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Gun for the Border
Tonight's must-see TV? President George W. Bush announcing that he's sending up to 10,000 National Guard troops to the Mexican border to protect the U.S. from...well, you know who, terrorists who are destroying the American economy by depressing wages, straining social services, and sending money back home (says Lou Dobbs). Or not (says former Fox Newsman and current White House press secretary Tony Snow).
Back to Bush:
Bush's Monday night remarks come as the Senate tries to pass a guest worker proposal that opponents say doesn't do enough to stem the influx of illegals passing over the southern border each day. Senators begin debate anew Monday on an immigration reform package that aims to allow the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegals in the United States look for a way to stay here.
The president supports a guest worker plan, but also must answer to many in his base who say border security is step one in dealing with the flood of illegal immigrants.
More here.
Xmas|5.15.06 @ 11:14AM|#
Not to get all right-wing radical here but...
Mexican President Vincent Fox is in a tizzy about the
militarization of the US-Mexican border while at the same time he
is actively encouraging his citizens to slip into the US, raise the
Mexican Flag, and declare the land as Mexican territory.
Anyway, I think it's funny (ha-ha funny).
|5.15.06 @ 11:25AM|#
Why do we think government can do things even Superman
can't?
This is right after we see something Superman could do--build a
good levy around--New Orleans; government failed at it.
Some of the many things Superman is too smart to attempt:
Seal borders
War on terror
War on drugs
Urinate into the wind.
James B.|5.15.06 @ 11:36AM|#
Why does Bush have to speak tonight.
I was looking forward to watching FOX where a gang of criminals
with nothing to lose do what ever it takes to thwart the law,
followed by a President engaged in all sorts of illegal and
unconstitutional acts to ensure that the US has an assured supply
of Central Asian-Middle Eastern Oil.
|5.15.06 @ 11:37AM|#
76, Fox has learned from his predecessors' errors.
Zedillo had a quote along the lines of "the authority of Mexico
extends beyond its borders" or something like that.
Personally, I think we should do what Mexico does. They put troops
on their border with Guatemala to shake down Central Americans on
their way to the US.
Maybe the National Guard should go into the Extortion business. We
could really pay down the debt.
|5.15.06 @ 11:37AM|#
"Some of the many things Superman is too smart to attempt"
I highly recommend Alex Ross' beautiful, oversized graphic novella,
"Superman: Peace on Earth" for a study of Superman learning his
limitations.
|5.15.06 @ 11:43AM|#
"Maybe the National Guard should go into the Extortion business.
We could really pay down the debt."
This is why my conservative Republican father (who is a veteran) is
increasingly distressed by the use of American military personnel
in law enforcement operations. As part of his work he had the
opportunity to talk informally with some officers from Latin
American militaries who were in the US for training purposes and
apparently a number of them were quite candid that the main reason
they liked being in their respective nations' militaries was the
possibility for graft and extortion. (And that was in the late
1960s to early 1970s. With the "war on drugs" I doubt things have
gotten better.)
|5.15.06 @ 11:50AM|#
Ruthless, I must object to your statement that Superman wouldn't
attempt to urinate into the wind. Since he can generate
super-breath at speeds sufficient to blow away hurricanes, why not
high-speed super-urine as well? In fact, he could probably piss
into the sun if he wanted to.
And, as a guy, I'm sure that he wants to.
|5.15.06 @ 11:54AM|#
I'm confused. Not long ago they
didn't want more agents.
Maybe they think that the military's uniforms just look
spiffier.
VM|5.15.06 @ 11:54AM|#
"Ruthless, I must object to your statement that Superman
wouldn't attempt to urinate into the wind. Since he can generate
super-breath at speeds sufficient to blow away hurricanes, why not
high-speed super-urine as well? In fact, he could probably piss
into the sun if he wanted to.
And, as a guy, I'm sure that he wants to.
Comment by: Pro Libertate at May 15, 2006 11:50 AM"
chuck norris can.
and does :)
|5.15.06 @ 11:59AM|#
Pro Libertate and VM,
Before answering, I have placed on hold the Superman book
recommended by SR. I'll have to read it first.
You could be right though.
There is a strange relationship between testosterone and
urine.
(By the way, see my topic above.)
|5.15.06 @ 12:14PM|#
Zedillo had a quote along the lines of "the authority of
Mexico extends beyond its borders" or something like
that.
No. According to the quoted IBD editorial helpfully cited by Bruce
Arena, Zedillo said, "I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican
nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders."
Not authority, but nation. Meaning that those outside Mexico who
consider themselves Mexicans can continue to think themselves
Mexicans in Zedillo's -- and, given that he repeated the line in
2001, Fox's as well -- eyes.
|5.15.06 @ 12:16PM|#
Bush's plan is just a dog and pony show. Neither the republican or democratic party leadership are interested in stoping the flood of illegal aliens into the country. This whole guard on the boarder is a joke and nobody is falling for it.
|5.15.06 @ 12:35PM|#
commonsense,
All these jokes nobody is falling for are beginning to add up: like
barnacles.
VM|5.15.06 @ 12:38PM|#
"(By the way, see my topic above.)
Comment by: Ruthless at May 15, 2006 11:59 AM"
"the truckers' plan for the beautification of the west side of
cleveland" post? yup. (ewww).
|5.15.06 @ 12:39PM|#
I will have NO COMMENT until I HEAR what IMMIGRATION REALIST has to SAY about THIS.
|5.15.06 @ 12:42PM|#
Mexico gets 5000 visas a year. 500,000 a year are coming over
the border. This is like when the diots on the Right say that
liberalizing adoption is the answer to abortion when there are 1
1/2 million abortions per year but only 40,000 adpotions. Wanna fix
the system? Up the visas to about 300,000 at least. We don't need
border patrols - we need INS workers.
JMJ
|5.15.06 @ 12:45PM|#
Joisey McNoisy, is there any problem he can't solve after listening to NPR for five minutes?
|5.15.06 @ 12:45PM|#
Everybody is trying to leave Mexico because they heard that Chuck Norris was going on vacation there.
|5.15.06 @ 1:03PM|#
This sort of combative, "us vs immigrants" stuff only helps the
nuts like that prof in the article Bruce linked to, to my way of
thinking. It's sorta like how the best way to help a little
religion is to persecute it. I seriously doubt that illegal
immigrants have some sort of master plan in coming here, aside from
sinister goals like "feed the family." But if we treat them like
some sort of subersive group, they might just start acting like
one.
Which would fit in with the whole "funny" thing. Or at least be
kinda ironic.
|5.15.06 @ 1:08PM|#
"Well, Geek, what's your grand answer?"
To mock you at every turn for being as continually arrogant as you
are mouth-breathingly stupid.
Jim Henley|5.15.06 @ 1:09PM|#
Zedillo had a quote along the lines of "the authority of Mexico extends beyond its borders" or something like that.
What American could assent to the crazy-ass notion that a country's
authority might extend beyond its borders?
(Not that, as MikeP points out, he actually said that.)
VM|5.15.06 @ 1:15PM|#
"To mock you at every turn for being as continually arrogant as
you are mouth-breathingly stupid.
Comment by: mediageek at May 15, 2006 01:08 PM"
yooo da man! you're taking on, and beating, IR, JMJ. We need the
"good" DrX here to receive his whoopin', too!
first round is on Mr Crane! :)
|5.15.06 @ 1:23PM|#
This proposal has nothing to do with border control. It's just a ploy to get more people to sign up for the National Guard so they can be sent to Iraq.
|5.15.06 @ 1:31PM|#
"This proposal has nothing to do with border control. It's
just a ploy to get more people to sign up for the National Guard so
they can be sent to Iraq."
If so, I fully expect to see the .gov propaganda machine go into
full swing.
"Be a man! Join the real Minutemen."
|5.15.06 @ 1:33PM|#
"yooo da man! you're taking on, and beating, IR, JMJ. We
need the "good" DrX here to receive his whoopin', too!"
LOL! Thanks, VM!
Though I don't know if I'm powerful enough to take on the
amazingdrx. It's hard to mock the utterly incomprehensible.
|5.15.06 @ 1:37PM|#
Hate to say it guys, but I think on this one Jerz is on the
right track.
Hey it had to happen sometime. :)
Anyone who has ever had to deal with INS knows what an utterly
byzantine bureaucracy it is.
Those who are at the "front of the line" (ie immediate family of
citizens) have a two year wait before getting Green Cards. The next
favored group (immediate family of Green Card holders) have up to a
five year wait. The unskilled (ie most the mexicans) have a ten
year wait.
Is there any wonder why so many jump the line.
And what is irksome to me is that most of them don't even want to
become permanent residents they just want a few years of the high
pay they can get working in the USA. So why not work out a way to
process them as temporary residents. Perhaps they could take some
of the money that they would normally pay to "coyotes" and use some
to cover the cost of proccessing and hold the rest as a "good
behavior bond" to be returned when they go back home or forfeited
if they break the law while here.
Xmas|5.15.06 @ 1:39PM|#
Also to the point from that Nation Center for Policy Analysis
site, an article from the Wall Street Journal:
http://www.ncpa.org/iss/imm/2002/pd071702c.html
From 2002, the article states that increased border patrols also
increased illegal immigration by raising the costs of crossing the
border.
Also, some comments on Embassy cards issued by the Mexican
government:
http://www.ncpa.org/iss/imm/2003/pd012903c.html
Personally, I'd rather see a completely open border, but that's
about as likely to happen as the end of the War on Drugs.
|5.15.06 @ 1:42PM|#
He really is on the right track here, however he's been so
profoundly off on every other time that leads me to believe he's a
troll.
I mean, the equilivalent could be trollboy stressing how government
should stay out of the economy, and despite being correct, he
shouldn't be accepted for saying something true- that wouldn't make
him any less of a troll.
|5.15.06 @ 2:04PM|#
"Hate to say it guys, but I think on this one Jerz is on the
right track."
Joisey McNoisy is on the right track. But only because he's taken
ideas that were presented on an NPR story and posted them here
without attributing the real source.
Anybody can look smart by passing off smart ideas as their own.
|5.15.06 @ 2:12PM|#
You know who could stop illegal immigration?
D'Brickashaw Ferguson. 320 pounds staring Juarez in the face,
guarding Brownsville's blind side. Go ahead, YOU try to get past
him.
Wake UP, America! OUR white culture IS being SACKED!
James Anderson Merritt|5.15.06 @ 2:17PM|#
The Constitution gives the Congress -- not the President -- the
power to call up the Militia to repel Invasions.
Since Immigration became such a hot issue, I thought I would take a
walk through the Constitution to find out what, if any powers were
explicitly given to the Federal government in the area of
immigration.
Quite to my surprise, I got nothin'.
Declaring a Uniform Rule of Naturalization is a congressional
power. Repelling Invasion is a congressional power. The Congress is
prevented from prohibiting importation of people (slaves?) and
migration until 1808, but nothing is said about its powers once
that that temporal milestone had been passed.
The original Naturalization Acts of 1970 and 1795 mentioned only
the rules for granting of formal citizenship to aliens. How those
Aliens got into the country, who was responsible for keeping tabs
on them while they were "in residence," prior to their grant of
citizenship, and what should happen to an Alien who didn't want
citizenship, or was turned down -- none of these things are covered
by those early laws. We don't see national legislation to control
immigration until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This Act was
not supported by any citation of constitutional authority. In 1889,
the Supreme Court took up the question of the Exclusion Act and
follow-on legislation, ruling against CHAE CHING PING with
reasoning that included this little gem:
"There being nothing in the treaties between China and the United
States to impair the validity of the act of congress of October 1,
1888, was it on any other ground beyond the competency of congress
to pass it? If so, it must be because it was not within the power
of congress to prohibit Chinese laborers who had at the time
departed from the United States, or should subsequently depart,
from returning to the United States. Those laborers are not
citizens of the United States; they are aliens. That the government
of the United States, through the action of the legislative
department, can exclude aliens from its territory is a proposition
which we do not think open to controversy. Jurisdiction over its
own territory to that extent is an incident of every independent
nation. It is a part of its independence. If it could not exclude
aliens it would be to that extent subject to the control of another
power."
In other words, while it may be true that there is no explicit
power to control immigration in the Constitution, control of
immigration is an inherent power of a nation, which doesn't NEED to
be mentioned in the Constitution -- even though the framers did
stop to mention such other inherent powers as taxation, repelling
Invasion, and Naturalization, etc.
This is pretty scary reasoning -- almost as scary as the
proposition that intrastate commerce affects interstate commerce
and is therefore under federal control AS interstate commerce --
and it's amazing to me that it has apparently formed the basis of
US immigration law for over a century. Actually, this is scarier
than the interstate commerce thing, because at least the Supremes
asserted constitutional authority, even if they could only do so by
speaking Bizarro English. In Ping, the court established a huge
precedent for the government simply making things up as they went
along, brushing off challenges by declaring the desired holding as
being "a proposition which we do not think open to controversy."
That is to say, "just because we say so."
Reading Ping is very instructive, because it demonstrates that
nothing ever changes. The charges against chinese immigrants --
that they stuck to themselves, refused to learn English, seemed to
retain loyalty to their mother country, and were arriving in
hoardes (the better to overrun the existing US population), sound
as if they were ripped from today's headlines. For "Chinese," just
plug in "Mexicans." For "Chinese Emperor," just plug in "Vicente
Fox." That's it; you're good to go.
Maybe traditional nations had the power to exclude anyone from
their territory for no good reason. But the US Constitution exists
precisely because the framers wanted to put even what seemed like
the most obvious and necessary national powers out in the open, in
writing. Naturalization was explicitly mentioned in the
constitution; control of immigration was not. So it seems to me
that the right way to give the government that power would have
been (should still be) to pass a constitutional amendment. Until
then, our government is making it up as they go along, bending over
obligingly whenever a racist, xenophobic political wind blows. Part
of the danger lies in amplifying that wind into a gale. But the
other part -- perhaps the bigger part -- lies in abandonment of the
principle that powers not explicitly granted to the federal
government nor denied to the states, remain with the states or the
people, respectively. That principle IS in the Constitution, and I
suggest that, before we go overboard "assuming" unwritten powers,
we need to respect the limitations that ARE clearly established in
writing.
|5.15.06 @ 2:46PM|#
mediageek
I heard the NPR story this AM too. The facts presented are common
to knowledge to anyone who has dealt with the INS. For me it just
firmed up some numbers.
I made the mistake of marrying a Canadian and in spite of the fact
that she belong to a favored group the time to process her
paperwork was absurd. And that was thirty years ago. It has only
gotten worse.
Of course maybe I am give the Jerz to much credit. Sorry about
that.
|5.15.06 @ 3:12PM|#
Thank you Isaac - and to further prove your point - some 30
years ago 75% of migrant workers returned to their home countries
and now, since the border was beefed up in the 80's, it's only 25%.
The irony here is that the more we secure the borders, the more the
migrants will stay!
As for the NPR piece, sorrry guys, I missed that this morning. But
it's good to see how little you all know that you would just have
to assume that I get all my info from NPR. Just coincidence this
time folks. If I got it from NPR, I'd have siad so as I always have
in the past. I'm an ethical person.
JMJ
|5.15.06 @ 3:16PM|#
Hey Joe:
As a Patriots fan, I can understand why you'd want D'Brickshaw
(best name ever, BTW) down at the border rather than in a Jets
uniform.
|5.15.06 @ 4:24PM|#
How about Terry Tate, Immigration Linebacker? "Here comes the pain train, muchacho!"
|5.15.06 @ 5:27PM|#
"Wake UP, America! OUR white culture IS being SACKED!"
That was great, joe. Really great.
|5.15.06 @ 5:55PM|#
The present situation leads to folks dying on the road from
Guatemala to San Clemente. That just can't be the best
solution.
I would like to see us welcome everyone, but that's just a
non-starter. So I hope we do improve border enforcement, and build
the fence between USA and Mexico, and another fence between Mexico
and points south.
|5.15.06 @ 6:51PM|#
Hey, what if just nuked a hundred mile wide strip from the
border south.
That'd keep the bastards out.
|5.15.06 @ 7:33PM|#
Why don't we just have a guy--say a Chinese fellow--stand at the border and tell each prospective immigrant that they can leave Mexico when they can "snatch this pebble from my hand"?
|5.15.06 @ 8:12PM|#
It's 8:11 pm ET, and I'm watching Fox. I see that there's a
criminal in the Oval Office.
Which confuses me, because I thought that 24 wouldn't air until
after 9 pm tonight.
|5.15.06 @ 8:16PM|#
In Internet terminology, a troll is someone
who comes into an established community such as an online
discussion forum, and posts inflammatory, rude or offensive
messages designed to annoy and antagonize the existing members or
disrupt the flow of discussion
Hmmm, I don't think I've ever seen Jersey post rude or offensive
messages, sometimes he mockingly refers to reason readers as
libbers, but that's about it. I'm gonna have to say I don't think
he's a troll, but if ignoring the substance of his posts and
insulting him is what y'all wanna do, well hey, it's still a free
country.
James Anderson Merritt|5.15.06 @ 9:19PM|#
Thoreau said, "It's 8:11 pm ET, and I'm watching Fox. I see that
there's a criminal in the Oval Office."
But he can't hold a candle to Richard Belzer in "The Groove Tube"
(1974). The Belz gave us the Gold Standard in Oval Office
criminals. The current pretender can only aspire to Bronze, and has
only achieved Brass.
Also, is it just me, or has Gregory Itzin (Logan on 24) been
auditioning for the role of Richard Nixon this whole season? Whose
Nixon-biopic is going to get a green-light and snap up this
guy?
|5.16.06 @ 10:53AM|#
ratbombz - "Inflammatory" definitely describes JMJ, though. He comes here and makes largely fact-free and contrarian posts. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but when questioned on anything, he changes the subject, starts insulting people, or just becomes increasingly random. That's what makes him a troll. I'm starting to think he's serious at some level, though - even though he doesn't want or know how to have a real intellectual discussion, I think he does believe what he's saying.
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