More on the Immigration Bill--and The DIfference

This Victor Hansen guy writes material with which I often agree--but with reservations.

However, in this essay he describes the craven me-first-ism of the Senate (pick a name, any name) and the alliance of dirtball interests which created the "immigration bill." One can hardly disagree with those sentiments and observations.

...Rather, it is a new public face to the old alliance between profit-minded employers (and those who represent their interests) and demographically obsessed liberal and ethnic activists.

The former want assurances that there will be millions of aliens available to work at wages that Americans will not — with the ensuing medical, housing, schooling, and legal costs subsidized by the taxpayer. The latter can’t wait for more constituents in need of group representation who, it is hoped, will someday support them at the polls.

Most cynical of all, however, are the moralistic pundits, academics, and journalists who deplore the “nativism” of Americans they consider to be less-educated yokels. Yet their own jobs of writing, commenting, reporting, and teaching are rarely threatened by cheaper illegal workers.

...In general, such elites don’t use emergency rooms in the inner cities and rural counties overcrowded by illegal aliens. They don’t drive on country roads frequented by those without licenses, registration and insurance. And their children don’t struggle with school curricula altered to the needs of students who speak only Spanish.

So, what is the truth on illegal immigration?Simple. Millions of fair-minded white, African-, Mexican- and Asian-Americans fear that we are not assimilating millions of aliens from south of the border as fast as they are crossing illegally from Mexico.

In the frontline American southwest, entire apartheid communities and enclaves within cities have sprung up whose distinct language, culture and routines are beginning to resemble more the tense divides in the Balkans or Middle East than the traditional melting pot of multiracial America.

And therein lies the Big Difference from the immigration waves of the past. While it is true that the Germans, Poles, Irish, and Italians also lived in "apartheid communities and enclaves..." in the past, those Germans, Poles, Irish, and Italians were educated well-enough (by and large) to find decent jobs. This is not (by and large) true of the current crop of Illegals. Further, those prior waves of immigration were controlled by Immigration laws--the better to assimilate our new citizens-to-be.

One can always hope that the current immigrants, when converted to citizenship-track status, will grow upwardly mobile, as have many who now serve in private industry and Governmental positions all over the US.

And so concludes Hansen:

Concern over this inevitable slowdown in integration and assimilation is neither racist nor nativist. It grows out of real worry that when millions of impoverished arrive in mass without legality, education, and the ability to speak English, costly social problems follow that will not be offset by the transitory economic benefits cheap wages may provide.

He's right.

HT: The Cafeteria Is Closed