immigration

Trump vs Pope

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Just wanted to get this out there – the Pope did not say we can’t build a wall…he just said, correctly, that if all you’re about is building a wall, you’re doing it wrong.

It must be kept in mind that the Catholic Church is neither left nor right – it can’t be. The Church, being universal, contains all…a deep concern with the poor as well as a deep concern that people be allowed to hold their own property. And it goes on and on like that on the issues.

Trump, however, decided to lash out – stupidly. Oh, I’m sure it will delight that element of the American population which retains an anti-Catholic animus, but the bottom line is that the Pope did nothing to Trump…just pointed out that if all Trump is about is building a wall (and for a lot of his supporters, that is all Trump is about), then Trump is flat wrong…and I’ve held that position for nearly 9 years now. Border security is a must – but there must also be accommodation for those who are here and for those who wish to come here. People can disagree endlessly about this, but getting in a fight with the Pope for being Catholic is absurd.

GOP Makes Sure Trump is the Nominee

Mark Noonan21 Comments

The GOP base is furious with the GOP leadership – and one of the major bones of contention is the way the leadership is handling immigration. Out of this has come the rise of Trump to the utter dismay of the GOP leadership. So, what to do? Clearly, the times call for the GOP leadership to stab the GOP base in the back on immigration!

The upcoming appropriations legislation would massively expand the foreign worker program, quadrupling the issuance of low-wage visas, according to an analysis from Sen. Jeff Sessions’ (R., Ala.) office.

The H-2B visa program allows employers to hire foreign workers to come temporarily into the United States to work either in nonagricultural labor or a temporary service job. For example, some workers who use the H-2B visa program could be employed as a housekeeper, an amusement park worker, or a landscape laborer…

This is all about importing low-wage workers to replace American workers so that Big Corporation can squeeze out just a little more profit. Why the heck would the GOP sign on to this? I’ll tell you why:

1. The major GOP donors wanted it.
2. The GOP leadership didn’t want a fight with Obama going into 2016.

As for the first bit: screw the GOP donors. We don’t need them. Only inside-the Beltway nitwits give a darn what the mega donors think. As for the second bit – the GOP leadership doesn’t want a fight but the GOP base does. We’d love to have a fight over expanding a program to bring in more low-wage workers! Give it to us! Let’s have Obama and Hillary try to defend that stupid idea at the behest of Big Corporation.

But, we won’t get the fight because our leadership is afraid (seriously) that the MSM would look negatively on such a thing – as if anyone who will vote GOP, ever, pays the slightest attention to what the MSM says.

This action will only make the GOP base more angry – and will allow Trump to gain even more support. Cruz and Rubio needed a knock-down, drag-out fight with Obama and, by extension, Hillary…the GOP leadership gave them craven surrender. What can they say now? Vote for me, I’ll get the people I serve with in Congress to fight for you?

I’m ready to throw up my hands here – what can I possibly say to a Trump supporter? That Trump is irresponsible? That he can’t get things done for our side? Compared to the current GOP leadership Trump is a responsible, hard-working warrior for the Middle Class…

Immigration as the GOP Litmus Test

Mark Noonan2 Comments

It does seem to be, now doesn’t it? You can pretty much rely on it that Jeb is going nowhere because he was forthright in his defense of comprehensive immigration reform, while we all know that Trump rocketed into first place in the polls based upon his “deport ’em” statement. And as I go around social media and the conservative websites, it becomes ever more clear to me that the GOP base, at least, has set down this marker: if you aren’t in favor of strict border security and at least some deportation, then you’re going nowhere.

Long time readers know that I’ve been an amnesty shill since 2007 – or even before; but that is as far back as I can remember making any sort of statements on it. But I’ve also been a vigorous proponent of border security – but not so much in service of keeping people out as in recognition that “open borders” works out to “borders controlled by criminal gangs”. And those criminal gangs treat the immigrants just hideously (to the absolute silence of open borders liberals, of course – they don’t want us talking about that aspect of it all). It astonishes me that the GOP isn’t dwelling upon the issue of what the criminal gangs do to illegal immigrants day in and day out – to me, it is the best way of making sure that the people understand that the desire for border security is based upon a desire for justice and mercy, not some manifestation of anti-immigrant feeling. But for all my support for border security, if I were running for office I’d be a RINO – because I’m not into deportation.

I don’t believe, as our establishment does, that being in favor of deportation in some form is political suicide. It does make it more difficult to appeal to Latino voters, of course, but I personally know Latino voters who are ok with the idea of shutting the door a bit and sending back those who cause trouble while in the United States. In spite of strenuous liberal efforts to present Latinos as a monolithic block on this issue, they aren’t. But, still, the GOP does have a problem here – because if we’re yammering on about deportation, then natural-born Latino Citizen A or even Naturalized Latino Citizen B do wonder if it means that Illegal Alien Relative C gets deported, even though he’s a decent chap who works for a living.

I do, though, worry about making immigration a litmus test. Marco Rubio has many of the qualities that any conservative GOPer can get behind. In addition, he is the most “natural” politician we’ve got. On the stump, he is fantastic and in debate he never stumbles. He’s young, ardently patriotic, he’s got a great life story and in spite of attempts by the MSM to gin up controversy, he’s never done anything dishonorable. In contrast to a worn out and corrupt Hillary, Rubio is stellar. But he’s also a RINO – because he did sign on to the misbegotten “Gang of 8” immigration bill. And even though he has now renounced that action and is promising border security if elected, he’s persona non grata for a large swath of GOP voters (as an aside, I’m still a Jindal supporter – but I’m pretty sure his destiny is HHS Secretary in President Rubio or Cruz’ Administration).

This is absurd. I do understand the single-issue thing – I’ve got a couple, myself. I cannot in good conscience ever vote for a candidate who would advance the cause of abortion, for instance. But I can’t see how immigration has become this massive issue which we must have first and foremost. We should, as I said, be border security fanatics – but we should also be talking up things like letting in more Christian refugees from the Middle East; more immigrants from the increasingly Christian (and massively socially conservative) nations of west Africa. We should be, that is, firmly demonstrating that we’re not afraid of immigration, as such – but that we are insistent upon justice and mercy for the immigrants…and that leaving them in the hands of bloody handed human traffickers (as the left de-facto does by refusing border security) is not something any decent person would do.

The more I look over the overall parameters of the 2016 race, the more I see a chance for a stunning Republican victory. A victory which would make Reagan’s 1980 triumph pale in comparison. We can win the White House. We can even possibly increase our numbers in Congress (very difficult in the Senate, but the fact that it is even in the realm of possibility shows the real state of the campaign). We can certainly increase our political power at the State level. But all of this will be put at risk if we’re just seen as running on deporting illegal immigrants. And we can rely upon the MSM to do the Democrat’s dirty work – they will relentlessly tell the people that we’re a bunch of kooks not ready to govern and we’d all better play it safe with Hillary. And LIV will fall for that nonsense – unless we are demonstrably not what is being said about us.

Out and About on a Sunday

Mark Noonan8 Comments

The Dominican Republic (73% racially mixed, 16% white, 11% black) is deporting illegal immigrants. Is there any way our Progressives can describe this as a racist act?

Once we get some rationality in our economic policies, manufacturing will expand in the United States and we’ll stop being so much of a service-sector, consumption-based economy. This may cause a lot of economic problems in China, which lives by exporting to the United States. Can’t say as I’m at all upset about this.

FBI is still looking into the Hillary e mail fracas. Some people are gloating that this will mean the end of Hillary. It won’t. They might find a few people to nail for it – and Hillary might throw a few of her own under the bus – but they won’t get Hillary. They can’t. It is Obama’s Justice Department and they simply won’t let this wind up at Hillary’s door with an indictable offense.

Alabama detective hesitated before defending himself against an attacker. Why did he hesitate? Because he was afraid that deadly force would get him accused of racism. He ended up beaten unconscious. One thing I really appreciate about the Obama years is all the racial healing.

Jeremy Corbyn – mentioned earlier as the possible next leader of Britain’s Labour Party – is pretty rock solid in the anti-Israel camp, as you might have expected.

The University of Georgia has banned hoop skirts. Yes, you read that correctly. Hoop skirts are racist. Trust me on this, we’ll never reach the bottom of liberal stupidity.

Out and About on a Wednesday

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Attorney General Lynch says she will look into those videos of Planned Parenthood looking for “less crunchy” ways of carrying out an abortion. The question remains whether she’ll be looking for criminal activity on the part of Planned Parenthood, or will be out to get the makers of the videos.

Governor Brown (D-Peoples Democratic Republic of California), says global warming threatens human extinction. As soon as he calls for a ban on limos, private jets and beach houses larger than 1,000 square feet, I’ll take him seriously.

Our new Partners for Peace in Tehran say they will buy whatever arms they want.

If you ever thought there was a bottom to the well of Progressive silliness, you were wrong.

Perry rips into Trump. He has to. First off, as a matter of principal: Trump is simply not the man who will win the White House for the Republican party. Secondly, as a matter of electoral politics – he’s an also-ran so far in the GOP sweepstakes and he has to gain some traction. Attacking Walker or Cruz will work against him (their supporters might be angered), attacking Bush and Christy is boring – we already know he’s not on board with them. Attack Trump and you get noticed.

Hillary Clinton is polling just terrible in the swing States. Before you get too excited, I understand the polling sample over-states Republican numbers – but, still, with 99.99% name recognition Hillary is down 9 points against Walker, who probably doesn’t have 50% name recognition in, for instance, Colorado. She’s a giant on weak legs.

I really don’t know what to say about the Bland case – woman gets stopped for failure to signal (with, I guess, also doing a rolling stop at a stop sign) and it escalates into her being arrested and then dying in prison – officially by suicide but the full investigation isn’t close to done. The only bit of wisdom I can impart is to wait until the investigation is complete before rendering anything like a judgement on it.

In the Fundamental Transformation department – newly sworn citizens don’t have to swear to bear arms in defense of the United States. It makes sense – after all, some of the people becoming citizens might not want to defend the United States; why inconvenience them with something as trivial as being loyal to the nation they voluntarily immigrated to?

List of the 20 cities Americans are fleeing from in droves. Oddly enough, a lot of them appear to be governed by Democrats. Shouldn’t people be moving into Democrat governed areas? I mean, they really care about the little guy and have the best solutions for all of us, right?

Attacking Big Corporation as a GOP Campaign Issue

Mark Noonan37 Comments

See? It’s not just me any more – Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) weighs in on how the GOP can leverage a bit of anti-corporatism for electoral victory:

…the fact is that many big businesses are unpopular with the public, aligned with the Democrats, and wide open for attack. And after eight years of the Obama administration’s naked cronyism and support of Wall Street even as the middle class has suffered, the opportunities are there.

One of the most appealing targets would be the tech industry’s wage-suppressing hiring habits. Not only have tech giants like Apple and Google engaged in what a federal court called an “overarching conspiracy” to prevent wage competition, but Silicon Valley firms also abuse H-1B visas to bring in immigrant competition at lower wages, a practice that’s now spreading to other industries. (In Los Angeles, Southern California Edison is firing workers and replacing them with immigrants now)…

Reynolds goes on to note how big corporations – especially big tech – are abusing the H1-B visa program to get rid of well-paid American workers and bring in low-paid foreigners, thus abusing both Americans and foreigners in the name of increased corporate profits. That is just one in a very long line of issues where Big Corporation is working against the United States. We on the GOP side have got to wrap our minds around the fact that big anything is bad. Once a concentration of power and wealth exceeds a certain size, it becomes baleful…and must be controlled carefully, lest is wreck everything. We understand this regarding things like the Department of Education, but we’ve failed to understand that General Motors is just like the Department of Education…an bureaucratic behemoth most interested in using raw, political power to preserve itself.

It is the free market we must defend – not those who are on top of the market and who are abusing their position. That the leaders of these corporations also largely support Democrats (or are at least de-facto liberals), just makes attacking them doubly advantageous for us. It becomes best of all when we realize that a lot of people who vote liberal (but who are not particularly liberal, themselves) can be moved to vote for us when we do this. Defending the worker against ruthless exploitation by Big Tech is just a splendid way to move the needle in our favor…let Democrats defend the H1-B visa program, we’ll defend the workers.

We have a grand opportunity to take the abysmal failure of the Obama years and use it to destroy liberalism as a political force forever. All we have to do is dare to take it.

Jeb’s Immigration Problem

Mark Noonan6 Comments

We all know that Jeb is in favor of amnesty – as am I – but there’s a problem I detect in Jeb’s view:

Here’s Bush: “We need to find a way, a path to legalized status for those that have come here and have languished in the shadows. There’s no way that they’re going to be deported — no one’s suggesting an organized effort to do that. The cost of that would be extraordinary.”

And here’s Bush: “The 40 percent of the people that have come illegally came with a legal visa and overstayed their bounds. We ought to be able to find where they are and politely ask them to leave.”

As it turns out, those who over-stay their visas tend to be better educated, have a command of English and would be eligible for some pretty good jobs if their legal status was changed. Meanwhile, people who cross our southern border tend to be less educated, non-English-speakers and cluster in low-pay, low-skill jobs. It would seem to me that if we wanted to do amnesty, we’d actually want to favor those with the most skills – ie, those who can do the most good for the United States – than those with the least skills. But here’s pro-amnesty Bush saying let’s get rid of the high-educated and keep the low-educated. Why?

I can’t peer into Jeb’s heart and see what precisely is motivating him but I suspect that raw, political calculation might be at play. Who would feel most threatened by the sudden legalization of a large number of college-educated, high-skilled immigrants? Americans who are college-educated and high-skilled – you’d be allowing massive competition for their jobs to suddenly erupt…and people like that can command political power by simple fact of their ability to donate buckets of money to political campaigns. But letting in lots of low-skilled workers? No problem – they just compete with low-skill American workers…who cares about them? And, at any rate, a large increase in low-skill workers just drives down labor costs for some of our largest multinational corporations, and that is pleasing to the Chamber of Commerce types. In total, Jeb’s views on immigration are picture perfect if you are planning on running for President on an anti-GOP Base platform…it allows you to appeal to the big money corporate donors while also keeping upscale, suburban voters on your side (who are, also, all in favor of amnesty…as long as it doesn’t hurt them…and if it provides cheap nannies and gardeners, so much the better).

I’ve long grown rather irritated with our Ruling Class, including the GOP part of it. It appears to me that they want to keep masses of Americans on welfare so they can be fat, dumb and happy voters while importing a bunch of foreigners to do the grunt work of the nation while the people at the top get to live swell lives…meanwhile, those Americans who want to work hard and play by the rules are to be squeezed by cheap labor and high taxes. Methinks this might not be the best way for the nation to go. I’m not going to blame Jeb for all this – or even think him bad for what he advocates…but the whole system is rotten and it will screw us all over (even the immigrants – remember, cheap, easily exploitable labor is not exactly what America is supposed to stand for)…and Jeb is just part of it. We definitely cannot entrust ourselves to him, or anyone like him.

I retain a general support for amnesty – but until we get a government I can trust is actually on the side of the people, I want no part of it. I want liberty and justice for all – not special deals designed to merely perpetuate a Ruling Class in power.

Insanity, Thy Name is Harry Reid

Mark Noonan10 Comments

The stupid – it just hurts!

U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, left, wants to end the practice of giving illegal immigrants tax credits for kids, but U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., won’t let the House-approved measure H.R. 556 through the Senate.

“The System is Working Fine” says Senator Harry Reid, even though the Joint Committee on Taxation calculates that enactment of H.R. 556 would save taxpayers $24.4 billion over the next decade.

Here’s the real kicker – illegal aliens can claim the $1,000.00 tax credit even if their kids aren’t in the United States.  I mean, come on!  Any illegal who doesn’t claim at least one kid back in the home country is now a certifiable idiot!  How in heck would we possibly be able to check on something like that?  But to Harry Reid, its just working fine…which, I guess, is true from Harry’s perspective…it provides yet more taxpayer money for the undocumented Democrats.
As you all know, I’ve been in favor of amnesty since 2007 – but I’ve now decided to put on hold my support for the idea until such time as Harry Reid and Barack Obama have no further say in American law.  They are just too stupid to be trusted on such an important issue…and by being so stupid, they risk us never being able to get to rational immigration reform.

Illegal Immigration: The Issue is Coming to an End

Mark Noonan84 Comments

First, a report from the Wall Street Journal:

Net migration from Mexico has plummeted to zero thanks to changing demographic and economic conditions on both sides of the border, a new study says, even as political battles over illegal immigration heat up and the issue heads to the U.S. Supreme Court.

After four decades that brought 12 million Mexican immigrants—more than half of them illegally—to the U.S., the curtain has come down on the biggest immigration wave in modern times.

“The net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped and may have reversed,” says the report, which is based on an analysis of U.S. and Mexican government data by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center…

There are three reasons this is happening:

1.  The Mexican economy, relative to the United States economy, is doing pretty well.  There simply isn’t as much economic need to migrate as their used to be.

2.  The United States economy – especially in home construction – is not as vibrant as it once was, and so there is less need for a pool of cheap labor.

3.  The Mexican fertility rate has cratered – going from about 7 children per woman 50 years ago to just over 2 children per woman today, and continuing to rapidly fall.  Mexico’s fertility rate will probably drop below replacement level in just a few years.  Long term, this means fewer young Mexicans and thus a simply smaller pool of people who would even want to move to the United States.

Of course, once we get rid of Obama, the United States economy could well take off in to boom times and that would act as a magnet for immigrants – but it would also benefit the Mexican economy, thus providing yet more reason for Mexicans to stay home.  Additionally, the trends in Mexican migration are not exactly duplicated in non-Mexican migration, but the fact of the matter is that all south of the border is growing economically and all of those nations are undergoing rapidly declining fertility rates…there might be a little over hang of Salvadorans coming after the Mexicans stop, but it won’t last long.  If anything, our next illegal immigrant problem will come from Africa as people there get wealthy enough to flee nations which are basket cases or likely to become such in the future…but its a long trip from Africa to the United States and we’ll never again have a situation where a large population of potential illegals is separated from us by a mere walk.

My point here is that the illegal immigrant problem, as such, is over or will be very soon.  The problem we have is what to do with those who came in the past 20 years – and in that, my fellow Republicans/conservatives we have a choice:  we can welcome them per Rubio’s plan or we can provide one, last insult which will ensure Democrats getting 70% of their votes for the next 50 years.  What will it be?  You know my answer – I have favored amnesty since 2007 (even back then I knew that the realities were changing – I wasn’t thinking in terms of electoral math but just hard facts:  birth rates declining, economy improving = less and less Mexicans coming across the border; so, why make a gigantic, heart ache issue out of it?).  I’m with Rubio; secure the border (which, at any rate, is mostly about protecting us from cross-border drug/slavery gangs and possible terrorist incursions) and provide a path to legality for those already here.  Issue ended.  Yes, as these people become citizens over the next ten years, they will give a majority of their votes to the Democrats – poor, immigrant groups have always voted for whomever showed willing to pass out some government assistance (and this goes all the way back to when my Irish Great-great-grandfather arrived in the 1850’s…Irish Catholics became dedicated Democrats for more than 100 years because the Republicans didn’t welcome them or offer them any aid); we can break that by welcoming them, providing some aid and while we’ll initially only win 35-40% of their votes, we’ll get their grand-children voting for us at least 50/50 (additionally, we’ll have made Americans out of them because that is what will come along with our welcome and our aid – teaching them of the greatness of America:  right now they are being taught to despise this nation by liberal Democrats…you want that to continue?).

The issue is over – our choice is to decide how we want to wind it up?  I go with welcoming and helping and turning them in to conservative, pro-life, gun-toting, patriotic American TEA Party fanatics…what do you want to do with them?

UPDATE:  Rubio has received some kudos out there for his reform proposal, but he’s also getting some stern pushback from some conservatives.  Allahpundit has the run-down.

The objections seem to revolve mostly around the fact that the 1986 immigration reform act was a complete failure on the enforcement end and, so, a lot of people are worried that Rubio will get rolled by the Democrats – leaving us with toothless enforcement mechanisms while a whole lotta amnesty is going on.  That is a legitimate worry, but Rubio has said he’s firm:  no strong enforcement, no Rubio vote…and if Rubio votes against, I can’t see the proposal getting the necessary 60 votes for cloture in the Senate (a Rubio “no” would give a lot of GOPers cover to go along with the “no”…just as a Rubio “yes” gives a lot of cover for going along with the “yes”).  I can definitely see scenarios where Obama and his Democrats poison-pill immigration reform just so they can race-bait on it going in to the 2014 mid-terms…we’ll see if that eventuates; but it is risky for them…honest Latinos who are not race-baiters (ie, almost all of them) simply want to ensure that family members can’t be deported…Democrats killing the bill by inserting enforcement-destroying provisions might get themselves a bit of a backlash.  At all events, having a prominent, Latino GOP Senator being out front on this issue and essentially giving any honest Latino what he wants vis a vis immigration is already doing well by the GOP.

Another objection is that doing this won’t win the GOP a huge number of Latino voters.  To me, this is a big “no kidding” objection…of course it won’t.  Its not designed to.  It is because we want to be merciful (seriously, I doubt that too many GOPers have to stomach to round up millions of people and send them home…there’s just something un-American in such a concept) and we need to deal with the problem that we move on this…and, in purely political terms, it gets a monkey off our back.  We no longer have to carry around this issue, trying to court Latinos while Democrats are telling them, “those GOPers are going to deport your uncle Jose”.  It clears the field and allows us to compete…and, remember, a crushing victory against liberalism means getting not all of the liberal voters, but just 10 or 15% of them…this will allow us to start doing that.