Friday, March 31, 2006

First it was George Will...

...Then John Podhoretz surrenders to the invading hordes...

"The immigration issue has risen in importance not because of real-world conditions but because of a relentless campaign to place it at the center of the national consciousness - a campaign waged primarily by intellectuals (many of them, ironically, immigrants themselves). Their hostility to open immigration is rooted in many different arguments.

There's the cultural argument - the idea that immigrants from Mexico neither wish to be nor are compelled by policy or principle to seek to become fully American. There's the economic argument - the idea that certain American industries are addicted to overly cheap immigrant labor by hand when they would do better in the global marketplace to innovate and use machinery.

And there's the national-security argument - the idea that we need to restrict immigration to defend the country against an unconventional terrorist attack staged by individuals coming across the border illegally. And there are others as well.

All these arguments are sound, and they raise issues that must be addressed. What is distressing about them, however, is how weirdly defeatist they are. Immigration foes are convinced that the American national fabric is frayed, tattered and in danger of disintegration - that America cannot survive in its present form if current immigration trends continue.

They fear the kind of social disorder now on display in Europe, where disgruntled Muslim immigrants are increasingly testing the limits of democratic civil society.

That's not the America I see, or the America I live in. I see a vibrant, dynamic, extraordinarily strong and extraordinarily stable country that has dealt successfully with far more pressing domestic problems without losing a beat.

Brilliant men and women brought immigration to the forefront with the strength and passion of their ideas. But brilliant people can be very wrong sometimes."
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Trying living in a border state, John, then get back to us about violent crime, and the erosion of the American identity.

Yes, we don't need migrant farm workers because we're being left behind by modern technology and it's time to begin the switch, so what then do we do with the millions of suddenly jobless illegals.

You going to police them and house them and feed them, John? Or will you wait for the problem to reach epic proportions and then say nothing can be done?

And stop the nonsense about crime being the lowest in 3 decades. REPORTED crime is down, but anyone buying into how safe we are is not living in the same galaxy.

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