I appreciate you keeping up with all of this movement on "Immigration Reform" as it moves along. I've seen the numbers you and others have produced showing that immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, tend to vote for the democrats, and if the pollsters are producing honest numbers, then this would certainly be a danger for us.
That being said, I don't trust polls very much simply because of my distrust of the entire government and media apparatus.
I do some immigration law; most of my clients are legal immigrants applying for green cards or naturalization, but I have gotten a fair number of callers who I have had to turn away because I couldn't help them. They came here illegally out of desperation, and there's nothing to do for them.
Of the sampling I've seen, there have been some who liked the socialism of home but preferred the more affluent socialism here. However, the majority, came here illegally out of desperation to escape their ruined countries and are very disapproving of the direction this country is headed.
I've seen the same attitude from the legal immigrants from South America.
The biggest group of Liberals I've seen immigrating here are Western Europeans who are rich enough to easily navigate the system and get into the US, and who seem much more likely to import the values of their country of origen.
This may be the case nationwide, or it may just be true of the immigrants who choose to move to Eastern Tennessee--maybe more conservatives are self selecting the Bible Belt.
As for Immigration Reform, a real reform to the system is needed--currently it makes NFA law and the tax code look simple. Unfortunately, that's not what we're getting. The Democrats strategy is to keep a screwed up system that leaves only one option open for people from most places other than socialist Western Europe. This results in illegal immigration from everywhere from S. America to Eastern Europe. These folks come here and find themselves preyed upon by various entities that have figured out that they can abuse illegals.
Since the Democrats have been controlling the narrative to say that they want to help these people, this allows them to make inroads into the community and get support from it.
Unfortunately, by siding with this "Immigration Reform" package, the Republicans are playing into the Democrats' hands by joining them in their own narrative. The predictable result is that some of the newly minted voters will see the Democrats as their saviors and see the Republicans as johnny come lately folks they can't trust.
A better solution, if our Republican Leaders had the brains and brass to undertake it, would be to truly work to reform the system and start proclaiming loudly that the Democrats' reforms don't go nearly far enough. They should also repeatedly hammer that the reason is that it profits the Democrats to run a shoddy system that creates the illegal alien slave class repeatedly, allowing for repeated amnesties that make them look like saviors.
After all, what the Democrats are doing is really no different than a mobster that pays a bunch of youths to vandalize and rob shops in an area just so that he can come in and restore order by tossing the hoodlums out. It's a giant protection racket.
If the Republicans presented their case this way and truly fixed the system, they could probably sway the immigration issue in their favor.
I think this is what Rubio and others wanted to do (maybe even W.), but they have totally dropped the ball on it.
It might be more worth our while to encourage our politicians to pursue a course like this than to worry about immigrants being new Democratic votes. What we've been doing now tends to push some of the immigrants who are on the fence into the Democrats' arms. A more proactive course of taking the narrative back, framing the Dems as the bad actors they are, and fixing the system, might just pull those fence sitters our way.
It may be too late for us to get our pols to pull their head out of their posteriors.
However, there's something Everyone here can do that will help our cause. Make friends, and take them shooting.
I've taken black friends from the inner city, white liberals, and Immigrants and exchange students from all over the world shooting. The only ones who didn't swing at least a bit closer to our side were some of the Western Europeans--but I made some in-roads with some of them even.
They would see how much fun shooting was, and suddenly understand why I owned and liked guns; this understanding blunted their knee jerk reaction that only bad actors want guns in a way that simply knowing that I was a shooter did not. Some of the Americans even became gun owners--and some of the Immigrants wanted citizenship so that they could become such.
This reevaluation also opened the door for more productive conversations on other topics. After all, if I could convince them guns weren't evil, maybe they should at least be more open minded when talking about other topics they "knew" I was wrong on.
I have yet to fully pull anyone away from socialism (Though I've moved some our direction), but one of my best friends is a guy who moved from a member of a socialist world workers party to being a Constitutional Libertarian, and it all started when, to his horror, he discovered that a cute girl he was interested in carried a pistol. Cue shooting range visits, and a gradual re-evaluation of his positions.
It would be nice if one politician decided to leave our country a better place when they left, rather than trying to create some ambiguous "legacy". Not all laws with politicians' names attached have turned out to be good, usually just the opposite.
Chuckie Schumer is now #3 in the Senate? That is truly frightening.
The politics of immigration is not about getting more democrats here illegally who will vote for more restrictive gun laws. It is about money, pure and simple. In fact, the number of non-documented border crossers has actually slowed down since the peak in 1991(1). Politicians are not stupid. They have access to the latest and greatest economic numbers, and they're scared. Not because one side or the other is losing voters, but because the economy is heading to a deflationary period. Our economy desperately needs all the workers it can get. The GOP know this, hence they're embracing immigration. Some may point out that there are so many currently unemployed already and that is a different subject. Even under full employment in this country, there aren't enough workers entering the work force as those retiring, and the representative graph when turned on end looks like an overhanging cliff. The highest numbers of immigrants arrive at age twenty-three, and immediately begin producing and consuming which has an instant effect on the economy. People save more, and spend less starting at age 46(2), and guess what? The largest population in U.S. history, the baby boomers, have hit that age. Their purchasing started tapering off in 2007. Remember what happened in 2008? The housing bubble. They're dipping into the Social Security fund in larger numbers than contributors can keep up. Dent also points to immigration being highly cyclical. We're all immigrants; just from different generations of immigration booms.
The best thing one can do is make all immigrants feel welcome. Encourage them to embrace liberty and individualism, and once they get a taste of real freedom, they'll defend it too. HinMO ________________________ (1) The Demographic Cliff - Dent, page 16 (2) The Demographic Cliff - Dent, page 13
5 comments:
Mike,
I appreciate you keeping up with all of this movement on "Immigration Reform" as it moves along. I've seen the numbers you and others have produced showing that immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, tend to vote for the democrats, and if the pollsters are producing honest numbers, then this would certainly be a danger for us.
That being said, I don't trust polls very much simply because of my distrust of the entire government and media apparatus.
I do some immigration law; most of my clients are legal immigrants applying for green cards or naturalization, but I have gotten a fair number of callers who I have had to turn away because I couldn't help them. They came here illegally out of desperation, and there's nothing to do for them.
Of the sampling I've seen, there have been some who liked the socialism of home but preferred the more affluent socialism here. However, the majority, came here illegally out of desperation to escape their ruined countries and are very disapproving of the direction this country is headed.
I've seen the same attitude from the legal immigrants from South America.
The biggest group of Liberals I've seen immigrating here are Western Europeans who are rich enough to easily navigate the system and get into the US, and who seem much more likely to import the values of their country of origen.
This may be the case nationwide, or it may just be true of the immigrants who choose to move to Eastern Tennessee--maybe more conservatives are self selecting the Bible Belt.
As for Immigration Reform, a real reform to the system is needed--currently it makes NFA law and the tax code look simple. Unfortunately, that's not what we're getting. The Democrats strategy is to keep a screwed up system that leaves only one option open for people from most places other than socialist Western Europe. This results in illegal immigration from everywhere from S. America to Eastern Europe. These folks come here and find themselves preyed upon by various entities that have figured out that they can abuse illegals.
Since the Democrats have been controlling the narrative to say that they want to help these people, this allows them to make inroads into the community and get support from it.
Unfortunately, by siding with this "Immigration Reform" package, the Republicans are playing into the Democrats' hands by joining them in their own narrative. The predictable result is that some of the newly minted voters will see the Democrats as their saviors and see the Republicans as johnny come lately folks they can't trust.
A better solution, if our Republican Leaders had the brains and brass to undertake it, would be to truly work to reform the system and start proclaiming loudly that the Democrats' reforms don't go nearly far enough. They should also repeatedly hammer that the reason is that it profits the Democrats to run a shoddy system that creates the illegal alien slave class repeatedly, allowing for repeated amnesties that make them look like saviors.
After all, what the Democrats are doing is really no different than a mobster that pays a bunch of youths to vandalize and rob shops in an area just so that he can come in and restore order by tossing the hoodlums out. It's a giant protection racket.
If the Republicans presented their case this way and truly fixed the system, they could probably sway the immigration issue in their favor.
I think this is what Rubio and others wanted to do (maybe even W.), but they have totally dropped the ball on it.
It might be more worth our while to encourage our politicians to pursue a course like this than to worry about immigrants being new Democratic votes. What we've been doing now tends to push some of the immigrants who are on the fence into the Democrats' arms. A more proactive course of taking the narrative back, framing the Dems as the bad actors they are, and fixing the system, might just pull those fence sitters our way.
P.S.
It may be too late for us to get our pols to pull their head out of their posteriors.
However, there's something Everyone here can do that will help our cause. Make friends, and take them shooting.
I've taken black friends from the inner city, white liberals, and Immigrants and exchange students from all over the world shooting. The only ones who didn't swing at least a bit closer to our side were some of the Western Europeans--but I made some in-roads with some of them even.
They would see how much fun shooting was, and suddenly understand why I owned and liked guns; this understanding blunted their knee jerk reaction that only bad actors want guns in a way that simply knowing that I was a shooter did not. Some of the Americans even became gun owners--and some of the Immigrants wanted citizenship so that they could become such.
This reevaluation also opened the door for more productive conversations on other topics. After all, if I could convince them guns weren't evil, maybe they should at least be more open minded when talking about other topics they "knew" I was wrong on.
I have yet to fully pull anyone away from socialism (Though I've moved some our direction), but one of my best friends is a guy who moved from a member of a socialist world workers party to being a Constitutional Libertarian, and it all started when, to his horror, he discovered that a cute girl he was interested in carried a pistol. Cue shooting range visits, and a gradual re-evaluation of his positions.
RE: "Take an Anti to the Range"
Every time an anti enters a voting booth, he casts a vote to rob me of what is mine.
The risk of arming a known robber far outweighs any possible benefit of an unlikely conversion.
Let the hoplophobes all die of their irrational fright. The world will be a better place for it.
It would be nice if one politician decided to leave our country a better place when they left, rather than trying to create some ambiguous "legacy". Not all laws with politicians' names attached have turned out to be good, usually just the opposite.
Chuckie Schumer is now #3 in the Senate? That is truly frightening.
The politics of immigration is not about getting more democrats here illegally who will vote for more restrictive gun laws. It is about money, pure and simple. In fact, the number of non-documented border crossers has actually slowed down since the peak in 1991(1). Politicians are not stupid. They have access to the latest and greatest economic numbers, and they're scared. Not because one side or the other is losing voters, but because the economy is heading to a deflationary period. Our economy desperately needs all the workers it can get. The GOP know this, hence they're embracing immigration. Some may point out that there are so many currently unemployed already and that is a different subject. Even under full employment in this country, there aren't enough workers entering the work force as those retiring, and the representative graph when turned on end looks like an overhanging cliff. The highest numbers of immigrants arrive at age twenty-three, and immediately begin producing and consuming which has an instant effect on the economy. People save more, and spend less starting at age 46(2), and guess what? The largest population in U.S. history, the baby boomers, have hit that age. Their purchasing started tapering off in 2007. Remember what happened in 2008? The housing bubble. They're dipping into the Social Security fund in larger numbers than contributors can keep up. Dent also points to immigration being highly cyclical. We're all immigrants; just from different generations of immigration booms.
The best thing one can do is make all immigrants feel welcome. Encourage them to embrace liberty and individualism, and once they get a taste of real freedom, they'll defend it too.
HinMO
________________________
(1) The Demographic Cliff - Dent, page 16
(2) The Demographic Cliff - Dent, page 13
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