Transcript at the link. I was struck — perhaps because I'm also in the middle of reading "41: A Portrait of My Father" — by Bush's spontaneous and a bit awkward expression of empathy:
... we're creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family-loving people that are in violation of the law.... If they're living here, I don't want to see...six- and eight-year-old kids being made, one, totally uneducated, and made to feel like they're living outside the law.... These are good people, strong people. Part of my family is Mexican.This education issue doesn't come up anymore, because —2 years after that debate — the Supreme Court determined that it violated Equal Protection to exclude these children from school. Reagan's contribution ignores the school question and stresses the need for work permits:
Rather than talking about putting up a fence, why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems? Make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then, while they're working and earning here, they'd pay taxes here. And when they want to go back, they can go back. They can cross. Open the borders both ways.
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33 comments:
They proved that amnesty doesn't work.
We tried it already, now.
High fence / wide gate. It's humane, sensible, and, as Reagan says, recognizes the mutual problems.
The xenophobes are insignificant in the public debate, the sticking point is their intellectual fellow travellers--the pro-amnesty intellectual crowd that dominates the upper echelons of our political class.
Kinder and gentler by a long shot.
How humane. Unlike the current crop. I remember McCain his year stood out as the only GOP candidate to talk of Mexicans as human and potentially good people.
Both candidates here come off as good Christians, not patriots first and Christians second.
Controlled legal immigration. Work permits, not amnesty and not citizenship.
More evidence of the great opportunity the Republicans missed by letting the anti-immigration faction gain too much sway. But before you lefties get too smug, remember how many opportunities you had to deal with this when you controlled the government. You failed to cash in on the opportunity.
My vague recollection is that Bush was lampooned for his views by the Media.
Maybe I'm mixing that video up with his comments about his brown grandkids (I thought the reaction to that was ridiculously harsh)
"But before you lefties get too smug, remember how many opportunities you had to deal with this when you controlled the government."
You assume lefties want to "deal with" issues rather than exploit them for political gain.
You are mistaken.
"Mark said...
Kinder and gentler by a long shot.
How humane. Unlike the current crop. I remember McCain his year stood out as the only GOP candidate to talk of Mexicans as human and potentially good people.
Both candidates here come off as good Christians, not patriots first and Christians second."
What about Perry, who famously caused a stir when he spoke of others being heartless?
Frankly, other than fringe candidates like Buchanan and whatshisname from Colorado, no GOP presidential candidate remotely resembles the picture you paint. They might support laws that are harsh or go too far in "securing" the border, but the extremist, culturalist element really isn't there.
"the children of illegal aliens..."
Both sides of the argument seem to use this construction and I find it endlessly annoying.
It makes no distinction between children born here and those born elsewhere.
Those who are citizens and those who are not.
Those children who are citizens and those who are illegal aliens themselves.
Any child born in the US (with diplomatic exceptions) is a citizen by Constitutional right. An indisputably "Natural born citizen". It makes no difference who their parents are, there citizenship, legal status or length of stay.
It is a pretty bright line.
That sentence construction muddies it horribly.
John Henry
No immigration advocate will ever explain to me their reasoning on letting millions of only Mexicans/South Americans come and stay here illegally.
What about the millions of deserving Ethiopians? Indians? Afghans? Much of the world consists of desperately poor but decent human beings. Why should we discriminate in favor of Mexicans? And that argument leads to open borders and the US becoming a third world country.
If one in not born in the US, one may be a statutory citizen. That is a citizen by statute rather than by Constitution. Naturalization or maternal citizenship, principally.
McCain and Cruz are 2 famous examples.
Other than, possibly, being able to be president, there is no distinction between the two.
Neither citizenship can be taken away. The one exception is if there was fraud in the process of becoming a citizen. For example, if someone lied on the application for citizenship.
John Henry
TIm McGuire said:
High fence / wide gate.
Never heard that before but I love it. It captures my feelings exactly.
John Henry
We need those brown people (Primarily Mexicans as someone else pointed out) to empty our bedpans and so on. Nobody would ever think they should aspire to more than that, right?
“America is not a nation that accepts the hypocrisy of workers who mow our lawns, make our beds, clean out bed pans, with no chance ever to get right with the law.”
Obama, in hos Vegas speech (H/T Ed Driscoll)
And not to be outdone:
"This is about people's lives, people, I would venture to guess, who served us tonight."
Hilary! cited in the Daily caller.
They didn't mention but I do wonder what else this says beyond mere racism on Hilary's and Obama's parts. Esp Hilary.
If illegal aliens are serving them at the function, that means the venue is violating the law by hiring them.
We know that Hilary has little respect for law but could she please be a bit less blatant?
John Henry
To think Obama would not have plagiarized some of what these two presidents said is a fallacy.
BDNYC, McCain said "But then you've still got two other aspects of this issue that have to be resolved as well. And we need to sit down as Americans and recognize these are God's children as well.
(Applause)
And they need some protection under the law. And they need some of our love and compassion."
During a GOP debate the year he won the nomination:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/28/debate.transcript/
It's no wonder he won amidst the Tom Tancredo, Rudy Guiliani and the other candidates who lacked any sense of compassion that you hear in both Bush and Reagan.
The difference is stark, the GOP used to talk of immigrants like they were actual people, not cattle that got around the fence somehow.
Most of the people talking about how amnesty and open-ish boarders is a nice, humane thing to do are people who will either benefit from amnesty (politically or financially), or they will be relatively unaffected by it.
They refuse to discuss how this will burden and harm the average American, how this will diminish the idea that laws mean something, and that it encourages a difficult situation to continue.
Where is the compassions for the work-a-day American?
"the GOP used to talk of immigrants like they were actual people, not cattle"
Yes, and Scott Walker's ship is still sinking.
And they need some of our love and compassion
McCain is one of those rich people who just think immigrants mow your lawn and clean your house.
Where is the compassion for low-skilled Americans who will be undercut for jobs and wages by immigrants?
Where is the compassion for American school kids in already burdened schools that will be further diminished by the influx of illegal alien kids enticed here by our government?
Where is the compassion for American teenagers who can't find jobs anymore?
Where is the compassion for middle class tax payers who'll be burdened by increasing taxes to pay for benefits for low wage immigrants AND welfare benefits for Americans who can no longer find jobs?
Why don't rich politians and business people have any compassion or concern for the middle and working class Americans?
Why are they left out of this discussion?
I live in the Rio Grande Valley. Here are some interesting factoids regarding the Texas Border:
The Rio Grande River is a shitty border. In the southern delta, for each 10 miles of actual distance, it snakes 40 miles through scrubby wilderness. It would take an army division to police it.
From Brownsville all the way to Larado, it’s called La Fronterra (the Mexican Frontier). It may be in the Texas, but it is 95% Mexican. Of the 2 million plus residents, less than 10% are of true legal origin. Most U.S. citizens are second generation naturalized.
There are dozens of bridges crossing the river. Mexican Nationals freely come and go. The streets in McAllen Texas choked with plates from Tamaulipas. Most of the luxury homes and prime real estate are owned by Mexican Nationals. It might as well be the 32nd Mexican state.
The real border checkpoints are 70 miles inland (google “inland border checkpoints”). These checkpoints are in the vast scrubby Mustang Desert. The coyote’s primary job is to get them across this desert. All of this land is privately owned and fenced (mostly absentee owners). It’s used for ranching, hunting, oil and gas. It’s very very remote and 100% private. Hundreds of miles of gated roads. The Border Patrol will not traverse it without permission.
No policy or law will change the dynamics on the ground. From my prospective, Mexicans make pretty good citizens. The Texas Bush’s probably have the same prospective.
As the song goes….
“Davey Crockett went to Texas to fight at the Alamo
Ol’ Will Travis never told him that Texas is Mexico
It’s a bloody mess, you know the rest”
JSD:
Most U.S. citizens are second generation naturalized.
What does this mean? How can one be second generation naturalized? If they are born, in the US, to naturalized parents (or illegal aliens) they are 14th Amendment, Constitutional, natural born, US citizens.
Not "naturalized" in any way shape or form.
John Henry
The immigration laws are designed to be unenforceable.
It is illegal to refuse to hire an illegal immigrant that presents even obviously fake documents. If you reject a person's documents, they can go to the Civil Rights Office and the Federal government will provide them with a lawyer, and you will have to prove in court that you treated all applicants' documents in the same way.
However, if you accept the documents, you are given immunity from this lawsuit.
So you, being no idiot, accept the documents and SSA says there's no such SSN, at which point, if you fire the applicant, they can go to the Civil Rights Office and the Federal government will provide them with a lawyer, and you will have to prove in court that you treated all applicants with rejected documents in the same way.
However, if you do not fire them, but give them a letter asking them to resolve the discrepancy, you are given immunity from this lawsuit.
And at that point you are done. Any other action you take against a suspected illegal leaves you liable to a civil rights lawsuit.
Even E-Verify requires that you first hire the suspected illegal, and only after they have made a final determination of status can you then fire them.
The AFL-CIO killed the Bracero Program under Lyndon Johnson, thereby giving us the illegal alien problem we have today in spite of all efforts to solve it.
Mark: How humane. Unlike the current crop. I remember McCain his year stood out as the only GOP candidate to talk of Mexicans as human and potentially good people.
Both candidates here come off as good Christians, not patriots first and Christians second.
Nothing says "good Christian" like slandering people who disagree with your views.
This is not only the current status quo, this is the de facto trade relationship between the U. S. and Mexico: the U. S. supplies Mexico with capital, Mexico offloads its surplus, unemployable population into the U. S. labor market.
Currently, the U. S. citizen population is being buffered by taking SSI disability while their Mexican peers must continue to work for their marginal wages.
More of the same will mean, yes, that's right, more of the same.
The best thing the Republicans can do is to clamp down heavily on marginal and outright fraudulent SSI disability and equivalent welfare payments; restrict funding to those programs.
Then, without the escape hatch of undeserved SSI and welfare, U. S. citizens will be better able to evaluate the effects of a labor market flooded with foreign nationals on their own lives.
Nothing says "good Christian" like taking from one poor person and giving to another poor person, while living a very rich and unaffected life like the Bushes, McCaina, Obamas, et al.
tim maguire: High fence / wide gate. It's humane, sensible, and, as Reagan says, recognizes the mutual problems.
The xenophobes are insignificant...
Who are these "xenophobes", tim? I happen to think that even our legal immigration gate is too wide (as well as badly designed). Does that make me a "xenophobe"?
I ask because I've often been in arguments about immigration with people who reflexively accuse me of "xenophobia". Amusingly, they are invariably monolinguals with demonstrably less interest, less knowledge, and less experience of foreign peoples and places than myself. (They're "multiculturalists" - i.e., radically de-cultured people who therefore are incapable of any serious understanding or appreciation of other people's cultures.) So I have no idea what they think I'm "afraid" of.
"Xenophobe" is the rhetorical equivalent of "racist" and "homophobe", and you don't strike me as the kind of person who's on board with those shabby maneuvers. I doubt even the hardest core immigration restrictionist or "nativist" is afraid of foreigners.
Don't play that game of trying to pre-emptively establish your "good guy" bona fides by calling the guy to your right a *-phobe. Won't work, anyway - if you want a "high fence" they're going to call you a xenophobe, too.
Jus' sayin'.
The straw man of NO IMMIGRATION EVER and ANTI-IMMIGRATION conservatives must be maintained. Else the left would have to actually discuss a topic where vast majorities of the public despise their position.
Besides I would rather have exchanges than immigration. For every Hispanic that comes in and wants to work we should send over an Occupy protester in good faith.
Immigration should not exceed the rate of assimilation and integration. That should be self-evident.
Immigration should not provide incentive for Americans to abort around 2 million of their children annually. That's a gross human rights violation that devalues human life. That too should be self-evident.
Immigration should not serve to obfuscate and promote the American welfare economy and culture. Think of the American... men, women, and children.
Immigration should not serve to secure environmental policies that prevent people from exploiting the land to live their lives and improve their welfare.
Immigration should not provide incentive for second and third-world nations to defer or delegate responsibilities for their citizens. It should be especially disconcerting that the causes of mass emigration are conveniently ignored on both sides. Isn't that self-evident?
David said...
More evidence of the great opportunity the Republicans missed by letting the anti-immigration faction gain too much sway.
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The anti-immigration faction of the GOP? Who would that be?
You mean anti-illegal immigrants?
The people that are furious (which includes me) say let the immigrants come whether Botswana, Burma, or Belgium. Stop the illegal flow from Mexico.
We do not have an immigrant problem. We have an illegal Mexican problem.
The number of illegals went from 3.5 million in 1990 to about 11 million in 2007, where it remains today.
Mexico isn't as bad a shithole as it used to be but its still pretty shitty in a lot of places.
Lucky for them it borders the US and not some African nation.
Since the US is pretty well fucked for all sorts of reasons, it looks like we've plateaued with illegal immigrants. Most of them them are poor and most poor need government assistance. So they will be Democrats. Nothing much to do about this.
Since the country is fucked, just figure out ways to get more for yourself and your friends and family. And don't waste your time joining the military. Most of the people in this country aren't worth saving.
mccullough:
In South Africa, the replacement native population murder and rape illegal aliens. In America (Norway, etc), the illegal aliens murder and rape the native population. Welcome to La-la Land.
"Rather than talking about putting up a fence, why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems? Make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then, while they're working and earning here, they'd pay taxes here. And when they want to go back, they can go back. They can cross. Open the borders both ways."
it is not only the USA that came up with the idea of guest workers. Hong kong and saudi arabia has it too. But any low skilled guest worker program the USA comes up with will never work because
1) USA operates under Jus Soli system (birthright citizenship)
2) Plyler v Doe.
compare that to what hong kong supreme court recently decided on LEGAL lowskilled guest workers' permanent residency request.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/03/24/top-hong-kong-court-rules-unanimously-to-deny-permanent-residency-bid-by/
in other words, until you plug the anchor baby loophole and overturn plyler v doe, Illegal immigration will never stop in the USA with a guest worker program, will only exacerbate it.
http://politicaljunkie.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-illegal-immigration-in-usa-got.html
So, they were talking about making a unilateral decision, regardless of the will of the people or government law?
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