Alienating the Anti-Aliens

Immigration restrictionistas are hopping mad over the White House's request that House Republicans drop immigration-tightening provisions from the 9/11 Commission-related security bill. The measures, which were not included in the Senate's version of the legislation, would have sped up deportation of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally in the last five years, blocked federal employees from accepting foreign matricular IDs, and made it more difficult for illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses. Supporters say the Bush Administration previously signed off on each of these measures, and are calling the request "an act of utter hypocrisy."

Comments

[Crusader Rabbit]

Good for Bush, whatever his motivation. Trying to link immigration with terrorism and 9/11 is blatantly bogus (and, for that matter, racist). As has been pointed out elsewhere, none of the 9/11 killers was Mexican, none entered the U.S. illegally, none crossed the border from Mexico (or Canada). The Border Patrol (or whatever it's now called in the DHS) is not going to fight the "war on terror." The real terrorists are way too smart for that.

[Dave Weigel]

Wait a second. There's an anti-immigration group using the same name as the anti-terrorist puppet strike force in the new Trey Parker/Matt Stone movie?

Wow. Their PR is about to suck.

[Jason Ligon]

I think I hear Lonewacko typing away in the distance ...

[scott]

I think I hear Lonewacko typing away in the distance ...

I think he lives on Mt. St Helens- it's not an imminent eruption, merely his head exploding. :o)

[Ruthless]

Borders don't need defending and certain drugs are not evil. Both are inanimate.
Restrictionistas think puppets are animate.

[andy]

Viva la inmigracion! Abajo los racistas hijos de puta!

[joe]

Bush isn't being a hypocrite. He's trying to get a bill passed.

If there's ever a bill to create a universal system of health insurance, and it's two votes short because of a paragraph creating a program that provides grants for city planning initiatives, this liberal city planner will be the first to take the scissors to the document.

Here we have a bill that will allow a number of things that are necessary to protect the country from terrorism, and the anti-immigrant lobby would set it up for defeat because they can't get their pet issues through. You know, I'm getting a pretty good idea of who is looking out for my safety, and who isn't.

[Hydroman]

Ok guys the next time,which will be soon, when the "Mohados" show up knocking at my door at 4 in the morning I`ll need your addresses so I can send them your way.
Where the people that participated in the 911 attack Americans or Immigrants?

Help me out here Lonewacko.

[Josh]

If there's ever a bill to create a universal system of health insurance, and it's two votes short because of a paragraph creating a program that provides grants for city planning initiatives,

...I'll be moving to Mexico.

[joe]

So Hydroman, when the (immigration) prohibition laws make things worse, we should adopt stricter prohibition laws. There just might be a future for you in ONDCP.

[Todd Fletcher]

I live in the southwest, and I've never had illegals knock at my door at any hour. I think they're usually dead asleep at 4am, after working 12 hour days in 110 degrees.

[Hydroman]

Joe,
The laws are fine the enforcement is lacking.All the Wets caught down here claim to be OTMs (other than mexican) so the get a release and a court date that they never show up for. We call it "catch and release " program.
Todd,
The "Rancho no Lehace", my home, is 35 miles north of the Rio Bravo,between Del Rio and Eagle Pass. Send me your address sos I can give it to the Wets.

[fyodor]

Hydroman,

Why are people knocking at your door at 4 AM?

[xray]

fyodor: hydro, man!

[Hydroman]

fyodor,
they are looking for water,food,and a ride to your town.

[kwais]

Dude,
I saw the interview Bush did with O'Reilly. O'Reilly being a big anti immigration dude asked the pressident why he did not use the military on the border.

I really liked the presidents answer. The jist of which was "hey they are hard working individuals just trying to get a job"

He did say something half hearted about giving the border patrol more tools or whatever.

I think we should have an exchange program. Where we take mexican immigrants trying to come here and work hard and we send them our welfare recipients. That would be cool.

[Gadfly]

Our biggest welfare recipients by far are our big corporations, airlines and farmers. I wouldn't make that trade.

[Curtis Overbo]

Yes, Bush is both clear and yet evasive (if not duplicitous) on this issue. While I'll likely vote for him, I won't pretend that my concerns about his policies have made me comfortable with the vote. Kerry hasn't done better.

[Curtis Overbo]

I'll mention that I have met many "wetbacks" and am in no way casting aspersions regarding them. I was referring to government policy and how it relates to some comments above. An inconsistent policy is maybe all we'll get without a careful analysis of the issues involved (tough to bring about in even a non-election year).

[thoreau]

Gadfly-

I wouldn't send over the entire airline or the entire farm crew, just the inefficient managers. They'd be perfect in Mexico's state-owned oil and gas companies. Apparently Mexico is unable to profitably extract its large reserves of natural gas. I'm sure that some airline CEOs would fit right in.

Meanwhile, we could bring in some new blood to run these businesses.

And don't even get me started on agribusiness executives who lobby for sugar tariffs to protect their more expensive corn syrup. Let's put them where they belong: Managing coca plantations in South America, selling an agricultural product at artificially high prices because the laws protect them from competition.

[The Lonewacko Blog]

Help me out here Lonewacko.

Help is on the way.

From Chapter 3 of the 9/11 Commission staff report: once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack. Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity.

From "Potential terrorists released due to lack of jail space, congressman says": Middle Easterners with possible terrorist ties have been detained after entering the country from Mexico but released for lack of jail space, said U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness...

Just recently, from "Al-Qaida infiltrated U.S. military meal company?": U.S. officials are probing the possibility the al-Qaida terrorist network sought to infiltrate a Texas company in order to contaminate ready-to-eat meals designated for the military. A high-ranking al-Qaida operative provided information leading authorities to nearly a dozen illegal immigrants working for the McAllen, Texas-based Wornick Co., the largest supplier of the meals, according to McAllen's The Monitor newspaper.

See also Problems on the border. That rounded up all the chatter about al Qaeda trying to infiltrate the U.S. via Mexico. The article's a month old, and there's been more chatter since then.

And, Time Magazine's cover story Who Left the Door Open? discusses the property and environmental damage done by border crossers.

If you think O'Reilly's interview with Bush had some tough questions, see Bill O'Reilly asks some semi-tough questions.

Their money or your safety discusses how the Bush administration supports foreign IDs that the FBI and the DOJ call a security threat.

The more you know about this issue, the more worried you get; on the other hand, if you don't really know what you're talking about (see some of the comments above), it's easy to dismiss the severity of Bush's failure to secure our borders.

[thoreau]

Lonewacko-

Would you agree that, to whatever extent we do or should let immigrants in, for every immigrant we let in we should also expel a subsidized airline or agribusiness manager?

If so, then we'll finally have some common ground!

[Crusader Rabbit]

A few points of data taken from myriad real life situations hardly paint a complete picture of the immigration issue in the U.S. For every illegal alien (and yes, they are illegal) who causes property or environmental damage along the border or commits a crime on this side of the border, there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) who get jobs, pay taxes, and obey the law -- and, incidentally, do the work that must be done for a complex and multi-layered society like ours to function. And they do so merely to provide for themselves and their families.

As a Californian, I have struggled with the issue we're facing here regarding driver's licenses for illegal aliens. Hey, they're illegal; they've committed and continue to commit a crime; they don't and shouldn't have the privileges of citizenship. But they're here. They're not going away. Better to force them to drive around without licenses, without insurance, without learning enough English at least to read traffic signs? It's a tough call, but I ultimately come down on the side of dealing with the reality of the situation, not the theory.

OK, so a handful of wannabe terrorists tried to contaminate military meals (as though they weren't bad enough to eat already!); the Tylenol contaminator of a few years back tried to murder a bunch of people, too, but was he a terrorist? There are probably other such instances of bad guys crossing the border to do us harm (although I still maintain they're the fringe, not the brightest bulbs in the terrorist circuit), but that's not a reason to seal off the borders a la Isreal's fence and pretend we don't have to face the real issues of illegal immigration -- how to deal with the millions of people who are already here, and how to encourage newcomers to follow the rules.

[Mexile]

Our biggest welfare recipients by far are our big corporations, airlines and farmers. I wouldn't make that trade.
Gadfly

We're already overrun by those particular welfare recipients down here. What do you think is forcing OUR farmers to leave the farms and emigrate?

[Ruthless]

I can't rebut Lonewacko in his flashy manner, but I'm sure there are those who could.
I'm thinking excerpts from books by Julian Simon would work well.

Some of Lonewacko's points are reciting problems caused by the War on Aliens, not by aliens.

[The Lonewacko Blog]

For every illegal alien (and yes, they are illegal) who causes property or environmental damage along the border or commits a crime on this side of the border, there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) who get jobs, pay taxes, and obey the law

In the 80's, L.A. County had 26 trauma centers. Now there are just 13. A large part of that is due to the fact that companies are able to hire illegal workers and pass the costs onto the rest of us. So, the damage illegal immigration - and those, dare I say, traitorous companies - do echoes far beyond the border.

But [illegal aliens drivers are] here. They're not going away.

Strangely enough, that's similar to comments made by Gil Cedillo, continual sponsor of DLs for IAs laws in California.

Here's something else he said: "they were here first." In other words, because California used to be Mexico before it was stolen, they should have licenses. You can dispute that interpretation, but that's only because of lack of knowledge.

The "public safety" argument is, frankly, BS. As pointed out by the Commisioner of Minnesota's Department of Public Safety:

...advocates argue that they want to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants so they will be safer drivers. This argument is completely without merit and is a transparent attempt to turn the illegal immigrant problem into a public safety issue. There is no evidence that if illegal immigrants received drivers licenses, they would enroll in driver education programs, obtain insurance, and refrain from fleeing the scene of an accident. Common sense dictates that an individual on the run from the law would not wait around at an accident site for the police to arrive... The Department of Public Safety will not facilitate illegal immigration...

There's much more on how terrorists used driver's licenses here.

And, from "California legislators ask Mexican Senate to intervene [in driver's licenses for illegal aliens]":

Mexico City ? Members of the Assembly of California have asked the Mexican Senate (sic) to beseech Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign the bill so that almost 2 million undocumented Mexicans can obtain driver?s licenses that would serve as identification... Marco Antonio Firebaugh, said that the governor ?is the one who has the ability to make it law, to give this right to Mexicans, whether they have settled in California or not... We want the Mexican people to know that the measure is on his desk... However it is now September and he has not responded whatsoever, although we will insist on approval of the bill, basically so that illegal migrants can have access to education and health services in the U.S..." Assemblywoman Cindy Monta?ez, from the San Fernando Valley, said that it is vital for Mexico to ask Schwarzenegger to approve this legislation "so that he would know that not only people of California, but an entire country is asking that he sign the bill."

So, as I said above, the more you know about this, the more worried you are. Unless, of course, you don't see a problem with supposedly American legislators asking foreign governments to interfere in America's laws.

[Dan]

Better to force them to drive around without licenses, without insurance, without learning enough English at least to read traffic signs? It's a tough call, but I ultimately come down on the side of dealing with the reality of the situation, not the theory

Governor Schwarzenegger recently vetoed a bill that would have granted licenses to illegal immigrants. He stated, at the time, that he sympathized with the concerns you mentioned, and would therefore sign a bill allowing illegal immigrants to get licenses... provided the licenses had an identifying mark, distinguishing them from regular licenses.

Whereupon license supporters decided that no licenses were better than licenses that actually identified their bearers as illegal immigrants.

So much for the theory -- not that anyone ever really believed it, mind you -- that what these people are really worried about is road safety and car insurance.

[raymond]

The Know-Nothings are back.

[denisse]

i dont think that all the immigrants who enter the united states are terrorist.And i also cant understand why many people think that all those who enter the country illegally have the intension to come and terrorise the united states.