Letters

From the January 1994 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

Postrel goes on to write that the governor is "attacking illegal immigrants" for using a variety of public services. Nonsense. He is merely recognizing that the spate of federally mandated programs available to illegal immigrants is enticing many of them into breaking U.S. immigration laws and joining California, at a rate of approximately 100,000 per year.

And as for Postrel's claim that the governor "loves ever-expanding social programs," I would like to place some facts on the record. California's general-fund budget is now $5 billion lower than when he took office. Over the last three years, he has cut $2.10 in spending for every $1.00 in new revenue--a record that puts Bill Clinton to shame.

Is it possible to be a libertarian and a federalist all at the same time? Surely yes, with a little effort. But Postrel doesn't even bother commenting on the gross injustice of state and local taxpayers' spending $3 billion a year for services to illegal aliens--only to find Congress playing possum when asked to cough up some reimbursement monies for the mandates it has meted out.

A final point: Are immigration laws "un-American," as Postrel suggests? That's debatable, but certainly all can agree that smearing one's opponents is un-American. I can find no other word except smear to describe Postrel's unfortunate comment that millions more might have perished in the Holocaust had Gov. Wilson been in control of U.S. immigration laws in the early 20th century. What an ugly thing to think, let alone send off to the typesetter.

Joseph D. Rodota Jr.
Governor's Office
Sacramento, CA

Ms. Postrel replies: Mr. Davison's concerns about crime are understandable, given his experiences. And they raise two usually overlooked points about immigration. The first is that strict controls, even when laxly enforced, skew the distribution of immigrants. Among those who enter illegally, one large group are those who are the most desirable--the most future-oriented, the most enterprising, the most courageous, the hardest working. Illegality acts to screen out people whose passive personalities might predispose them toward welfare dependency. On the other hand, the illegality of the border-crossing process also breeds a certain disregard for U.S. law and encourages those who are most skilled in avoiding law enforcement--in other words, criminals. More vigorous enforcement would probably give us more of the latter group of illegal immigrants, fewer of the former.

Second, Mr. Davison's letter, and Mr. Rodota's statistics, point up an unre-marked fact of the debate on immigration: Immigrants show up only when they come in contact with the government; tax-paying counts, as does county hospital use, but private wealth creation doesn't. So, for instance, we hear that a third of those arrested in the L.A. riots were illegal immigrants. We do not hear what I observed in the cleanup--that the vast majority of the men, women, and children who came out to sweep and shovel were Latinos, few of whom seemed to have lived here long. No one asked for their papers, but I doubt if they were all legal.

Without recapitulating my entire editorial, it's hard to respond to Mr. Rodota's letter. But let's start with Pete Wilson's record. It is true that California's continuing fiscal crisis has forced the governor to rethink his ambitious program to expand "preventive government" social-service programs. But let's not forget that his first budget--the one in which he raised state taxes by $7.3 billion--included $175 million for such expanded programs.

And even his new-found frugality disappears when he talks about why he wants to do away with state spending on illegal immigrants and their citizen children. He complains that state cannot "extend [the] reach and effectiveness" of "important preventive children's programs (in health, safety, mental health counseling, pre-school)," that "state tax dollars are cut from our needy elderly, blind and disabled programs," that "state tax dollars that could provide increased per pupil spending and reduced class size are required by federal law to be spent instead on illegal immigrants." Pete Wilson may be a federalist, but he's still a big spender.

The point of my editorial was to place the debate over freedom of movement in its American historical context. In that context, the only people for whom there was any doubt about the fundamental right to enter the country were those whose full humanity was debated: blacks and, in some cases, Asians. The 14th Amendment was an affirmation that freed slaves, and anyone else born on U.S. soil, possessed the basic human right to stay here as a citizen.

Finally, Mr. Rodota's rewriting of my mention of the Holocaust is bizarre. I wrote, "The debate over immigration, legal and illegal, isn't really about...whether someone's grandfather would have escaped the Holocaust if Pete Wilson had been running immigration policy in the early part of the century." In the English language, the word isn't means is not. As a politician who panders to voters' fears, Pete Wilson (without benefit of hindsight) probably wouldn't have been any better than the politicians who shut off immigration in the '20s, but I see no reason to think he would have been any worse.

The BATF's Mission

I am grateful to see in my first issue of a new subscription Alan Bock's article on the Weaver case ("Ambush at Ruby Ridge," Oct.). The murder of peaceful Americans by federal thugs is not considered newsworthy by the mainstream media. I depend on publications like REASON to stay informed.

Mr. Bock is incorrect in stating that the BATF is "an agency in search of a mission." The BATF's mission is clear: to turn the American people into disarmed European cattle. The BATF is doing exactly what it is paid to do by Congress: persecuting the politically incorrect.

BATF personnel are the tax-funded Brownshirts of the gun-control movement. The people who join the BATF or any paramilitary "law enforcement" agency are indistinguishable from those who joined the S.A. or Cheka. These "agents" are either ideologically committed collectivists or mindless thugs. But they all share a contempt for individual rights, the Constitution, and common decency. The sniper who shot Vicki Weaver should be tried for murder, as should his masters in Washington. The fact that there is no real investigation of the Weaver case, the Waco massacre, or the unspoken policy of harassment of firearms dealers indicates that neither Congress nor the president has any problem with the actions of the BATF.

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