Jim Gilchrist – MMP Exclusive – Why do amnesty supporters insist on tearing down native-born Americans and exaggerating the virtues of illegal immigrants?
Illegal immigrants must be given legal status, they say, because they are hard-working and family-oriented. With their energy, work ethic and fertility, they represent the future of this Nation.
Americans, on the other hand, are too lazy and old. They are tuckered out, weary of having children, and content to live on welfare and other entitlements. They whine about every little thing and all they want is MORE.
An aide to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) summarized this disdain for writer Ryan Lizza in a June 24 piece that appeared in the New Yorker: “There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it.”
Under a blanket amnesty, however, all 11+ million illegal aliens are presumed to be star performers. In fact, the whole concept of “star performer” is turned upside down, since illegal aliens can get started on a path to citizenship without even having a job or the skill to get a job.
When the historians weigh in on the immigration matter, they make the sophomoric mistake of comparing epochs as if the Nation were under a dome and immune from change. They note, for example, that the biggest economic gains coincided with waves of immigration. From 1840 to 1914, they remind us, the U.S. economy became the largest in the world. What they conveniently ignore is how badly immigrants, including children, were exploited by employers to maximize profit. They forget that government regulation of business was virtually non-existent. They disregard the impact of no personal income tax. More importantly, they deny the burden today’s welfare state imposes on business, innovation and entrepreneurship. Under these circumstances, how could explosive economic growth not occur 100+ years ago?
When all else fails, amnesty advocates try to confuse the issues. They say high-skilled immigrants create new businesses, invent new products and services, and create jobs. We should welcome this flow of genius to our country because so many benefits will trickle our way. Maybe, but how does this justify amnesty for over 11 million unskilled, under-educated interlopers?
Unable to give up this train of thought, they note that foreign students with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields should be able to remain in the United States to help us become more competitive in world markets. These are the same people who want the U.S. to take a more active role in alleviating poverty around the world. Apparently, their solution is to take the best and brightest the world has to offer, effectively denying other countries one of the few means to climb out of poverty. They are left dependent on U.S. aid and forced deeper into debt with World Bank loans for basic infrastructure needs. Not exactly the most elegant solution, but one that seems to soothe many liberal consciences.
Another inconvenient truth to ponder is that amnesty with a path to citizenship would add 36 million new immigrants over the next two decades — comparable to the population of Canada. Amnesty advocates cite increased tax revenues, deficit reduction and badly needed Social Security funding as reasons to embrace mass immigration. They gloss over the adverse impact this population growth is likely to have on our environment, infrastructure, food and water capacity, and energy demand — any of which threatens to sink our Nation deeper into a debt that is already mathematically impossible to pay down.
To hear the pro-amnesty crowd tell it, only mass immigration can save us from ourselves. You name the problem, and more immigration is put forward as the solution. In the words of President Barack Obama, this is just “commonsense.” The implication is that the rest of us must be fools to think otherwise and damned fools for questioning it.
