 |
| The opinions expressed in guest columns posted on this site do not necessarily reflect the opinions of AmericanPatrol.com. Visit the Alamance Independent to read Mark Andrew Dwyer's weekly column posted every Sunday. -- Click here for more Mark Andrew Dwyer columns. |
Originally published in the January 11,2004 issue of the Alamance Independent
THE DAMAGE HAS BEEN DONE (1)
A Critique of President Bush's `New Temporary Worker Program' Proposal
1/13/04
When I read the transcript of President Bush's speech on immigration policy (see [1]), I thought I was dreaming. Here comes a duly elected leader of the most advanced country in history of Western civilization and he mindlessly repeats all the debunked myths, refuted lies, and discredited half-truths that the open-border lobbyists were feeding American citizens with for a decade or so. Mr. Bush, like a "D" student (who, I suppose, was collecting the gentleman's "C"s as a son of an affluent parents), has obviously failed with this non-trivial assignment to fix the immigration mess his and his predecessors' administrations have brought on our heads.
This article comprises of my critical comments on Mr. Bush's `New Temporary Worker Program' proposal, and consists of three parts. The first part, Introduction, outlines the major flaws and misconceptions of the proposal. The second part, The Critique, contains detailed comments made on the transcript of Mr. Bush's speech that justify in detail a grade "F" that I gave him for his proposal. The third part, Conclusions, indicates some of the most serious implications of Mr. Bush's proposal as well as fundamental issues that he hasn't addressed in his speech. It is my sincere belief that if Bush's `New Temporary Worker Program' is implemented then it will cause irreparable damage to American nation. But even if the U.S. Congress does not pass the "reform" bill Mr. Bush is calling for, some of the damage has been already done by the mere fact of him siding with the open border lobby, apparently in an attempt to gain their votes in this election year.
PART I: Introduction
Mr. Bush's main line of thought may be characterized as follows. After the amnesty for about 2.5 illegal aliens was granted in 1986, "we" (mostly the government and corporate elites, that is) have failed miserably in enforcing America's border and her immigration laws and policies. This failure has resulted in an unmanageable mess consisting of eight to 11 million illegal aliens that fuel "underground economy", and are subject to hardship and exploitation as well as to inconvenience of illegally crossing the American-Mexican border. So, let's give them a chance to legalize themselves and their illegal employment in this country, with a future possibility of applying for citizenship and bringing their families (which is likely to award legal U.S. residency to about 25 million aliens). Right after that "legalization" is done, and don't you dare to call it an "amnesty", the government will begin strict enforcement of the American border and the immigration laws (which the administration somehow couldn't do without a "reform"), deport all those who don't follow the rules, and sternly punish the employers that continue hire "undocumented" workers.
There is a number of misconceptions and fatal flaws in Mr. Bush's proposal that I indicated in my critique, perhaps the most striking one of which is the apparent misunderstanding, by the authors of the proposal, of the relationship between the law, its enforcement, and the crime. Criminal acts are prohibited by the law because they are socially undesirable and not vice versa, that is, they are not undesirable merely because they are prohibited the law. For instance, theft is illegal because our society doesn't accept nor allow stealing. It is not true, though, that stealing is unacceptable just because it's illegal. In particular, legalizing theft would not make us welcoming a prospect of being ripped off by the thieves, even if it were just the poor and the needy who are granted the right to somebody else's property. In general, a mere legalizing of a criminal activity does not make it socially acceptable, contrary to what the above-described misunderstanding might suggest.
Having noticed that, we can address the first major misconception of Mr. Bush's proposal. Illegal aliens are illegal in the sense of the U.S. immigration laws because their presence in the U.S. has some serious damaging effects on this country, and not the other way around, that is, it is not the case that their presence here is damaging merely because they are illegal. They depress wages and working conditions of American workers. Many of them profit from criminal activities like drug trafficking, forging documents, and evading taxes, many others bring with them violence, crime, and diseases. They overpopulate the most desirable parts of the U.S. (like Southern California), overcrowd our schools, our emergency rooms, our highways, and our cities. They pollute air, trash the environment, and often stimulate social tensions between their "undocumented communities" and other residents. Legalizing them would not remedy the negative effects of their mass "migration" into the U.S. anymore than legalizing theft would remedy the negative effects of stealing. Mr. Bush does not m to realize that, or at least he purports so. His main idea to relax the immigration law in order to turn a bad thing (he used the word "wrong") into a good thing may be best characterized as "utopian" and have no chance to work.
The second major misconception of Mr. Bush's program is a derivative of the first one. He criticizes the current (immigration) laws as the "system [that] is not working". In other words, he de facto blames these laws for his and his predecessors' administration not enforcing them. Using the previous analogy, it's like blaming the growing theft rate on the law that prohibits it and not on a lack of adequate prosecution and punishment of the thieves. This bizarre idea of laws that somehow enforce themselves (and if they don't then they need to be reformed) is particularly dangerous in that it shifts the responsibility of obeying the law from government to the violators, most of them, quite obviously, having no desire to treat this responsibility seriously. I can imagine Mr. Bush watching from his Ivory Tower the million man illegal traffic going freely through the American border that his administration refuses to protect and saying emphatically "Look, it doesn't work!"
The third major misconception, closely related to the first two, is a result of Mr. Bush's apparent belief that the commonality of crime makes the law "unreasonable" or even "inhumane". Although it's a widely accepted legal doctrine that one cannot, or should not, enforce the law that is rejected by a sound majority of citizens (which clearly is not the case here), it doesn't follow that mass violations of a law by foreign perpetrators is a valid premise for legislative changes that would make these violations legal. That would go against the idea of sovereignty that allows nations to follow and enforce their constitutions and laws even if a vast majority of world's population disrespects their articles. In particular, the fact that tens of millions (there eight to 12 millions currently in the U.S.; about as many had left or got deported) of illegal aliens violated our border and broke our laws is no excuse for opening the border and repealing the laws they broke. As a matter of fact, it would be inexcusable to doing so; a sound majority of Americans, as numerous results of polls clearly demonstrate (see [3]), is decidedly opposed to "legalization" of illegal aliens and wants a dramatically better enforcement of America's border and her current immigration laws, instead.
(Here is an illustration. If you have water leaks in your home, the best way to deal with the problem is to seal the pipe. If you have a flood, you may need to shut the master valve down as well. Few would argue that the best you can do is to let the water flow freely and accept the flood as a fact of life. Even fewer would be naive enough to believe that whoever gave you such a stupid advice is going to take the broken irrigation system under control.)
The above misconception seems to be a proverbial tip of the iceberg of Mr. Bush's loyalties. His suggestion that the Americans have a duty to adjust our immigration laws and policies in order to better assist other nations with sending their surplus citizens to America in "search for a better life" even if done at the expense of American citizens (he said "We must make our immigration laws more rational, and more humane.") is indicative of his departure from his earlier "America first" stance. How different this current position is from the one that he took in his "State of the Union Address" (see [2]) on January 28, 2003, when a few weeks before eruption of the war on Iraq he said: "Yet the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others". Well, millions of "others" made a decision to violate the border of a sovereign country (the U.S., that is) and to change the course of this nation, but Mr. Bush doesn't seem to be nearly as resolute about this as he was during his preparations to the war with Iraq.
The mentioned above iceberg of Mr. Bush's shifting loyalties shows another tip in his statement that "If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will fill that job". What about welcoming in our country the jobs (or not letting them go overseas in hundreds of thousands, as it's happening right now) that American citizens are willing to fill? What about making the "unwanted" job easier, more efficient (and profitable), and more enjoyable, so that American citizens will be willing again to take it? What about investing in a technology that would replace this job with a machine?
By importing millions of unassimilating aliens, most of them with no talents or skills, many of them unwilling or unable to complete high school education or even learn the English language, just because some "entrepreneurs" want to handsomely profit from their "cheap" labor, the government and corporate elites will thwart social and economic progress this nation had experienced in the 20-th century. Your proposal, if implemented, will push our country backwards, if not wreck it, Mr. President, and no "compassionate" or "good-for-the-economy" rhetoric will ever change this fact.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
[3] Polls
http://americanpatrol.com/POLLS/Polls.htmlPlease, send your comments to readerswrite@yahoo.com
| 
| 
| 
| 