The Fix
There recently was an article in the St. Petersburg, Fl. Times. The Business Section asked readers for ideas on: "How Would You Fix the Economy?" I think this guy nailed it!
Dear Mr. President,
Please find below my suggestion for fixingAmerica's economy. Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.
You can call it the "Patriotic Retirement Plan":
There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:
1) They MUST retire. Forty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.
2) They MUST buy a new AMERICAN Car. Forty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed.
3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed.
It can't get any easier than that!!
P.S. If more money is needed, have all members in Congress pay their taxes...
Send illegal aliens home.
Mr. President, while you're at it, make Congress retire on Social Security and Medicare. I'll bet both programs would be fixed pronto!
If you think this would work, please forward to everyone you know.
If not, please disregard.
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Open Letter to Rep. Luis Gutierrez
March 9, 2010
Open Letter to Rep. Luis Gutierrez:
I applaud your efforts to enable legal immigrants to learn English, civics, and the tenets of good citizenship. Unfortunately your legislative agenda conveys a different message to illegal aliens, legal immigrants, and potential new immigrants: don’t wait for legal admission; ignore immigration laws; support those who are here illegally; thumb your nose at the rule of law, the very foundation of all civilized societies; ignore the long term adverse impact on the environment, the pressure on our finite natural resources, the diminution of the quality of life and our standard of living which will be the inevitable result of continued population growth. In the long run, millions of new immigrants from failed, impoverished nations unable to provide jobs for their own citizens will ultimately, by their sheer numbers, recreate the very conditions they fled their homelands to escape. Can anyone look at these countries with their poverty, crime, corruption, overpopulation, and disease and still conclude that allowing millions of them to enter the U.S will be beneficial? If Latinization of the U.S. is your goal and, considering the conditions in other Latin American countries, you think that would be a good thing, then you are doing the right thing. If you think the U.S. culture, government, ideals, and achievements are better, then some introspection and soul-searching is in order. Let’s not kill the goose that laid the golden through a misguided concern about foreigners. We should all have learned by now that the U.S. cannot solve all the world’s problems and, instead, we should be focusing our resources and those of all of the tax-exempt foundations on solving the problems of our own citizens.
In your introductory remarks for H.R. 4321 you made a number of statements that warrant a response. What you call “real immigration reform” in your bill turns out to be a complete emasculation of our immigration system and immigration laws. The kind of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) most Americans will support is a far different thing from what you propose and what was previously proposed in the CIR bills that failed in 2007 and 2008.
The key question is whose or what CIR concept is best for our country, not just your illegal constituents? You have chosen to present a bill which you may believe to be best for you and for your illegal ethnic brethren but it is not what is best for our country. Your bill places the interests of foreigners above those of your fellow citizens. If you consider yourself a loyal American, the ethnocentrism evident in H.R. 4321 is totally inappropriate.
There are many important and significant facts that you and the Hispanic Caucus have either chosen to ignore or are completely oblivious to. While the negative impacts of illegal aliens and excessive legal immigration on the 10-17% unemployment rate and the rising health care costs play an important role in America’s antithesis to your version of CIR, they are not the only considerations by any means. Nevertheless, in these times of high unemployment it is unconscionable to suggest that we need more rather than fewer legal immigrants and that we should grant amnesty to illegal aliens rather than expediting their removal.
The legal immigration quota should be reduced to the historical level of about 200,000 per year exclusive of tourists, students, and migrant farm workers who are willing to return to their homelands when the harvest is in. What you propose is just the opposite and, if enacted, would surely have an adverse effect on the long term well-being of our country and the future of our descendents.
Illegal aliens flood our emergency rooms and hospitals and soak up Medicare funds that are badly needed by citizens. Certainly this drain must have some bearing on health care costs, the health care crisis, and the billions of dollars that are spent on Medicaid. Are illegal aliens responsible for all health care cost increases and all unemployment? Of course not! Are they important and undeniable factors in both Medicaid costs and the number of citizens unemployed? Of course!
The immigrants America is attracting these days are mostly poor and badly educated. They reproduce, fall ill, struggle with school, require hiring of paid interpreters, multi-lingual ballots and other government publications, and create instant citizens who drain the welfare and Medicaid budgets of states like Texas and California. Fifty three percent of immigrant households with children collected welfare from at least one government program in 2008. These programs include food stamps, Medicaid, Aid to Dependent Children, and free school lunches.
These are not people doing "jobs Americans won't do." These are people getting benefits that drain the coffers of states already in deep financial difficulty.
Each day at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Texas some 32 babies of illegal alien parents, mostly Mexican, are born into instant U.S. citizenship. In fiscal 2006, that was 75 percent of the 16,489 deliveries. Medicaid pays the bill—or at least some of it, some of the time. Do you suppose there is any relationship between this and the need to increase the Medicaid budget every year reducing the funds available for other important programs?
One wonders where all of this Medicaid expense and the emergency room losses are factored into the calculations of those who praise the illegal aliens as a good labor source. Isn’t it time we required all employers to provide full family health care insurance for all of their foreign employees? Is it any wonder that our nation faces a health care crisis, that Medicare is all but bankrupt, and that gazillions have to be paid out in Medicaid? Does anyone believe Gutierrez-brand CIR will solve these problems?
Your sarcasm regarding global warming and traffic congestion is misplaced. Americans produce 20 metric tons of pollutants per capita annually. Adding another 300 million people by the end of this century will produce another 6 billion tons of pollutants annually at the present rate. Even if, by some technological miracle, we were to be able to reduce our per capita output by half, to that of Mexico’s 10 metric tons per year, we would still have made absolutely no progress toward reducing the present unacceptable level as our population doubles. Have the Hispanic Caucus and the immigration lobbies thought about that or are they ignoring this inconvenient truth?
The “limit” of finite natural resources per capita as population grows without bounds is zero. The more there are of us, the less there is for each of us. How much farther down that road does the Caucus think we should go? I hope the answer is, “No más.”
There is a limit to the amount of the water that is available for domestic and agricultural uses, especially here in the Southwest where many Hispanics live. The burgeoning populations of cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Denver are soaking up the water resources needed to grow the food required to feed the additional people. If you check out an atlas of California, you’ll notice that Owens Lake is filled in with white, not blue. That’s because Los Angeles sucked it dry decades ago. Las Vegas is considering similar plunder of groundwater elsewhere in Nevada. And there are many other cities—Houston and Tampa, to name a couple—that have chosen to push nature’s limits. We continue to plunder the Great Plains’ Ogallala Aquifer, the largest underground reservoir in the United States and one of the largest on the planet. It once held as much water as Lake Huron. It is a treasure that took millennia to accumulate. Remarkably, it could cease to be a water resource within another generation. We are left with yet another illustration of an all too common American mindset: short on vision, mired in denial and unable to comprehend nature’s limits.
Water rights bought up by cities means there will be land that can no longer be productive. This is clearly a losing proposition that needs recognition in any proposed immigration reform bill. With immigration, legal and illegal, adding up to 2 million people a year to a population that is already too large, we are setting ourselves up for a disaster.
Legal immigrants in excess of the historic level of about 200,000 per year, illegal aliens, their progeny, and their higher fertility rates are the main factors in population growth and the depletion of finite natural resources. The fertility rate of American women is near the replacement level of 2.1. It follows that immigration and tax policy reforms are needed to address population growth as an issue of vital importance to the future of our country. Your version of CIR flies in the face of these facts.
You may consider the immigrant blame game to be deplorable but that view ignores the real and significant adverse impacts excessive legal immigration and the presence of illegal aliens have on our country and will have on its future. This is not to deny the many contributions of legal immigrants and even some of the illegals who are willing to do the hardest work our economy requires. Nevertheless, we must limit the amount of foreign labor we import to the demonstrated needs of our economy and make sure employers pay the full cost of foreign workers rather than offloading some of it on unsuspecting taxpayers. With the current high unemployment rate this is the perfect time to enact enlightened tax and immigration policies that achieve the goal of a stable population but I suppose that is too much to expect from a Congress that hasn’t seen a true statesman who is able to rise above parochial interests since the days of the late Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan.
In the immigration debate, some things are indeed constant. They never change but they are regularly ignored by those who have an axe to grind: immigration lawyers, the ethnocentric communities, and their leaders, and, of course, employers who want to be absolved of their past sins and be assured of a continuous flow of cheap labor. They are pushing an agenda that does not bode well for the America we know and love. Does any reasonable person really believe we can double or triple our population without affecting our quality of life or standard of living? Population-driven economic growth is not sustainable in the long run. As I stated above, the more there are of us, the less there is for each of us, and that includes Hispanic citizens as well as everyone else. Why is this simple fact not understood by the Hispanic community and the pro-immigration lobby?
There are lots of people out there who give lip service to border security, just as you do, but, in the next breath, would deny us the tools we need to achieve that goal. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. If the truth were known, they would be clearly recognized as open borders advocates. They are the worst of the anti-America, pro-immigration elements in our country.
So what would it take to secure our borders? First and foremost it is clear that the borders can never be absolutely secure. It is also clear that if illegal aliens think they will be home free once they escape the immediate environs of the border, secure borders will always be just a pipe dream. Secure borders require a many- faceted approach: continuing improvements in border infrastructure and border patrol staffing, improvements in the rules of engagement, penalties for employers and foreign workers who violate the law, and vigorous and continuous internal enforcement. We desperately need mandatory E-Verify across the board for all employers and employees, new and current, public and private. It is the sine qua non of in depth border security. If we deprive illegals of job opportunities, they will have less incentive to come. If we quickly apprehend them and send them on their way, they will stop violating our borders. If we sentence them to six months work on the border infrastructure at minimum wage, they will have some time to think about their transgressions.
Separate immigration courts with judges or justices of the peace in residence at all detention centers with a mandate to make decisions within 24 hours of apprehension would also provide a disincentive for illegal entry. Certainly, appeals must be limited to one week. Contractors who operate detention facilities should be compensated based on throughput rather than detainee-days. Quick decisions could be enabled by the enactment of a rigid set of criteria to be used by these judges and JOPs. These criteria should explicitly exclude family separation as a basis for a favorable immigration decision. Adults under a removal order must take their minor children with them regardless of citizenship. Adult children who are citizens, of course, can make their own choices whether to leave with their parents or remain. This would be no different from the situations of other immigrants who left adult relatives behind when they came to this country. I have many distant relatives in Germany and Denmark who are perfectly content with the decisions of their ancestors to stay there while their brothers and sisters moved on. Those immigrants made the decision to start a new life here while their adult relatives were content to continue living in their homeland.
The issues of how many legal immigrants to admit each year, whether to end chain immigrations, and to provide yet another amnesty for illegal aliens are too important to allow mere politicians to exercise complete control without accountability to the American voters. Cynical politicians ignore what is best for America and pander to those who they believe can help them to achieve perennial re-election and the power that comes with it to do more damage to the national interest.
The comments of TV personalities are often closer to the truth than the typical politician’s rants. And the American people generally agree with them except when they indulge in some over-the-top comment that in an attempt to make a point or simply to be entertaining. For every Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh there is a Chris Mathews or Keith Olbermann. They all play the ratings game. Immigrants are only secondarily to blame for some of the economic, financial, and other woes of our country. The real culprits are the Congress and the Administration who have failed to enact, promote, and enforce immigration policies in the national interest.
The incessant promotion of illegal aliens and excessive legal immigration is the most deplorable element of public debate in our nation. We have failed to deal with the facts of excessive legal immigration, the continued violation of our borders, and their long term adverse impacts on our standard of living and quality of life. We need to look no farther than the teeming masses of China, India, Bangladesh, and Sub-Saharan Africa to know what that would be like.
Something else that has been predictable, constant, and dishonorable is the way that many of our nation’s Hispanic citizens have responded to the illegal presence of so many millions of aliens who are their ethnic brethren. They should know that their fellow non-Hispanic citizens want the immigration laws to be enforced. They want illegals to be removed unless an employer can provide irrefutable evidence that they are unable to fill their jobs with citizen labor, even after extensive advertising offering a living wage and a hiring preference. Instead of behaving as loyal Americans and making common cause with their fellow citizens to achieve real immigration reform, some Hispanics support those who have violated our borders and flaunted the rule of law, the very foundation of all civilized societies. They avoid completely any thoughts about the long term negative consequences to themselves and their descendents. In that respect, they are like most of our shortsighted politicians whose myopic approach to legislation has created many of the problems we face today: a huge national debt; perennial budget deficits; a negative balance of trade; a fading manufacturing capability; wasteful spending on multi-lingual ballots and other government publications and proceedings; the unprecedented Social Security and Medicare unfunded liabilities; the burgeoning costs of Medicaid, the special interest appropriations to organizations like ACORN and La Raza; and immigration and tax policies that do not serve the best interests of this country. The ineptness of Congress in keeping our fiscal house in order is well-known and hopefully will result in the failure of many re-election campaigns.
Does anyone believe that the importation of millions of people from failed countries run by oligarchs will improve America? What is the probability that a Latinized America will be less like the America we know and love and more like the countries the illegals fled to come here? Has anyone in the Hispanic caucus even thought about that question?
The Congress has responded to the immigration and illegal alien problems year after year with faulty legislation. While immigrant proponents have come to the table, they have failed repeatedly to craft a workable solution to our urgent crisis. Instead they offer thousand page bills containing the same old loopholes that weaken our immigration laws rather than reform them. The American people have sat patiently waiting for some statesman in the Congress to introduce a bill that meets the fundamental criteria for effective reform and that is based on a careful assessment of the long-term impact of excessive population growth and the current abandonment of the rule of law.
In the public debate, some commentators and critics have used harsh language to get the attention of the American people regarding immigration’s unarmed invasion and its deadly consequences. The opposition has responded with charges of nativism, xenophobia, and racism. Then they introduce another CIR bill that they claim will cure all the ills of the immigration system but which instead merely sweeps the illegal alien problem under the carpet by offering yet another amnesty and opens the floodgates for unneeded and unwanted population growth. They try to bully those who oppose their brand of negative reform.
Immigrant citizens marched in the street flying foreign flags and ripping the American flag from counter demonstrators’ hands. They say they are asking for fairness but those who are citizens they are already enjoying all the fairness and benefits of our great country has to offer. What they are really asking for is amnesty for their illegal alien ethnic brethren and open borders for others so that hundreds of thousands more can enter without difficulty to participate in governmental welfare and largess. They are not acting like loyal citizens. They are giving precedence to foreigners who have violated our borders over the wishes of the American people who place the national interest first.
They attend community meetings to plot how to achieve their goals. They often focus on the concept of family unity or reunification. Having created the problem themselves by entering our country illegally, they now want to be absolved so that they can remain here. It is not a question of family unity. It is a question of the rule of law. Families can remain unified by simply returning as a unit to their homeland. Minor children must always accompany their parents if they are ordered to be removed. Adult citizen children can make their own choice. A fair immigration policy is one which does not grant special favors to those who have entered our country illegally and which requires families to take responsibility for their own actions. Chain immigrations obviously should be limited to the spouses and children of those who have already become citizens. There is no need for legislation to stop tearing families apart. Everyone knows they are free to return to their countries of origin or stay there to begin with.
We all have learned something from our religious leaders, who have reminded us of these words from the good book: “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’; but I say unto you, whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Indeed America has turned the other cheek a number of times through the various immigration bills and amnesties of the past. But enough is enough! The bible surely does not expect us to continue to turn the other cheek again. I believe our country has turned its cheek so many times that our collective head is spinning like a top, to use your simile.
It’s easy to be angry and frustrated about immigration but still America has turned the other cheek with patience and tolerance and dignity. But our good will and humanitarianism is not unlimited. Loyal Americans are saying, “No más!”
It is time for the Hispanic caucus to come to the table as Americans not as hyphenated Americans. It’s time to negotiate and compromise until we have determined what is in the best interests of our country, not what is in the best interests of illegal aliens or all those who wish to come here. Let’s break any comprehensive reform bill into a series of shorter bills that everyone can read and understand before any vote is taken. As you point out immigration bills need not be complicated. Neither should they be 1000 pages long.
And let’s put the debate on C-Span for all to see. Let’s begin with the reforms I have listed in the attachment. With patience, tolerance, and dignity and putting country first, we can achieve comprehensive immigration reform.
Our nation’s immigration policy should be pro-jobs, pro-rule of law, pro-secure borders, pro-stable population, pro-enforcement, and pro-security. A number of smaller bills were introduced previously in 2007 and 2008 that placed top priority on securing the borders before any other reforms could be considered. That was the correct approach but the powers that be in Congress scuttled those bills. They would have been a great beginning for immigration reform, putting the right foot forward first as it were.
Legal immigrants must indeed learn English just as my grandparents and parents did. And they should not be granted citizenship until they are fully fluent in English. Executive Order 13166 should be repealed so we can dispense with multi-lingual ballots and other government publications and proceedings. My Danish grandfather never voted because he believed he was too old to learn English. He didn’t expect the government to publish anything in Danish. Those legal residents who are unable to achieve fluency will still be free of any threat of deportation. Their children will be able to achieve citizenship as they progress through American schools learning English and Civics. The current English test for citizenship is a meaningless farce.
We’ve waited long enough. Just because America has turned its cheek in the past doesn’t mean we should turn away from what’s right, what is legal, and what is in the national interest. Just because we’ve been patient with illegal aliens, doesn’t mean we can wait forever for them to return to their homelands until they can enter legally.
America has given. America has granted amnesty. America has waited for its Hispanic citizens to act like loyal Americans and stand with other loyal Americans. And America has compromised. But there are some fundamentals that America simply cannot negotiate away and cannot wait for agreement on that one minute longer to: secure the borders; maintain family unity by returning illegal alien families to their homelands as a unit; base the opportunity for permanent residency and citizenship only on the needs of our economy; end dual citizenship and allegiance; require the payment of taxes; insure social integration, and linguistic and cultural assimilation.
We need immigration reform that will secure our borders, identify those who in our country illegally, remove those who are surplus to the needs of our economy, punish employers who exploit immigrant labor or who employ illegal aliens so they can compete unfairly with those who don’t; and reform that absolutely prohibits any more blanket amnesties regardless of any conditions that might be imposed. We must assert our values and our principles as a nation of laws. We were once a nation of immigrants but no longer should be. In the early days of our nation, a largely unsettled continent lay before the Founding Fathers. Natural resources like land, water, fish, game, timber, and minerals seemed limitless. Now we know better. We are sending our treasure to despots in the Middle East and South America to buy oil while Congress and the Administration continue to fail to exploit all of the domestic sources available. We have 300 million people in America and some would argue that is already too many. Certainly adding more people compounds the problems we are faced with in the economy, the environment, and in the availability of food, energy, and natural resources.
It is not enough to merely “…understand that we must secure our borders.” We must backup that understanding with action and objective results. We have to agree to buttress infrastructure and staffing improvements at the border with changes in the rules of engagement and continuous and vigorous internal enforcement. We must begin with mandatory E-Verify across the board for all employers, public and private, and all employees, current and new. (It is treasonous to suggest otherwise.) The minimum essentials for the kind of CIR loyal Americans are willing to accept, beginning with borders that are demonstrably secure, are listed in the enclosure. Without internal enforcement it will be impossible to achieve border security. Everyone knows that.
I hope I have not been too blunt or candid in this letter. I still harbor some hope that you will actually find the time to read it. Lest you misunderstand the important aspects of what I have written, let me add that I recognize the many contributions Hispanics have made to our society not the least of which has been the honorable service of many in our Armed Forces. The name of Medal of Honor winner M/Sgt Benevidez comes to mind. While my personal service has not achieved that level of distinction, I and three other members of my family served honorably in WW II and the Korean War. We have paid our dues and I therefore feel justified in stating with complete frankness my position on illegal aliens and the needed immigration reforms. I therefore hope that you will give these few words the thoughtful consideration they deserve.
cc Senator Schumer
Senator Graham
Senator Udall
Senator Bennett
Rep. Polis
Open Letter to Rep. Luis Gutierrez:
I applaud your efforts to enable legal immigrants to learn English, civics, and the tenets of good citizenship. Unfortunately your legislative agenda conveys a different message to illegal aliens, legal immigrants, and potential new immigrants: don’t wait for legal admission; ignore immigration laws; support those who are here illegally; thumb your nose at the rule of law, the very foundation of all civilized societies; ignore the long term adverse impact on the environment, the pressure on our finite natural resources, the diminution of the quality of life and our standard of living which will be the inevitable result of continued population growth. In the long run, millions of new immigrants from failed, impoverished nations unable to provide jobs for their own citizens will ultimately, by their sheer numbers, recreate the very conditions they fled their homelands to escape. Can anyone look at these countries with their poverty, crime, corruption, overpopulation, and disease and still conclude that allowing millions of them to enter the U.S will be beneficial? If Latinization of the U.S. is your goal and, considering the conditions in other Latin American countries, you think that would be a good thing, then you are doing the right thing. If you think the U.S. culture, government, ideals, and achievements are better, then some introspection and soul-searching is in order. Let’s not kill the goose that laid the golden through a misguided concern about foreigners. We should all have learned by now that the U.S. cannot solve all the world’s problems and, instead, we should be focusing our resources and those of all of the tax-exempt foundations on solving the problems of our own citizens.
In your introductory remarks for H.R. 4321 you made a number of statements that warrant a response. What you call “real immigration reform” in your bill turns out to be a complete emasculation of our immigration system and immigration laws. The kind of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) most Americans will support is a far different thing from what you propose and what was previously proposed in the CIR bills that failed in 2007 and 2008.
The key question is whose or what CIR concept is best for our country, not just your illegal constituents? You have chosen to present a bill which you may believe to be best for you and for your illegal ethnic brethren but it is not what is best for our country. Your bill places the interests of foreigners above those of your fellow citizens. If you consider yourself a loyal American, the ethnocentrism evident in H.R. 4321 is totally inappropriate.
There are many important and significant facts that you and the Hispanic Caucus have either chosen to ignore or are completely oblivious to. While the negative impacts of illegal aliens and excessive legal immigration on the 10-17% unemployment rate and the rising health care costs play an important role in America’s antithesis to your version of CIR, they are not the only considerations by any means. Nevertheless, in these times of high unemployment it is unconscionable to suggest that we need more rather than fewer legal immigrants and that we should grant amnesty to illegal aliens rather than expediting their removal.
The legal immigration quota should be reduced to the historical level of about 200,000 per year exclusive of tourists, students, and migrant farm workers who are willing to return to their homelands when the harvest is in. What you propose is just the opposite and, if enacted, would surely have an adverse effect on the long term well-being of our country and the future of our descendents.
Illegal aliens flood our emergency rooms and hospitals and soak up Medicare funds that are badly needed by citizens. Certainly this drain must have some bearing on health care costs, the health care crisis, and the billions of dollars that are spent on Medicaid. Are illegal aliens responsible for all health care cost increases and all unemployment? Of course not! Are they important and undeniable factors in both Medicaid costs and the number of citizens unemployed? Of course!
The immigrants America is attracting these days are mostly poor and badly educated. They reproduce, fall ill, struggle with school, require hiring of paid interpreters, multi-lingual ballots and other government publications, and create instant citizens who drain the welfare and Medicaid budgets of states like Texas and California. Fifty three percent of immigrant households with children collected welfare from at least one government program in 2008. These programs include food stamps, Medicaid, Aid to Dependent Children, and free school lunches.
These are not people doing "jobs Americans won't do." These are people getting benefits that drain the coffers of states already in deep financial difficulty.
Each day at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Texas some 32 babies of illegal alien parents, mostly Mexican, are born into instant U.S. citizenship. In fiscal 2006, that was 75 percent of the 16,489 deliveries. Medicaid pays the bill—or at least some of it, some of the time. Do you suppose there is any relationship between this and the need to increase the Medicaid budget every year reducing the funds available for other important programs?
One wonders where all of this Medicaid expense and the emergency room losses are factored into the calculations of those who praise the illegal aliens as a good labor source. Isn’t it time we required all employers to provide full family health care insurance for all of their foreign employees? Is it any wonder that our nation faces a health care crisis, that Medicare is all but bankrupt, and that gazillions have to be paid out in Medicaid? Does anyone believe Gutierrez-brand CIR will solve these problems?
Your sarcasm regarding global warming and traffic congestion is misplaced. Americans produce 20 metric tons of pollutants per capita annually. Adding another 300 million people by the end of this century will produce another 6 billion tons of pollutants annually at the present rate. Even if, by some technological miracle, we were to be able to reduce our per capita output by half, to that of Mexico’s 10 metric tons per year, we would still have made absolutely no progress toward reducing the present unacceptable level as our population doubles. Have the Hispanic Caucus and the immigration lobbies thought about that or are they ignoring this inconvenient truth?
The “limit” of finite natural resources per capita as population grows without bounds is zero. The more there are of us, the less there is for each of us. How much farther down that road does the Caucus think we should go? I hope the answer is, “No más.”
There is a limit to the amount of the water that is available for domestic and agricultural uses, especially here in the Southwest where many Hispanics live. The burgeoning populations of cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Denver are soaking up the water resources needed to grow the food required to feed the additional people. If you check out an atlas of California, you’ll notice that Owens Lake is filled in with white, not blue. That’s because Los Angeles sucked it dry decades ago. Las Vegas is considering similar plunder of groundwater elsewhere in Nevada. And there are many other cities—Houston and Tampa, to name a couple—that have chosen to push nature’s limits. We continue to plunder the Great Plains’ Ogallala Aquifer, the largest underground reservoir in the United States and one of the largest on the planet. It once held as much water as Lake Huron. It is a treasure that took millennia to accumulate. Remarkably, it could cease to be a water resource within another generation. We are left with yet another illustration of an all too common American mindset: short on vision, mired in denial and unable to comprehend nature’s limits.
Water rights bought up by cities means there will be land that can no longer be productive. This is clearly a losing proposition that needs recognition in any proposed immigration reform bill. With immigration, legal and illegal, adding up to 2 million people a year to a population that is already too large, we are setting ourselves up for a disaster.
Legal immigrants in excess of the historic level of about 200,000 per year, illegal aliens, their progeny, and their higher fertility rates are the main factors in population growth and the depletion of finite natural resources. The fertility rate of American women is near the replacement level of 2.1. It follows that immigration and tax policy reforms are needed to address population growth as an issue of vital importance to the future of our country. Your version of CIR flies in the face of these facts.
You may consider the immigrant blame game to be deplorable but that view ignores the real and significant adverse impacts excessive legal immigration and the presence of illegal aliens have on our country and will have on its future. This is not to deny the many contributions of legal immigrants and even some of the illegals who are willing to do the hardest work our economy requires. Nevertheless, we must limit the amount of foreign labor we import to the demonstrated needs of our economy and make sure employers pay the full cost of foreign workers rather than offloading some of it on unsuspecting taxpayers. With the current high unemployment rate this is the perfect time to enact enlightened tax and immigration policies that achieve the goal of a stable population but I suppose that is too much to expect from a Congress that hasn’t seen a true statesman who is able to rise above parochial interests since the days of the late Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan.
In the immigration debate, some things are indeed constant. They never change but they are regularly ignored by those who have an axe to grind: immigration lawyers, the ethnocentric communities, and their leaders, and, of course, employers who want to be absolved of their past sins and be assured of a continuous flow of cheap labor. They are pushing an agenda that does not bode well for the America we know and love. Does any reasonable person really believe we can double or triple our population without affecting our quality of life or standard of living? Population-driven economic growth is not sustainable in the long run. As I stated above, the more there are of us, the less there is for each of us, and that includes Hispanic citizens as well as everyone else. Why is this simple fact not understood by the Hispanic community and the pro-immigration lobby?
There are lots of people out there who give lip service to border security, just as you do, but, in the next breath, would deny us the tools we need to achieve that goal. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. If the truth were known, they would be clearly recognized as open borders advocates. They are the worst of the anti-America, pro-immigration elements in our country.
So what would it take to secure our borders? First and foremost it is clear that the borders can never be absolutely secure. It is also clear that if illegal aliens think they will be home free once they escape the immediate environs of the border, secure borders will always be just a pipe dream. Secure borders require a many- faceted approach: continuing improvements in border infrastructure and border patrol staffing, improvements in the rules of engagement, penalties for employers and foreign workers who violate the law, and vigorous and continuous internal enforcement. We desperately need mandatory E-Verify across the board for all employers and employees, new and current, public and private. It is the sine qua non of in depth border security. If we deprive illegals of job opportunities, they will have less incentive to come. If we quickly apprehend them and send them on their way, they will stop violating our borders. If we sentence them to six months work on the border infrastructure at minimum wage, they will have some time to think about their transgressions.
Separate immigration courts with judges or justices of the peace in residence at all detention centers with a mandate to make decisions within 24 hours of apprehension would also provide a disincentive for illegal entry. Certainly, appeals must be limited to one week. Contractors who operate detention facilities should be compensated based on throughput rather than detainee-days. Quick decisions could be enabled by the enactment of a rigid set of criteria to be used by these judges and JOPs. These criteria should explicitly exclude family separation as a basis for a favorable immigration decision. Adults under a removal order must take their minor children with them regardless of citizenship. Adult children who are citizens, of course, can make their own choices whether to leave with their parents or remain. This would be no different from the situations of other immigrants who left adult relatives behind when they came to this country. I have many distant relatives in Germany and Denmark who are perfectly content with the decisions of their ancestors to stay there while their brothers and sisters moved on. Those immigrants made the decision to start a new life here while their adult relatives were content to continue living in their homeland.
The issues of how many legal immigrants to admit each year, whether to end chain immigrations, and to provide yet another amnesty for illegal aliens are too important to allow mere politicians to exercise complete control without accountability to the American voters. Cynical politicians ignore what is best for America and pander to those who they believe can help them to achieve perennial re-election and the power that comes with it to do more damage to the national interest.
The comments of TV personalities are often closer to the truth than the typical politician’s rants. And the American people generally agree with them except when they indulge in some over-the-top comment that in an attempt to make a point or simply to be entertaining. For every Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh there is a Chris Mathews or Keith Olbermann. They all play the ratings game. Immigrants are only secondarily to blame for some of the economic, financial, and other woes of our country. The real culprits are the Congress and the Administration who have failed to enact, promote, and enforce immigration policies in the national interest.
The incessant promotion of illegal aliens and excessive legal immigration is the most deplorable element of public debate in our nation. We have failed to deal with the facts of excessive legal immigration, the continued violation of our borders, and their long term adverse impacts on our standard of living and quality of life. We need to look no farther than the teeming masses of China, India, Bangladesh, and Sub-Saharan Africa to know what that would be like.
Something else that has been predictable, constant, and dishonorable is the way that many of our nation’s Hispanic citizens have responded to the illegal presence of so many millions of aliens who are their ethnic brethren. They should know that their fellow non-Hispanic citizens want the immigration laws to be enforced. They want illegals to be removed unless an employer can provide irrefutable evidence that they are unable to fill their jobs with citizen labor, even after extensive advertising offering a living wage and a hiring preference. Instead of behaving as loyal Americans and making common cause with their fellow citizens to achieve real immigration reform, some Hispanics support those who have violated our borders and flaunted the rule of law, the very foundation of all civilized societies. They avoid completely any thoughts about the long term negative consequences to themselves and their descendents. In that respect, they are like most of our shortsighted politicians whose myopic approach to legislation has created many of the problems we face today: a huge national debt; perennial budget deficits; a negative balance of trade; a fading manufacturing capability; wasteful spending on multi-lingual ballots and other government publications and proceedings; the unprecedented Social Security and Medicare unfunded liabilities; the burgeoning costs of Medicaid, the special interest appropriations to organizations like ACORN and La Raza; and immigration and tax policies that do not serve the best interests of this country. The ineptness of Congress in keeping our fiscal house in order is well-known and hopefully will result in the failure of many re-election campaigns.
Does anyone believe that the importation of millions of people from failed countries run by oligarchs will improve America? What is the probability that a Latinized America will be less like the America we know and love and more like the countries the illegals fled to come here? Has anyone in the Hispanic caucus even thought about that question?
The Congress has responded to the immigration and illegal alien problems year after year with faulty legislation. While immigrant proponents have come to the table, they have failed repeatedly to craft a workable solution to our urgent crisis. Instead they offer thousand page bills containing the same old loopholes that weaken our immigration laws rather than reform them. The American people have sat patiently waiting for some statesman in the Congress to introduce a bill that meets the fundamental criteria for effective reform and that is based on a careful assessment of the long-term impact of excessive population growth and the current abandonment of the rule of law.
In the public debate, some commentators and critics have used harsh language to get the attention of the American people regarding immigration’s unarmed invasion and its deadly consequences. The opposition has responded with charges of nativism, xenophobia, and racism. Then they introduce another CIR bill that they claim will cure all the ills of the immigration system but which instead merely sweeps the illegal alien problem under the carpet by offering yet another amnesty and opens the floodgates for unneeded and unwanted population growth. They try to bully those who oppose their brand of negative reform.
Immigrant citizens marched in the street flying foreign flags and ripping the American flag from counter demonstrators’ hands. They say they are asking for fairness but those who are citizens they are already enjoying all the fairness and benefits of our great country has to offer. What they are really asking for is amnesty for their illegal alien ethnic brethren and open borders for others so that hundreds of thousands more can enter without difficulty to participate in governmental welfare and largess. They are not acting like loyal citizens. They are giving precedence to foreigners who have violated our borders over the wishes of the American people who place the national interest first.
They attend community meetings to plot how to achieve their goals. They often focus on the concept of family unity or reunification. Having created the problem themselves by entering our country illegally, they now want to be absolved so that they can remain here. It is not a question of family unity. It is a question of the rule of law. Families can remain unified by simply returning as a unit to their homeland. Minor children must always accompany their parents if they are ordered to be removed. Adult citizen children can make their own choice. A fair immigration policy is one which does not grant special favors to those who have entered our country illegally and which requires families to take responsibility for their own actions. Chain immigrations obviously should be limited to the spouses and children of those who have already become citizens. There is no need for legislation to stop tearing families apart. Everyone knows they are free to return to their countries of origin or stay there to begin with.
We all have learned something from our religious leaders, who have reminded us of these words from the good book: “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’; but I say unto you, whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Indeed America has turned the other cheek a number of times through the various immigration bills and amnesties of the past. But enough is enough! The bible surely does not expect us to continue to turn the other cheek again. I believe our country has turned its cheek so many times that our collective head is spinning like a top, to use your simile.
It’s easy to be angry and frustrated about immigration but still America has turned the other cheek with patience and tolerance and dignity. But our good will and humanitarianism is not unlimited. Loyal Americans are saying, “No más!”
It is time for the Hispanic caucus to come to the table as Americans not as hyphenated Americans. It’s time to negotiate and compromise until we have determined what is in the best interests of our country, not what is in the best interests of illegal aliens or all those who wish to come here. Let’s break any comprehensive reform bill into a series of shorter bills that everyone can read and understand before any vote is taken. As you point out immigration bills need not be complicated. Neither should they be 1000 pages long.
And let’s put the debate on C-Span for all to see. Let’s begin with the reforms I have listed in the attachment. With patience, tolerance, and dignity and putting country first, we can achieve comprehensive immigration reform.
Our nation’s immigration policy should be pro-jobs, pro-rule of law, pro-secure borders, pro-stable population, pro-enforcement, and pro-security. A number of smaller bills were introduced previously in 2007 and 2008 that placed top priority on securing the borders before any other reforms could be considered. That was the correct approach but the powers that be in Congress scuttled those bills. They would have been a great beginning for immigration reform, putting the right foot forward first as it were.
Legal immigrants must indeed learn English just as my grandparents and parents did. And they should not be granted citizenship until they are fully fluent in English. Executive Order 13166 should be repealed so we can dispense with multi-lingual ballots and other government publications and proceedings. My Danish grandfather never voted because he believed he was too old to learn English. He didn’t expect the government to publish anything in Danish. Those legal residents who are unable to achieve fluency will still be free of any threat of deportation. Their children will be able to achieve citizenship as they progress through American schools learning English and Civics. The current English test for citizenship is a meaningless farce.
We’ve waited long enough. Just because America has turned its cheek in the past doesn’t mean we should turn away from what’s right, what is legal, and what is in the national interest. Just because we’ve been patient with illegal aliens, doesn’t mean we can wait forever for them to return to their homelands until they can enter legally.
America has given. America has granted amnesty. America has waited for its Hispanic citizens to act like loyal Americans and stand with other loyal Americans. And America has compromised. But there are some fundamentals that America simply cannot negotiate away and cannot wait for agreement on that one minute longer to: secure the borders; maintain family unity by returning illegal alien families to their homelands as a unit; base the opportunity for permanent residency and citizenship only on the needs of our economy; end dual citizenship and allegiance; require the payment of taxes; insure social integration, and linguistic and cultural assimilation.
We need immigration reform that will secure our borders, identify those who in our country illegally, remove those who are surplus to the needs of our economy, punish employers who exploit immigrant labor or who employ illegal aliens so they can compete unfairly with those who don’t; and reform that absolutely prohibits any more blanket amnesties regardless of any conditions that might be imposed. We must assert our values and our principles as a nation of laws. We were once a nation of immigrants but no longer should be. In the early days of our nation, a largely unsettled continent lay before the Founding Fathers. Natural resources like land, water, fish, game, timber, and minerals seemed limitless. Now we know better. We are sending our treasure to despots in the Middle East and South America to buy oil while Congress and the Administration continue to fail to exploit all of the domestic sources available. We have 300 million people in America and some would argue that is already too many. Certainly adding more people compounds the problems we are faced with in the economy, the environment, and in the availability of food, energy, and natural resources.
It is not enough to merely “…understand that we must secure our borders.” We must backup that understanding with action and objective results. We have to agree to buttress infrastructure and staffing improvements at the border with changes in the rules of engagement and continuous and vigorous internal enforcement. We must begin with mandatory E-Verify across the board for all employers, public and private, and all employees, current and new. (It is treasonous to suggest otherwise.) The minimum essentials for the kind of CIR loyal Americans are willing to accept, beginning with borders that are demonstrably secure, are listed in the enclosure. Without internal enforcement it will be impossible to achieve border security. Everyone knows that.
I hope I have not been too blunt or candid in this letter. I still harbor some hope that you will actually find the time to read it. Lest you misunderstand the important aspects of what I have written, let me add that I recognize the many contributions Hispanics have made to our society not the least of which has been the honorable service of many in our Armed Forces. The name of Medal of Honor winner M/Sgt Benevidez comes to mind. While my personal service has not achieved that level of distinction, I and three other members of my family served honorably in WW II and the Korean War. We have paid our dues and I therefore feel justified in stating with complete frankness my position on illegal aliens and the needed immigration reforms. I therefore hope that you will give these few words the thoughtful consideration they deserve.
cc Senator Schumer
Senator Graham
Senator Udall
Senator Bennett
Rep. Polis
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Average Length of U.S. Recessions
The average duration of the US economic recessions since 1900 was 14.4 months. Given the recent string of weak economic reports and the freeze up in the credit markets, the question regarding the current period is no longer if we are in a recession, but when did it start. Using the assumption that the recession began at the start of 2008 (using Industrial Production and Employment statistics), if the current period ends up as just an average contraction, then we could expect the economy to bottom some time in the spring of 2009.
As shown in the chart, there is a clear dichotomy in recessions prior to WWII (red) and recessions after WWII (blue). Pre WWII, the average recession lasted 19.1 months. Since then, though, the average duration has been nearly cut in half to 10.2 months. While the reason for the shorter duration is up for debate, the faster information flow has certainly allowed companies to quickly adjust activity in order to compensate for shocks to the upside or the downside. By the post-WWII standard, the current recession should have ended in November, 2008. Therefore, the Obama turnaround is already several months overdue. Nothing to crow about there!
Monday, July 27, 2009
Realities and the Pro-America Agenda
Realities
1. The Browning of America is an undeniable and irreversible fact.
2. With 50 million Hispanics, 40 million Blacks, and millions more Asian, India Indians, and Native Americans it is utter nonsense to even speak of the bleaching of America as anyone's serious agenda.
The Pro-America Agenda
1. Secure the borders
a. Improve infrastructure and staffing
b. Change the rules of engagement
c. Vigorous and continuous internal enforcement using e-verify
d. Modify the 14th amendment to jus sanguinis, requiring at least one parent to be a citizen for the child to have birthright citizenship.
e. Deny employment opportunities to illegals
f. Require a six month term working on border infrastructure for all male adult illegals who are apprehended at the border or internally
g. Create other disincentives as necessary to achieve border security
2. Treat all apprehended illegals humanely
3. Reduce legal immigration to no more than 200,000 per year (exclusive of tourists, students, political refugees, and temporary migrant workers)focused on needed skills.
4. Close the borders to pregnant women
5. Make English the official language of the United States for all purposes of government at all levels
6. Require fluency in English for citizenship rather than just the knowledge of a few words of English; this would make multi-lingual ballots unnecessary and inappropriate. Provide Public Interpreters for noncitizens who demonstrably cannot afford one.
7. Reduce cross-border traffic of all kinds; eliminate cross-border work commutes; if you work here, you must live here and you must be here legally.
8. Strengthen the treason, sedition, and un-American laws to enable the incarceration of those who aid and abet illegal aliens or otherwise undermine the rule of law.
9. Provide tutors and teaching assistants to enable a phase out of bilingual education at the earliest effective grade level; encourage parents to take advantage of free, community-based English instruction.
10. Encourage the study of foreign languages for those who plan careers where such knowledge would be of use; place no restrictions on such study or the use of any language in private conversation or private business, except as specified by the business owner.
11. Re-advertise all jobs currently held by foreign workers at a living wage and with a hiring preference for citizens.
12. Allow foreign workers only if an employer can present irrefutable proof of need.
13. Pay and benefits for foreign workers must be at the prevailing wage for citizen workers in the same occupations with the same level of experience and skill.
14. Require employers to provide full family health care coverage for all foreign employees.
15. Photograph, fingerprint, DNA all illegal aliens before repatriation after they have served their sentences; admonish them that if they return, they will do hard time.
16. Institute a biometric ID card for all foreigners; make it optional for those who may wish to have one as ready proof of citizenship or legal status.
17. End chain immigrations except for spouses and minor children of permanent residents or citizens.
18. Declare delivery rooms to be the temporary sovereign territory of the homeland of the mother; issue birth certificate showing that homeland as the citizenship of the child.
19 Build a string of triage/obstetric hospitals above the northern and below the southern borders, jointly funded by the U.S. and its neighbors but staffed by the the countries in which they are located. Provide helicopters and ambulances at border ports of entry to transport aliens who are ill to one of these hospitals.
20. Stabilize illegals who seek treatment and then transport to one of these hospitals.
21. Allow work permits (green cards) only when the U.S. unemployment rate is below a certain level as specified by the U.S. government in conjunction with local unions and professional organizations
22. No immigrant bashing
23. Establish as a national objective a stable population with a soft landing for our economy
24. Immediate deportation without recourse for imams who preach jihad or use the word infidel
25. Outlaw burqas, headscarves, yarmulkes, and other religious symbols in public schools.
26. Eliminate federal funding for ACORN,racist organizations, and separatist schools.
27. Outlaw public employee unions, card check, and other corrosive labor practices.
28. Eliminate foreign language TV and radio stations but not a limited number individual foreign language programs as inconsistent with the objective of encouraging a common unity language and culture.
29. Prosecute those guilty of intolerance to the full extent of the law.
30. Require objective evidence of secure borders before considering amnesty, even for needed workers.
31. Give amnesty priority for those who passed the employment re-advertisement test above and who can present evidence that they have been paid over the table, paid all applicable taxes, are socially integrated and culturally and linguistically assimilated,have children in school learning English and civics.
32. Give priority to legal immigration applicants who are fluent in English.
33. Expedite citizenship for foreign-born PhD students in science, math and engineering who wish to become citizens.
34. Require illegals ordered to be removed to pay the costs of their removal.
35. Require illegals ordered to be removed to take their minor children with them regardless of the childrens' citizenship
36. Minimize detention times by compensating contractors on the basis of throughput rather than detainee-days.
37. Provide for resident immigration judges or justices of the peace and inspectors general in all detention facilities to assure quick decisions and human treatment.
38. Establish rigid criteria for the successful appeal of removal orders; family separation should be explicitly excluded from these criteria since 35. above requires minor children to remain with their parents.
39. Develop a method for precisely metering the number of foreigners admitted to our needs rather than to the demand. The U.S. has no obligation to admit any immigrants.
40. Deal as harshly with anyone convicted of crimes against immigrants and illegals as we do with illegals or citizens who commit similar crimes against citizens.
41. Shun any ideas of mass overnight deportation of all illegals.
42. Base repatriation of illegals on a systematic and gradual approach over a significant amount of time using e-verify as the primary tool to identify them; make adjustments and allow appeals as necessary to avoid economic disruption and to assure that demonstrated labor needs are met
43. Depend primarily on self-deportation resulting from denial of employment opportunities.
44. Negotiate bi-lateral treaties with our neighbors to enable reimbursement for the cost of apprehending, detaining and repatriating illegals; failing this reduce any foreign aid provided to those countries to offset these costs (send 'em a message); the illegals and their employers must bear the primary fiscal responsibilty. Remittances should also be taxed as necessary to make repatriation a no net cost operation to the government.
45. Determine in advance which donor countries are guilty of political persecution, apply sanctions, and reduce the detainment time for refugees from these countries.
46. Negotiate a treaty that lays out the behavior expected of neighboring countries regarding the control, reimbursement and repatriation of border violators.
47. Eliminate cross-border busing to schools in the U.S.
48. Require schools, hospitals, and public service offices to establish the bona fides of all students, patients and applicants.
49. Reduce federal aid to sanctuary cities
50. Require local law enforcement to determine the immigration status of all those who are stopped or arrested for other violations and hold the illegals for ICE or transport them immediately to the nearest detention facility.
51. Train the national guard to perform the same functions as the border patrol; employ the guard, during the two weeks of active duty each year, at gaps in the fence and where illegal traffic is heaviest, as necessary and as requested by the border patrol.
52. Negotiate treaties with our neighbors to allow reciprocal hot pursuit of human and drug smugglers across the border; grant the border patrol authority to arrest or use lethal force as necessary within 10 miles north or south of the border.
53. Impose a mandatory sentence of 5 years for the first offense and 10 for each subsequent human smuggling offense; 10 and 20 years at hard labor for drug smugglers
54. Incarcerate Islamic illegals indefinitely as potential terrorists if they come from countries designated as supporters of terrorism.
55. Require Islamic legal immigrants to abjure jihad, sharia, mistretment of women, and death penalties for apostacy.
56. Allow in the U.S. only Korans revised to denounce jihad, sharia, female mistreatment, and anti-apostacy actions; encourage the voluntary removal and replacement of imams who preach jihad or the denial of human rights guaranteed citizens under the constitution.
57. Limit deductions for exemptions to two children per female; cap and trade for more.
58. Base tax and immigration policies and reform on the stable population objective.
59. Declare that America is a multi-racial society and will remain so; advocacy of ethnic cleansing or bleaching is illegal except as permitted by the constitution
60. Those who accuse segments of the population of advocating ethnic cleansing or
"bleaching" may be found guilty of incitement and/or libel.
Corrections, improvements, additions, edits, etc. are solicited.
1. The Browning of America is an undeniable and irreversible fact.
2. With 50 million Hispanics, 40 million Blacks, and millions more Asian, India Indians, and Native Americans it is utter nonsense to even speak of the bleaching of America as anyone's serious agenda.
The Pro-America Agenda
1. Secure the borders
a. Improve infrastructure and staffing
b. Change the rules of engagement
c. Vigorous and continuous internal enforcement using e-verify
d. Modify the 14th amendment to jus sanguinis, requiring at least one parent to be a citizen for the child to have birthright citizenship.
e. Deny employment opportunities to illegals
f. Require a six month term working on border infrastructure for all male adult illegals who are apprehended at the border or internally
g. Create other disincentives as necessary to achieve border security
2. Treat all apprehended illegals humanely
3. Reduce legal immigration to no more than 200,000 per year (exclusive of tourists, students, political refugees, and temporary migrant workers)focused on needed skills.
4. Close the borders to pregnant women
5. Make English the official language of the United States for all purposes of government at all levels
6. Require fluency in English for citizenship rather than just the knowledge of a few words of English; this would make multi-lingual ballots unnecessary and inappropriate. Provide Public Interpreters for noncitizens who demonstrably cannot afford one.
7. Reduce cross-border traffic of all kinds; eliminate cross-border work commutes; if you work here, you must live here and you must be here legally.
8. Strengthen the treason, sedition, and un-American laws to enable the incarceration of those who aid and abet illegal aliens or otherwise undermine the rule of law.
9. Provide tutors and teaching assistants to enable a phase out of bilingual education at the earliest effective grade level; encourage parents to take advantage of free, community-based English instruction.
10. Encourage the study of foreign languages for those who plan careers where such knowledge would be of use; place no restrictions on such study or the use of any language in private conversation or private business, except as specified by the business owner.
11. Re-advertise all jobs currently held by foreign workers at a living wage and with a hiring preference for citizens.
12. Allow foreign workers only if an employer can present irrefutable proof of need.
13. Pay and benefits for foreign workers must be at the prevailing wage for citizen workers in the same occupations with the same level of experience and skill.
14. Require employers to provide full family health care coverage for all foreign employees.
15. Photograph, fingerprint, DNA all illegal aliens before repatriation after they have served their sentences; admonish them that if they return, they will do hard time.
16. Institute a biometric ID card for all foreigners; make it optional for those who may wish to have one as ready proof of citizenship or legal status.
17. End chain immigrations except for spouses and minor children of permanent residents or citizens.
18. Declare delivery rooms to be the temporary sovereign territory of the homeland of the mother; issue birth certificate showing that homeland as the citizenship of the child.
19 Build a string of triage/obstetric hospitals above the northern and below the southern borders, jointly funded by the U.S. and its neighbors but staffed by the the countries in which they are located. Provide helicopters and ambulances at border ports of entry to transport aliens who are ill to one of these hospitals.
20. Stabilize illegals who seek treatment and then transport to one of these hospitals.
21. Allow work permits (green cards) only when the U.S. unemployment rate is below a certain level as specified by the U.S. government in conjunction with local unions and professional organizations
22. No immigrant bashing
23. Establish as a national objective a stable population with a soft landing for our economy
24. Immediate deportation without recourse for imams who preach jihad or use the word infidel
25. Outlaw burqas, headscarves, yarmulkes, and other religious symbols in public schools.
26. Eliminate federal funding for ACORN,racist organizations, and separatist schools.
27. Outlaw public employee unions, card check, and other corrosive labor practices.
28. Eliminate foreign language TV and radio stations but not a limited number individual foreign language programs as inconsistent with the objective of encouraging a common unity language and culture.
29. Prosecute those guilty of intolerance to the full extent of the law.
30. Require objective evidence of secure borders before considering amnesty, even for needed workers.
31. Give amnesty priority for those who passed the employment re-advertisement test above and who can present evidence that they have been paid over the table, paid all applicable taxes, are socially integrated and culturally and linguistically assimilated,have children in school learning English and civics.
32. Give priority to legal immigration applicants who are fluent in English.
33. Expedite citizenship for foreign-born PhD students in science, math and engineering who wish to become citizens.
34. Require illegals ordered to be removed to pay the costs of their removal.
35. Require illegals ordered to be removed to take their minor children with them regardless of the childrens' citizenship
36. Minimize detention times by compensating contractors on the basis of throughput rather than detainee-days.
37. Provide for resident immigration judges or justices of the peace and inspectors general in all detention facilities to assure quick decisions and human treatment.
38. Establish rigid criteria for the successful appeal of removal orders; family separation should be explicitly excluded from these criteria since 35. above requires minor children to remain with their parents.
39. Develop a method for precisely metering the number of foreigners admitted to our needs rather than to the demand. The U.S. has no obligation to admit any immigrants.
40. Deal as harshly with anyone convicted of crimes against immigrants and illegals as we do with illegals or citizens who commit similar crimes against citizens.
41. Shun any ideas of mass overnight deportation of all illegals.
42. Base repatriation of illegals on a systematic and gradual approach over a significant amount of time using e-verify as the primary tool to identify them; make adjustments and allow appeals as necessary to avoid economic disruption and to assure that demonstrated labor needs are met
43. Depend primarily on self-deportation resulting from denial of employment opportunities.
44. Negotiate bi-lateral treaties with our neighbors to enable reimbursement for the cost of apprehending, detaining and repatriating illegals; failing this reduce any foreign aid provided to those countries to offset these costs (send 'em a message); the illegals and their employers must bear the primary fiscal responsibilty. Remittances should also be taxed as necessary to make repatriation a no net cost operation to the government.
45. Determine in advance which donor countries are guilty of political persecution, apply sanctions, and reduce the detainment time for refugees from these countries.
46. Negotiate a treaty that lays out the behavior expected of neighboring countries regarding the control, reimbursement and repatriation of border violators.
47. Eliminate cross-border busing to schools in the U.S.
48. Require schools, hospitals, and public service offices to establish the bona fides of all students, patients and applicants.
49. Reduce federal aid to sanctuary cities
50. Require local law enforcement to determine the immigration status of all those who are stopped or arrested for other violations and hold the illegals for ICE or transport them immediately to the nearest detention facility.
51. Train the national guard to perform the same functions as the border patrol; employ the guard, during the two weeks of active duty each year, at gaps in the fence and where illegal traffic is heaviest, as necessary and as requested by the border patrol.
52. Negotiate treaties with our neighbors to allow reciprocal hot pursuit of human and drug smugglers across the border; grant the border patrol authority to arrest or use lethal force as necessary within 10 miles north or south of the border.
53. Impose a mandatory sentence of 5 years for the first offense and 10 for each subsequent human smuggling offense; 10 and 20 years at hard labor for drug smugglers
54. Incarcerate Islamic illegals indefinitely as potential terrorists if they come from countries designated as supporters of terrorism.
55. Require Islamic legal immigrants to abjure jihad, sharia, mistretment of women, and death penalties for apostacy.
56. Allow in the U.S. only Korans revised to denounce jihad, sharia, female mistreatment, and anti-apostacy actions; encourage the voluntary removal and replacement of imams who preach jihad or the denial of human rights guaranteed citizens under the constitution.
57. Limit deductions for exemptions to two children per female; cap and trade for more.
58. Base tax and immigration policies and reform on the stable population objective.
59. Declare that America is a multi-racial society and will remain so; advocacy of ethnic cleansing or bleaching is illegal except as permitted by the constitution
60. Those who accuse segments of the population of advocating ethnic cleansing or
"bleaching" may be found guilty of incitement and/or libel.
Corrections, improvements, additions, edits, etc. are solicited.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Externalities
All employers, not just corporations, seek to externalize costs. They are just trying to improve their bottom line.An externality is when the benefit or cost of a transaction is not reflected in the price arrived at by the buyer and seller when they enter into the deal. The benefit or cost is shifted onto society.
It’s very simple: Employers gain from illegal immigration because illegal immigration increases the supply of labor in the U.S. economy (by 8 million workers), which in turn reduces the cost of labor in the United States. The lower cost of labor allows employers to hire workers at lower wages and therefore make more money. If it is a small landscaping business, the owner can make more money by hiring workers at lower wages. If it is a large, public corporation, the managers can make more money by hiring at lower wages. Some of the money will go to executives in the form of higher salaries, and some of it may go to the shareholders as higher dividends. Sometimes the employer knows they are hiring illegal immigrants; many times the employer does not because the illegal workers have fake papers (which is a federal crime). Congress has had a tendency to excuse the employers if they did not "knowingly" hire illegal aliens. This loophole has yet to be closed.
But since 80% of illegal immigrants are low-skilled, they usually earn such low wages that they turn to welfare to make ends meet. So we, the taxpayers, are subsidizing illegal aliens as they break our nation’s reasonable and duly enacted laws. And we, the taxpayers, are subsidizing employers’ increased profits due to lower labor costs. Show me an illegal alien and I’ll show you a subsidy. And, if you are purposely hiring illegal workers, you are shifting your labor costs to the public and enriching yourself while the rest of us pay taxes to provide welfare to your workers.
The market is distorted. The availability of welfare benefits to illegal immigrants acts as an inducement for them to come here and accept jobs that Americans would rather not accept because the pay is so low that you cannot take the job without going on welfare. The taxpayer burden of illegal immigration is a negative externality of the cheap labor employer-employee relationship. It is a negative externality just like pollution is. The concept of the negative externality is at the heart of environmentalism. The Pro-america, pro-environment people understand that illegal immigration imposes negative externalities on society. But I think that if you put the plain evidence in front of the Anti-America/Pro-illegal crowd that illegal immigration imposes a negative externality on society, they would deny it. It wouldn’t be politically correct for them to allow logic to lead them to an honest conclusion.
(Adapted from an essay by Charles Breiterman)
It’s very simple: Employers gain from illegal immigration because illegal immigration increases the supply of labor in the U.S. economy (by 8 million workers), which in turn reduces the cost of labor in the United States. The lower cost of labor allows employers to hire workers at lower wages and therefore make more money. If it is a small landscaping business, the owner can make more money by hiring workers at lower wages. If it is a large, public corporation, the managers can make more money by hiring at lower wages. Some of the money will go to executives in the form of higher salaries, and some of it may go to the shareholders as higher dividends. Sometimes the employer knows they are hiring illegal immigrants; many times the employer does not because the illegal workers have fake papers (which is a federal crime). Congress has had a tendency to excuse the employers if they did not "knowingly" hire illegal aliens. This loophole has yet to be closed.
But since 80% of illegal immigrants are low-skilled, they usually earn such low wages that they turn to welfare to make ends meet. So we, the taxpayers, are subsidizing illegal aliens as they break our nation’s reasonable and duly enacted laws. And we, the taxpayers, are subsidizing employers’ increased profits due to lower labor costs. Show me an illegal alien and I’ll show you a subsidy. And, if you are purposely hiring illegal workers, you are shifting your labor costs to the public and enriching yourself while the rest of us pay taxes to provide welfare to your workers.
The market is distorted. The availability of welfare benefits to illegal immigrants acts as an inducement for them to come here and accept jobs that Americans would rather not accept because the pay is so low that you cannot take the job without going on welfare. The taxpayer burden of illegal immigration is a negative externality of the cheap labor employer-employee relationship. It is a negative externality just like pollution is. The concept of the negative externality is at the heart of environmentalism. The Pro-america, pro-environment people understand that illegal immigration imposes negative externalities on society. But I think that if you put the plain evidence in front of the Anti-America/Pro-illegal crowd that illegal immigration imposes a negative externality on society, they would deny it. It wouldn’t be politically correct for them to allow logic to lead them to an honest conclusion.
(Adapted from an essay by Charles Breiterman)
Saturday, February 28, 2009
“Hate”-- A Term Designed to Appeal to Emotion rather than Reason
A recent Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) study identified 926 hate groups in the United States—defined as groups with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people. By this definition, the SPLC is itself a hate group because it attacks entire classes of people such as the KKK, the Skinheads, and the Neo-Nazis.
The term “hate” is entirely too simplistic to be applicable to the entire spectrum of opposing beliefs and approaches to achieving power or influence over others. It is a term designed to appeal to emotion rather than reason. The beliefs of the so-called hate groups range from a political philosophy that merely differs from that of the SPLC’s to actual advocacy of violence against entire classes of people. This broad brush treatment of those who dissent from political orthodoxy or correctness is unwarranted. It undermines whatever good they could otherwise accomplish through regular and consistent criticism of those who would do harm to others whom they perceive to be a threat to their way of life or simply “different” or “inferior.” The feelings of these groups are, of course, very human qualities that have been demonstrated time and again throughout history. Nevertheless, as we strive to recognize the pervasiveness of political, social and cultural differences that have frequently resulted in violence and wars, we cannot accept this as the norm or the behavior we should be striving for. Therefore, we must condemn violence of all kinds whether directed against individuals or whole groups of people or minorities.
This does not mean in any case that anyone must approve of or accept without comment behavior which he or she finds abhorrent, distasteful, contrary to law, or a perceived threat to his or her way of life. Currently the opprobrium of some is focused on the nation's first African-American president and an economy that is hemorrhaging jobs. For the past decade, illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico and Latin America, have also divided our society. The purveyors of the “hate group” mantra inevitably overlook the legitimate reasons for opposing illegal aliens and a new president whose political philosophy is foreign to the capitalism that drove America to the heights of power, prestige, and a standard of living of living that is the envy of many.
During the election, many candidates pussy-footed around their disagreements with Obama because they were worried that they would be considered racist. Similarly, today the SPLC would mute the criticism of the president by attributing it to racism or “hate.” The SPLC conveniently overlooks all of the legitimate bases for disagreeing with and disliking the policies of Obama. People quite properly worry about what will happen to our beloved country as its Latino population increases to such a degree that America becomes Mexico Norte with all the ills of disease, crime, poverty, joblessness, and corruption evident in the original. In fact, there is little about Latin American culture, government, and economic and scientific achievements that recommends them over the America we all cherish.
The current economic conditions have exacerbated the opposition to the politics of the left and the politics and organizational methods promoted by Saul Alinsky that formed the basis for the successful Obama campaigns. People who had been complacent in the past are now upset and more motivated to do something. They didn’t fully appreciate the size of the illegal alien population until the economic crisis hit and it became clear illegals, by accepting substandard wages and benefits, were taking jobs Americans needed and wanted. The movement to provide amnesty to millions of illegals simply added fuel to the fire. But the ire resulting from these events is not “hate”, it is simply the current economic reality and the longer standing interest in secure borders and a preservation of the rule of law and our national sovereignty.
The term “hate” is entirely too simplistic to be applicable to the entire spectrum of opposing beliefs and approaches to achieving power or influence over others. It is a term designed to appeal to emotion rather than reason. The beliefs of the so-called hate groups range from a political philosophy that merely differs from that of the SPLC’s to actual advocacy of violence against entire classes of people. This broad brush treatment of those who dissent from political orthodoxy or correctness is unwarranted. It undermines whatever good they could otherwise accomplish through regular and consistent criticism of those who would do harm to others whom they perceive to be a threat to their way of life or simply “different” or “inferior.” The feelings of these groups are, of course, very human qualities that have been demonstrated time and again throughout history. Nevertheless, as we strive to recognize the pervasiveness of political, social and cultural differences that have frequently resulted in violence and wars, we cannot accept this as the norm or the behavior we should be striving for. Therefore, we must condemn violence of all kinds whether directed against individuals or whole groups of people or minorities.
This does not mean in any case that anyone must approve of or accept without comment behavior which he or she finds abhorrent, distasteful, contrary to law, or a perceived threat to his or her way of life. Currently the opprobrium of some is focused on the nation's first African-American president and an economy that is hemorrhaging jobs. For the past decade, illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico and Latin America, have also divided our society. The purveyors of the “hate group” mantra inevitably overlook the legitimate reasons for opposing illegal aliens and a new president whose political philosophy is foreign to the capitalism that drove America to the heights of power, prestige, and a standard of living of living that is the envy of many.
During the election, many candidates pussy-footed around their disagreements with Obama because they were worried that they would be considered racist. Similarly, today the SPLC would mute the criticism of the president by attributing it to racism or “hate.” The SPLC conveniently overlooks all of the legitimate bases for disagreeing with and disliking the policies of Obama. People quite properly worry about what will happen to our beloved country as its Latino population increases to such a degree that America becomes Mexico Norte with all the ills of disease, crime, poverty, joblessness, and corruption evident in the original. In fact, there is little about Latin American culture, government, and economic and scientific achievements that recommends them over the America we all cherish.
The current economic conditions have exacerbated the opposition to the politics of the left and the politics and organizational methods promoted by Saul Alinsky that formed the basis for the successful Obama campaigns. People who had been complacent in the past are now upset and more motivated to do something. They didn’t fully appreciate the size of the illegal alien population until the economic crisis hit and it became clear illegals, by accepting substandard wages and benefits, were taking jobs Americans needed and wanted. The movement to provide amnesty to millions of illegals simply added fuel to the fire. But the ire resulting from these events is not “hate”, it is simply the current economic reality and the longer standing interest in secure borders and a preservation of the rule of law and our national sovereignty.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)