This is a hot button issue, forced on our national conscious by politicos, seeking a payoff other that what is best for the nation. The victims of this are American citizens, broken into two categories. The first group includes people who live in communities which border or are in close proximity to our Southern neighbor, and the lawless Drug Cartels which have taken over sovereign control of the Northern part of that country. The people in this group are victims of a national policy that has sacrificed their security in the name of political correctness and the moronic creed of multiculturalism. The second group, everyone else in the nation, are victimized by non serious political leaders who are using this farce as a deflection from other pressing issues which are weakening our nation at every level. Issues such as national debt, run amok spending, a disastrous destruction of our national health care system, regulatory overreach of every government bureaucracy, have all been placed on the back burner so that our Congressional Leaders can get together and iron out an amnesty program for people who immigrated here illegally, despite the fact that this is universally opposed by a vast majority of actual citizens.
It’s not that simple however, as there is far more wrong with the entire situation, and this does represent a problem that actually needs to be addressed, debated, and ultimately dealt with. Those of you who have read my articles regularly already know that I hold the Global Warming Scare Mongers and the Creationists to be two sides of the same coin. Each declaring to be advocates of science while using faith to form most of the basis for their beliefs. It is not that I am against faith, I truly believe faith to be a wonderful gift, capable of helping man kind achieve well beyond means otherwise available to him. It is just that faith and science are separate things, and one should not be substituted for the other. The entire immigration debate has taken on a life of its own, very similar to that. Each side clings to a belief, and holds to that belief despite all evidence to the contrary.
During the last several years, I have heard repeatedly, two disparate statements emanating from either side of this issue. Each is exactly as moronic and vacuous as the other. If there is a hall of fame for idiocy, certainly these two statements will adorn the arch through which one passes into that great hall, along with Rosy O’Donnell’s, “first time fire ever melted steel,” declaration on the television set of, “The View.” These statements are, “Diversity is what made America great,” and “Immigrants have taken all of our jobs.” I’d like to discuss why each statement is grotesquely wrong, and worse yet, evidence that critical thinking itself has been shelved forever behind a pane of glass that reads, “break open only in case of spontaneous combustion.”
Immigrants Have Taken All Of Our Jobs:
Before I get started on this one, I would like to point out that there are caveats, and serious ones at that. The tables have been skewed in our country, as previous government interference plus the hostile attitude of other nations from which many immigrants arrive has shifted the playing field and its rules somewhat.
I tend to view issues through the prism of economics. I am a free marketeer by nature, and will usually, which means practically every time, defend that system as being the best promise for our nation, any society which wishes to see its citizenry benefit, and in general all of man kind. The lens of history is absolutely crystal clear on this point. No economic or government system here to for devised by man has seen the vast improvement in the lot of the ordinary common man as has an unbridled free market. The vast wealth that was created in our nation happened due to the productive and innovative forces that were unleashed by allowing every person in our society the freedom to determine his or her own destiny and further, making and keeping the promise that the rewards of those efforts would be kept by those people undertaking them. All things being equal, there is not an economist in the world who would ever tell you that open immigration would be bad for any society. In fact, most other nations around the world actively seek immigration to their countries. People vote most honestly with their feet, and there is a reason why the rest of the world wishes to move to America and take up residence, or at least they used to.
Immigrants not only bring themselves looking for work, but they bring with them, innovation, new business opportunities, new ideas, an expanded market for current businesses in operation, and more often than not, an influx of people who wish to assimilate themselves into our culture and become a part of the American melting pot culture. To illustrate that point, roughly 40% of American corporations, were founded either by immigrants, or first generation Americans,(children of immigrants.) These companies employ, even in this crappy economy, Millions of American citizens. Without the open immigration of the past, we would be without Colgate Palmolive, Apple, Google, AT&T, Budweiser, eBay, General Electric, IBM, McDonald’s, Intel, Qualcom, Procter and Gamble, Kraft, U.S. Steel, Altria Group, (Philip Morris,) DuPont, Pfizer, Khol’s, Honeywell, Nordstrom, to mention just a few. The entire point I suppose is that one must recognize that our economy, and life itself is not zero sum. A rising tide lifts all boats as they say, and the net gain from growing our productive capability will far outweigh the negative impacts from having more people living here, provided they are actually productive, which brings us to the first caveat.
Immigration to work is one thing, immigration to our social welfare system is another entirely. The day that we began including the social welfare net into our national economy, the immigration equation changed. On that day, illegal immigration became a net positive addition to our national economy. The day that we began allowing access to that social welfare system by not only immigrants, which is itself insane, but to illegal immigrants, which is down right stupid, that changed the equation again. Many of those coming to our nation against the rules are doing so to feed off of the federal teat, and many of those are doing so because our government has taken to advertising this glorious state of lunacy through broadcast media in Mexico.
Another caveat to this position is the quality and demeanor of different groups of immigrants. There are many people who wish to become Americans. They want to live the American dream, and wish to become one of us. I can think of nothing more flattering. I can think of no greater compliment. Those are the folks that we should encourage to become part of our fold. Unfortunately, our current immigration policy seeks to diminish the chances of these individuals from ever finding a place on our shores. There are immigrants who wish to move here so that they can destroy our culture, infrastructure, and seek to subjugate us according to the dictates of their pedophile illiterate prophet. Not only do we welcome this group with open arms, literally and figuratively, but we even have government programs by which subsidize businesses for them, while robbing those who already live here of the opportunities that should be present for all citizens by right of being born here. This is a form of Jizya, (Islamic Blackmail,) paid for the right to purchase their oil from them. Why our current immigration policy would seek to deny entrance to the first group and promote entrance for the second is beyond insanity, it is openly self destructive behavior.
The third caveat is that amnesty is a non starter. People who have immigrated here illegally have basically told us that they are willing to place themselves above the rules by which the rest of us are expected to live. These people irk me when they skip ahead of me in the line to a movie theater, let alone something actually serious in nature. What’s more, I could not care less if their kids were born here or moved here at too young an age to decide for themselves. That is nobody’s fault but the people breaking our laws and rubbing our noses in that fact. There is a difference between legal immigration, and illegal immigration, and I refuse to be guilted into accepting the sob story of individual cases of, “it wasn’t my fault, and I’ve already been here so long that this is home.” We should send each and every one of those caught, and their children, back to where they’ve come from, after a stay in one of our prisons. We should also add more personnel to our borders in order to secure them, and give those tasked with enforcing our laws the support and empowerment to do the job we’ve asked of them. I am in favor of immigration, but I want the immigrants to at least sign the guest book on the way in.
Diversity Is What Made America Great:
Putting aside for the moment that this piece of insanity requires a complete rewrite if history, the complete ignorance of all historical perspective, and the complete loss of what really did make America great from the thought processes of those who babble it at us incessantly, it is offered and accepted by the political left despite not one shred of evidence which shows it to be true, even in the slightest imaginings. Colleges all over the country are touting diversity as proof of their superiority, and not one study, research effort, or even a stray thought has ever been ventured forth to show any truth behind the theory. It has just been accepted, and what’s worse, the whole thing has been posited as a means to prevent assimilation of foreign immigrants into the current culture, as if that would be a bad thing. So, what we have is not only a nation where immigrants are not expected to learn the language of the majority, but where the majority is expected to learn the language of every single minority. This happenstance robs two demographics. It robs the host country of the innovative growth and increased productivity that immigration usually brings, and it robs the immigrants of the means necessary to better themselves and earn a modicum of success in our society.
What made America great was the freedom afforded to our citizens, and the promise kept by our founding fathers that each person would have the ability to shape his own destiny and reap the fruits of his labors. It was the recognition of our rights coming from God, and not from our fellow man, and the vast innovative and productive forces that were unleashed from the free enterprise system itself. The diversity came afterwards, when people all around the world realized that our republic had created opportunity for all who lived here in an unprecedented fashion. People most honestly vote with their feet, and America was where many decided that they wanted to live. I am not saying that diversity is bad, and I love the disparate pieces of the eclectic culture that this created, but recognize please, which created which. People from different cultures flocked here because of the fact that we already were something exceptional.
More to the point however is the unmitigated disaster that has been created in those nations that have grabbed on and ran with the whole multicultural bonanza myth. Belgium is a barely functioning nation, thanks to its refusal to pick a language, and by the way, they only have two to worry about. Quebec has been trying to Secede from Canada for as long as I can remember, and they have terrible issues in that province from their two languages. Britain has embraced a multicultural attitude with an immigrant population that has set up shop in some of their cities, and even allowed Sharia Law to be practiced in their courts in some parts of that nation. They have been repaid with riots, entire swaths of her cities set ablaze, and honor killings galore. The same thing has happened in France. Multiculturalism, for all of those who herald it as something beautiful to aspire to, has been a success no where.
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
