Thread: It's not racist to demand action on illegal immigration

Published: Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012 - 6:27 pm

by Victor Davis Hanson

President Barack Obama recently assured El Salvador that the United States would not deport more 200,000 Salvadorans residing illegally in the United States.

As the election nears, and the president looks to court Hispanic voters, he also created a new position of "public advocate" for illegal immigrants. Duties of this new staffer would appear to be to advocate that millions circumvent, rather than follow, current federal law.

The administration has also said it will focus enforcement only on those who have committed crimes — with the implicit understanding that it is no longer a crime to illegally enter and reside in the United States. In contrast, Obama has caricatured those supporting completion of a fence on the border as wanting to place alligators in the Rio Grande.

It is time that Americans revisit the issue and ponder very carefully the morality of entering the United States illegally.

True, American employers have welcomed in illegal aliens as a source of cheap labor. Employers were happy to pass the ensuing social costs on to taxpayers. To summarily deport those who have resided here for 20 years, obeyed the law, worked hard, stayed off public assistance and are now willing to pay a fine, demonstrate English proficiency and pass a citizenship test would be impracticable, callous and counterproductive.

Most, however, probably do not fit those reasonable criteria.

More importantly, we forget that the influx of millions of illegal aliens unfairly undercuts the wages of the working American poor, especially in times of high unemployment.

Crossing the border was also hardly a one-time "infraction." It was the beginning of serial unethical behavior, as illegal aliens on everyday forms and affidavits were not truthful about their immigration status.

The legal process of immigrating to America was reduced to a free-for-all rush to the border. Million of applicants abroad wait patiently, if not naively, in line to have their education, skills and capital resources evaluated. But they are punished with delay or rejection because they alone follow immigration law.

Billions of dollars in state and federal social services do not just help provide parity to illegal aliens, but also free them to send back about $50 billion in remittances to Latin America each year.

That staggering sum also suggests that Mexico and other Latin American governments, as an element of national policy, quite cynically export human capital to gain U.S. dollars, rather than make the necessary economical, social and political reforms to keep their own at home.

Nor is it very liberal to turn illegal immigration into an issue of identity and tribal politics. Too many advocates for open borders and amnesty argue about the politics of ethnic solidarity rather than considerations of immigration law.

In other words, we do not hear much national outrage over the plight of the occasional Pole, Nigerian or Korean who overstays his tourist visa, but rather equate the circumvention of immigration law almost exclusively with social justice for Latinos.

How reactionary and illiberal that debate has become, when Mexican Americans who object to the undermining of immigration law are slandered as sellouts, while non-Hispanics who do the same are smeared as racists and nativists.

In fact, illegal immigration unfairly warped perceptions of undeniable Hispanic success. If one does not include millions of recently arrived poor Latin American foreign nationals in federal and state surveys, then Hispanic American citizens prove statistically to be assimilating, intermarrying, integrating, and finding economic success at rates comparable to many other immigrant groups of the past.

To mean anything, laws have to be followed. When newcomers choose to ignore them, then the entire structure of jurisprudence crashes as well. If aliens are free to ignore federal immigration law, then cannot citizens likewise pick and choose which statutes they find inconvenient?

Finally, illegal immigration has wrongly been couched in terms of a xenophobic and insensitive exploiter preying on a more noble and defenseless guest. In truth, the United States is the most generous host in the world, and never more so than during the present age.

There are now about 40 million foreign-born people residing in the United States, both legal and illegal immigrants. That is both the greatest absolute number and percentage of the population in our nation's history. No other country in the world is more liberal in its legal immigration policies or has been more caring toward new arrivals. To suggest otherwise is dishonest and shows an ignorance of how most countries, who now export their citizens to the U.S., treat any who would do the same to them.

We can argue about the history or the future of illegal immigration. But please spare us the psychodramatic appeals to a higher morality.

In most regards, illegal immigration has proven as immoral as it is unlawful.

HANSON: It's not racist to demand action on illegal immigration - Sacramento Politics - California Politics | Sacramento Bee

jean
you right it not racist to demand action on any illegal immigrants why The Usa has every country
they come over fro a free ride & every one know this but the gov don't do any thing about this
that why we want our gov to Listen to what we have to say'
& they better wake up or they will be out of a job . & it not fun looking for a job when all of the
mexico & china & every other country has our job .
& I will say this again it not Racist to demand action In illegal immigration just wake the hell up
I know for one want Our country back .
NO amnesty or dream act

Illegal is not a race so no, it is not racist. We have laws and we want them enforced.

Originally Posted by Kiara

Illegal is not a race so no, it is not racist. We have laws and we want them enforced.

We can say this until we are blue in the face, but it makes no difference. As long as the media, activist groups and our educators equate anyone opposed to illegal immigration as being racists it is so. Our children and grandchildren (the very children we are fighting to preserve America for) are being brainwashed into believing that we are racist.

They are spoon fed the sob stories. Families being torn apart, parents just wanting a better life for their kids. Kids just wanting an education, etc. The innocent victims and we become the monsters, the racists monsters.

Yes that is true but we know better and have common sense and the truth by our side. We must share the sob stories of our own poor citizens and never give up.

Actually, those who say that opposition to illegal immigration is racist are the real racists. I get very tired of the notion that the term "illegal immigration" is tied
to anyone's race when the illegal aliens in this country come from every race on the planet: Hispanic, AngloSaxon, Irish, Asian, Eurasian, Caucasian, etc., not to mention virtually every nation. This is because we not only have porous southern and northern borders, but because we have an even more porous visa program that is not adequately monitored and managed by the federal government. The last estimate I saw was a couple of years ago, but it was that as much as 40% of the illegal aliens in this country came here LEGALLY under one of the visa programs. When their services were no longer needed, or the visas expired, they just stayed.

We know we are not racist. But the word is used as a weapon against us. It is a tactic being deployed to silence and invalidate us. Our message gets lost as we are forced to defend ourselves. Our young are still naive and they buy into all of the sob stories. I have found recently that I have had to change my conversations to focus on the racist activist groups. It is only when I point out how these groups are racists, inciting and lying to illegal immigrants that I get a positive reaction.

LA RASISTS!!!

That's right, it isn't racist to demand that every would-be immigrant of EVERY ethnic group obey our immigration laws! If it were a bunch of "Anglos" instead of Latinos who had decided they were going to take this country over and force us to reverse-assimilate to their culture and language/kill us/be kicked out of our country, I'd still be mad and be here! But it is the Latinos who are coming here illegally in the most numbers and about the only group (aside from radical Islamist terrorists who are so far being paid attention to by the government, unlike the Latinos terrorists who hate us based on race instead of religion) who have high numbers of people who hate the American people and wish to supplant our nation with one of their own right before our eyes!