American and European leftists share the conviction that the immigrant, legal or illegal, is always right -- and the native-born citizen's always wrong.
This bigotry toward the law-abiding American, Brit, Frenchman or Italian doesn't help the immigrant in the end. Instead, it's a powerful engine driving divisiveness.
There are deep differences between Europe's experience with legal immigrants intent on importing intolerant lifestyles and our problem with illegals responsible for social friction and violent criminality.
But the left's blame-game is identical: Anyone who doesn't elevate the "rights" of the immigrant over the rights, safety and desires of the citizen is a bigot. No exceptions. Could there be a formula better designed to excite anti-immigrant sentiment?
In Europe, right-wing movements once consigned to the fringe have gained electoral traction from the Netherlands to Hungary as desperate citizens, ignored by political elites, struggle to preserve their way of life.
Here in America, where our political aristocracy's equally disdainful of the average citizen, Arizona found itself overwhelmed by illegals and abandoned by a federal government unwilling to enforce its own laws. The state felt compelled to act -- and has been damned for its self-preservation effort by the left and its media acolytes.
The left's fighting harder than ever to enforce its group-think on both sides of the Atlantic: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown trashes a voter with sober concerns as a "bigoted woman," while American activists condemn citizens in ravaged communities as "racists" because they don't like gunfights in their yards.
Racism does play a significant role in Europe, but it's profoundly dishonest of American leftists -- anxious to pander to such extremist groups as La Raza -- to paint anyone alarmed by illegal immigration as a white supremacist.
Take Arizona: Polls reveal that two-thirds to three-quarters of its citizens approve of the new enforce-the-law law. Yet only 58 percent of Arizonans are non-Hispanic whites. Over 30 percent are Hispanic. Another 5 percent are Native Americans, 4 percent black and 2 percent mixed race. According to the left's logic, every non-Hispanic white must be "anti-immigrant." Blacks and Indians must be piling on, too.
Of course, that's nonsense. Left-leaning whites don't support the legislation. Which means some Hispanics must favor it. Many do. Hispanic Americans have the same concerns as all other citizens. They don't unanimously support human trafficking, the narcotics trade and criminal gangs. They want safe neighborhoods, too. Assuming that all citizens who happen to be Hispanic automatically back illegal immigration is just the left's selective racism.
Hispanics have been in Arizona for centuries and take great pride in their lineage. Tucson's known as "the Old Pueblo," not "Ye Olde Village." They don't like what's happened to their state any more than does Parker Van Barker III in his retirement mansion in Scottsdale. And, by the way, Hispanics are far likelier than other citizens to be the victims of illegal-immigrant criminality.
As the left's blame-the-citizen demands for special privileges for all immigrants only intensify an anti-immigrant backlash, let's apply some commonsense maxims:
* It is always the responsibility of the immigrant to conform to the laws and social norms of the host society. It is never the responsibility of a society to alter its traditions and values to please immigrants.
* The primary responsibility of government is to protect its citizens and territory. That demands robust border security.
* Illegal immigrants are entitled to basic human rights, but have no civil rights: no right to an attorney, trial or "sanctuary."
* Washington must remove current incentives to illegal immigration. This means relentlessly pursuing both those who hire illegals and illegals themselves, doubling sentences for illegal-immigrant offenders, and a constitutional amendment eliminating the automatic citizenship granted to children born on our soil to illegals.
* At the same time, we must reform our legal immigration system to recognize the need for temporary workers, as well as for qualified new citizens.
* Turning 10 million illegals into US voters is not the answer.
While Europe's problems have veered beyond healthy solutions, immigration remains a vital source of national strength for us. But illegal immigration's purely destructive. Our borders must be subject to the rule of law.
And let's stop calling law-abiding citizens "bigots" just because they don't want their communities destroyed by illegal immigrants.
Not enough Lebensraum for the Volk? I hear the death rattle of the Nativists.
"Lebensraum?" We're a republican form of government here in the United States, which means that our legislative branch writes legislation, the governor/president then signs it into law, at which point the government then enforces those laws, assuming they're not declared unconstitutional by the courts (which immigration law is not!)
The United States doesn't imprison our illegal immigrants the way that Mexico does. No, we put them on a bus and send them back to Mexico. As MSNBC so aptly pointed out: "Arizona's new law makes illegal immigration a crime!" Yes, I suppose that when something is illegal that usually means it's a crime. Nice going, MSNBC, for pointing our the obvious!
My...another fancy dancy word for an apparently effete snob. However clever and utterly leftist.
Which "Volk" are you referring to? The new Volk...also known as illegal immigrants, appear to have enough space where they are at. Unfortunately, Mexico apparently wants to make their multitudes of the unemployed and criminals of all kinds our problem. Then you look at how they handle their southern border:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/world/americas/18mexico.html
"Mexican law authorizes only federal migration agents and federal preventive police officers to inspect cars for illegal migrants and to demand proof of legal status. But Mexican authorities acknowledge that migrants face run-ins with every level of law enforcement.
Migrants are also routinely detained by machete-wielding farmers, who extort their money by threatening to turn them over to the police. So many female migrants have been raped or coerced into sex, the authorities said, that some begin taking birth control pills a few months before embarking on the journey north.
Few are punished for such crimes, the authorities added, because the migrants rarely report them.
"This society does not see migrants as human beings, it sees them as criminals," said Lucía del Carmen Bermúdez, coordinator for a government migration agency called Grupo Beta. "The majority of the attacks against migrants are not committed by authorities, although there is still a big problem with corruption in Mexico. Most violence against migrants comes from civilians."
So it looks like the immigrants entering Mexico have a much harder time because Mr. Calderon doesn't want any more of them. I don't see why we shouldn't make it just as hard for them, (illegals from anywhere), to cross out southern border, but in a less thugish and brutal manner as decribed in the article.
The Nativists as you call them, or legal immigrants or Mexicans who have lived within Arizona for generations, or before it was even a state, or whoever has moved there since, have a perfect right to be upset with all the bullshit that has occurred and continues to occur, particularly in the areas of increased criminal activity including drug smuggling, and the straining the facilities and resources of the state of Arizona. A large majority of Hispanics want this problem to solved too, and Obama, with all of his horses and resources and all of his men, will not be able to put this borderline Humpty Dumpty together again. It is now all in pieces thanks to some good people in Arizona and some solutions will have to be found, or its liable to spread to other states like Texas and New Mexico. Europe is starting to wake up too. State run socialism there is not getting the job done.
Effete? That's the sort of fancy word a rich Republican Populist would use, but then you are Spiro Agnew to Anon's Nixon. You should have used degenerate instead.
Skyhawk wrote: "State run socialism there is not getting the job done."
Socialism has never worked anywhere it's been tried. It strangles economic growth. Even the Chinese eventually figured that out after after forty years of Maoist/socialist man-made disasters. Yet, for some reason, liberal Democrats (including our current president) still think it's the best direction for the U.S.A.
Charlie Chan wrote: "Effete? That's the sort of fancy word a rich Republican Populist would use, but then you are Spiro Agnew to Anon's Nixon. You should have used degenerate instead."
OK, so what if you're effete? We can still be friends, right?
And thanks for calling me "Nixon!" I'll take that anyday over "Obama" or "Carter." At least Nixon was re-elected!
Charlie Chan wrote: "That's the problem, you keep coming back and don't know when you're beaten"
Thanks again for not comparing me with "Carter!" You're a pal!
Arizona Immigration Law May Lead to Consensus
I was traveling this weekend to a family reunion and got seated on the plane between two beefy guys, who were on a business trip with some similarly beefy colleagues in the next row. When I asked where they were headed, they replied, “To a mock riot.” Huh? It turns out they were all prison guards (“Call us corrections officers, please!”) going for annual training in how to suppress an inmate uprising. Between a lot of joking with me, good-natured teasing of my mother nearby, and some prison-related banter (their prison movie all-time favorites: The Shawshank Redemption and Escape from Alcatraz; their favorite tool for controlling inmates: water cannon), I asked who their most notorious inmates were. They said it was a group of high school boys who were charged with hate crimes and murder in the racially-motivated killing of an Hispanic man in 2008. It was a horrible crime. That led us to start talking about the controversial new immigration law in Arizona.
While none of us thought the law was perfect by any stretch, and while we all believed that immigrants helped make this country great, we also all agreed that the frustration of the people of Arizona is understandable, given what’s going on in some of the border towns. We all agreed that securing the border must be one of the top duties of the federal government. They hadn’t read Peggy Noonan’s column over the weekend, but we talked about this part:
... Nothing can or should be done, no new federal law passed, until the border itself is secure. That is the predicate, the common sense first step. Once existing laws are enforced and the border made peaceful, everyone in the country will be able to breathe easier and consider, without an air of clamor and crisis, what should be done next. What might that be? How about relax, see where we are, and absorb. Pass a small, clear law—say, one granting citizenship to all who serve two years in the armed forces—and then go have a Coke. Not everything has to be settled right away. Only controlling the border has to be settled right away.
I like the idea of granting citizenship to anyone who spends two years willing to give their life for our country, and as law enforcement officers--who also either know or are themselves people who are willing to sacrifice their lives as Army reservists, National Guardsmen, and first responders in their communities--they felt the same way. We soon realized that all three of us seated in the same row were either first- or second-generation descendants of immigrants. Our parents or grandparents all came to this country legally, and at considerable delay and difficulty. My grandparents already spoke English, but theirs did not and they had to learn the language before they could become citizens--something that has become controversial these days. “They had to go to some trouble to become citizens, and that’s all we’re asking now,” said one guy. “Just put forth some effort, and come in legally, like our families did. That’s all we’re asking.”
Maybe a mainstream consensus is emerging from the debate over this unreasonable law in Arizona: that securing our border has to come first--and then fair, reasonable but well-enforced immigration rules should follow. It’s like he said: “That’s all we’re asking.”
You might be right with the thread title. It might be unfair to just blame Arizona (LOL). The moment you pulled your arm away ... you were commiting assault. What a line, eh?
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