Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Agreeing With Pat Buchanan

Watching Hardball's ninth anniversary show with Chris Matthew as I type this. Pat Buchanan and some Republican I've never heard of just got done talking over one another about illegal immigration.

I never thought I would find myself agreeing with the likes of Pat Buchanan, a true bigot who sickens me on many levels, but I do so on this particular issue.

Buchanan is advocating enforcing existing anti-illegal immigration laws and going after employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens with fines and jail time. I couldn't agree more.

This may sound surprising coming from a flaming liberal such as myself, but is it too much to ask that our own government honor the hard work and sacrifices of millions of legal immigrants to this country by doing everything in the realm of legality to ensure our laws are enforced and illegal invaders repelled?

It's like this; this country was built by immigrants, people who came to America legally to work legally and to legally become citizens of the United States. I'm talking about the Slavs, the Irish, the Chinese and other Asian nationals, Eastern and Western Europeans, Middle Eastern, African, and yes even Central and South Americans.

All of whom came here to start life anew legally. They came, assimilated into the culture and learned the language, at least their children did. That's what my great-grandparents did. And it's what millions of Americans' great-grandparents, grandparents and contemporaries did and continue to do. Why should we spit on their memory and the work of today's legal immigrants by offering amnesty and guest-worker status to foreign invaders?

I am not trying to denigrate the desperation that drives millions of Central and South Americans to risk their lives trying to cross the desert along our Southern borders and across the Gulf of Mexico. I can only imagine how shitty life must be for them in their own countries--rife with political corruption, oppression, drugs, death and crime. That's what happens in impoverished nations and it is only natural to want to escape it by any means necessary.

But we can't just allow people to come into our country breaking our laws and taking jobs that ought to go to American citizens both natural-born and naturalized, and people who have come here legally to become citizens.

George W. Bush is supposed to be enforcing the laws currently on the books to keep out illegal aliens. But he won't do it, because it's a growing source of cheap labor for his base--major corporations. Congress should force Bush to enforce our laws, but it won't because it too is beholden to corporate interests that want cheap labor they don't have to pay wages we Americans expect and demand under the law.

I agree with Buchanan, we need to go after those businesses that knowingly hire illegals and make high-profile examples of them. Try, convict and sentence them; force CEOs to pay heavy personal fines, and seek prison sentences for those who repeatedly refuse to comply with the law. And if some corporate asshole decides to try and punish his American workers with layoffs after being fined for employing illegals, then toss him in jail and throw away the key.

Sure, we may end up paying a tiny bit extra at the checkout counter at Wal-Mart. But it needs to be done, because Americans are losing their jobs to invaders and their facilitators who have no respect for our laws.

Once businesses realize we are serious about the issue, that they have something major to lose for hiring illegals, then I think you'll see illegal immigration level off and eventually decline. Once those invaders realize they're not going to get jobs here because their reason for coming here illegally has gone, they'll be forced to clean up their own nations and improve the conditions therein or else go somewhere else looking for work. And we can help them reform their own countries if need be, so they don't feel the need to break our laws and invade our country.

I do disagree with Buchanan on one point; I don't think building a wall will work because the desert kills thousands of illegals daily and so does the sea--Elian Gonzales's mother and every other stupid motherfucker that crowded onto that leaky boat in 2000 are good examples. People desperate enough to risk death to come here will find a way into the country. Only by cutting off their incentive to come here illegally will stem the tide. And in the meantime, we can take a serious second look at the restrictiveness of our immigration laws and--perhaps--reform them.

I know some people will think me horribly racist for saying all this. If you, dear reader, are one of those people then I have only one thing to say: fuck you.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Coupla points...

The original "immigrants" were not legal.. As a matter of fact, they stole land, killed the locals, gave them alcoholism, disease, and taught them to scalp other immigrants. And on top of that, the illegal immigrant that is the country of america has yet to EVER uphold ANY treaty with ANY of the Native AMerican Nations. So we might do well to remember that, unless we're 100% native american, all of us have illegals in our ancestry.

Secondly, just as important as making laws more harsh on those that employ and encourage illegal workers, we need to decrease (or just plain get rid of) laws requiring emergency rooms, clinics, and hospitals to report illegals. Laws like these, from a humanitarian perspective, are just plain cruel and inhumane. They only encourage illegals with health problems to not seek help until problems worsen. (or they die.) This of course, includes children. In the long run, these laws only cost the taxpayers more money.

Michael Wilk said...

The original Europeans, yeah you're right they did come here seizing lands not theirs, swindling lands away from native peoples, and everything you said.

I was actually referring more to those who came after the turn of the 20th Century, so I should have been more clear.

I agree that on a purely humanitarian level we should see about reforming laws requiring hospitals to report illegals, but what other methods do we have for tracking suspects? I'm open to ideas, because I don't have all the answers.

Michael Wilk said...

I have Cherokee and Comanche blood running through my veins, so I know what you mean. See now why I take such a strong position against illegal immigration? Millions of European motherfuckers swarmed over here in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries and killed off my ancestors, driving the survivors onto reservations. Hell, they did it to literally every nation that inhabited this continent, even driving a number of nations to extinction--acts of genocide. And of course they killed many languages as well. Hell, they even stole people from the continent of Africa and forced them to come here to work for them, killing their language and culture and diluting their bloodlines.

Of course, to be fair my Polish and Hungarian ancestors came over after the turn of the 20th Century, so they did it legally--they had an open invitation. Every legal immigrant who has come here since the beginning of the 20th Century has gone through the legal process and assimilated, learning the language and obeying our laws. My job at Boston Market has two Albanian-born employees and one from some African nation I can't remember the name of. Their parents brought them here legally and they have learned the language, and they work here legally.

Now the shoe is on the other foot, and South and Central Americans are coming up here in swarms. They're not bringing disease--nothing Europeans haven't already brought over centuries ago anyway, or killing us off, but they are taking jobs that ought to be going to us and forcing their language on people who neither speak nor write it. Why?

It's that damned left-over sense of entitlement the Europeans brought over with them during the "Manifest Destiny" phase. I'm sure of it.

Anonymous said...

you posted this exact thing on lib forumm...

should i repost my response