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.

Comments

[George "Duh" "Bull You" Bush]

I'm handling everything so you can all rest easy.

[Xmas]

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).

[emmajane]

This better not interfere with the season finale of Grey's Anatomy!

[Ruthless]

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.

[76]

Xmas: Care to point towards any quotes or analysis that concludes this?

[James B.]

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.

[Landon Donovan]

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.

[SR]

"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.

[Bruce Arena]

76, here you go.

http://www.ncpa.org/newdpd/dpdarticle.php?article_id=1642

[SR]

"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.)

[Pro Libertate]

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.

[Happy Jack]

I'm confused. Not long ago they didn't want more agents.

Maybe they think that the military's uniforms just look spiffier.

[VM]

"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 🙂

[Bears' Fan]

If Superman was trying to sneak into the US from Mexico, Ditka could stop him.

[Ruthless]

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.)

[MikeP]

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.

[commensense]

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.

[Ruthless]

commonsense,
All these jokes nobody is falling for are beginning to add up: like barnacles.

[VM]

"(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).

[Spectator]

I will have NO COMMENT until I HEAR what IMMIGRATION REALIST has to SAY about THIS.

[Jersey McJones]

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

[mediageek]

Joisey McNoisy, is there any problem he can't solve after listening to NPR for five minutes?

[Brian McBride]

Everybody is trying to leave Mexico because they heard that Chuck Norris was going on vacation there.

[Jersey McJones]

Well, Geek, what's your grand answer?

JMJ

[76]

Don't feed the trolls.

[me]

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.

[mediageek]

"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]

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]

"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! 🙂

[s.m. koppelman]

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.

[mediageek]

"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."

[mediageek]

"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.

[Isaac Bartram]

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]

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.

[Isaac Bartram]

I hope koppelman's kidding coz that's just a bunch of nonsense.

[76]

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.

[mediageek]

"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.

[joe]

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]

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.

[Isaac Bartram]

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.

[Jersey McJones]

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

[Kevin]

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.

[Randolph Carter]

How about Terry Tate, Immigration Linebacker? "Here comes the pain train, muchacho!"

[Jason Ligon]

"Wake UP, America! OUR white culture IS being SACKED!"

That was great, joe. Really great.

[johnl]

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.

[MacArthur's Ghost]

Hey, what if just nuked a hundred mile wide strip from the border south.

That'd keep the bastards out.

[Pro Libertate]

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"?

[thoreau]

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.

[ratbombz]

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]

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?

[JD]

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.