The New York Times claims that “waves of anti-immigrant hostility have made many in this country forget who and what we are,” in an editorial modestly comparing Alabama’s recently-enacted penalties against illegal immigrants and their employers to the Fugitive Slave Act.
I have never met a legal immigrant from a country other than Mexico who does not strenuously oppose illegal immigration (and indeed I know at least one naturalized Mexican resident of California who is just as vociferously against the illegal flow across the southern border). Are such legal immigrants “anti-immigrant”? Or are they against illegal immigration — a distinction which the illegal-alien lobby works incessantly to erase. If anyone would know what this country stands for, it should be legal immigrants, who have gone through the demanding process of gaining legal residency here. And they understand that what sets the U.S. apart is the rule of law — as well as how fragile that rule of law is. Legal Iranians, Egyptians, Columbians, and Nigerians oppose illegal entry not because they are xenophobic; they oppose illegal aliens because of their behavior — deliberately breaking the law as their first act upon entering the country.
The Times, joined by an ever-growing army of politicians, wants to obliterate any distinction between legal and illegal immigration by erasing the penalties for illegal entry. This de facto amnesty has in fact been in place for the vast majority of illegal aliens, which is why a growing number of states are now trying to give effect to federal immigration laws which Washington has failed to enforce.
Until the Times can persuade the American people to discard the country’s immigration laws — the most liberal in the world — it is on weak ground in accusing those who want to apply those laws of racism and civil-rights violations.
The usage "illegal immigrant" is the open borders crowd's most effective tool in altering perception. "Illegal immigrant" is properly seen as an oxymoron. An immigrant is somebody who has followed his new country's laws and procedures in gaining lawful entry and residence.
Entering and/or residing in a country illegally is not immigration. It is infiltration, or trespassing. People who do this are and should be called infiltrators or trespassers. That would concentrate minds wonderfully on the proper treatment of them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI like your thinking, Pko. Term coined.
As another said, breaking and entering a house should not be compared to knocking on the front door and being invited in. Indeed, breaking and entering in this country seem to be more excusable, considering how often legal immigrants don't get to stay.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis legal immigrant* opposes illegal immigration, and if you want "vociferous opposition," just get my legal-immigrant* mother started on the subject.
We followed the law, and resent the HECK out of being in any way "lumped in" with the people who didn't.
(I also resent the H out of the statement I've read on other comment threads on this subject: "if you're not Native American, your ancestors came here illegally." Hello? My parents and I showed up at the airport in 1983 with the thick packages of paper that the US Consulate called "immigrant visas.")
I'm pretty sure every one of those newspaperfolk who blur the distinction between immigration and sneaking across the border understands the distinction between opening his front door and inviting the person who just rang the doorbell to come inside, and finding a stranger climbing in through a broken window. As a matter of fact, isn't it hypocritical of them to even close their doors if they don't get it?
*now naturalized citizens, both of us.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLos inmigrantes legales son estúpidos e infantiles.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs another legal immigrant that went through the utterly ridiculous and repetitive process, the fact that no major media outlet will refer to lawbreakers not as illegal but instead as "undocumented" is revolting.
I also find it incredibly racist that if you're Hispanic you get a pass on our immigration laws but if you're Asian, African and so forth the law does apply.
Indeed the only people I find who are even more indigent about illegal immigration than the legal immigrants themselves are the spouses of those legal immigrants. Those are the people who waited for months or years while their loved ones could not enter the country during the immigration process.
As my wife says every time the subject comes up: "What other laws of my country can I choose to ignore?"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou can't have Obamacare and open borders without bankrupting us, almost immediately.
I see another crisis that will not be let go to waste.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe legals only resent that the illegals avoided the misery that the legals went through to be here. Perhaps we can agree that the ICE is not the most wonderful organization to interface with eager new immigrants? Would you NRO readers honestly say that if you met the intransigent, stupid, lazy bureacrats of the ICE that you might not consider bypassing it with a refreshing swim?
Say what you want about immigrants - legal or not - most of them embody the hard-working ethos of the Americans of my youth. I'll take 4 randomly selected Mexicans as residents if we can give Rosie O'Donnell to Mexico in trade.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWas your youth also full of "hard workers" who broke the law with impunity, took welfare handouts 85% of the time, refused to assimilate or learn English, crashed others' countries, and brought education and income levels way down across the US?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWay to miss the point entirely. What the H-E double hockey sticks are you talking about? I don't care if someone is hard working. I do care if they are law-abiding. And that's the point....our culture is one that respects the rule of law. Breaking the law and then being rewarded for it as your very first act in the U.S is not cool. And BTW, the function of ICE isn't to be a welcome wagon for crying out loud. We need a sane immigration policy that makes sense and we need to abide by it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseyeah, today I saw 6 Mexicans spreading tar around a parking lot with shovels. Hard working is great, but working smart with like, you know, machines is better.
besides, 77% of Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, receive some form of public assistance. No business would bring in 'hard working' but low skilled, low educated employees that it had to subsidize for years on end.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDon't want to be too technical here but ICE has little to nothing to do with applications for legal immigration. The same legislation that created DHS divided the jurisdiction of the old INS. Immigrant visa petitions are handled by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Catching illegal aliens is divided between ICE and CBP - Customs and Border Protection.
I've dealt with BCIS and their requirements can be awfully technical and demanding. On the other hand, admitting someone to the United States as a permanent resident should be more than a mere formality.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs another said in a comment barely above yours---amnesty is unfair because only people from contiguous countries can benefit from it.
This would be easily done by fighting the drug cartels of Mexico, and giving those hard-workers a chance to work at something other than growing marijuana.
I almost agree with you---but this naive game of slander and disguised racism is NOT the answer. Amnesty is biased, and must be, by definition. Charity is the answer, not government entitlement.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's an even trade by weight, I'm not sure about the value. But while it may be so that some illegals are more useful to the nation than some citizens (the WSJ position) it is also true that the culture of illegality produces a class of lawless people. What would happen to YOU if you used or simply had a fake SS number? Well, if you are a non-citizen there are great incentives for officialdom to simply look aside. The result has been recurrent criminality, admittedly from very few of this population, but serious never the less.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHeather,
THANK YOU for this. This is an issue that affects me personally. I'm about to leave the US with my fiance, who has to return to her home country (it's not exactly a First World place) for a few years before she can receive a work permit due to restrictions connected with her student visa. I am a native-born US citizen, as were my parents, their parents, etc. And now I'm leaving for at least a few years. I understand and respect the law, and am willing to suck it up.
I have nothing but disdain for those who work to eliminate the distinction between foreigners who illegally enter into the US with no regard for its sovereignty and immigrants who respect our laws and sovereignty, who want to become Americans, not opportunistically play arbitrage with our higher (for now) wages and then demand to be rewarded for that with citizenship ... which few legal immigrants on work visas ever obtain.
My co-workers who have immigrated from China, Ukraine, Russia, India, Brazil and elsewhere are the most stringent in their criticism of illegal immigration in the office. Actually, they're the only ones who criticize it at all, the Americans too cowed into submission by the Multicultural Elite to utter anything other than a platitude about "diversity."
The fact is that our system at present IS unfair, and it IS racist.
It is unfair against the skilled and educated of the world. They want to work middle-class jobs, not as dishwashers in shady restaurants. However, for them to have a normal job, they need a valid work permit, as marketing firms or insurance companies don't hire illegally.
Our policies are geared TOWARD the unskilled and uneducated, who are able to work the jobs that do not check status -- the low-level landscaping/roofing/restaurant jobs.
So our policies actively discriminate against those with an education, skill, or ambition to be successful in America. How's that for "winning the future"?
Moreoever, given that we still demand a visa upon arrival by ship or plane, Obama's unconstitutional amnesty benefits those who can enter illegally ... which is to say those who are from areas geographically contiguous with the US. In a word, Barack Obama's immigration policies (and Rick Perry's too, for that matter) are racist in favor of Central Americans and discriminate against everyone else on earth.
What the NY Times and its fellow-travelers fail to understand is that, to ensure fairness and opportunity to all across the world, we need to enforce our laws. The "empathetic" immigration policy / amnesty they want is deeply unfair to the law-abiding, skilled, educated, and non-Central American of the world. To use the Left's favorite word of late, it is racist, and wrong.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy mother and father were both legal immigrants; I was the third person in my family born in the US.
The left wants illegals because they are easy to get - let them walk over from Mexicio. They want more Democrats. But mostly, they want more poor people to help get that percentage of Americans on entitlements over 55-60%, at which point the socialist state becomes an irreversible reality - for the rest of America's life. They just don't get the unsustainable math of it.
Being an American means nothing if it doesn't mean self-sufficiency. The entitled class numbers are almost there and we peer over the cliff.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCheap labor to work the fields, gardens and kitchens is the more apt comparison to slavery. And the NY Times supports this. Now if slaves were sneaking into the country to get field jobs...but then running away wouldn't of been a problem I guess.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe NYT should be forgiven for using the "anti-immigrant" tag if we don't call out those among us who fit that description perfectly. There is at least one Corner contributor who detests all immigration --legal or not. You know who I'm talking about.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRidiculous. How does it make sense to give the NYT (and MSM, in general) a pass when they apply a universal strawman on the Right? We are talking about two separate issues - illegal immigration and legal immigration. One's views can - and should - be distinct between the two.
Illegal immigration should be crushed like a grape.
Legal immigration should be managed to best support the needs for this country, alone. That's right...it's what we need, not what the would-be immigrants want or need that matters.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere is no such thing as an 'illegal immigrant', only an illegal alien. It is no more 'illegal immigration' than a bank robbery is an 'illegal withdrawal'.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI get your point, but we have lost that particular battle of language. I stopped resisting.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse