all of that this immigration deal pops up.  We see illegal aliens protesting in the streets, demanding rights and benefits not theirs.

Holding their country's flags and threatening more.  It was that last straw, those last few grains of salt in the wound, that made many "mad".

It took the anger level up a few notches.  A kind of feeling that now you are being attacked at home, on a more personal level, on top of everything else.  As I said, this is my belief, take it as you will.  I know I am VERY dissatisfied with my representation...how about you?

But you did.

Anyway,she is on the side that smacks of the nativist/Know Nothing crowd. She never gave a good reason for her opposition to DPW, save that some "A-Rabs" would have a business deal. Never mind the UAE has been helping us immensely.

She opposed Miers for no good reason, other than she is a woman.

Also, she has never opposed immigration issues involving non Mexicans, but I guess I'm just parsing and spinning. She even got mad when the Texas Rangers wore uniforms Friday that had Los Rangeros, or something like that, on them. That's petty and silly.

On a different note, I guess there is some circular logic going on:

*Sit out to protest the immigration bill and help the Dems win the House so that they can "end a message" to Bush by allowing him to be impeached, yet the Senate probably won't change hands regardless.

*The House's immigration bill is better than the Senate/Bush bill, and they may yet kill the Senate bill in Conference.

*But we're still going to punish the House for being closer to what we want and being better than the Senate. That'll teach them.

Nice to see the "sit out" crowd is really thinking this through.

hasn't had the effects that it's having now.  That's the difference.  A hundred years ago, it wasn't going to create an America where everyone who isn't Hispanic has to be bilingual just to order dinner at Wendy's.  Today it's doing just that.  A hundred years ago, it wasn't going to cause demographic changes that make it politically impossible to oppose insanely generous welfare programs.  Today it's doing just that.  Etc., etc., etc.

yet I feel something is different, something beside 9/11.

It's the transnational pressure.

I am for globalization, but it does change the calculus.

I tried to elaborate, but I'm quitting smoking :-(

"Conservatives overwhelmingly oppose illegal immigration."

As do I.  I just think that allowing 1% of our population each year in legal immigration is the best solution to the problem.  That's where understanding the economics behind the problem leads to a pro-market solution as opposed to a populist one.  Over time the pro-market free traders have overcome the populist protectionists and it has lead to a great increase in economic growth in America.  Hopefully, we can shut down illegal immigration by allowing more in legally.  Immigration is good.  President Bush agrees and it was one of his many pro-market views that won my vote.

Last note, I can't wait to see how well Tancredo does in his quixotic 08 run so we can see how many are in the "vast majority" you speak of.  Probably just about as many as were in Nader's "vast majority."

Because you have to ask an honest question to get an honest answer.

"where is this epidemic of native-born unemployment as a result of markedly higher levels of illegal immigration?" and "How have the 12 million illegals hurt the American economy?" are different questions. I can point to very high levels of unemployment among unskilled and low skilled American citizens. It is the economy of these people that is being hurt by 12 million illegals. The wealthy, as usual, are doing just fine.

But you did call her Mal*kkk*in. That is a not so clever reference to the KKK. I would say that is bringing race into it.

She opposed Miers for no good reason, other than she is a woman.

Yea that makes sense. I'm sure she just hates women. Do you have any links to where she said that Miers would make a good nominee if she only had the right equipment for the job? Or where she said that she should be at home barefoot and pregnant?

Also, she has never opposed immigration issues involving non Mexicans, but I guess I'm just parsing and spinning.

Oh yea? She has posted articles that advocate that non-Mexican illegal immigration is A-OK? Do you have links?

"As it stands right now discussion of legal immigration is pointless because no one really needs to bother with that route."

I believe that all else equal immigrants would prefer to be here legally.  They choose to come illegally because they have no viable way to come legally.  If we gave them a way to come legally they would do so.  That is my main proposal to fix the problem.  Increase legal immigration to 1% of the US population per year.  This is the economic equivalent of getting rid of a price control.  It allows the market to run efficiently.  We can then focus our efforts on preventing the security threats from entering the country rather than worrying about those who come to give their families a better life.

I don't do Drudge.  Nothing against him, though.

I saw the upside-down flags on TV and on various blogs.  One was enough.  

It is also unacceptable to have the flag of a foreign nation flown above the American flag on our soil, no matter what Old Glory's orientation.  To have it done at a school is doubly insulting.

"I can point to very high levels of unemployment among unskilled and low skilled American citizens."

Links would be great.  Because off the top of my head, overall unemployment is at 4.7% which is lower than the average of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.  Also, unemployment in the hispanic and black communities is lower than it was 10 years ago and 20 years ago.  I would be interested if you have data for the assertion that I quoted above.

The pool of illegal labor is a subsidy to business that are willing to operate outside the law. This subsidy is being paid for by the taxpayers. We might as well just be cutting Joe's Lawn Care or Bob's Onion Farm a check every month.

And even if it was, Bush is not reliably pro-market. Remember the steel tariffs? What about all the other punitive tariffs we continue to have in place (on stuff like lumber, sugar, ethanol, avocados etc)? You know, if we dropped some of those tariffs (which are yet another subsidy, this time paid by consumers) maybe some of these employers of illegal immigrants would have to look for a new line of work.

Conservatives didn't abandon Bush he left us. I bet he doesn't even care anymore. Maybe if he did he wouldn't be teaming up with Ted Kennedy to write immigration bill and shout out critics. Just a couple of weeks ago he held a meeting in the white house with liberals and moderates on immigration, but no,no conservatives, they suck , they didn't fall in line with my "guest workers program" no no, we can't have them here. He simply doesn't care about securing our borders.

 I've lost all confidence and admiration I had for this president.

"Tancredo does in his quixotic 08 run so we can see how many are in the "vast majority" you speak of"

Tancredo has no base, Hillary does and is working as we speak to frame a position that is tough on security while at the same time soft on the human aspect of illegal immigration.

Lets say the Republican Senate and House is unable to move any meaningful legislation, Hillary steps in and puts a plan on the table that secures the boarder and offers a plan with a path to legalization/citizenship. So she looses some with the hard core Left wing of the D's, they don't like her anyway, so no real loss, but she will appeal to those who care about this issue. She will grab the middle in other words.

On the Republican side, the fight for the '08 nomination could be a tough one, with a real fight for the nomination between the base social conservative movement and other wings of the party like fiscal conservatives, Libertarian leaning Republicans.

while I accept that all else equal immigrants would prefer to be here legally  --- who would want to be illegal and subject to even the almost non-existent deportation?

But I don't believe that most of the current wave of illegals necessarily wants to be Americans. I believe that when large numbers of people carry signs in the street telling Americans to get off of their lawn they probably mean it.

"I am even more bewildered as to why we, as unwavering free market conservatives, have been suddenly transformed into nativists?"

Suddenly? I've been writing about this on my own website for years. Only now is mainstream America starting to pay attention.

"You mock the "jobs Americans won't do" argument. Pray tell, where is this epidemic of native-born unemployment as a result of markedly higher levels of illegal immigration? Take a step back and look at the big picture. How have the 12 million illegals hurt the American economy? Specific examples please."

1. I know a guy named Mark who's been a construction worker his entire life. Now he can barely make a living because he has to compete with illegals that will work for much less than he's accustomed to. I suppose he could always do what they do and live with 6-10 other guys in a 1-bedroom apartment but that's just not acceptable in our American culture.
   
2. My mother used to clean houses for a living. She was driven out of business by... yes... illegals.
   
3. Go to El Paso, TX (right on the Mexican border) and watch how many women pile onto the busses in the mornings to go clean houses at $5 a pop. They aren't legally allowed to work here but they cross the border every day to do it. Poverty runs rampant in El Paso. Unempolyment is about 9% there. Yet instead of calling Merry Maids that employs legitimate workers, you get pay someone else much less who has no business working in the US to begin with and they're happy to take it when their rent is only $80/mo. across the river.
   
4. Mass immigration (illegal and legal combined) keeps wages low in the factories. A good thing you may say - after all your prices at the store stay (artificially) low. But the rent keeps going up for everybody. In the 1980's, a meatpacker made about $15+ per hr. Now he makes about $8-10/hr. Back in 1980, that $15 went a lot further than it does today. Once upon a time, a man could support a whole family on a factory wage. Now it takes both parents working and they better not dare have more than a couple of kids. This is why our birthrate is declining. Flooding the labor market with people that will work for any amount does a disservice to our own working-class people. I could go on and on about this.
   
5. Someone else mentioned the stresses on healthcare and education. How many hospitals in CA alone have closed in the past 10 years? Last count I heard was around 80. Doctors are changing professions. Every year, our health insurance premiums go up by about 9% or more. Some companies are dropping it altogether. Blame it on the illegals? Yes, you can. Even some of the legal immigrants. Go visit a big city ER, food stamp office, WIC office, TANF office... pick your welfare agency. How much longer can we continue to take care of a population that a certain country down South refuses to take care of?

So "nativist" is the new buzzword of demogoggery? Am I a "nativist"? Oh well then. I guess I am. So what? Is there something wrong with that?

Will never be large enough for that. One or two million more legal immigrants a year isn't going to do anything to eliminate the disparities between the US and other countries, such as those in Latin America. Those differences will still be there. People will still want to come here. The only way to completely eliminate the flow without relying on enforcement is to equalize our standard of living and economic opportunity with Latin America.

well as legal documents in france are printed in a completely unintelligible foreign language.  I think they call it french.  Or something.

President Bush isn't perfect.  But Kerry was much worse.  And I don't think illegal immigrants are a pro-market issue.  I think raising the bar and allowing more legal immigrants is.  Specifically the solution to the illegal immigrant problem could be very pro or anti-market.  It is my feeling from my reserach that pro-market solutions are generally more successful at achieving their goal.  If the goal is to eliminate illegal immigration, we can use a pro-market solution to achieve that goal.

Hey let me set it up for you, If there is no "temper tantrum" The leaders of the republican party (rightly) believe they can screw off the base of the party, and throw off all pretense of actual conservatism.

  Even if it means letting the Democrats back in the door, I see no alternative to voting your conscience. I will not reward people who have jacked around with my Nation.  And it goes a lot further than immigration as Zuicko alludes (I would throw in McCain/Feingold)

  IN FACT, that is the answer to Machiavel's question!  Immigration is the last straw, a break long time coming.

of immigrants (legal and illegal) are not Mexican nationalists who want to "take back" the Southwest.  Just as most Christians don't agree with Falwell that 9/11 was caused by America tolerating homosexuality.  But if Republicans insist on throwing all immigrants in with a small minority of nationalists, it is no wonder that they also worry about losing the Hispanic vote.

about legal vrs illegal immigration. What I don't understand is that you seem to think the Bush administration agrees with you.

many of us don't really mind the immigration so much as we abhor the sheer size of it, and the increasing speed of this wave.

  Previous waves of immigration were all followed by periods of cooling off to allow assimilation.

I believe I said "a large number."

And it doesn't take a "vast majority", only an extremely active, vocal minority driving a majority that does not speak any other language. To them the activist minority makes sense because they have no way to engage the rest of us or to understand our views. We made it possible for them to function completely without any language other than Spanish.

However, if Rs upset 80% of the Hispanic community by seeming xenophobic then the breakdown would be more like 4.8 million to 1.6 million which could flip a 3 million vote difference.

However, if we don't let them in in the forst place then we face neither a 3 million nor a 1.4 million advantage for the Democrats.

This seems like a no brainer. Why do you not get it?

It does not matter to me if they are entrepenuerial or not.

is most definitely NOT just about economics. In fact it is partially the same security concern you raise.

"equalize our standard of living and economic opportunity with Latin America. "

This is the long run solution.  Take Mexico as an example.  It is now the 12th largest country in the world by GDP.  It is the richest of the Latin American countries.  And most importantly for immigration purposes:

According to the director for Colombia and Mexico of the World Bank, the population below the poverty level has decreased from 24.2% to 17.6% in the general population and from 42% to 27.9% in rural areas from 2000-2004.

And remittances from immigrants is helping in that process.

As for the numbers game.  We allow about 1 million

legal immigrants each year and about 1-1.5 million more come illegally each year (high estimate).  Thus a 1% per year cap would allow 3 million immigrants per year and give every potential immigrant a good chance of being allowed to come.

FWIW, most of Europe expected much high amounts of immigration after the EU took in the Eastern European nations.  The flow happened but much less than people expected.  Actually, the biggest flow was after the Soviet Union fell.  After a couple years, the amount started to fall.  It takes a lot for someone to be willing to uproot his or her family and move to a new, foreign country far away from one's roots and extended family.  I expect the 1% solution would cut down on illegal immigration more than a wall.  But most of those who opppose illegal immigration also oppose more legal immigration.  So I doubt it will happen.

Actually you did bring race into it.Wahich is paer for the course for the pro-illegal crowd.

seem to be much assimilation going on. We made assimilation unnecessary on the alter of multi-culturalism and multi-lingualism. We don't need no steeenking assimilation. :-)

he called us racists and vigilantes.

Until recently the blogosphere right has been defined by four tenets: 1) a general libertarian sense

Its true that the blogs have been more libertarian than the country actually is. What you are seeing I think is that the real world is starting to intrude. The majority of even "right wing" bloggers would probably favor open borders and gay marriage. Both positions are hugely unpopular in the actual voting puplic.

"We made it possible for them to function completely without any language other than Spanish."

And legalization would fix that.  Those who are here legally learn English faster (including children born here).  As the Economist explains:

This dispersal is allaying the main fear of immigration's critics: that Hispanics will cluster in giant ghettos without interacting with the rest of America. It is true that illegal immigrants are often trapped in a semi-criminalised shadow economy, unable to move up or out. But for the legal sort, the signs of mobility and assimilation are everywhere--not assimilation as in becoming the same as everyone else, but assimilation as in becoming citizens, taking part in politics, enlisting in the army, paying taxes and speaking English.

America seems in no danger of becoming a society divided by language. In 2002, a survey by the Pew Hispanic Centre and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that over 90% of second-generation Hispanics were either bilingual or mainly English-speaking, split equally between the two. In the third generation, more than three-quarters were mainly English-speaking. In the same year, a market-research company, Cultural Access, found that young Latinos watched twice as much English-language as Spanish-language television.

and 5 again

  Has even one department of government been axed?

 Hell, has even one been reduced?

  You can make a principled conservative argument that except for foreign policy, the Clinton administration was 100% more conservative than the Bush administration.

With your 1% figure. I just think it isn't going to be nearly enough to reduce the flow significantly.

I really do have a problem with guest worker program though... that is my major problem with the Bush plan. We should be after permanent immigrants, not swapping them out every 6 years. That undermines any attempt to get serious on enforcement as well... it will bring in a whole lot of people on temporary visas that are not going to leave when the time is up... and we are very bad at catching and deporting people once their stay is up.

...don't do that again here.  I'm sure that you can come up with a way to show your distaste for Ms. Malkin* that doesn't involve using the tactics of Democratic Underground.

Moe

*I'm not fond of the woman myself, and she has few defenders among the Contributors these days.  But show some couth.

Do you really imagine that only a handful of border areas are affected by this? The whole country is awash in illegal aliens, not just a few counties along the border. Where do you live that you can say stuff like this? Maybe there are backwoods towns in North Dakota unaffected by immigration, but even there I doubt it.

"pro-illegal" crowd?

Links would be helpful.

one is supposed to be a citizen, In order to become a citizen one must demonstrate a proficiency in English.

So perhaps you can explain why the Voting Rights Act requires us to print ballots in foreign languages? Oh, and by the way an amendment to remove this requirment in the Voting Rights Act failed in committee today during hearing on renewal of the act. And this aidsw assimilation how?

The rage on this issue, I just don't get, other than from people who live near the border and have trespassers constantly trampling their property

My neighborhood in NJ is overrun with illegals.

has gone fine in the legal communities.  It's going about the same speed as it did with the Irish and Italians.  From the Economist:

 This dispersal is allaying the main fear of immigration's critics: that Hispanics will cluster in giant ghettos without interacting with the rest of America. It is true that illegal immigrants are often trapped in a semi-criminalised shadow economy, unable to move up or out. But for the legal sort, the signs of mobility and assimilation are everywhere--not assimilation as in becoming the same as everyone else, but assimilation as in becoming citizens, taking part in politics, enlisting in the army, paying taxes and speaking English.

America seems in no danger of becoming a society divided by language. In 2002, a survey by the Pew Hispanic Centre and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that over 90% of second-generation Hispanics were either bilingual or mainly English-speaking, split equally between the two. In the third generation, more than three-quarters were mainly English-speaking. In the same year, a market-research company, Cultural Access, found that young Latinos watched twice as much English-language as Spanish-language television.

Like their predecessors, Hispanics are busy bettering themselves. First-generation Mexican immmigrant men in their late 40s have had six fewer years of full-time education than their white American-born peers. Their sons are only one year short. That is still regrettable. A mere 10% of Hispanics have university degrees, and the high-school drop-out rate among Hispanic immigrants is worryingly high. Over 40% of 16- to 24-year-old immigrants lack a high-school diploma. But among the children of Hispanic immigrants, the drop-out rate is much lower.

Politically, Hispanics are moving into the mainstream at about the same rate as the Italians or Irish did in the 20th century. This year, Antonio Villaraigosa became mayor of Los Angeles, America's second-largest city, the first Hispanic to hold that job. In 2004, two Hispanics became senators, Mel Martinez in Florida and Ken Salazar in Colorado; 25 congressmen have Hispanic backgrounds. This might be a problem if Hispanic politicians had separatist agendas, such as demanding obligatory Spanish-language teaching in schools. But they do not. Naturally there are specific Hispanic concerns, as there are for all ethnic groups in America (for example, how to deal with illegal immigrants). But Hispanic politics is diverse, and its spectrum is similar to that of the country as a whole. It ranges from the Texan conservatism of the attorney-general, Alberto Gonzales, to the Californian liberalism of Mr Villaraigosa.

Lastly, there is evidence that new immigrants, Hispanics especially, are joining the rest of the American people in the most direct possible way: by marrying them. Almost a third of all marriages involving a Hispanic or Asian partner cross racial lines (counting Hispanics as a race for this purpose). By most standards, American rates of mixed-race marriage have been low: one in 23 marriages in 1990, up to one in 15 in 2000. Latinos seem to be leading the way in breaking down that barrier. Nearly half of all the 3.7m inter-racial marriages in the country have one Hispanic partner. In states with a lot of Hispanic immigration, the rate is surprisingly high: 14% in California and Nevada, around 11% in Washington state, Colorado and Arizona. At this rate, intermarriage will soon stop being exotic and become mainstream. It is another way of stirring the melting pot.

The people who think that criticsm of the illegal aliens is racist and wrong and nativist. I'm sure you can find a few somewhere on this page.

Things passed surreal a long time ago here.

doesn't get around much I guess. Here in Miami, and in many other parts of the country, its getting harder and harder to find someone who speaks fluent English --- and we're talking about second/third generation Americans. And the English that is spoken is getting worse not better. Twenty years ago the immigrants were striving for English, but now the numbers of Spanish speakers are so large that fluency in English has become less and less important. It is really disconcerting to try speaking to someone who is obviously not a recent immigrant in a store and find they speak broken English if at all. And don't even think about Creole.

Gingsburg, Breyer, pro-life efforts, and Hillarycare seem to be a bit different and that's just off the top of my head.  Although the Clinton Pres / Rep Congress doesn't look too bad sometimes.

Maybe there are backwoods towns in North Dakota unaffected by immigration, but even there I doubt it.

Not even there. Meatpacking seems to be about a 90% illegal business now. If ICE was serious about immigration enforcement they would start with the meatpackers. Unfortunately they are always on time with their protection money -- I mean campaign contributions.

Illegal immigration is not "pro-market". Its also not legal. The employers who engage in it need to go to jail.

I agree with your concerns about guest worker programs.  I think no change is the worst option, then guest worker programs, than higher quotas.  I think the administration felt that raising quotas would never fly so they went for the guest worker program.  My guess is that it will end up being more like an end around on the low quota.

Has a very expansive definition of the word. As he defines it, most conservatives are paleocons.

This has no resemblance to the world we see around us with our own eyes. We are rapidly becoming a suburb of Mexico.

the administration even thought about raising quotas. And in today's climate raising quotas would not be well received by the average American. So they simply ignore the problam altogether.

You do realize that there are nativists and racist who hold the same view for unsavory reasons, right?

And I'm not sure how that equates with being "pro-illegal."  I see a major debate on what to do about the illegal immigration problem.  And those who believe we should focus on market solutions are tarred as "open-borders" and "pro-illegal."  And it doesn't really help the conversation.

I think this is why the administration is pushing a Guest Worker program.  They want to find a way for people to come legally so there is less incentive to come illegally.

Anyone who is not a libertarian is a paleocon I guess. A number of people here have the same mentality.

For a lot of these people, any suggestion that America is more then just some sort of economic free trade zone seems to indicate incipient facism.

"Illegal immigration is not "pro-market". Its also not legal. The employers who engage in it need to go to jail."

I agree with all three sentences.  And I think there are pro-market solutions to the problem.  Specifically, we could raise the quotas to 1% of the US population which would give immigrants a reasonable chance of coming into the country legally and thus disincentivize illegal immigration.  This would lower illegal immigration more than a wall and would be pro-market.  Of course this could also be done in conjunction with a wall or fence too.

Where did you get the idea that "illegal immigration is 'pro-market?'"

They won't kill the Senate bill in conference, if you're talking about the same conference that gave us an even more liberal pro-illegals bill back in April.  And as for the supposed lack of wisdom that punishing the House entails, some people live in RINO districts.  If I lived in J. Dennis Hastert's district, there really wouldn't be a reason to vote GOP this year--assuming that I favor borders, which I do and Hastert doesn't.

By the way, you might want to learn what circular logic actually is.  You didn't give an example of it in your post, though you think you did.  An example of circular reasoning, from the liberals' playbook: "The death penalty is wrong because two wrongs don't make a right."  Circular because it assumes that the death penalty is wrong, which is the conclusion of the argument.  That's off the subject, but I got to show off that I know what circular logic actually is.  So I'm happy.

What difference does it make what reason people have for their views?

How do you know what reasons people have for their views?

You are aware that there are racist people who support the immigration cause, right? What is your reaction to them?

I think that if he wanted increased quotas he would demand increased quotas. He is not shy about asking for what he wants... especially on this issue. It's my belief that he prefers this program to increased quotas.

I wonder if one reason is that he thinks it will contribute to the Americanization of Mexico. Take in workers for a few years to work here, then send them back to Mexico. Then you have these quasi-Mexican-Americans who've seen how things work here who will be starting their own Mexican businesses, participating in the Mexican political process, etc.

Now I don't think there is any chance it would work like that, but that strategy would seem to fit pretty well with his beliefs.

There is also the question of what Mexico wants. You could make the argument that a guest worker program suits their needs better than permanent emigration.

yeah I should have said "and also judge appointments" But lets not forget that Clinton also cut taxes, In fact he went against his own party and signed a huge capital gains tax cut for the rich!

your on to something

Well, the thread got off to a bad start when the initial diary called the anti-immigration side "nativist". So the tone of the conservation was set pretty low from the start.

I don't see what a pro-market solution to the problem is.

I don't see what the problem is in fact. If large scale immigration, legal and/or illegal, is the solution, what exactly is the problem?

She has, in the past, favorably cited Lawrence Auster and Steve Sailer.

Take a look what two of the founders of this site said about Auster and Sailer.

I'd say that it's a clever play, given who she has cited.

Really, how many places in the country can you not find decent stores and services that speak English?  I can't imagine this is too widespread.  I mean, yeah, in my neighborhood there are an awful lot of stores with signs only in Korean, and it does irk me.  But I don't shop there; their loss.

We lost out huge on that deal.

I think she should be a little more careful about who she chooses to cite.

From the Iraq plan except without the tanks and humvees.

You wrote, "I can't wait to see how well Tancredo does in his quixotic 08 run so we can see how many are in the 'vast majority' you speak of.  Probably just about as many as were in Nader's 'vast majority.'"

Gee, that's strange... I could've sworn Tancredo isn't running anymore. Oh, well. I guess I don't know jack.

But of course the more fundamental flaw is in your assumption that voters vote based only their policy preferences rather than on a host of considerations like personal appearance, speaking ability, and perception of electability. Nothing else explains Alan Keyes's failure to get his fair share of the Republican primary votes in 1996 and 2000. Unless you think that Jean-Jacques McCain and George W. Bush are closer (in their policy preferences) to the Republican base than Keyes is? No, Keyes got next to no votes because the GOP (correctly) thinks he's unelectable.

If Tancredo goes down to the same defeat, it would be foolish to suggest that he'll lose because his views are not widely held. If there's one thing that experts on public opinion are unanimous about, it's that voters' views on the issues have very, very little to do with their voting behavior.

And in any event, you don't have to wait until the 2008 primary and general elections to see what the public thinks. All you have to do is read the polls, which you clearly haven't done. Almost twice as many people support the House bill as support the Senate bill. Which puts them right where Tancredo is on the immigration issue. Oops. Now, I remember you sneering about my suggestion that the vast majority overwhelmingly supports Tancredo's position... Care to repeat or defend that little comment?

was that most people are upset that people are breaking the law to get into the country.  There are pro-market solutions to that problem.

If the problem is having a lot of immigrants, then we disagree on the problem.  I believe immigration is good for the country.  We need policies that help assimilation but as I posted down thread in a huge block quote assimilation is going better than many want to admit.

Now step away from the nice Contributor trying to spray fire-retardant foam on the burning thread.

Hey I was mistaken in the view that LA was the illegal capital of the US, it may be but I'm willing to give up the crown to Fargo, or Grand Forks, or Williston, or Dickerson, Fortuna or anywhere else that wants it....Don't ya know.

If Hispanics are assimilating so successfully, then why does my ATM ask me if I want instructions in Spanish? Why do so many phone numbers I call ask me if I want to hear everything in Spanish? Why do I have to be bilingual just to order dinner at Wendy's? (I live in upstate New York, not Miami.) No, the plain fact is that assimilation isn't happening.

I think W does some things for political reasons.  For example, I think his support of the FMA is politically driven.  So he could support higher quotas and not push them for political reasons.

However, your view of guest workers returning and adding their entrepreneurial stamp to Mexico is also interesting.  A form of reverse brain-drain.  Interesting.

if we're talking restaurants, then the only ones where the people speak English tolerably well are the Chinese restaurants. Which isn't such a bad thing, since Chinese is my favorite food. Still, I'd like to be able to order a hamburger with no cheese and have the person I'm talking to UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M SAYING. I didn't go move to Spain or Mexico, so I shouldn't have to say, "Una hamburguesa sin queso, por favor." If he's coming to America, then he should learn how to speak English. I guess that makes me a bigot.

My guess is that businesses learned that it was profitable to offer multiple languages.  And with a growing bilingual population it makes sense to offer multiple languages.  But why does punching 1 on a phone bug people so much?  I think that is what the original diarist was getting at.  There is an illegal immigrant problem but why do people get so emotional at hearing "press one for English"?

I am even more bewildered as to why we, as unwavering free market conservatives, have been suddenly transformed into nativists?

The open borders movement is not free market conservatism. It is the opposite of it. Free market conservatism holds that different places and people should specialize in different areas and abandon certain ares to other places and people who have a competitive advantage in them.

You know, Adam Smith.

This should mean that if it is cheaper to grow vegetables in Mexico and import them to the US, we should do that. Instead of importing Mexican wage workers to the US. The same applies for a wide range of jobs and products.

Since you are appearently free to cast "nativist" aspersions, I would speculate that the people on your side are motivated by little more than greed, and view America as no more than an economic development zone.

It's the battle with the Democrats I'm worried about.

NYC's ethnic mix is so varied that you don't walk around all day saying "hey look: Mexicans!"

As for meat-packing jobs and the like, those jobs at $19/hour were always going to be vulnerable.  Look at the auto industry.

that's right big of ya.  Ya know.

The adverse effect of illegal immigration on the economy will be a small fraction of the damage that the next 9/11, if any, will have. The economic Ground Zero will consist of all 50 states including your zip code area. While 2/3 s of Americans protect the nation's economy from illegal immigrants from Mexico, count on the other 1/3 to protect it from Islamic terrorists. Consistent with American history, only 1/3 of the colonialists supported the American Revolution.  "Liberty" also allows focus and priorities to divide Americans.  With the port terminals free of Arabs, and the Mexican border sealed, only fear of the CIA tracking your phone usage may remain.

But really, all we're talking about here is perspective.  Is illegal immigration a legit issue?  Yeah.  The issue is why exactly it has to bring forth all this anger that seems to overwhelm the conservative coalition's ability to hold together to accomplish other things in 2006.

Quite simply it doesn't have to.

And the examples you cite are the tip of the iceberg. The do-gooders made sure that they don't have to assimilate by adopting multi-culturalism, multi-lingualism, English-as-a-Second-Language in school that somehow goes on and on year after year and never leads to English proficiency, etc., etc.

And if assimilation is working so well why do we legally have to print ballots in a zillion different languages when naturalization supposedly requires a proficiency in English?

What polling, can you give a link that shows that it's not one of those loaded polls?

As to '08, why wait? If the hard nose House immigration plan stands and no compromise position between it and the more liberal Senate plan is reached, resulting in no immigration reform at all, want to bet how voters will react?  The Senate will vote from some form of reform, but not the Houses hard nose approach, no matter what poll you think you have seen.

About the only consensus out there is increased boarder security, heck even the Dems seem to support that. But the "Round Them Up, send them home", make it a felony to be here illegally or help illegals in any way, I don't see that making it past the Senate or for that matter the President.

I can understand people not liking bilingual education (we call it "immersion" here... I thought the point of immersion was to learn a new language -- not to avoid learning one)... but the 1 for English stuff doesn't really bother me.

When I go to Mexico I am able to get by on mostly English. I can fall back on my really horrible Spanish when that doesn't work, but most of the people know English better than I know Spanish. Is there a similar backlash there? I don't see it.

In fact, I'd suggest to you that most sovereign states, for most of history, had no more control over their border than we have today

Can you think of any other countries, anywhere in the world or at any time in history, which have had borders as open as ours, and allowed as much immigration?

Do you know that America takes in more immigrants each year by a large measure than any other country in the world?

because the proponents of the guest worker program have no illusion that it will lead to people returning home. Once here there will be some path to residency and citizenship --- it just won't have to be called amnesty thata all.

I'm surprised at the support here - and elsewhere - for legal immigration levels of 1% of current population.  That's about 3 million a year. Over 30 years, that's another 100 million people in the US.  Not counting "family re-unification".

These 100 million will be less educated, poorer, and less productive than the current population.  In those numbers, they will be difficult to assimilate.

Given cheap international airfare, these is no particular reason to assume most of them will be Mexican or South American - there are lots of peasants in India, China, and the rest of the Third World who would be happy to come to the US and work for even lower wages.

Tell me again why this is a good idea?

The stats about the overall unemployment rate being 4.7 percent are irrelevant, since he's talking about one sector of the economy.  And in 2000, 65 percent of black males without high school diplomas were unemployed; in 2004, that figure was 72 percent.  It's surely higher today.  Today, more than half of black men in their 20s (high school diploma) are jobless. That's not "institutional racism" in action, it's illegals taking jobs that previously were done disproportionately by blacks.

To what...importation of slave labor under the guise of illegal immigrants?  That's a good thing?

you are just visiting, you aren't moving in.

The same thing is true around the world. Visit Paris and you can stumble on in English just fine. But if you emigrate there (I can't imagine why but this is a hypothetical ... :-) you will not find your citizenship test in English, you will not find the ballot in English, etc.

And if assimilation is working so well why do we legally have to print ballots in a zillion different languages when naturalization supposedly requires a proficiency in English?

Because we have an imperial judiciary that just decides what the law of the land is going to be that day over breakfast? Just be glad we don't have to let illegals vote -- yet. Or deliver the ballots to their house with instructions in the same zillion languages that describe how to vote for the Democrat -- yet. Or give everybody a month to vote as often as they want -- yet.

it strikes to everything else we are trying to accomplish.

It threatens to tip the whole country solidly to the left. The GOP may or may not be the majority party in it, but it will not be a conservative country as we understand it.

It will make America more like Mexico. That is, it will make it more corrupt, more poor, with a government more out of touch with the rabble it rules over.

It will bring in more and more big government social programs, which the GOP is alredy very fond of.

to what, offshore outsourcing to India?

that this was not a judicial fiat, it is in the Voting Rights Act. And an amendment to remove it from the law before it is renewed failed in committee yesterday. This is one we can't blame on judicial activism.

Thats all very scary sounding. In fact it will hardly take 2/3 of Amerians to "protect us" from Mexicans.

Really, we don't need illegal immigrants, and we probably don;t need legal imigrants either.

Buld a fence, jail some employers for hiring Illegals, and get back to fighting the GWOT. Which is another thing the GOP is dropping the ball on.

Visit Paris and you can stumble on in English just fine.

I couldn't do much at all in Paris in English. I had a hard time even ordering at the McDonald's across the street from the train station. You would think they'd pick up enough to handle an order for the "Royale with Cheese," but I guess not. :)

like what?

More campaign finance reform? Perhaps so; there are still a few specks of freedom that haven't yet been wiped out by our wonderful conservative Republican President and Congress.

More spending on unconstitutional and unproductive social programs? Perhaps so; the national debt is only $8 trillion about now.

More bureaucratic labyrinths with national security agencies duplicating each other's work and cross-charging and undermining each other? I feel so much safer now than I did on Sept. 12, don't you? I also feel that it'll rain Hershey's Kisses!

More laws that strip the states of their control over education and continue to feed a federal bureaucracy that doesn't even deserve to exist? How well is No Child Left Behind really working, anyway? "Is our children learning?"

More botched wars? I'm sure that the Democrats will be so much worse with Iran than the GOP has been with Iraq. And I'm sure that it's really in America's interest to keep getting involved in the political affairs of the Middle East. Oh, which reminds me:

More insistences on democracy in the Middle East, followed by expressions of shock and condemnation of democracy when it puts into power the people we don't like, thereby further undermining our credibility in a part of the world that apparently doesn't hate us enough? (E.g., our hypocrisy on Hamas. Now do we like democracy in the Middle East or not?)

More infuriating Supreme Court picks like Consuelo Callahan? (Those who like Roberts should remember that Justice Kennedy was conservative for four years, and unlike Roberts he'd actually expressed some opinions as a mature adult and didn't spend umpteen hours talking about how important precedent is. They should also remember that Roberts came out of the same process that gave us Harriet Miers. Expect no more Alitos with Bush's goal of appointing a Hispanic unfulfilled.)

Screw the GOP, they've left no betrayal unused.

I'm glad you like it there, really I am. But I see no reason why the entire country needs to be like Queens.

is horrid and I did better than that :-)

There is a conception that Parisians don't like Americans and this is simply untrue; they don't like anyone even other Frenchmen :-)

Or he had Ed Gillespie and his wife say we're sexists. Well, you'd have to be a sexist to think that Harriet Miers isn't fit to serve on the Supreme Court, right? I mean, look at her qualifications. She's... a person! Just like Scalia and Thomas!

The illegal and legal immigration going on right now that gets you in the ballpark of 1%. So 1% would not be a radical change if that included the current legal immigration and we could cut out the illegal activity.

You could also point out that they will tip the country to a majority pro-life.  They are staunchly against same-sex marriage.  They value hard work and want to succeed through their efforts.  In general, they agree that "it takes a family."

As a general social moderate, fiscal conservative, most recent immigrants are not necessarily in line with my views.  But they are socially conservative and could easily be Republicans rather than Democrats if efforts are made.

I also doubt your contention about immigrants making the country more corrupt.  I think it is more likely that immigrants will follow the path of past immigrants and become less corrupt here.  They will also become richer (and help make their home country's richer through remittances).

increasing the legal quotas will not dry up the illegals. Those folks are not interested in filling out applications and getting in line. All an increased quota does in add even more immigrants, not offset the illegals.

If we were to repeal it or let it expire tomorrow... do you have any doubt that the courts would come up with their own version before the next election?

First, a lot of Hispanics aren't learning English. And offering bilingual services makes it a lot easier for such people to continue living here without learning English.

Second, you didn't address my restaurant example. Businesses of that sort aren't offering bilingual services; the people I meet don't even know what "no cheese" means. And I live in upstate New York! And this is the way it is not just in every non-Chinese restaurant I go to, but all over the country. Now, might that say something about the failure of assimilation?

If the full 1% come every year that is true.  I doubt that will happen every year.  Right now many of the biggest problems in the developed world come from an aging population and slow population growth.  Europe, Japan, and Russia are getting hit harder than us mainly because we are more pro-immigrant.

But FWIW, most people would not support this solution.  I think it is the best pro-market solution to illegal immigration.

Enforcement needs to be beefed up first (I would settle for at the same time). We need a fence. We need to track and deport people who overstay visas (and never let them back in the country again). We need to severely punish employers who hire illegals (after giving them a decent system to verify work status).

The areas in the US with heavy concentrations of Hispanics are already Dem or Dem leaning. These new immigrants, most of them poor, will be natural Dem voters. The influx of Mexicans played a big part in tipping CA from a Republican state to a solidly Democratic one.

A lot of people say what you say, but if it happens it will take at least a generation.

Past generations DID make America more corrupt. The Italian and Irish gangs of the prohibition area for example.

It's swell for Mexico that it gets all that money sent back to it, but I'd prefer if we hired Americans who spent their money in this country.

if we're importing this much poverty, driving down wages this much, bringing in so many more gangs (and whether or not you want to admit it, violent crime is going way up where the illegals are making their homes), bringing in more--shall we say--human ailments (tuberculosis didn't come back because of the hated Tom Tancredo, it came back because of illegal immigrants), bringing in more welfare recipients who don't pay anywhere near enough in taxes to compensate for what they take, bringing in more future Democrats who vote for increasingly unsustainable expansions of welfare services, bringing in more beneficiaries of (and supporters of) affirmative action...

No, not worth it. Stopping gays from getting married takes a back seat to saving America from financial self-destruction, from increased violent crime, etc.

And even besides all that, it doesn't matter that Hispanics are more conservative on a few issued because Hispanics vote for politicians who don't represent their views. Hispanics aren't as likely to vote Democratic as blacks, but nevertheless they vote Democratic. Whites vote for Dems and Republicans who oppose them on illegal immigration, and Hispanics are no different on those issues where they're conservative. Sorry, there's not going to be any rightward shift on any issue because of the influx of Hispanics. The only changes will be more affirmative action, more spending, and so on.

Then we can talk about dealing with the illegals that remain here after the jobs dry up.

That areas of the US with heavy concentrations of any kind of people are already Dem or Dem leaning. Cities are liberal. Whether there are Hispanics present or not.

As for CA, that is in no small part thanks to their horrible, rotten party. I don't know what I'd do if I lived in CA, but it certainly wouldn't involve writing any checks to the CA GOP.

Densely populated places lean left. The more densely populated the country is, the more it will lean left.

and go to Question 3.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/2006poll.html

Delighted to provide it.

"Those folks are not interested in filling out applications and getting in line."

Most illegals come that way because they have no other realistic option.  We need to change the incentive structure.  A fence would help with that by making the illegal passage harder.  Higher quotas would make the legal route easier.  That's a good two way policy for changing the incentive structure.

To us at least. But the Senate is already rigging the process to push the pro-amnesty bill through.

Maybe we can find forty votes to fillibuster.

 in the libertarian-conservative camp, and I definitely want the borders secured.

The end of the nation-state will be a disaster.

Give me structured liberty of give me death.

as if their coming here is as unavoidable as rain falling from the sky, and all we should worry about is how to get them the correct paperwork.

We don't need higher quotas.

the fact is they will a) not get in because they have no skills; b) will not wait in line for the time it takes to find out (a).

Increasing the quota will not solve this unless you lower the bar to "immigrate to America, no skills required."

TX - no.  Both are majority minority states.  But while Hispanics grew in TX, it became more Republican.  President Bush won 49% of the Hispanic vote in TX.  He won 56% of the Hispanic vote in FL.  In CA, Republicans were successfully tarred as anti-Hispanic and President Bush won only 35% of the Hispanic vote there.

I also think where immigrants come affects their politics.  Thus, the immigrantion in FL, TX, NC, and GA are more likely to interact and see Republican leadership.  The anti-Hispanic tarring doesn't work in those places as much.  CA is the opposite.  FWIW, in NM, AZ, NV, and CO President Bush won the states even though Hispanic immigration is large there.

CA seems to be more of an exception and it may have to do with offending Hispanics rather than just high immigration levels.

Total copout.  It's not going to be repealed because of all the minority pressure that the free-market, anti-borders crowd has allowed, nay, encourages, to strengthen so. Failure to assimilate has given modern immigrants an entitlement mentality--which we saw on display at those protests.

So the courts would be the second problem; the first is our culture, which the free-market people have done so much to poison, advocating that we bring in ever so many people, with no attention to the effect that mass immigration would have on assimilation.

Better to have lots of cheap labor than the intermittently open immigration policy that served our country so well until 1965--or so the border libertines think, anyway. And what's their solution? More immigration! But more legal immigration--we won't have an illegal-immigration problem if we bring the same people in legally!

I would agree that the polling you cite makes your case, but I doubt the Senate will go along with the House hard nose approach.

So if things end up, No bill rather than a bad bill, I still say Republicans will loose in the fall, Big Time.

Look at what happened to Prop 187. Look at what happens every time a state tries to require ID to vote. Courts would jump on an English only ballot so fast it would make your head spin.

Check out Democrats like Henry Cuellar.  Some of the few remaining conservative Ds are the Hispanic ones, such as Mr. Cuellar.  And they are voting for Republicans in greater numbers thanks to the outreach of President Bush.  He won 49% of the Hispanic vote in TX and 56% of the FL Hispanics.

In fact, President Bush's share of the white vote in FL didn't change from 2000 and 2004.  His increase came entirely from black and Hispanic voters.

Black unemployment is lower than it was under Clinton on average.  It is lower than the average over the past 10 years and the average over the past 15 years.

You said,

Terrorists could cross the border. But they'd be more likely to get here unmolested if they crossed from Canada into Washington state, Montana, or North Dakota. About a third of illegals crossing the Mexico border get caught, at least temporarily, for a total of 750,000 detentions a year -- a staggering sum. How we wish that number were higher -- but for a Middle Eastern terrorist, a 33% failure rate at the border is an operational risk probably none are willing to take. Safer to get in using a phony student visa -- a more labor-intensive process, but one with a lower fail rate. (And we haven't been attacked since 9/11 despite our wide-open border, so we must be doing something right.)

Before my current job in Baghdad, I was in a government position where I received classified briefings on these issues on a daily basis.  Terrorists are in fact using our border with Mexico as an entry point, because they blend in so well with the other people coming over.  I can't tell you specific examples without losing my clearance, but the ones I saw would shock you and make you sick that our government is doing so little to stop it.

We should be building a wall and relocating military bases to points all along the borders, both North and South.  This is the most pressing national security imperative we face at the moment.

I'm not willing to see any reform enacted, just as long as there's something good in it. If there's something bad in it, it's going to be bad enough that it won't be worth it. Because the bad will be amnesty. And I won't accept that under any circumstances.

The voters aren't going to say, "Well, they passed an amnesty, and lied that it wasn't an amnesty, but they did provide for an extra 1,000 Border Patrol agents and promise that the law will be enforced from now on..." The voters were told that enforcement would follow the 1986 amnesty. They're not falling for that lie again. So if they see, "Amnesty, plus laws that call for more enforcement," they're not going to like it just because, on paper, it's a compromise. They went for a compromise in 1986. They've learned from their mistake.

And I don't think I've seen the poll I've cited, I did see it. If you think you know what the American people think better than people whose profession involves finding out what they think, then I'm curious to know how many mirrors Your Arrogance has worn out today.

You also wrote, "[T]he 'Round Them Up, send them home', make it a felony to be here illegally or help illegals in any way, I don't see that making it past the Senate or for that matter the President." True, but from my perspective, that just means that our Senate and President stink. I'm through with the GOP.

he said sarcastically.

So in Bush's home state, in which he has lived and been governor, and in which the hispanic population is more receptive to the GOP, Bush managed to get 49% of the hispanic vote. This does not fill me with optimism that the hispanic population on the whole will start voting for us any time in the next generation.

Seriously, why is anyone pushing this crazy notion to make ten million or so of them American citizens? Its political suicide for conservatives. The Republican party can just get itself new principles and adapt, which it seems to be well on its way to doing already. But the majority of its voters are going to be hosed, including most people on this site.

doesn't make your case. After it was struck down, California could've appealed it to the Supreme Court. (It wasn't SCOTUS that struck down 187.) It was pro-illegal (say, pro-market, at least on immigration) Governor Gray Davis who refused to appeal it. The problem is, as I say, more fundamentally with the pro-illegal culture that the libertines have done so much to nourish. It's the culture before it's the courts. We didn't even have a chance to get the issue before SCOTUS.

But don't take offense when people say you are anti-immigrant then.

There are ways to dry up illegal immigration and secure the border by using pro-market means.  If you don't want to do that becuase you don't want more immigrants in the country that's your opinion.  I think immigration is good for the country and should be welcomed.  We differ on the solution to this problem.

Here is how I put it last year:

Conservatives Reward Hard Work

Anyone who is willing to uproot his or her family from their home and from their extended family to take a risk so that their children can grow up with opportunities they never had is the type of person conservatives should be extending a helping hand to. Anyone dedicated to hard work as the primary means for seeking opportunities is an ally of the conservatives. Anyone who relies on their community before relying on their government is the type of citizen conservatives should be greeting with open arms. Most immigrants move to America for the golden opportunity of living in a country that is as economic free as we are. If they were looking for a welfare state Canada and Europe would be attractive options, but most immigrants want to come to America. We continue to be a beacon of the possibility that hard work is rewarded and that a strong worker will receive his or her due. Whether it is working in fields, in restaurants, in cafeterias, or in offices, immigrants often work jobs that are best characterized as semi-skilled or blue collar. These mothers and fathers are raising children with the belief that hard work is the path to success and they serve as a strong example to the next generation that responsibility garners respect. In many ways, today's immigrants are merely the most recent wave of lower-middle class citizens who have worked hard to provide their children with unlimited opportunities and it will not surprise me to see the second generation immigrants as successful businessmen, doctors, lawyers, professors, and politicians in numbers so large that our stereotype of immigrants and blue collar labor will be outdated

Or as Dick Armey put it: "I'm hard-pressed to think of a single problem that would be solved by shutting off the supply of willing and eager new Americans."

but hardly a good reason to grant American citizenship to several million Mexicans.

Lets assume for the moment that every single Mexican granted American citizenship would become a lifelong Republican. So what? We already have the government. We can win elections just fine as it is. What we are lacking is the willingness to use that power for anything the party supposedly stands for. Can you suggest how that will improve with the arrival of lots of new GOP voters?

Voters are not our problem. Its the politicians that are the problem. Maybe we can instead import some politicans from foreign countries. From what I've seen foreign born Americans are a lot more protective of the country then the native born, who just assume that nothing they do to it can ever harm it.

America does not need new workers. It needs new management.

It was struck down by the California Supreme Court. They don't answer to SCOTUS, except in the most unusual and exceptional circumstances (where federal issues are involved, such as Bush v. Gore). SCOTUS isn't the arbiter of what is and is not allowable under the 50 different state constitutions. They don't review state supreme court decisions. The state supreme courts are called supreme for a reason.

For every Henry Cuellar there are five Xavier Becerras and Jose Serranos.  The Hispanic elected officials are to the left of the salad ford. And Hispanics often elect non-Hispanic ultraliberals anyway. You talk about the "few remaining conservative Ds [who] are... Hispanic," but the sample size for that is so small that it renders your point useless.

And I recall someone else on this site debunking your Bush figures. Florida is irrelevant because that state is full of Cubans. It's not Cubans who're coming into this country from Mexico. And Hispanic immigrants overall are overwhelmingly Democrats; Cubans are the exception. Mexicans are the majority of Hispanics in this country. And in both Texas and Florida, we have something artificially driving up the Republican take of the Hispanic vote: Hispanics who are also second- and third-generation Americans. That won't be a factor when it comes to illegals and their children. When they get amnesty, they'll vote for the Democrats in huge numbers.

By the way, did Reagan win the Hispanic vote for the GOP in 1986 when the pro-borders wing of the GOP was making nowhere near as much noise? No? Oh, then, why would we think it'll help us now to open the borders more if it didn't work back then--now, when the GOP is less monolithically pro-illegal than it used to be? It wouldn't be more lies from the market libertines about the positive electoral effects of welcoming these lawbreakers, would it? Just like their lies about how NAFTA was going to reduce illegal immigration?

Also, I note that you didn't cite the figures for the three other states where Hispanics are as significant in determining the state's vote as is the case in Texas and Floria. And those states are California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Gee, I wonder why you didn't cite those? Maybe because an honest picture of Hispanic voting, which would entail showing the figures for those states as well (given how important Hispanics are in those states' voting behavior), would show that non-Cuban Hispanics aren't anywhere near as favorable to Republicans outside of Texas? Naw, couldn't be that. That would be dishonest!

You note that "President Bush's share of the white vote in FL didn't change from 2000 and 2004. His increase came entirely from black and Hispanic voters." True, whites saw Bush turn left on affirmative action in 2002 and 2003, and on immigration in January 2004. Had Bush turned right, his share of the white vote would've increased. I, for one, refused to vote Bush in 2004, and have sworn off the GOP for life, because of its left turns on those two issues (and, admittedly, a lot of others, but immigration was the last straw).

We differ on the solution to this problem.

As I keep asking, if immigration is the solution, what exactly is the problem?

Every other country in the world manages to get by without anything like the level of immigration we have, legal and illegal.

What I'm concerned with is not black doctors and lawyers and administrators (whose jobs the illegals obviously don't threaten), but UNSKILLED blacks. Their unemployment rate has only gone up and will only continue to, because of illegal immigration.

Hispanics voted 53-44 for Kerry.  This leads you to say that "Its political suicide for conservatives."

First, Hispanics are generally conservative, even the non-Republicans.  Adding Hispanic immigration will probably make the country more conservative.

Second, the trend from 20+% for Dole in 1996, then 35% for Bush in 2000, and finally 44% in 2004 is pretty clear.  If Republicans are tarred as anti-Hispanic it may drop back to the 20s.  Then you are right about the possible affects.  But there are many groups that went 53-44 in the last election.  People aren't flipping out about single women or asians or other groups that are narrowly Democratic.  If Hispanics voted 90-10 one way then it would be a bigger deal.

But if 30-50% of a group vote and they split 60/40, then the impact is very minor unless they are a huge part of the voting population.  For example, whites voted 58-41 for President Bush and that made a big difference.

Since Hispanics were only 8% of the voting electorate and they split their vote 53-44, they didn't change the overall distribution almost at all.

I think a huge new group of voters who are pro-life, religious, hard working, and committed to families is a great thing for the country and if the party was smart it would be a great thing for Republicans too.

If you want employment/unemployment stats in the US a good place to start is http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

You could do some research yourself.  I included TX and FL because they are the largest states with major Hispanic populations besides CA.

But here ya go, the President's percentage of the Hispanic vote in border states.

FL: 56

TX: 49

NM: 44

AZ: 43

CA: 35

Yes, CA and FL are outliers.  But anything over 40% is not much of a difference for a group as small as Hispanics (8% of voters).  For comparison, the best President Bush did with black voters was in OK where he won 28%.

I'd like to see these statistics with source and numbers.  Where are they?

had an opportunity to appeal it to SCOTUS because the Supreme Court of California struck down Prop 187 on the grounds that it violated the federal Constitution. Davis said, we're not gonna do it. Yes, they do call it the Supreme Court of California for a reason, but guess what, the Supreme Court of the United States can and does overturn state supreme court decisions. One rather famous example of that is Bush v. Gore. Oops.

http://www.newsobserver.com/691/story/431611.html

Just repeating that Hispanics are hard-working, pro-life, religious, etc is going nowhere.

Blacks are quite culturally conservative. The GOP freed the slaves and passed the Civil Rights Act. And they still vote 90% Dem.

Your notion that Hispanics will support the GOP if it votes to give citizenship to millions of Mexicans here illegally is insulting to both the GOP and to law abiding Hispanics.

If HIspanics like what we stand for, then they will naturally come to us, without us prostituing ourselves in search of their votes.

Really, this kind of racial calculus is more apporpriate for the Democrats. You are not an ex-Dem by any chance? Some of them bring their bad habits over with them.

the more convinced I am that this is a crazy idea. The numbers you yourself are giving us indicate that making the country more Hispanic would make it more difficult for Bush to have been elected. If the states in question had had several million more Hispanic voters, than Kerry would be President today.

I think you need to come up with a more convincing argument then this.

First of all, how do you demagogue an issue by showing something that happened? Was it misleading? Was the guy holding the flag upside down at gunpoint? Give me a break.

You give a ratio of 1,000 American flags right-side-up for every American flag held upside down, but how on earth could you possibly know that? You say that the ratio was "probably" that, but on what basis do you say that? I'd be amazed if there even were 1,000 American flags. As Mickey Kaus observed, there were so many Mexican flags that if you said "Mexican flag" every time you saw one, you'd never stop saying "Mexican flag."

It's important that people got to see the upside-down flag (or a burning American flag), since the open-borders media weren't so interested in letting us see it. And you obviously have a problem with our seeing things like that because it makes these lawbreakers look bad. But it was there, and we did deserve to see it.

I think that these marchers are fundamentally anti-American. It's revealing that we saw so many Mexican flags notwithstanding the organizers' plea for the marchers to bring American flags because they knew what it would make the American people think of the marchers. But the marchers didn't care. That's how brazen these people are. It's the entitlement mentality. They demand of us what they want, as if they've a right to it, and they won't even ask in a way that makes us want to give it to them. They might as well have carried placards saying, "Al infierno con los gringos."

They aren't helping anyone.

"If HIspanics like what we stand for, then they will naturally come to us, without us prostituing ourselves in search of their votes."

And they have come to us.  If by us you mean President Bush.  And he is proposing a solution to the illegal immigrant problem that will help end illegal immigration and not drive away Hispanic voters from the party.  We don't have to "prostitute ourselves."  We are doing fine as is.  We shouldn't sabotage it by railing against immigrants in addition to trying to solve the illegal immigration problem.

You wrote, "I included TX and FL because they are the largest states with major Hispanic populations besides CA." Besides CA? Then why not put in CA as well? Because CA is an outlier? Oh, but so is FL, so that can't be the explanation. So the explanation is that you made a transparent effort to deceive us on the issue of Hispanics and the GOP.

I note that the three states you didn't cite have the smallest percentages of Hispanic support for Bush, of the five states where the Hispanic vote is the most important. Well, Hispanics are important in New York as well, albeit less so (percentage-wise) than in CA, FL, TX, NM, or AZ. Still, what's the percentage in NY? I'd love to see what that does for your theory. You say that I could do my own research, but you're the guy who brought up TX and FL, the states that most support your argument, and ignored all the states that support my argument: that more Hispanics inevitably means way more Democrats.

Dishonesty alone explains your choice of data.

I'm rebutting the argument that 12 million new voters would all become lifelong democrats.  They would split about evenly and more than half wouldn't vote.  The point is the fearmongering about Hispanics totally shifting the partisan makeup of the country is incorrect.  It will not shift anything for decades at the soonest unless Republicans become the xenophobic party that dislikes immigrants.

And another way to look at the Hispanic influx is that it is shifted electoral votes to AZ, TX, FL, GA, and NC while MA, NY, MI, IL and PA lose seats.  If we added 20 million Mexican immigrants to TX tomorrow and they voted they voted the same way TX Hispanics vote today, Republicans would be winning 60-40 and TX would be worth 50+ EVs.

I'm not arguing we should let in more legal immigrants for partisan reasons.  I'm saying that it won't tilt the scales either way unless Republicans become known as anti-Hispanic.

So you are saying that black criminal rates went up because more Hispanics are in the country?

The jobless rate includes those who are not looking for work, those who are in jail, and those who are in school.  The unemployment rate is the number of people looking for work who can't find a job.  That number is down.  Even the article points out that blacks jobless rate is related to the rise in the number of incarcerated black twenty-somethings.  Finally, it's an op-ed without a source for its data.

Here is the census page.  It won't let me link directly to the unemployment rate data for blacks, but you can click on the boxes and retrieve the data.

I'm not being dishonest.  I've put up with your name calling and incivility.  Cut it out or you're gone.

As for the substance, CA was addressed upthread by someone.  I had already discussed it.  And my point was that Republicans can win Hispanic voters over if they make the effort.  I'm done searching for data for you.  The exit poll link is in my other comments.  The overall percentage for the country is 44% for Bush and 53% for Kerry.  I'm sure NY and CA are the most pro-Kerry of the major Hispanic populations and TX and FL are the most pro-Bush.  Since those 4 make up most of the Hispanic population in the country, the other states won't affect the overall average very much.

Hispanics do not mean "way more Democrats."  They do if Republican come off as anti-Hispanic.  Otherwise they mean "way more swing voters."  Voters we can and have won in elections.  

I thought the problem was illegal immigrants breaking the law to come here.  We can solve that problem by making legal immigration more plausible and illegal immigration more difficult.

If the problem is the fact that we have immigrants in the country, then we disagree on the problem.  I believe immigration is good for the country.  Those who do not are the definition of nativist.

driving up the unemployment rate wasn't supported by any data; when I see data followed by an assertion that has no data of its own to support it, I ignore it. No evidence was given to show an increase in the black incarceration rate. Even were there such an increase, I don't agree with the analysis. Incarceration certainly makes it harder to find work when you get out of jail (though the rising crime rates among Hispanics don't seem to be having that effect), but it doesn't affect the unemployment rate until then, because the unemployment rate is calculated by taking into account people who are not employed yet who are seeking employment, and people who are in jail aren't looking for work. I did have better sources than that article, but don't have access to them at the moment.

The Republicans are made up of Paleos (anti-all immigration ALA Tancredo to hell with all other issues; [side note: paleos hate McCain more than Hillary Clinton]), Reaganites (anti-illegal immigration, pro legal/market based solutions to this 2nd rate issue ALA Martinez-Hagel, and RINOs/Rockafellers (pro-tax and/or pro-choicers ALA Snowe, Collins, Voinivich)

Sign a Bill Mr. President, or Say Hello To President Witch in Jan '09.

I didn't address the jobless/unemployed distinction because I thought that the author was fudging the two, and folding the former into the latter. Hence I was talking only about unemployment stats.

I don't hate Bush, I would never cast a vote for McCain as POTUS, and I think the Senate immigration bill is garbage (much worse than nothing), while the House bill is fine (much better than nothing). Does that make me a paleocon? Even though I am not isolationist and am a free market guy? Even though I care for Buchanan even less than I like McCain? I would say there are some holes in your definition.

In a close election, like 2004, states like AZ and NM do in fact matter quite a lot, since we have an electoral-college system. So the fact that Hispanics are an important part of the vote in those states (and an increasingly important part, as their population grows) makes them very important to the outcome of presidential elections. Thus, it makes no sense for you to omit them just because they're not such a large percentage overall, the states being small. So I think that what I said was totally fair.

President Bush flipped NM from Gore to Bush between 2000 and 2004.  The entire gain in FL between 2000 and 2004 was from black and Hispanic voters.  That increased the margin from 49-49 to 52-47.  My point is that these voters are winnable if we try.  President Bush (and Governor Bush in FL) have done very well in that category.  We could use a similar leader in CA at some point.

with your numerous statements implying that for the GOP to take a hard line on immigration will alienate Hispanics by showing them that the GOP is anti-Hispanic. You're aware that 53 percent of Hispanics support the House bill, right?

http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/2006poll.html

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/2006/05/11/196974.html

Don't worry, I'm not making any statement about your honesty here. I notice that you're sensitive about that. On that subject, I also noticed your saying in comment 199 that the comment in 194 was insulting... I didn't see any insult in there. Don't be so sensitive.

it's alienating white voters. Bush would've had an increase in white support if it hadn't been for his views on affirmative action and immigration.

I think that letting people know that you support discrimination against whites isn't going to help bring white voters to your side. But coupling that with a policy that puts illegal aliens on a path to citizenship (and thus legal entitlement to discriminatory benefits disfavoring whites) is only going to make matters worse.

Now that the public has had a chance to see his views come into sharper relief (since the issue has come more into the foreground than in January 2004) I think that Bush would notice a considerable dropoff in support among whites.

thick skinned and least easy to offend of all the moderators.  If he is telling you to lay off, you'd do well to listen.  Some of the others can get down right cranky, pretty darn quick.

Our home, our rules.

dems are down right freakin' hawks on immigration.  NOT!

it doesn't affect the unemployment rate.  It does affect the jobless rate which is different.  The unemployment rate of blacks has decreased and is lower than the average over the past 10 and 15 years.  The jobless number may be higher if there are fewer blacks looking for jobs or in jail for any reason.  My point was that the one statistic from upthread and in the op-ed talks about jobless numbers and points out the incarceration numbers as part of the story.  It has nothing to say to counter the point that black unemployment is (relatively) low and has been going down for a while.

As for your "no evidence..." point, here is the quote from the article:

By 2004 the figure had reached 72 percent and was made worse by the rise in the incarceration rate for blacks.

 By 2004, 21 percent of black men in their 20s who did not attend college had spent time in jail or prison.

The causal mechanism posited has nothing to do with illegal immigration, but rather a rise in incarceration.  Black unemployment is down and unemployment in general is down.

If there is data about a subgroup with higher than usual unemployment over the past decade or so, I'd be interested in it.  I know there is some evidence that wage growth has slowed in some low skill sectors.  Here is an economist article on the topic which reviews several academic articles on the topic of immigration and its effect on wages.  

Empirical evidence* is as inconclusive as the theory. One method is to compare wage trends in cities with lots of immigrants, such as Los Angeles, with those in places with only a few, such as Indianapolis. If immigration had a big effect on relative pay, you would expect this to be reflected in differences between cities' wage trends. David Card, of the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the leading advocates of this approach. His research suggests that although there are big differences between cities' proportions of immigrants, this has had no significant effect on unskilled workers' pay. Not everyone is convinced by Mr Card's technique. His critics argue that the geographical distribution of immigrants is not random. Perhaps low-skilled natives leave cities with lots of immigrants rather than compete with them for jobs, so that immigration indirectly pushes up the supply of low-skilled workers elsewhere (and pushes down their wages). Mr Card has tested the idea that immigration displaces low-skilled natives and found scant evidence that it does.

An alternative approach, pioneered by George Borjas, of Harvard University, is to tease out the effect of immigration from national wage statistics. Mr Borjas divides people into categories, according to their education and work experience. He assumes that workers of different types are not easily substitutable for each other, but that immigrants and natives within each category are. By comparing wage trends in categories with lots of immigrants against those in groups with only a few, he derives an estimate of immigration's effect. His headline conclusion is that, between 1980 and 2000, immigration caused average wages to be some 3% lower than they would otherwise have been. Wages for high-school drop-outs were dragged down by around 8%.

Immigration's critics therefore count Mr Borjas as an ally. But hold on. These figures take no account of the offsetting impact of extra investment. If the capital stock is assumed to adjust, Mr Borjas reports, overall wages are unaffected and the loss of wages for high-school drop-outs is cut to below 5%.

Gianmarco Ottaviano, of the University of Bologna, and Giovanni Peri, of the University of California, Davis, argue that Mr Borjas's findings should be adjusted further. They think that, even within the same skill category, immigrants and natives need not be perfect substitutes, pointing out that the two groups tend to end up in different jobs. Mexicans are found in gardening, housework and construction, while low-skilled natives dominate other occupations, such as logging. Taking this into account, the authors claim that between 1980 and 2000 immigration pushed down the wages of American high-school drop-outs by at most 0.4%.

None of these studies is decisive, but taken together they suggest that immigration, in the long run, has had only a small negative effect on the pay of America's least skilled and even that is arguable. If Congress wants to reduce wage inequality, building border walls is a bad way of going about it.

IIRC, polls showed support for the CA Prop too.  But since then Republicans have gotten destroyed in the Hispanic voting community there.

And I'm not too convinced by the first poll there.  When a bill is described even "neutrality" it impacts people's view of the bill.  The description of the Senate Bill has only one line on enforcement and a full paragraph on the guest worker program.  And the House description doesn't mention a "wall."  Instead it calls for "fotifying the border" which could mean a lot of things before building an actual wall.  Whether intentional or not that impacts people's view of the bill.  I've written a survey for a major organization and those types of questions are very hard to ask in a way to get a useful answer.

FWIW, I expect many Hispanics support enforcement in an immigration bill.  I support it and I'm pretty staunchly in the pro-immigrant camp.  But if a bill was only to build a wall an force all illegal immigrants to go back to their homeland, it would not have majority support among Hispanics because it seems more punitive than helpful.

"and was made worse by," that's what I said had no evidence to support it. No figure or other information is given to support the "and was made worse by" contention.

Here is some DOJ data in a graph.  Seems an upward trend over the 1990-2004.

It's very simple: I'm NOT putting our national security before the foreign War on Terror.

The Republican party is virtually uniform on the War.  I'd never vote for a Republican who opposed the war.

That leaves me free to demand that Republican politicians I support also suport the domestic War on Terror, and that includes maintaining the integrity of the borders.  That's why I support greater border security: defense against nuke smuggling, not against illegal aliens.

As for why I care about the rest of the illegal alien issue: I care about that for the same reason I care about the War on Terror: I want to maintain our quality of life and standard of living.

A black market of third world labor not only distorts our labor market, but it degrades the rule of law, and threatens to drag us down to the level of Mexico in that respect.

That's on top of the national security threat of having millions of people with foreign allegiances being allowed to organize and demand changes to our laws and our system of government!

While many in the anti-immigration movement ...

When someone has to grossly distort the opposing position, that's generally a good indication he realizes his own position is weak. Like Democrats, and to some extent even Bush, you smear-law abiding immigrants by unfairly suggesting an issue about law breaking immigrants refers to immigrants in general.

Very few advocates of effective measures against illegal immigration want to also stop legal immigration. Even if illegal immigration was stopped completely, we would still have a very high level of immigration (which I support) from those who enter in compliance with our laws.

I am even more bewildered as to why we, as unwavering free market conservatives, have been suddenly transformed into nativists?

Nativism?? I don't see support of immigration law enforcement having much correlation with restricting immigration to those who match the predominant ethnic/religious background of current Americans. In fact some of the apologists for illegal immigration, including you, argue that one reason illegal Mexican immigration is no big deal is because they "share the same religion as the vast majority of the natives". Sounds like a nativist defense of those illegal immigrants.

You mock the "jobs Americans won't do" argument. Pray tell, where is this epidemic of native-born unemployment ...

Still stuck on straw men. The primary effect is wages not unemployment level. In labor markets, as in other markets, the price adjusts to bring supply and demand into equilibrium. If you drastically increase the supply of low-skill labor with a flood of illegal aliens, that results in a price (wage) lower than it would otherwise be to equate supply and demand. With normal market economics, any significant effect on the unemployment rate would be transitory, disappearing as lower wages equalized supply and demand for low skill labor.

Our changing economy and technology have been increasing the wage disparity between high and low skill workers. I suspect the disparity would have increased even without the supply of low skill labor being artificially inflated by illegal entrants. However the flood of mostly low-skill illegal workers forces the wages of low-skill workers even lower than they would have already been.

The apologists for illegal immigration, and the parasites who hire them, expect us to believe that there is something supernatural about the market for low skill labor, which defies the laws of supply and demand that govern all the other markets. If there's a shortage of a certain kind of labor, doesn't that tend to drive up the wage? Of course it does, and just as surely, increasing the supply of low-skill labor with illegal aliens tends to drive down the wage.

So if you believe we need the labor supplied by the mostly low-skill illegal immigrants, that means the American labor supply without illegals has too high a proportion of high-skill labor to function effectively. American capitalism is supposedly too inflexible to adjust to a labor supply that doesn't have a huge proportion of low-skill labor. Illegal immigration (i.e. immigration tilted toward low-skill workers) only makes sense if you think America needs its workers to be less skilled on average.

If we gave them [illegal aliens] a way to come legally they would do so.  That is my main proposal to fix the problem.  Increase legal immigration to 1% of the US population per year.

Brilliant. If I have a problem with people shoplifting item X from me, I can prevent X from stolen by just giving it away. If a woman doesn't like the fact that she is getting raped, she can "stop the rape" by giving consent to her rapist.

Maybe it is desirable to increase the number of legal immigrants, depending on what skills they bring and our ability to assimilate them. However that's a decision to be made on the basis of whether allowing them in improves America for Americans already here, not as a capitulation to those who enter our home without our consent.

What goes up must come down. Currently the economy is at full steam, what happens to southern cities like mine when the next recession hits and the construction boom goes down?

  Then we are faced with cities full of unemployed and unassimilated foreigners who don't like us much.

How quickly do you think politicians will offer them  goodies paid with our tax money to appease them?

This would not apply to right leaning immigrationists, but to all the left wingers who get appoplectic about Wallmart and its workers being "subsidised" by having to rely on public health services. Why can't they see that the same thing applies to those who employ illegals?

#1) Great diary.  It must be given the HUGE number of comments.

#2) I am non anti-immigration.  Anti-illegal-immigration is quite a different story.

#3) You can be all about securing the borders (pick me, pick me) and still want to INCREASE the number of legal immigrants.

#4) I am not a complete free market conservative.  I am pro-american before free-market.  I think NAFTA, CAFTA, etc are boondoggles that make companies rich and Americans poor.  I don't know what the best solution is, but NAFTA/CAFTA/ Open Borders is not it.

Just sayin....

1. Immeadiately increase the number of low skill visas from Mexico by 1 million per year.  But NO ONE who is in the country illegally can obtain one. If you're caught illegally in the country then you go on a list where you can't get one of these visas for five years.
   
2. Start fining any company that hires illegals $10,000 per illegal hired and seize any equipments or plants being used by illegals (think drug busts here).
   
3. Deny all services except emergency medical services to illegals.
   
4. Close the borders
   

is that we all went along quietly the last time they did something like this and said, "Amnesty first and then we'll close the borders" and here we are years later with millions more about to get amnesty.

To be precise, the rest of us subsidize low wage workers, legal or illegal. But illegal aliens increase the number of low wage workers that the rest of us have to subsidize.

... about Wallmart and its workers being "subsidised" by having to rely on public health services. Why can't they see that the same thing applies to those who employ illegals?

Not only the same thing, it applies far more so to employing illegals.

The simple fact is that in our society, lower income people do not pay their own way. The amount of tax they pay on their low incomes is far less than the cost of government services they consume on average. The rest of us subsidize them.

That's true about both lower level Walmart workers and typical illegal aliens' jobs. The difference is that with low skill Americans working at Walmart, we would be subsidizing those people whether Walmart hired them or not. Presumably they took the Walmart job because it was the better than the alternatives available to them, so Walmart hiring the low-skill workers reduces the amount that we have to subsidize them.

In contrast, when an illegal alien takes a low paying job, the rest of us have to pay the subsidy on that person, which we would not be paying if he was living in his own country. The employer gets a good deal, filling the job while paying less than the market wage for attracting legal labor; and the parasite employer imposes the burden of low wage workers' government services subsidy on the rest of us.

Yeah, another aspect of the illegal immigration supporters' vision of a better America: we just don't have enough poor people, let's import some more.

> What difference does it make what reason people have for their views?

Does this really need a reply?

I think the answer is we have allowed our opinion leaders to abuse the issue. Nearly every local talk show, and many national, have been hyperventialting on this issue for years.

Inspite of lowering crime rates, high employment, rising prosperity, strong economy and no terror attacks at home for mearly 5 years, the low brow talk shows have beat the drum that illegal immigration is a big disaster.

Now it has reached a critical mass of mobb hysteria.

> I see no reason why the entire country needs to be like Queens.

And that's why people think you're racist/nativist.  If that wasn't your intent, we'd welcome an explanation - but that's certainly how it comes across to this free-market social conservative.

the German economy was going gangbusters. They imported tens of thousands of "guest workers" from Turkey to "do the jobs that Germans won't do." (Any of this sounding familiar yet?)

Then came the day when the German economy went into the tank --- and stayed there. Well, the "guest workers" stayed too because the German welfare system provided them better rewards than living in Turkey.

Now the Germans are up to their eyes in unassimilated Turkish Muslims. And they are hate-filled and angry --- at the Germans because they are not assimilated and the Germans keep giving them handouts.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Then you should learn to say,

"Leader Nancy"

"President Hillary"

Because your sort of I gotta have my way, or the highway and I'm going to hold my breath till I get my way will lead Democrat majorities.

Thanks

...for assimilation, I agree.  Comes down to it, the Germans didn't really want the Turks to assimilate, and the Turks weren't all that interested in assimilating.  Couple that with a policy (since reformed) of making it difficult for descendants of guest workers to get citizenship and you almost guarantee friction.

that there was mutual hostility to assimilation in Germany. But I'm not certain that the situation here with respect to the Mexican illegals is all that different. I live surrounded by Latin American (non-Mexican) immigrants and I don't see much interest on their part, legal or illegal, to assimilate. Quite the contrary, and while my exposure to other areas is more limited, I suspect this is similar for areas with enormous numbers of Mexican illegals.

This is significantly different than the Cuban migration post-Castro. Through the early '70s the emphasis was on "going home" when Castro was gone. After the mid '70s, when there was a new born-in-the-USA generation, and the realization set in that Castro was not going away, the emphasis shifted to true assimilation.

for it is not a god-given right nor is it guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution.

" The lesson here: We can be strong war on terror conservatives and still be open to welcoming people who are culturally well suited to becoming good Americans."

For me, a former immigrant who became a naturalized American citizen, it is not about immigration, which I have always supported. It is about the widespread arrogance that demands everything. Last time I checked, the spirit of the Constitution was "the pursuit of happiness" not "the guarantee of happiness." I am happy, more or less, but not because of any demands I made; I achieved my American dream the old fashioned way: I pursued my opportunities. Legally.

raising quotas. That's what the Guest Worker proposal is. The administration rightly perceives that increasing legal immigration is required if we are ever to get control of our borders. But the administration underestimates the wisdom, the reasonableness, and the generosity of the American people. And so, rather than propose an honest, straightforward increase in the issuance of green cards to Latin Americans, it seeks to give us a milquetoast -- and potentially problematic if Europe's experience is any guide -- "guest" immigration increase.

it's your position that the entire country should look like Queens?  

I could not have said it better.  As a believer in free market capitalism, I am at a loss to see how that justifies the invasion of this country.  More convoluted logic I have never seen.

Hispanics, at least until recently, aren't recent immigrants, and don't consider themselves Mexican, but rather play up their descent from 16th and 17th century Spaniards.  Try again.

not named Bush don't win as many "Hispanic" votes as Bush did.  Secondly, the reason TX turned toward the Republicans was the wholesale switch of TX whites (now a minority) in the 1980s and 1990s to the GOP, such that 75% of them vote for Republicans.  That, and nothing else, is what explains the GOP dominance in the state.  If and when Hispanic electoral participation rises to match their share of the population, Texas will be in play.

As for Florida, again, Cubans aren't going to vote for the party of anti-anti-Communism.  It doesn't tell us much about Mexicans, now does it?

Thus, the immigrantion in FL, TX, NC, and GA are more likely to interact and see Republican leadership.  The anti-Hispanic tarring doesn't work in those places as much.  CA is the opposite.

When the tide of immigration hit California starting in the 1970s, the state was as dominated by the GOP as any of those states.  Nixon, Deukmajian, Wilson...Reagan.  This exposure to GOP leadership didn't turn immigrants into Republicans.

not having a job, and then there's "unemployment."  The two are not the same thing.

...demonstrations for "Economic Justice", after which the pols will trample each other as they scurry up to the microphone to see who can write the biggest check the fastest.

but my point is that if Republicans aren't united behind a position that will be satisfactory to their base (and those identified by the poll) then why bring this issue to the table at all in '06?  It's better to address in an off-election year.

"If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones."

-Voltaire

Multilingual voting ballots should be disposed of.  No disagreement on that.

After 9/11, We Republicans were up in arms about "The Wall" which was built between our intel agencies and which helped to facilitate the terrorist strikes.  After the next massive US terror attack is found to be the work of OTM's crossing our southern border, will we be as outraged that "The Other Wall" wasn't built, and who will we blame? When the terrorists strike during the first months of Clinton's presidency, I am sure she will say, "Bush and the Republicans had eight years to build a wall!"  The sad thing is, she will be right.

where's the bridge game?

Seriously, I'm new here, so what is the meaning of your comment? I'm just asking ...

$19/hour in a low-skill job just leaves far too much margin for off-shore competition to provide the same service at a fraction of the cost.

At least meatpackers did the right thing by seeking to maintain sustainability by addressing root causes instead of rolling over to the unrealistic, unsustainable demands of unions.

Vilify agribusiness all you want, but they apparently understood emerging markets and responded appropriately.  The auto, textile, and many other industries did not, at least not until it was too late.

A great nation controls its borders.  A great nation decides its immigration policies and does not allow it to be decided by invaders from another country.

A great nation controls its culture and does not allow that culture to be destroyed so that  businessmen can have cheap labor.  

President Bush is wrong on this and it is destroying the country as well as the republican party.  Americans had better wake up quick.

...in this whole sorry spectacle are the La Raza racists and the Aztlanazis.  

YOu must not be paying attention.  There is no assimilation going on.  There are demands that the "gringo's" leave.

And what is this god of "free market" solutions? What in the world does economics have to do with this, except these people will take jobs at extremely low prices.  Life is not economics.  This is a cultural and national invasion.  

I would also add that this has nothing to do with FREE markets. I see a free market where the playing field is even. With illegals the playing field is stacked against on side because illegals dont pay taxes and fees (income, social security. workers comp) and illegals dont follow minumium wage regulations.

I am sure there is a whole host of other items that make it unbalanced but those are the two biggies that dont make this market a "free" one.

and answered.

For me it's a fundamental fairness, rule of law, and sovreignty issue.  

Throw in political caluclations, this being an election year, and it makes for a line in the sand moment.

Here's my proposal

Step up enforcement against employers who hire illegals (instead of building "hiring centers" like ocurrs in some places here in the northeast) and you won't have to remove 12 million illegals, some of them may remove themselves.

I realize that there will be an increase in prices for consumers in everything from restaurant meals to produce to home renovations if the illegal immigrant labor pool is reduced.  But, I for one am willing to at least see what the increases are before declaring that the problem of cheap illegal immigrant labor is too big or too vital to the economy to solve.

Now here is a question for you.

We would not allow (in theory) a trading partner to flood our market with artifically cheap goods and undercut American businesses.  Why should we allow a foreign government to export its poverty problem to our market and disrespect our sovreignty?

http://www.redstate.com/comments/2006/3/21/132711/492/163#163

and if you are wondering what n/t or nt stands for in a subject line, it means "no text" so you know no text is in the comments section.

Competitive advantage is the issue.

We do not have that advantage in low-skill labor relative to our trading partners.  For those industries that [especially] depend on low-skill labor, they have three options:

1.  Let someone else produce or provide the product or service.  Export operations and import final goods.
   
   
2.  Die trying.  Fight economic principals until there is nothing left to fight with.  The do nothing strategy.
   
   
3.  Adapt and adjust.  Regain competative advantage, or at the very least, close the gap.  Import labor, downwardly adjust wages where there is competition.  

Many industries have had to contend with this.  Some have been thus far insulated.  It is in our interest do have them adjust now, rather than later.  We either pay the price now (and let some wages depreciate), or risk losing a vast amount of capital (and our ability to produce and have a dollar that retains its value) later.

What good will it do us if we are a nation of construction workers, maids, and meat-packers?

"a nation of construction workers, maids, and meat-packers"

and I didn't like it very much when I lived there

So I guess I'll have to agree with you...

I assume you mean surviving off direct subsidies, punitive tariffs (another huge subsidy), and illegal labor (another huge subsidy). If that's the right thing to do, I don't want to know what the wrong thing would be. It shouldn't be the government's job to keep every marginal business that can't make it without a lot of help from the government open for business.

lose the "nativist" smear remark. I oppose illegal immigration, but not legal immigration. Maybe the quota should go up, but until there's a wall, I'm not willing to discuss that issue.

Now, as to why this is the focus of our anger, start with the solution being obvious to most of us, and the complete disconnect of political leadership from that knowledge. But the kicker is that some of see this as fundamentally the same as the islamist attacks on us. At their heart, both seek to overthrow our culture. Illegal immigrants certainly aren't joining our culture, and it is not clear that a majority of LEGAL immigrants are asimilating either.

So we see the amnesty-free immigration crowd as the same fools who would sell Lenin a rope with which to hang us.

under Clinton (or was it Bush I?), and we're not buying it again. Wall FIRST, then we'll talk about the rest. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

"However that's a decision to be made on the basis of whether allowing them in improves America for Americans already here, not as a capitulation to those who enter our home without our consent."

I do believe it is best for America.  We need hard-working, young, family-oriented people in the country to help pay for our aging population.  It is fortunate that we have a group of willing immigrants who are so similar culturally.

As for the "problem," we must disagree on what that is.  I think the problem is people breaking the law to come here.  We can solve that it several ways.  The one that is the most pro-immigrant is to raise the quota so that the supply and demand of immigrants is in equilibrium.  If you think the problem is too many immigrants (regardless of legality), then we are at an impasse.  For we would then fundamentally disagree as I see immigration as good for the country and nativists do not.

its an issue that needs to be dealt with. Like Social Security we keep kicking this can down the road in hopes that somehow, magically it will fix itself. And if we can't fix it in an election year when we have the pols attention when will we fix it?

Politicans are like swine; first you have to hit them between the eyes with a stick to get their attention.

I have provided statistics, research, and sources for my assertion that assimilation is going on at the same rate (or faster) than with the Irish and Italians.  The faster refers to the level of intermarriage.  It goes best when immigrants are legalized so they don't feel confined to Spanish ghettos where they are less likely to assimilate.  This is one of the reasons I think some form of legalization is necessary; it is a prerequisite for successful assimilation.

This "god of free market solutions" is the fact that pro-market solutions seem to be the most successful ones.  Understanding that immigration is an economic driven issue allows one to consider the most cost effective way of ending illegal immigration.  That would be by raising the quotas.

If one thinks having immigrants in the country is a problem in and of itself, then we are talking past each other.  I thought people were upset with "illegal immigrants," but it seems many are more upset with any immigrants.   I believe immigration is good and thus it will be hard not to talk past one another on the topic.

Those who are here legally learn English faster

and Spanish-speaking immigrants aren't learning English faster-they aren't learning it at ALL. They don't need to. I lived with an American born to Mexican immigrants and the immigrant wife he married. He spoke good English, and had a strong work ethic. He believed strongly that immigrants should learn English because it helps them get ahead. One of his nephews, also native born, had no interest in learning English. His mother spoke almost no English so Spanish was the preferred langauge at home. Classes in school were taught in Spanish as well, so he didn't need it there. He was 16 years old and his English as a second language class was teaching him elementary school English, with which he was having tremendous difficulty.

There is a sufficiently large spanish community in my area so that they don't NEED to learn it. They just become an island onto themselves and don't join in the rest of the community. And our multi-lingual ballot laws, education laws, legal services, and businesses do nothing to encourage assimilation. You may see this as good, and it certainly congruent with libertarian thought, but I can't.

But I can promise you there will be no wall without a comprehensive package that deals with the problem in its entirety.  There is no way the Senate is going to go along with a populist version of immigration reform.

If one is willing to trade a physical barrier for increased legal flows of immigration, I bet it could get through Congress.  But it seems many people aren't willing to put the carrot with the stick in this case.

Which "immigrants" are these?

Culturally similar? Can you perhaps describe where the illegals are so "culturally similar?"

While generally not helpful, some subsidies and price floors are a good thing.  I believe it is a good thing to have excessive foodstocks to insulate against drought and shortage.  I also believe that it would be a great security risk if we had to depend on another nation for food.

However I don't disagree that there are certain agri-subsidies that need to go, or need to be adjusted on a more on-going, automatic basis because they are somewhat counterproductive to those goals and the goal of market competitiveness.

Illegal labor is the result of a structural problem for low-skill labor dependant industries who wish to remain domestically productive.

The vast majority of immigrants are Christians (inclusive of Catholicism).  They are capitalists who believe that you work for a living.  They generally put a big emphasis on family.  They are willing to uproot their family to provide a better life for their children.  They are willing to do thankless work for low wages because it is the first step toward providing a good life for their families.  They have a similar conception of human rights and democracy as most Americans.

These aren't Muslim jihadists from a theocratic kleptocracy.  They are people who, except for language, have very similar cultural attitudes and experiences as most Americans.

the House, which has a majority of their members who are LISTENING to their base, is going to accept the Senate give-up-the-country bill.

I think the reason is that a. people worry about where it is headed and b. there is a perceived arrogance by people who dont speak english.

If I have to press a. for english then why cant I press f. for farsi or e. for estonian? Why do I have to go into home depot and try to find the english side of the power drill box? Why, as mention elsewhere, do I have to constantly repeat my simple order for a big mac to someone who is suppesedly on the customer relation side of the counter? And it doesnt look like it is getting any better.

This all wouldnt be so bad if it wasnt for the fact that there are many here who are immigrants or whose parents are immigrants and I would bet every one learned to speak english when they got here. Just like I would expect to learn German if I wanted to live and work in Germany. And that is where the arrogance comes in. It seems there is a lower standard for Spanish and no desire to learn it. I remember reading a thread here that talked of a Home Depot in Miami where you cant even get the workers to talk to you in english. Yes they are Cuban not Mexican, but does it matter? I would be just as concerned no matter what language it was, Spanish, German, Mandarin....

A country, any country, especially one as large as ours, needs a common language to communicate and feel like a country. Otherwise we are in a lot of trouble. Since the birth of this nation the language has always been english. And that is why I think people get emotional about it.

"lower standard for Spanish and no desire to learn it" should be "lower standard for Spanish and no desire on the part of those speaking it to learn English."

I read last week that Hastert was looking to "stack" (not his words) the House side of the conference committee with people more amenable to the Senate approach.

Hillary will be gone in 8 years.

You can't say the same thing about 24 Million illegal immigrants.

Once they pass an amnesty, regardless of what they call it, the 24 million will be a drop in the bucket in 8 years regardless of who is in the Whitehouse.

that most Americans think the immigration laws should be enforced. Illegal immigrants clearly don't. And Americans don't want to see lots of people who broke the law to get into this country demand that they be given rights, and march under Mexican flags. Illegals were doing precisely that. Which indicates a serious patriotism gap between illegals and Americans. Wait, actually they're equally patriotic: The illegals are from Mexico, and their identity remains Mexican, whereas we're from the US, and our identity remains American. Well, I guess we're not all that different after all. I stand corrected.

So who's listening to me?  And there are many of us who believe immigration is good for the country and agree with the President that there should be a way for more people to come legally to the country.  Just because we aren't yelling louder or calling others anti-American doesn't mean we don't count.  I'm glad to see the Senate and the President recognizing that not everyone agrees with the House's punitive approach.

I don't think anyone will accept a "give up the country" bill whatever the heck that is.  I do think a compromise bill that includes higher levels of legal immigration (prossibly through guest worker programs) in combination with enhanced border security is likely.

Your own numbers show that Hispanics break Dem rather than Rep, NOT 50-50.

If you want to extrapolate from the small minority of immigrants (legal and illegal) who marched and the smaller minority who brought along Mexican flags the fact that all illegal immigrants believe certain things go ahead.

If you'd actually like to understand how and why people immigrate and what their views are on major issues then maybe this conversation can go somewhere.  Just wondering do you get upset when you see an Italian flag at an Italian restaurant?  Can someone not love their homeland and America as we have seen in past generations?

And if you think people want to be here illegally then I would reccommend you talk to some of them.  Almost universally, people would prefer to be here legally.  But that isn't an option for them.  I think it should be.  That's the base of our difference.

Cause Mexico has so many more people than the US that we will just be ungulfed by Mexico someday.

Bill Clinton's or George W. Bush's?

"The era of big government is over." --Bill Clinton

"[W]hen someone hurts, government has got to move." --George W. Bush.

$8 trillion national debt--Bush

Signed No Child Left Behind Act into law--Bush

Signed McCain-Feingold into law--Bush

Lost a war (and about to lose another)--Bush

Saved Arlen Specter's job--Bush

Saving Lincoln Chafee's job--Bush

Raised steel tariffs--Bush

Honorary member of Clinton family--Bush

Cut government by 300,000 people--Clinton

Kept the borders open in the age of terrorism and suitcase nukes--Bush

Welfare reform--Clinton (after vetoing it twice, but Bush would've vetoed it too, since he thinks that "when someone hurts, government has got to move")

The only conservative things Bush has done are cut taxes (but taxes will inevitably go up to pay for the debt he's running up; that isn't a good idea, but it will happen because, in the eyes of most people and the government, it'll look necessary to deal with the debt with which he's inexcusably saddled us) and appoint Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court (but only after he was forced into it by conservatives rebelling and threatening to stop voting Republican; remember that he wanted Harriet Miers on the Court). Roberts doesn't count because we don't know if he'll be any good. He's been good so far, but so was Anthony Kennedy for his first four years. And Roberts showed a fetish for upholding precedent, which Kennedy didn't show. I think that Roberts will move far enough to the left that all conservatives who don't believe in open borders will come seriously to regret having voted for Bush.

POTUS matchup is a very bad move for the country.  Of course I'd prefer another nominee, but if it's John John, I'll vote John John in a heartbeat.

It really comes down to the rule of law.  The whole nativist vs. Latino thing is a highly unwise distraction.  During previous eras of mass immigration, civil authorities DECIDED who came and who stayed.  Now they don't.  That's the problem in a nutshell.

On a personal note, my starter home was in a neighborhood with a very big Latino population.  They celebrated the US success in the first Gulf War.  A good many people in corporate whitebread America barely noticed.  And of course affluent whitebread liberals took their normal potshots at the military.

We should take a patriotic immigrant over a spoiled native any day!

You wrote, "Just wondering do you get upset when you see an Italian flag at an Italian restaurant?"

That might be a relevant question if I had criticized Mexican restaurants that have the Mexican banner, but that's clearly not what I said. To address your question, a response: When was the last time you saw 500,000 Italians marching in the streets, tens of thousands of them (or more) carrying Italian flags, demanding citizenship? I don't believe I've ever seen that.

"Can someone not love their homeland and America as we have seen in past generations?"

Like the people in Los Angeles who booed the American soccer team and threw garbage and beer cans at the American players? Like the marchers last month who carried a Mexican flag, or an American flag upside down, or a burning American flag? Like the millions of people who love America but spit on her laws? Oh, I'm sure these people love America equally, or at all.

"Almost universally, people would prefer to be here legally.  But that isn't an option for them."

Yes, it is. They could get a pen and some paper and write out an application. How many of the 12 million illegals did that? You tell me; you imply that you've talked to them. But if they apply and get rejected, does that mean they have no option? By that logic, anyone who applies and is rejected has no option. And we don't have to take them in; we should craft an immigration policy that doesn't consider the immigrants' interests at all, only ours. It's not in our interests to import this much poverty or crime. As to crime (to cite just one statistic), in Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide target illegal aliens; up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants are for illegal aliens. http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_illegal_alien.html

If you want to call it a security issue (that's what the Congress did when they passed the atrocious farm bill), you can call everything a security issue. We could just shut our borders to imports and produce everything here. We could turn around our automakers tomorrow by slapping a 100% tariff on imported autos.

The strategy of protecting domestic production at the expense of the unwilling public is not healthy when it comes to anything. The only people it helps are those that can't compete in the market place and rely on their government checks to stay in business. Maybe these people would do something more productive if we took them off corporate welfare.

Ag subsidies don't need to be tweaked, they need to be gone. Illegal labor is just one of these subsidies.

Is that given the Democratic propensity for fraud, a standard voter is worth 1 GOP vote and 1.5 Democrat votes.  Thus using Daley math, it's 18 million potential votes and only 12 million GOP.

I'm used to 5 NT meaning "five no trump."

The Cubans in Florida (and God bless them!) are mostly middle and upper class refugees from a nation where the disasters of socialism are fully evident. But what about immigrants who are poor and unskilled from a country where socialism remains an attractive dream to such people? Do you think they are GOP voters to come?

Who said capitulate [to illegal immigration]?

You did, though avoiding the word itself, just as Bush & other amnesty advocates claim to oppose "amnesty".

If you weren't advocating "capitulation to those who enter our home without our consent," your arguments in favor of higher legal immigration quotas would be limited to why America is better off with more immigration than the law currently allows. Instead you have repeatedly used the argument that countless Mexicans will enter whether or not we give consent, so offering legal entry to those who violate our sovereignty is your "solution" to that violation of our sovereignty.

Suppose a man tells a woman "Hey you really need me, and even if you say No I'm going to do you anyway, and you'll be better off because I defied your refusal."  It would be advocating capitulation to rape, if you advised the woman to give her consent because the guy is going to take her even if she refuses consent. Adding your supporting arguments that the guy who believes "I don't need no stinkin consent" is a Christian just like us and basically a decent hard-working guy (aside from that minor detail about not respecting her personal sovereignty) doesn't change rape to seduction.

you are the wind beneath my wings.

Just look at the demographic changes in Aztlan. And Florida (Cubans not Mexicans in that case, but still demographic change on a scale rarely seen absent military conquest of one region by another).

Instead you have repeatedly used the argument that countless Mexicans will enter whether or not we give consent, so offering legal entry to those who violate our sovereignty is your "solution" to that violation of our sovereignty.

gensec: I personally use this argument all the time, because it's obviously true. Mexicans are entering "whether or not we give consent." I don't think it's the only argument in favor of a decriminalization/liberalisation/increased quotas approach, but I think it's a powerful one.

When you have a huge and healthy economy on one side of the border, and a large supply of industrious underemployed workers on the other, you will get labor transactions. Period. Prohibiting a legal framework for these transactions to occur doesn't make the market go away, it just drives it underground. Now obviously we could adopt a system of border security that achieves Iron-curtain levels of effectiveness. Likewise I could receive a $1,000,000 check in the mail tomorrow from Bill Gates after he stumbles upon my blog and is duly impressed.

Conservatives are supposed to be hard-headed realists. But when it comes to immigration, a lot of them have become wooly-headed idealists.

I personally use this argument all the time, because it's obviously true. Mexicans are entering "whether or not we give consent." I don't think it's the only argument in favor of a decriminalization/liberalisation/increased quotas approach, but I think it's a powerful one.

If you believe that it is indeed too costly to deter those entrants who don't respect our right to withold consent, then one can make a logically consistent (though repugnant) argument for submitting to the violators' will.

However I disagree with your apparent belief that deterring the invasion of nonconsensual immigration is so difficult. The only difficulty (a real one) is having the political will to do so.

I agree with your skepticism about the kind of border security that would be required to seriously reduce illegal immigration. Even with a Berlin wall and shoot-to-kill orders, intruders would find a way as long as there are lucrative jobs available to them.

That's why changing the economic incentives for the parasitical employers who induce this invasion is required. We have the ability to create and require reliable identification of legal workers at a reasonable cost. Imposing heavy fines (big enough to drive them bankrupt) on employers who don't maintain records proving they've properly verified their employees will dry up the demand for illegal labor, so would-be illegal immigrants have no economic incentive to break into our home.

The employers who currently hire illegals are motivated by money, willing to sell out their country in order to pay less than the market wage required to attract legal workers. As soon as the high probability of being fined out of business makes hiring illegals more expensive than paying the market wage for legal labor, those same employers will be dotting their i's and crossing their t's to ensure their employees are here legally.

Note: Politicians who think we're idiots will brag about heavy fines for knowingly hiring illegals. But that intention is impossible to prove in almost all cases, so an effective law must severerly punish failure to properly verify employees.

as Aztlan and never was. Before the Americans took the region, the Southwest was mostly inhabited by a mix of native peoples, with a few Spanish missions among them. The few Spanish-speaking inhabitants identified more as Spanish than as Mexicans, and many of them preferred American rule to that of Santa Ana.

Ask Izaraurora if he/she thinks the whole country should look like Vermont. If he/she says no, accuse him/her of antiwhite racism. Unless you think the country should look like {insert any area of the wolrd}, you're prejudiced against {whoever you find there}. That, even if it's your own race--for instance, all conservatives are familiar with the Brennan/Wisdom/Blackmun we-whites-suck racism.