An honest article about illegal immigration

Victor Davis Hanson asks at Investors Business Daily,

Can we be honest about illegal immigration, a challenge common to almost every advanced Western country that is adjacent to poorer nations?

American employers and ethnic activists have long colluded to weaken border enforcement and render immigration law meaningless. The former wanted greater profits from cheaper labor, the latter wished more political clout for themselves.

Mexico conspired, too. It received billions of easy dollars in remittances from its expatriates in America. Mexico had few qualms about letting millions of its own citizens illegally cross its northern border into the U.S. — even though the Mexican government would never tolerate millions of Central Americans illegally crossing the border to become permanent residents of Mexico.

For better or worse, illegal immigration is tied to race and ethnicity. No doubt, ignorant racism drives some to oppose illegal immigration. But by the same token, the advocates of open borders, many of them with strong ties to Mexico, would not be so energized about the issue if hundreds of thousands of Europeans or Africans were entering the U.S. illegally each year.

There is too often a surreal disconnect about the perception of the U.S. in the immigration debate. Millions, we sometimes forget, are fleeing from the authoritarianism, racism, corruption and class oppression of Mexico. They have voted with their feet to reject that model and to choose a completely different — and often antithetical — economic, social, cultural and political paradigm in the U.S.

...Then there is the matter of law. America went to war over the Confederate states' nullification of federal laws. A century and a half later, do we really want hundreds of sanctuary cities, each declaring irrelevant certain federal laws that they find bothersome?

For every left-wing city that declares immigration statutes inoperative, a right-wing counterpart might do the same with the Endangered Species Act, gun registration laws, affirmative action or gay marriage. The result would be chaos and anarchy, not compassion.

We should not minimize criminality. Creating a false identity, using a fraudulent Social Security number and knowingly filing inaccurate federal forms are serious felonies for most Americans. They are not infractions or simply innocuous wages of living in the shadows, but undermine the sinews of a society.

Reform should first include strict enforcement of the border. A new, ethnically blind immigration system would select from among applicants based on skill sets and education, and consider candidates from all over the world — not on the basis of ethnic identity or proximity to the border.

Immediate and lasting deportation would ensue for those who committed crimes or cynically chose to receive public assistance rather than work while here illegally.

Many Americans are in favor of offering a path to legal residence to those undocumented immigrants who have long lived and worked in the U.S. and have crime-free records — after they pay a fine for breaking federal law and then wait patiently in line while the legal process plays out — as long as the border is sealed to prevent future illegal immigration.

If some newly legal residents wished to become full-fledged citizens, then they could pass citizenship and English tests and assimilate into the American body politic.

Somehow I doubt that this fair, reasonable process is what the president really wants.

A chimera

Victor Davis Hanson writes that

the open-borders movement is race-obsessed to the core. Its message is anti-diversity, and anti-inclusiveness. Latino activists (in the age of the Redskins controversy, how has the racist rubric La Raza continued [3]?) have essentially hijacked U.S. immigration policy and set the following parameters: almost all illegal immigration shall come only across the southern border from Mexico and Latin America. Almost all legal immigration shall be predicated on family ties, which ensures Latinos will be privileged over all other groups, regardless of skill sets or education. If one objects that such a de facto policy is ethnocentric and does not result in ethnic, cultural, or professional diversity, then he is rendered a xenophobe. Racialists through extra-legal means have expropriated federal immigration law. It no longer exists. The losers are the Kenyan dentist, the Filipino nurse, the Estonian doctor, the South Korean architect — any who are not Latino, any who do not break U.S. immigration law, and any who have professional degrees and skill sets to offer America. How is that not biased to ignore all notions of diversity and meritocracy in favor of using only ethnic criteria?

Hanson also writes that there is a health crisis: obesity among Latino immigrants and their American-born children. I see the obesity among our own American citizens, and it is a huge problem. I did not know that it is even worse among Latino immigrants. I have not seen that here in the affluent suburb in Colorado, where I live. There are many Latinos here, but they are certainly not fatter than the average resident of this affluent American suburb. Is he talking mainly about women and children? The men I see are hard-working laborers, and definitely not obese. The obesity I see is mostly among women, white and black.

But, what about comprehensive immigration reform? Hanson writes:

Comprehensive immigration reform is a chimera. It simply does not exist. Talk to any Latino activist in private and ignore what the Democrat and Republican hierarchy profess and the paradox is clear. Secure the border? I know of no supporter of comprehensive immigration reform who, as a requisite for compromise, wants to finish the fence [5], fine employers who hire illegals, and deport those who have broken numerous federal laws. To do so would weaken all the forces that Democrat operatives see breaking their way, that Latino elites see as essential to their own self-appointed perches as group spokesmen for the perennially dispossessed, and that employers see as a way to ensure cheap good labor.

Deportation is now a joke. When the Obama administration bragged of near-record deportations before the 2012 election, we knew it was a lie. And so it was, predicated on redefining “deportation” as temporary turn-back at the border. Otherwise explain to a supporter of CIR that you favor deporting those with criminal records, with no work history, with long residence on public assistance, with only a brief residence in the U.S. — and yet would be willing to grant green cards to those working, paying taxes, not employing false names and fraudulent documents, with long tenure in the U.S., with no record of criminality or public assistance — and outrage still follows! Continue the conversation and you learn that CIR is a synonym for blanket amnesty and its supporters do not wish to deport anyone, to close the border, or fine any employers. Republicans know that as well as Democrats. In my experience, the Tea Party is not very likely to want to deport everyone while the race industry and Chamber of Commerce are very likely to want to deport no one.

If immigrants came in manageable numbers, if they arrived in legal fashion on the basis of ethnically blind and meritocratic criteria, if the host believed in the melting pot and promoted integration, assimilation, and the mastery of the English language, if the arrivals were reminded why they were leaving their homelands and why they were entering the United States, then we could manage. But, alas, the very opposite of these criteria is true.

It has become a cachet of elites to mouth platitudes about “comprehensive immigration reform” as they carefully construct their own apartheid existences in Nancy Pelosi style [6]. They are not so much immune from the ramifications of their own ideology as found guilty of racial bias and prejudice by their very efforts to talk in the abstract in a way that offers them psychological recompense for never living that way in the concrete.