Democrats Introduce Legislation Aimed at Granting Amnesty to Illegals

http://blogs.reuters.com/frontrow/2009/12/15/democrats-take-first-step-on-uphill-path-to-immigration-overhaul/#comment-405588

House Democrats, led by Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, have launched an effort to make good on a campaign promise to Hispanic voters to pass “immigration reform,” a euphemism for granting amnesty to approximately 12 million illegal immigrants. 

Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday introduced a bill to overhaul immigration laws, the first step in what analysts say will be an uphill slog to get the controversial issue to a vote before midterm elections next year. Rep Luis V. Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009, that seeks to give millions of illegal immigrants a shot at legal status. It was backed by more than 20 other Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

You have to wonder if this is a serious effort, or a token gesture to placate their pro-amnesty constituency.  With Congress’ approval ratings at a record low level, and falling further as the health care debate drags on, sucking the life out of other critical issues like the economy and climate change legislation, nothing would make the American people angrier than an amnesty bill getting priority over these other issues.  And the Democrats know it:

Democratic officials in Washington, however, said last month they were skeptical there will be enough time or political will to tackle the issue next year, although it could be on the agenda in 2011 or 2012 depending on the outcome of congressional elections next November — a position shared by political analysts on Tuesday.

Better for them to get it out there now, when it is sure to be pushed aside by much more pressing issues.  At least they can then tell their pro-amnesty bloc, “at least we tried.”

Still, the irony of debating a measure designed to import more labor, more carbon emitters and more oil consumers while, at the same time, debating how to mitigate the problems of unemployment, global warming and dependency on foreign oil would be wonderful political theater.  Anti-immigration forces would likely pounce on the opportunity to link these issues, waking people up to the consequences of our continued self-destructive lax immigration policy.  The pro-amnesty bloc woud be well-advised to simply let this legislation die.

Roy Beck Video About U.S. Immigration Policy

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7WJeqxuOfQ

The above link will take you to an outstanding presentation by Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUSA, about U.S. immigration policy.

Obama Administration Punts on Amnesty and Immigration Reform

The latest issue of the Immigration Report newsletter, distributed every two months to its members by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), arrived in the mail the other day.  The headline article reported on the White House summit on immigration reform, held on June 25th.  I found the article especially interesting in light of my recent post on the dramatic drop in the rate of U.S. population growth, in which I speculated that while the administration is publicly supporting immigration reform and amnesty, it is (for whatever reason) quietly putting the brakes on immigration.  Here are some excerpts from the article:

President Committed to Amnesty but Chief of Staff says “The Votes Aren’t There”

The much anticipated and oft-delayed White House summit on immigration reform finally took place on June 25.  President Obama hosted about 20 members of Congress for a closed door meeting about how to deal with an “immigration system that is broken and needs fixing.” 

… White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, made a point of dampening expectations that amnesty legislation is imminent.  “The votes aren’t there,” Emanual admitted in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor.  President Obama reiterated that point in a post-summit statement, saying, “there is not by any means consensus across the table.”

… A further indication of how unpopular the idea of an illegal alien amnesty is with the American people was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) revealing post-summit statement.  While reaffirming her “absolute commitment” to an illegal alien amnesty, Speaker Pelosi made it clear that it would be up to the Senate to pass a bill before the House would act. 

Whether or not you agree with the approaches taken, you have to admit that Obama has been dauntless in tackling issues important to him – things like global warming, salvaging the domestic auto industry and, more recently, health care reform – regardless of a lack of public support.  So it seems quite uncharacteristic for the administration to simply throw up its hands on the issue of immigration reform with the excuse that “the votes aren’t there.”  Perhaps their hearts were never really in it. 

It seems that opponents of amnesty and immigration “reform,” led by groups like FAIR and NumbersUSA, have clearly gained the upper hand in the immigration debate and that it’s unlikely any amnesty legislation will even make it to the floor of Congress any time soon.  But, as FAIR emphasized in their newsletter, this is no time to lower our guard.  We need to hold the government’s feet to the fire on securing the border and on halting the importation of foreign labor.

Obama Administration Cracks Down on Paper Work, Not Illegals

http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2009-07-01-immigration-crackdown_N.htm

The Obama administration has launched a sham crackdown on illegal immigration, obviously designed to create the illusion of securing the border ahead of a push in Congress for “comprehensive immigration reform” – a euphemism for granting legal status to twelve million aliens in the country illegally. 

The Obama administration launched investigations of hundreds of businesses around the country Wednesday as part of its strategy to focus immigration enforcement on the employers who hire illegal workers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun notifying businesses of plans to audit their I-9 forms — employment eligibility documents that employers fill out for every worker — the agency told members of Congress in an e-mail Wednesday.

How will this work?  Evidence is provided by a separate story of one of these “I-9 paper work audits” conducted at American Apparel’s manufacturing operations in Los Angeles: 

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2009-07-01-american-apparel_N.htm

American Apparel(APP), no stranger to controversial headlines, said Wednesday that the government has found that 1,800 of its employees are either illegally working in the U.S. or potentially illegal to work. Those employees comprise about one-third of the clothier’s Los Angeles manufacturing operation.

The disclosure came as a result of an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Of the 1,800 workers identified, 1,600 were deemed to be unauthorized to work while Immigration had been unable to verify the status of the remaining 200. The company said it was not found to have willingly hired illegal workers.

If the workers are unable to provide proof of eligibility, they will be forced to leave the company, American Apparel said in a statement. The company said the departures aren’t expected to hurt its financial results and noted it has a surplus of inventory and production capacity.

KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Edward Yruma said the immigration notice “thankfully led to no mass arrest or deportation of employees.”

No arrests.  No deportations.  No fines for the employers.  The illegals even get a second chance to provide proof of eligibility.  If they can’t, no doubt they’ll be rehired under some other identity, perhaps yours or mine.  Why not?  There’s absolutely zero risk of any meaningful enforcement action.

For all of Bush’s faults, one policy he was getting right was border security and immigration enforcement – conducting many high profile raids of employers, prosecuting company officials and deporting illegals.  Obama has put a stop to all of it, opting for a sham program to create an illusion of being tough.  I have news for him:  no one is going to fall for it.  In fact, the program may very well back-fire on him, with the I-9 audit results supporting opponents of amnesty and immigration ”reform,”  providing proof of just how ubiquitous the problem of illegal immigration (and all of the problems associated with it) has become. 

There are two issues absolutely critical  to the long-term future of this country:  restoring a balance of trade and stabilizing (even reducing) our population, and there is nothing more fundamental to addressing the latter than halting illegal immigration and deporting illegals.  On both of these issues, the Obama administration is failing miserably.

Christian Science Monitor Endorses Immigration Cuts

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0528/p09s01-coop.html

When a respected publication like the Christian Science Monitor calls for cuts in immigration to slow population growth, it may be time for the administration to sit up and take notice.  

President Obama has encouraged Americans to start laying a new foundation for the country – on a number of fronts. He has stressed that we’ll need to have the courage to make some hard choices. One of those hard choices is how to handle immigration. The US must get serious about the tide of legal and illegal immigrants, above all from Latin America.It’s not just a short-run issue of immigrants competing with citizens for jobs as unemployment approaches 10 percent or the number of uninsured straining the quality of healthcare. Heavy immigration from Latin America threatens our cohesiveness as a nation.

The political realities of the rapidly growing Latino population are such that Mr. Obama may be the last president who can avert the permanent, vast underclass implied by the current Census Bureau projection for 2050.

… Population growth is the principal threat to the environment via natural resource use, sprawl, and pollution. And population growth is fueled chiefly by immigration.

It’s no mystery why the U.S. continues to import people at an alarming rate. Our nation’s leaders take their cues from economists who continue to see population growth as the main driver of economic growth, blind to the relationship between excessive population densities and unemployment and hoping that no one will ask what happens when such a policy inevitably fails, since never-ending population growth is a physical impossibility.  More people means more customers, more sales volume, more corporate profits and – yes- more jobs.  But no one stops to consider whether the growth in jobs keeps pace with the growth in population, resulting in rising unemployment and poverty.  

The Christian Science Monitor can hardly be faulted for not including in their reasoning the cancerous effects upon the economy of a worsening population density, since my fledgling theory has yet to gain widespread acceptance.  It would have been nice if they had also pointed out that rampant population growth also makes the challenges of breaking our dependence on foreign oil and cutting greenhouse gas emissions nearly impossible.  But it’s refreshing that more and more mainstream media are awakening to the perils of our preposterous immigration policies.  

Congressman Seeks to End Birthright Citizenship for Children of Illegal Aliens

http://www.fairus.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=20569&security=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1721#3

As reported in the linked article by FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), Congressman Nathan Deal of Georgia, with bipartisan support from 46 other congressmen, has authored a bill that would do away with automatically conferring citizenship upon anyone born in the U.S. to illegal aliens.

True immigration reformers in the U.S. Congress have reintroduced legislation seeking to end birthright citizenship for children born to illegal alien parents in the United States. Authored by Congressman Nathan Deal (R-GA) and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of 46 other Members of the House of Representatives, the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009 (H.R.1868) would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to change the current interpretation of federal law that automatically confers citizenship to any child born in the United States regardless of the immigration status of the child’s parents. (See H.R. 1868 Legislative Text and Co-sponsor Listing).

… The Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009 does not seek to amend the Constitution, but would instead amend a statute in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to clarify the interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Congressman Deal’s bill would limit birthright citizenship only to children born to at least one parent who is either: (1) a citizen or national of the United States; (2) a lawful permanent resident; or (3) actively serving in the U.S. military. The legislation would only apply prospectively and would not “affect the citizenship or nationality status of any person born before the date of the [bill's] enactment.” (H.R.1868, April 2, 2009).
 
Congressman Deal noted that the United States is one of only a few industrialized countries who still allow birthright citizenship.

Such a measure is long overdue and essential if we are to ever have any hope of making dramatic reductions in our reckless rates of immigration.  I urge you to call or write your Congressman and urge him or her to support this bill.

Obama Advocates Legal Immigration from Cuba

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5isn-A6X47PLC4dRexapk4yFMmbyQD98C289G0

As reported in the linked article, President Obama has proposed a resumption of talks with Cuba aimed at establishing legal immigration from Cuba to the United States. 

In a fresh overture to Cuba, President Barack Obama is asking the communist government to resume talks on legal immigration of Cubans to the United States.Obama’s proposal would reopen discussions that had been closed off by former President George W. Bush since they were last held in mid-2003. His move comes ahead of the United States’ attendance at a high-level meeting early next month of the Organization of American States, where Cuba’s possible re-entry into the regional bloc will be discussed.

The State Department said Friday it had proposed restarting the talks to “reaffirm both sides’ commitment to safe, legal and orderly migration, to review trends in illegal Cuban migration to the United States and to improve operational relations with Cuba on migration issues.”

Cuba’s readmission to the O.A.S. and a normalization of relations with Cuba is a noble goal.  The U.S. has nothing to fear from such a relationship.  Free trade with Cuba would likely be a plus for the U.S., since the U.S. typically enjoys a nice trade surplus with island nations whose economies revolve around tourism instead of manufacturing. 

But what about the issue of immigration?  As an advocate of stabilizing the U.S. population, an impossible task without dramatic cuts in both legal and illegal immigration, you might think I’d be opposed to this course.  Not so.  What I oppose is admitting more immigrants than the number of people who choose to emigrate from the U.S. – about 50,000 per year.  I have no problem with that figure including Cuba’s fair share.  With a population of about 11.3 million people out of a global population (less the U.S.) of about 6.4 billion people, that means that we could afford to take in about 88 people per year from Cuba. 

Is that the figure Obama has in mind?  It’s impossible to know, but I doubt it.  I suspect the figure he has in mind is orders of magnitude larger.  The problem then is not legalizing immigration from Cuba; it’s the government’s lack of understanding of the ruinous effects of continued rampant population growth in the U.S.  The problem isn’t 88 Cubans; it’s the economic philosophy that says we need to import 1.5 million immigrants every year in order to prop up economic growth. 

Obama seems to be a man with one foot in the future and one in the past.  He understands the dangers of our heavy dependence on imported oil, our over-reliance on rapidly dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, and the dangers of climate change exacerbated by the burning of those fuels.  But, at the same time, he’s stuck in the economic mindset that can’t let go of population growth as an engine for economic growth, not wanting to ponder what happens when that strategy arrives at its inevitable failure. 

President Obama speaks of change and hope – genuinely, I think.  But what hope is there for breaking our dependence on imported oil and fossil fuels if every gain in efficiency is offset by population growth?  What hope is there for averting climate change if a 30% reduction in per capita emissions is offset by a 30% growth in the number of “capita?”  What hope have we for reducing unemployment if we import workers faster than jobs are created?  In the end, what will have changed?  Nothing, except that there will be a lot more of us burning oil, emitting CO2 and competing for relatively fewer jobs. 

It’s time for the president to stop straddling the line between the past and the  future if we are to have real hope or any meaningful change.

Higher Mileage Standards to Cut Oil Consumption – or Not?

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2009-05-18-auto-emissions_N.htm

Today President Obama announced plans to increase auto fuel efficiency to an average of over 35 miles per gallon, an improvement of approximately 30% over today’s level. 

The Obama administration announced Tuesday what amounts to a sweeping revision to auto-emission and fuel-economy standards, putting them in the same package for the first time.

The plan would require cars and trucks to average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, President Obama said at a ceremony with legislators, regulators, executives of 10 car companies and the United Auto Workers union. The plan would increase the standard and accelerate the requirement from 35 mpg in 2020 set by the 2007 Energy Act.

The president hailed the plan’s potential for cutting our dependence on foreign oil and for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, cutting both by about 30% once all vehicles on the road have been replaced by these more efficient models. 

Thirty percent less oil consumption.  Thirty percent lower CO2 emissions.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?  There’s just one problem.  It’s not true.  Because the government also plans to rapidly grow the U.S. population, through ever-higher rates of immigration and through high birth rates, by 2035 we will be consuming as much oil to fuel our vehicles and we will be emitting as much CO2 as we do today.  After that, further population growth will actually drive oil consumption and CO2 emissions even higher than today’s level!  Don’t believe me?  Check out the government’s own population projections at http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/summarytables.html. 

It’s not as though the government has no control over this.  They have total control of immigration and use tax policy to encourage a high birth rate.  Why?  Because they can’t envision a healthy economy that doesn’t rely on population growth as the major source of “economic” growth. 

I applaud the president for taking this action, but to sell this as a plan for cutting oil consumption and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is just a bit disingenuous when they also quietly plan to explode the population, more than offsetting any gains from this program.  If the president wants to get serious about cutting oil consumption and CO2 emissions, then we not only need a plan to cut the per capita consumption of oil but a plan to simultaneously stabilize and even reduce our population, the number of “capita,” to a sustainable level. 

Immigrant Killed in Gas Station Explosion

http://www.wxyz.com/news/local/story/Explosion-Kills-Man-in-Waterford/7ZB5JUJ3uEmJvQSt2QB8Ww.cspx

As I was driving to Lowe’s yesterday, I passed this Sunoco station where lots of emergency vehicles filled the lot.  I could see that some excavation had taken place, but couldn’t make out what was going on.  On the way home again, I could see the news vans from the local TV stations with cameras rolling and news reports in progress. 

It wasn’t until the local news came on at 5 PM that I found out what had happened.  It seems that a crew of four workers had been hired to work on an old underground tank.  A worker down in a ten-foot hole apparently struck a spark that caused an explosion, blowing him twenty feet into the air and killing him. 

When police and the fire department arrived on the scene, their investigation had to be delayed while finding an English-Arab interpreter, because not a single one of the four-worker crew spoke a word of English.  (Some of this is detail that came out during the television broadcast, and isn’t included in the web site report of incident.) 

It’s highly likely that the company that hired this crew did a poor job of providing safety training and proper safety procedures when none of the workers could understand English.  And how in the world could these people have possibly communicated with the gas station personnel to verify whether the tank had been cleared and properly isolated?  It’s outrageous that this kind of thing goes on, putting the public safety at risk by allowing immigrants to take jobs for which they’re clearly not qualified.  This particular gas station is on a very busy intersection and the station is situated very close to the street.  It’s fortunate that innocent passers-by weren’t also killed. 

I’ll keep you posted if details emerge about the legality of these immigrants and the culpability of the company who hired them.

Japan Pays Foreign Workers to Leave

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigrant.html?_r=2

Give the Japanese credit.  They stick together.  Their corporations are fiercely loyal to their workers, guaranteeing lifetime employment.  And, as demonstrated in this linked article, their government is just as loyal and proactive in trying to maintain extremely low unemployment.  With only 4.4% unemployment (a figure sure to rise, though, as huge drops in exports begin to bite), the Japanese government has implemented a program that pays foreign workers to leave the country, in return for a promise to never seek work in Japan again.  Here are key excerpts from the article:

Rita Yamaoka, a mother of three who immigrated from Brazil, recently lost her factory job here. Now, Japan has made her an offer she might not be able to refuse.

The government will pay thousands of dollars to fly Mrs. Yamaoka; her husband, who is a Brazilian citizen of Japanese descent; and their family back to Brazil. But in exchange, Mrs. Yamaoka and her husband must agree never to seek to work in Japan again.

“I feel immense stress. I’ve been crying very often,” Mrs. Yamaoka, 38, said after a meeting where local officials detailed the offer in this industrial town in central Japan.

“I tell my husband that we should take the money and go back,” she said, her eyes teary. “We can’t afford to stay here much longer.”

Japan’s offer, extended to hundreds of thousands of blue-collar Latin American immigrants, is part of a new drive to encourage them to leave this recession-racked country. So far, at least 100 workers and their families have agreed to leave, Japanese officials said.

The program is limited to the country’s Latin American guest workers, whose Japanese parents and grandparents emigrated to Brazil and neighboring countries a century ago to work on coffee plantations.

In 1990, Japan — facing a growing industrial labor shortage — started issuing thousands of special work visas to descendants of these emigrants. An estimated 366,000 Brazilians and Peruvians now live in Japan.

Mr. Kawasaki led the ruling party task force that devised the repatriation plan, part of a wider emergency strategy to combat rising unemployment.

Compare this action to the U.S. where, in spite of 8.6% unemployment (which is certain to rise above 10% this year), the government still imports foreign workers at a furious pace, yielding to corporate lobbies eager to hold down labor costs by flooding the labor market and exacerbating unemployment.