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Home Front
Dick Lamm on Immigration. A surprising opinion from the left.
2003-10-06
Read the whole article. But here are excerpts pertinent to homeland security:
We are also a nation of laws, with our own unemployed and underemployed, and our nation needs to come to some enforceable consensus on what our policy should be on people entering the country illegally.

Consider:
1. We are a nation built on law. It almost sounds old-fashioned in contemporary America to ask that people obey the law. Illegal immigrants "jump the line."

2. As every house needs a door, every country needs a border. By turning a blind eye toward illegal immigration, we are encouraging countless numbers of these people to attempt to sneak into America. I spent a night with the Border Patrol in California, and was amazed to find people from India, Bangladesh, Iran, Egypt, Africa and China among the people detained.

3. Illegal immigration hurts America’s poor. Illegal immigrants compete for the jobs our own poor need to start to move up the economic ladder. "Mexican immigration is overwhelmingly unskilled, and it is hard to find an economic argument for unskilled immigration, because it tends to reduce wages for (U.S.) workers."

4. We are told that illegal immigration is "cheap labor," but it is not "cheap labor," it is subsidized labor. The National Academy of Sciences has found that there is a significant fiscal drain on U.S. taxpayers for each adult immigrant without a high school education. Illegal immigration is something that benefits a few employers, but the rest of us subsidize that labor through the school system, the health-care system, the courts and in other ways that this form of labor imposes. With school spending of more than $7,000 per student per year, even a small family costs far more than a low-wage family pays in taxes.

5. America is increasingly becoming, day by day, a bilingual country, yet there is not a bilingual country in the world that lives in peace with itself. No nation should blindly allow itself to become a bilingual-bicultural country. Today, when over 40 percent of today’s massive wave of immigrants is from Spanish-speaking nations, people can move to America and keep their language, their culture and their old loyalties. If the melting pot doesn’t melt, immigrants become "foreigners" living in America rather than assimilated Americans.

6. Our social fabric risks becoming undone. It is important to America’s future that we look at how Mexican immigrants are doing. Too many of our Hispanic immigrants live in ethnic ghettos. Too many are unskilled laborers, too many are uneducated, too many live in poverty, too many are exploited, too many haven’t finished ninth grade, too many drop out of school.
Former Reform Party presidential candidate and former Colorado Gov. Richard D. Lamm is co-director of the Center for Public Policy and Contemporary Issues at the University of Denver.
Posted by:ColoradoConservative

#12  Very interesting points, Ed B.
As to illegal immigration; just as only Nixon could go to China, only the Democrats can be the ones to propose stopping the illegals. If a Republican proposes it, he will be branded a rabid racist.
We need more moderate Dems to speak out, now!
Posted by: Uncle Joe   2003-10-7 12:04:56 AM  

#11  Somebody tell the Swiss (German, French, Italian, Romanche, and increasingly English). Or the Belgians (French, Dutch and German). Or the Canadians (French and English, and yes they are at peace). South African (English, Afrikanner, tribal languages) is more peaceful than not. It IS possible to have a multi-lingual society and be at peace.

Well, let's take this one at a time, Steve.

The most successful example you cite is Switzerland. Ever been there? I have. They practice a subtle form of aparthide. German speakers tend to remain in the German cantons, French in the French, and so on. Given that most cantons follow geographic lines (valleys separated by mountains), it's almost Yugoslavian in nature. In essence, Switzerland is several large ghettos that clumped together for mutual protection from the rest of Europe several hundred years ago, and continue on under one goverment mostly from inertia. People are born in one ghetto, live in one ghetto, stay in one, and eventually die in one. Switzerland actually HAS managed to pull off the oft-quoted slogan of pre-1960's Southerners.. "Seperate, but Equal"

The Belgians? They're undergoing a subtle civil war even as we speak. They do try to keep it quiet, but they have native terrorists. Granted, their idea of "terror" is along the lines of "Some flemish bastard flushed a tennis ball down the toilet! He's terrorizing us!" Low grade 'civil disobedience' of the 1960's sort, intended not to cause terror, merely annoyance and irritation. A bland and tasteless 'terror' for a bland and tasteless people. But they are NOT living together in peace.

Canada? As late as the mid-80's, the Free French Quebec movement was conducting a militant harrassment campaign, and even took to the streets with shotguns in an attempt to force traffic off the roads, hoping to pressure people into voting for a french Quebec.

This failed ONLY when local Indians announced that if Quebec could secede from Canada, they, the Indians, could secede from a French Quebec. And, given that they owned crucial portions of land that would pretty much cut Quebec off from the rest of the world by anything but air travel, the FFQ didn't like that much. But however loudly they bitched, they WERE stuck. If they seceeded, so did the Indians, and the rest of Canada could sit back and laugh.

THAT'S why you don't hear much of the Free French Quebec movement anymore. It's in a sort of checkmate. As long as the Native Americans hold the land they do, a Free Quebec is impossible. They WANT to fight, they just can't win without first killing off the tribes in question. Heh.

South Africa? Please. Tribal violence is at an all time high there. It's merely moved OUT of the cities and into the bush where it won't be reported as much. With AIDS spreading like a forrest fire, they NEED outside aid, but it won't come as long as people are being shot at while they try to render aid. So, in a WONDER of rare common sense, the warring factions have come to an informal agreement: "No killing where the world can SEE it. Gotta convince those doctors it's safe to come here. Let's go back into the JUNGLE and kick each other's asses, that way we won't scare the sissy aid workers."

That's about the size of the examples you've quoted, Steve. Multi-lingual societies that function WITHOUT using aparthide simply don't exist. They never have. It's merely that some of the societies that practice aparthide do so willingly, on BOTH sides, so no one complains.

Ed.
Posted by: Ed Becerra   2003-10-6 10:29:47 PM  

#10  This is bigger than just Dick Lamm saying what he's always said about illegal immigration - it's published in the Rocky Mountain News, the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party in Colorado. That either indicates it's a mistake, and the paper will appologize to its subscribers tomorrow, or there's been a sea change in Denver politics (run by the Democratic machine).

Truth is, illegal immigration isn't just a border-state problem, but a problem all over this nation. The number of illegals involved in accidents and crime in Colorado has tripled since Dick Lamm was governor. The cost of illegals in California is tens of billions of dollars a year; here it's "only" a billion or so. There's also a significant tendency for anyone of Hispanic descent who gets promoted into a position of authority to try to bring on as many other Hispanics as possible so as to "feel more comfortable" in the job. Two of my wife's friends were turned down for jobs so that an Hispanic could be hired. One of the two hired was arrested a few weeks later for possession of cocaine. During the process the police learned that person had been in the US seven years illegally, and had a police record in five states and Mexico.

We have a problem. It's beginning to be a big problem. It's time to stop ignoring it.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2003-10-6 8:35:33 PM  

#9  Ã‚¿Quien es SteveG?

heh heh
Posted by: Frank G   2003-10-6 7:55:43 PM  

#8  One wants to get ahead, one learns English.

Posted by: Anonymous   2003-10-6 6:19:31 PM  

#7  SteveG


Belgian Flemish and Wallons are not at peace. During WWI Flemish apparently were used as cannon fodder (at least that is what they are telling to their youngesters), during WWII a lot of them were collaborationists, even enlisting in the SS. There is an increasing influence of people who preach downright hate towrd the other side. They still are not shooting at one another (same thing could be said about Croats and Serbs under Tito) but the rivalry between the two
communities leads to people being promoted or not depending not due to their capacities but for the need of linguistic balance, it leads to duplication of effort, it needs to countless problems who end in the Belgian state being one of the most inefficient in Europe (Remember the affair "Marc Dutroux"?). It even leads to traffic accidents when the (non-belgian) driver going to Liege doesn't pay attention to the panel telling next exit is Luyk, then the highway does in francophonic region, he sees "Liege" labelling the exit just there, he tries to change lanes and kaboom.


For Canada, I doubt it will survive another twenty years.

Posted by: JFM   2003-10-6 5:33:14 PM  

#6  "As every house needs a door, every country needs a border."

This is a great slogan. Simple, but effective. One can write a treatise with this as a theme.

Thank you Gov. Lamm for having the maverick courage to buck the status quo on your side of the ideological spectrum. Both the Democrats and the Bush administration need to put the good of the nation above pandering to the mythical monolithic Hispanic vote.
Posted by: Right on   2003-10-6 5:32:06 PM  

#5  It IS possible to have a multi-lingual society and be at peace.

Only if there is a realization that the language of the U.S. - English - is of paramount importance. This is (and should be) the shared trait that keeps the nation together - a common language.

There's little evidence that the melting pot isn't working -- the large majority of Hispanic immigrants (especially those under 30 years old) learn English.

It's kind of difficult to avoid seeing Spanish just about everywhere in California. It's on billboards, ATM machines, phone trees (like the bank or utility customer assistance lines), printed matter, store signage, etc. Where is the incentive for someone to learn the language of their new home when institutions from A to Z keep coddling them with things in their native tongue? Toss in the propensity for a lot of Latinos both foreigners and American-born alike to look at things through a racial prism, and it only spells trouble.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2003-10-6 4:26:57 PM  

#4  Dems should know curbing illegal immigration will help fight unemployment (less competition for jobs) and raise wages (if an American won't do the job for pennies, there are no immigrants available to do it for pennies, and the position needs to be filled, then the wage will have to be made more attractive).

The Democrats have given up trying to win votes on real issues - that's way too tough. A much easier way to get these votes is to import immigrants from other countries who then get naturalized and vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Another way is to buy votes by expanding the number of government jobs and handouts. And of course, they can always "raise" wages by hiking the minimum wage.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2003-10-6 4:15:50 PM  

#3  I've been wondering when anybody on the left is going to come to the awareness that illegal immigration is hurting their own causes. As the party that professes to support the downtrodden working classes, the Dems should know curbing illegal immigration will help fight unemployment (less competition for jobs) and raise wages (if an American won't do the job for pennies, there are no immigrants available to do it for pennies, and the position needs to be filled, then the wage will have to be made more attractive).

After all, isn't it evil Big BusinessTM that is profiting from such cheap, exploitable labor, whom the Dems hate?
Posted by: Dar   2003-10-6 3:19:46 PM  

#2  Also from the article:

But what is most disturbing is that second and third generations don't do much better. Again, the study from The Center for Immigration Studies: "The lower educational attainment of Mexican immigrants appears to persist across the generations." A recent report from the center shows that two-thirds of Mexican immigrant workers lack even a high school education; as a consequence, two-thirds of Mexican immigrant families live in or near poverty. The question has to be asked: By tolerating illegal immigration are we laying the foundations for a new Hispanic underclass? A Hispanic Quebec?

This lines up with the proposers of 'undocumented workers' rights claim that 'who else would do the dirty jobs which americans dont want to do?'. It seems to me that what these people want is not equality for immigrants (they can get that now by doing things legally) but to have a new 'lower class' of people (illegal / undocumented aliens) to cook their meals, washing their dishes, clean their houses, drive them around in their cars (drivers license) and dig their ditches. (I do not have a problem with people who do these necessary tasks (these are all honorable professions) but I do not want someone regulated or forced to doing these tasks because they are 'undocumented' or are not fully 'legal'.).


BTW: This guy makes some very valid points! I love it!
Posted by: CrazyFool   2003-10-6 3:19:15 PM  

#1   ...there is not a bilingual country in the world that lives in peace with itself.

Somebody tell the Swiss (German, French, Italian, Romanche, and increasingly English). Or the Belgians (French, Dutch and German). Or the Canadians (French and English, and yes they are at peace). South African (English, Afrikanner, tribal languages) is more peaceful than not.

It IS possible to have a multi-lingual society and be at peace. In certain neighborhoods of Chicago, if you want the best kielbasa you'd better speak Polish. Immigrants to America bring their language and culture, and America is the better for it. There's little evidence that the melting pot isn't working -- the large majority of Hispanic immigrants (especially those under 30 years old) learn English. They melt in.

Gov. Lamm might have some good points, but the language issue isn't one of them.
Posted by: Steve White   2003-10-6 3:05:39 PM  

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