Sunday, June 17, 2007

Amnesty - 12-20 million or many many more?

Nearly everywhere I go these days I see Hispanics. This is a dramatic change from just a few years ago when I saw almost none so I assume the majority are illegals. One fact that I've not yet seen pointed out is that the vast majority of illegals are men. So just what does this fact mean for the influx of new immigrants if the illegals are given amnesty? Assuming the lower number of 12 million is correct and that just 60% of that figure are men, I'm being conservative with my figures, that means that 7.2 million illegals are men. Now assume that 50% of that number are married and would be able to bring over their spouses. That puts the number at 12 million illegals + 3.6 million spouses, or 15.6 million new immigrants. Now let's assume that 50% of these couples have only one child, again being conservative. That's 1.8 million children. Add that to the 15.6 million and the total rises to 17.4 million new immigrants. If we use the higher figure of 20 million illegals as a base and run the same numbers the total possible influx increases to 20+6 million spouses+3 million children or 29 million new immigrants. My numbers are purposely conservative and the totals in both scenarios is likely to be higher.
So what is the REAL number of expected new "Americans"?

Amid all the posturing and name calling on both sides in this debate I've not heard some very important questions get answered:

1. Who's going to pay for the health care of these new immigrants? Their employers don't. The immigrants themselves likely won't. Will this lead to a bigger push for nationalized medicine funded by a stagnant middle class?
2. Most of these people are poor. Will their children qualify for free school lunches?
3. Will WIC be available to them?
4. Will these low earning illegals be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit in which we the taxpayers give them billions of dollars a year and for which the new citizens pay nothing?
5. We are importing poverty on an unimagined scale. What will this do to the "War on Poverty"?
6. Do we abandon all attempts to measure and improve poverty since this massive influx will distort the statistics heavily to the negative?
7. Who will pay for the new schools required to educate them? MeCHA, LULAC, MALDEF? Taxpayers!

We the People are subsidizing businesses now and will be forever if we let this bill pass. Taxpayers will pay for the savings and profits of employers that use illegal labor. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Amnesty - Shortcut to Socialism?

You have to admire Ted Kennedy for one thing, he has patience. I can't say for sure but I believe Teddy has always dreamt of turning the USA into a socialist state and he has pushed us in that direction over the decades one baby step at a time. But sensing that his life could end before his dream is accomplished he's come up with a way to fast forward the US shift to socialism, amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens.
The mechanism for the acceleration will be health care because who will be paying for the health care of these new millions? Not their employers. Not the illegals themselves, Teddy saw to that when an amendment was defeated that would have required illegals to prove health coverage before they could get their Z-visa. So we're going to give 12-20 million uninsured, barely insurable low income workers the "right" to stay here with the "right" to medical care funded by taxpayers.
Naturally the fact that the vaunted 46 million uninsured will now become 58-66 million uninsured, many of whom are the children of the now legal, the hue and cry for taxpayer funded health care will grow louder. And when these new "citizens" eventually vote, if not sooner, we will find ourselves with nationalized, socialized medicine, the costs of which will be borne by the middle class citizens of the US whose ranks will not have grown. Tax increases are inevitable.
Teddy is a shrewd and patient man and if this catastrophe of a bill is passed he may yet succeed in creating his socialist state.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Geraldo Rivera - Race Hustler?

I've been keeping up with Geraldo Rivera's positions and comments over the course of the immigration debate because I've always considered him a small time ethnic/race hustler always advocating for the "Latino" community regardless of the impact to larger society, rule of law, etc.

I decided to do a little research on Geraldo when he basically accused Bill O'Reilly of racism the on 6/6 during an immigration debate.

Geraldo said that people like Bill (whites) didn't want to come out of their homes and see people like "my kids" (Geraldo's has four children), implying that Geraldo's kids are "brown" people.

Any sane person looking at Bill and Geraldo side by side could reasonably assume that both men were of European extraction and that Geraldo clearly had more in common physically with Bill than with any of the Mexican (largely poor Aztecs) immigrants up for amnesty. Since Geraldo is of Puerto Rican extraction he obviously has more European, maybe even 100%, in him than most Mexicans.

After a quick read of his bio I quickly learned that Geraldo's mother, Lillian Friedman, is Jewish! So Geraldo is even whiter than he may already have been if he were 100% Puerto Rican.

Now, back to his "brown" kids. None of Geraldo's five wives (4 ex's, one current) is "Latina". This is assumed by looking at their last names , none of which are Spanish. So, this makes his children only 25% Puerto Rican/Hispanic and hardly "brown". So what kind of intellectual honesty is there in a statement by him to Bill about seeing "people like my kids" across the street?

So, just what is Geraldo's angle here? Is he raising his white kids to think of themselves to be "brown"? How many "Hispanics" are actually white, mostly white, or at least half white in the USA? How many of them are aligned against the majority in the immigration debate because of some misplaced sense of ethnic loyalty?

Time for Geraldo to come clean about his "brownness".

Post America America

I'm sure I'm likely to be pilloried for the following but I feel this is a serious issue that must be thoughtfully and seriously considered. Those that dismiss the question are either not seriously considering the answer, like the prospect of the potential outcome, are in denial, or are knee-jerk Liberals controlled by their emotions and a revulsion of the reality of actions having consequences. The question is this, can "America" as we know it from its founding through the present day survive if whites become just another minority or if Latinos become the majority? Yes, the country known as the USA will continue to exist, the form of government won't change, and the borders aren't likely to move. But how can the character of the nation survive?

The character of a nation is a derivative of its people and the character of the USA is predominantly defined, for now, by the culture of its northwestern European founders and earliest immigrants. Later waves of immigrants were assimilated into the WASP culture of the USA and as long as immigration from WASP countries exceeded or matched immigration from other countries or the level of non-WASP immigration was low relative to the US population a balance was maintained. People assimilated and became part of the historical America.

Now we are faced with a situation, started by Ted Kennedy in 1965, that is changing the fundamental character of America threatening to break the future from the past. When Ted Kennedy made the decision to change US immigration law so Europe was no longer favored as the source of immigrants he set in motion the process of creation of post America America. How many problems do we face today because of this dramatic change in policy? A policy by the way that Ted guaranteed would not impact the racial balance of the nation. Did he know in fact that it would? Would we be faced with the swamp of "multiculturalism" and the cult of "diversity" that cost the nations billions in lawsuits every year if not for the '65 legislation? Would we be confronting domestic Islamism with its concomitant threats to freedom and liberty? Would we be debating whether English should be our national language? What would be the current state of Liberalism, the enemy of freedom loving people everywhere, if not infused with ethnic agitators to increase its base and fuel its power?

As we consider the prospect of legalizing 12-20 million poor, uneducated, non-English speaking, non-whites we need to consider the long term impact on our country, our culture, and our future. I personally look south across the Latin American landscape and dread the future. Were we bordered by China, Egypt, or Zimbabwe the future would be just as dim. There is no history of liberty, freedom, or prosperity in these countries. Culture does matter in spite of what Utopian cultural relativists claim.

Unfortunately race matters too. That is simply undeniable. If it weren't so we wouldn't have the NAACP, LULAC, MECHA, La Raza, the Congressional Black, Hispanic, etc. Caucus, Negro College Fund, et al. I could literally go on for pages. Race matters. Especially to those in the minority. In many cases it is all that matters. People are black, or Hispanic, or Muslim, etc. before they are a man, a woman, an American. Except for fringe white supremacists this can't be said of the white majority and I'm sure that is so because we are the majority. However, the history of whites in places like Nigeria prove the opposite since to my knowledge they didn't form whites only organizations seeking special recognition and preferences.

So, since race matters how is the treatment of US history going to be managed in the future? How do you teach a majority Hispanic class in Texas that Mexico was the enemy at the Alamo? That Santayana was a bad guy? It's human nature for people to identify with their own kind. How many blacks are history professors? Not many, since US history isn't appealing at a personal level to blacks. When viewed through the lens of race, US history isn't about the grand voyages of discovery by the early European explorers, the defeat of Britain to found the nation, the struggle of the civil war in terms of states rights, WWI or WWII. Rather US history is viewed from the perspective of slavery, racial oppression, and the struggles of the civil rights era. Not many people can rise above their race to embrace the history of their nation and be proud of it. People look for heroes in people like themselves. US history offers few heroes that aren't white. At least blacks have been here long enough to have a small group of heroes and great figures, even before MLK, to look up to. Who so for Hispanics? I predict that they will have almost no interest in US history and will instead look south for inspiration and historical continuity. They will seek tighter integration with Latin America while loosening the bonds we now have with Europe, trading the first world for the third.

The US can manage immigration in numbers that don't threaten our existence but the massive numbers we are considering offering amnesty to and the millions upon millions that will follow them do indeed, in my opinion, threaten our national identity and this threat must be addressed honestly and openly. Hispanics, other minority groups, and many white Liberals will of course make any such discussion impossible to have and will berate anyone seeking such a discussion as a "racist". But why should we whites sit back silently while our country is transformed by guilty white Liberals, the ethnic lobby, and Big Business? Those that sit back and have absolute confidence in America to transform this polyglot wave into historically and culturally connected Americans are deluded.

This problem is one of our own making and the bleak future I describe doesn't have to happen if we have the strength and courage to call for an immigration policy that maintains our nations' character. We don't have to transform if we choose not to.