Cross-posted from TNH
When George Bush announced Monday that he would spend nearly $2 billion dollars to prevent immigrants from entering the country, liberals had a knee-jerk reflex to oppose the plan. But the case against immigrants is sound: they take jobs away from Americans, they drain our social services, and by moving routinely across our borders they endanger homeland security. The Senate is right to pass a bill next week to keep immigrants from entering America. In fact, in my opinion, they do not go far enough.
Jobs, for example. Apparently immigrants do not let Americans line up with them at 4 am in parking lots. Now, that's not fair. But we can't forget the companies that are moving those jobs out of the US altogether -- in 2004, an estimated
400,000 jobs per year. 140,000 of those jobs went right to Mexico. And it's not just the border states -- nearly half the lost jobs came from the Midwest; over a quarter of them came from Illinois and Michigan alone. If we're going to blame Mexicans who come here to work, we better also crack down on those executives who are moving the work to Mexico. (
Click here to find job exporters in your area.) So while we're at it, let's kick some of those CEOs out of the country as well.
Social services. Illegal immigrants don't pay taxes -- well, ok, they pay sales tax, and about two-thirds of them have Social Security and Medicare automatically withheld, and yeah I guess since their social security numbers are fake they aren't able to claim those benefits, and since 1996 they haven't been able to get Medicaid benefits, or food stamps or housing assistance for that matter. In fact it's estimated that illegal immigrants contribute on the order of billions of dollars to federal tax revenues. But the principle stands: it isn't fair for one group of people to drain substantially more from the federal pool than they put in. As Mississippi Senator Trent Lott writes on his web site, "That doesn't include other costs associated with illegal immigration like increased crime, the strain on social services and lost tax revenue." Of course, Mississippi itself has been getting more federal money back than it puts in for a while -- in fact, Mississippi has been getting one of the top 5 free rides for at least 25 years. New Mexico, North Dakota, and West Virginia, too, have consistently sapped our resources far more than they've given back, since at least the 1980s. Maybe we out to kick some of them out of the country as well.
ok, well, security is a real issue though. It's important to secure our borders, using the latest technology, even if it does cost us $2 billion and further strains our National Guard. We can't listen to those nay-sayers like the Heritage Foundation ("Some of the finest conservative minds in America today" -- Rush Limbaugh) who call on Congress to "reject the proposed 'solutions' to these concerns of mandated 100 percent inspection of cargo and increased port security grants," proposals made by Democrats in Congress. They say that these proposals would involve "spending billions of dollars on container and port security" and that it's just not worth it since terrorists might easily get around it by FedEx'ing a weapon of mass destruction into the US (I am not making that up). They are joined by Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, who said his officers will start running background checks on 400,000 longshoreman and issue biometric identification cards to 750,000 port workers to make sure they're not illegal immigrants stealing our jobs draining our social services sneaking bombs into our country, but that it would be impractical to inspect incoming cargo. Republican Senators also oppose port security. I say, you're either with us or you're with the immigrants. Heritage fellows, Chertoff, Republican congresspeople -- go back to your own country.
ok. I think we've just about gotten our house in order, sent away the ones who are causing all this trouble. Let's make sure we got rid of everyone we needed to. Immigrants, check. Job-outsourcing CEOs, check. Mississippi, New Mexico, North Dakota, West virginia, check. Conservative think-tanks, Michael Chertoff, and Republican congresspeople, check. Did I forget anyone?
Oh, wait -- maybe just one more --
Bush Wants Newcomers to Learn English
"What the president has said all along is that he wants to make sure that people who become American citizens have a command of the English language," Snow said. "It's as simple as that."
"Sometimes when I sleep at night I think of 'Hop on Pop.'"
--George W. Bush