The American Thinker

The American Thinker has a wonderful article that gets right to the heart of the problem with this "immigration" debate. If you've read this blog you know that I've struggled with where I stand on this. On one hand immigrants made this country and are very good for this country. On the other hand these illegal aliens have made it really hard to support them. And this article by Herbert E. Meyer distills this problem in a very succinct way. You should read this whole article in it's entirety. But here's the key part:

The American Thinker: "To ordinary Americans, the definition of “immigration” is very specific: You come here with absolutely nothing except a burning desire to be an American. You start off at some miserable, low-paying job that at least puts a roof over your family’s head and food on the table. You put your kids in school, tell them how lucky they are to be here – and make darn sure they do well even if that means hiring a tutor and taking a second, or third, job to pay for it. You learn English, even if you’ve got to take classes at night when you’re dead tired. You play by the rules—which means you pay your taxes, get a driver’s license and insure your car so that if yours hits mine, I can recover the cost of the damages. And you file for citizenship the first day you’re eligible.
.....
This is how the Italians made it, the Germans made it, the Dutch made it, the Poles made it, the Jews made it, and more recently how the Cubans and the Vietnamese made it. The process isn’t easy – but it works and that’s the way ordinary Americans want to keep it."

Amen! I will support this type of immigrant as much as I possibly can. Welcome to America, the greatest country on earth!

But here's the rub, the illegal aliens that are marching on our cities aren't this type of immigrant at all. Indeed they aren't really immigrants:

which is what neither the Democratic or Republican leadership seems to understand, or wants to acknowledge. They have come here solely for jobs, which isn’t the same thing at all. (And many of them have come here illegally.) Whether they remain in the U.S. for one year, or ten years – or for the rest of their lives – they don’t conduct themselves like immigrants. Yes, they work hard to put roofs above their heads and food on their tables – and for this we respect them. But they have little interest in learning English themselves, and instead demand that we make it possible for them to function here in Spanish. They put their children in our schools, but don’t always demand as much from them as previous groups demanded of their kids. They don’t always pay their taxes – or insure their cars.

In short, they aren’t playing by the rules that our families played by when they immigrated to this country. And to ordinary Americans this behavior is deeply – very deeply – offensive. We see it unfolding every day in our communities, and we don’t like it. This is what none of our politicians either understands, or dares to say aloud. Instead, they blather on – and on – about “amnesty” and “border security” without ever coming to grips with what is so visible, and so offensive, to so many of us – namely, all these foreigners among us who aren’t behaving like immigrants.

Bingo! These people are cheating the system and do not deserve amnesty. They are selfishly wrecking the society at the expense of legal immigrants and want to tell us that it's their right and should be legal for them to do so. I'm sorry, no! And right now I have no problem going against the President that I like so very much. I think his "gues-worker" idea is a ridiculous insult to conservative values. And he needs to realize it soon.

But at this point the issue is mostly a political one. The idea that we will have a new immigration bill this year is not really feasible. The House and the Senate are really really far apart in their versions of the bills. So even if there is a compromise in the Senate and an agreement is reached on a bill, reconciling against the one passed in the House will take most of the year. Mostly what's going on now is a lot of blovulating and postureing so that on the campaign trail politicians can say they stood up for one side or the other. I predict that nothing will actually get done. Sadly, that's politics.

What I wish would happen is that our Senators would actually realize the difference and stop worrying about illegal immigrants becoming a new voting bloc that they will have to pander too. The McCain's and the Spector's are worried that illegals(notice that I've stopped calling them immigrants) will become the new civil rights voters and that the Republicans will lose their power because of it. Well I wish I could remind them that Republicans have always done the best when they act like REPUBLICANS!!! Was Ronald Reagan so successful because he pandered to Democrats and liberals? No he was successful because he stood up to them and let everyone see how wrong they were and how right he was. As this article points out most people support immigrants but not illegal aliens, the Republicans would do well to take note of this. And it seems that enough people have because the amnesty version of the bill did not have the votes to go through. Thank goodness!

Linked to Don Surber, Basil's Blog, Jo's Cafe, and Rightwingnation.com.