Thread: Contrary opinion on John Edwards '08 Campaign Blog

My oh my. I was reading through the John Edwards for President '08 campaign blog and I came across this after many postings gushing over Edwards and how great it would be if he were President. I wonder if any of his campaign staffers have seen this. My oh my, WWJED...What Would John Edwards Do?



Illegal Immigration
PaulC in Arguments & Analyses
11/21/2007 at 3:46 PM EST

I searched this site to find out what people thought about amnesty for illegal immigrants. The search function returned 0 for every inquiry. Failure to even discuss this issue is a big mistake.

Opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants is long standing and strong through out the country in virtually every segment of the citizen population. As an issue that will influence voters come November 2008 it is gaining strength every day. Comprehensive immigration, the position staked out by every Democratic Presidential candidate, is seen by the public as amnesty for 12-20 million illegal immigrants and is a big looser.

If the Democratic candidates stick with this position, they will loose a huge number of votes. The public's hatred of Bush and Congressional Republicans is being mitigated because Congressional Democrats have failed to take decisive action to end the Iraq occupation.

Failure to discuss this issue will not make it go away, or remove it from voter consideration! Do candidates really want to leave it to Lou Dobbs to define the parameters of this issue? By the way, trying to denigrate/smear Lou Dobbs will be counterproductive.

I'm a liberal Democrat, but that fact does not make me a fool! I would, however, have to be a fool to believe that amnesty for 12-20 million illegal aliens is a good thing for US working families. Knowing that, I would have to be an even bigger fool to vote for any candidate, Democratic or Republican, who supports amnesty, or who refuses to impose increasingly harsh penalties against anyone who hires an illegal alien. Remove the jobs and the overwhelming majority of them will go home.

Although I'm a Democrat and want to support my party, I cannot see how I win anything by voting for Democratic candidates who pursue policies that injure my family and the families of other working US citizens. The party should be working for us, US citizens, not corporations and illegal aliens. Flooding the labor pool with millions of workers is not a progressive value; it is a corporate value!

The Democratic Party leadership and Presidential candidates have yet to tell us what is so special about today's 12-20 million illegal aliens that current law should not apply to them. Instead of telling us that, or how US citizens would benefit from granting them amnesty, party leaders and Presidential candidates give us childish and irrelevant slogans. We are a nation of immigrants, or they only take the jobs that US citizens will not do, or there are too many to deport, or you are a racist if you oppose amnesty, etc., etc., etc. Party leaders and Presidential candidates treat us like they are used car salesmen trying to unload a pile of junk at an exorbitant price.

Party leaders and Presidential candidates also fail to tell us the clearly foreseeable consequences of granting amnesty to so many illegal aliens, and how they propose to deal with those consequences. One foreseeable consequence is astronomical costs! We know that today illegal aliens cost us 100s of billions of dollars in direct and indirect costs, and those numbers will turn into trillions of dollars should amnesty be granted.

Who does the Party leadership and Presidential candidates say will pay these costs? Of course they never discuss costs much less who will pay for them; but you know as well as I do that it will not be those who benefit from the flood illegal alien workers. It will be working class US citizens who will pay them through higher taxes or reduced benefits, or most likely a combination of both.

Another consequence of amnesty that politicians of neither party will address is its impact on total US population. Every country has a maximum sustainable population; that is, a population that does not over tax its resources and provides a high standard of living for all its citizens. Let us be very clear, after a country reaches its maximum sustainable population there is a direct inverse relationship between population and quality of life. The higher the population the lower the quality of life. Demographers have said that the optimum sustainable US population is 150 million and the maximum sustainable US population is 200 million. Demographers also tell us that if current legal immigration is not reduced to historical levels, US population will exceed 400 million by 2050. If we maintain the current open borders policy, our population will surpass a billion by the turn of the next century. This is not what might happen, it is what will happen!

Population, immigration and amnesty are real issues; they are not wedge issues! They affect us in important ways today and will increase in importance as we go forward. The public deserves to know both near term and long term consequences of policy proposals of Democratic candidates at all levels and what they would do to mitigate the negative consequences. Failure to address the consequences indicates to me that they are so bad candidates are afraid to discuss them.

I am a life long liberal Democrat who has always voted a straight Democratic ticket. I will not be doing that in 2008 unless Democratic candidates honestly address this issue and does what the public wants.
http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2007/11/19/19154/134

Very good post. Well, Hillary has told us what she will do. In her first 100 days she will pass "comprehensive immigration reform" AMNESTY.