Capitol Ideas/What Immigration Crisis?
Bethell, Tom
memorations last month, reiterating their wartime charge that we should have invaded Europe two years earlier. They were lucky that we were there at all. Many Americans who opposed FDR's...
...Thus it seems likely that the sanctions will not be very effective (as they have proved not to be in numerous other countries), and so we are back to what may be the great imponderable of this legislation: Are the aliens who seek and obtain amnesty likely to go on welfare...
...This edition is based on the edition published in 1854 by Seth Ames...
...Many Americans who opposed FDR's interventionist policies based their opposition on America's idealistic disdain for European power politics, a case that was only strengthened by the Soviet Union's 1939 pact with the Nazis...
...No one seems to have asked this question...
...Of course the problem with amnesty, both from the point of view of control-conscious Democrats and raceconscious Republicans, was precisely that it threatened to attract more and more illegal aliens across the border...
...But there are other possibilities, and at this point we turn to those Democrats and editorial writers who supported the legislation...
...J104 Indianapolis, IN 46250 attack and he relented, against his own better political judgment...
...Or is it merely the confused reiteration of a noble goal, just as "nuclear disarmament" is a noble goal which some confuse today for a policy...
...Then, too, though they are certain that we were menaced by militaristic totalitarians wearing swastikas, they are not so sure that we are menaced by militaristic totalitarians wearing red stars...
...Nations commemorate events like D-Day with two goals in mind...
...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...Well," said the amnesty proponent, "we can't just round all these people up and throw them out of the country, can we...
...The new immigration bill is unpredictable in its effects, but just might go down in the history books as one of the worst pieces of legislation in postwar American history, and I think that we should therefore bear in mind the names of its sponsors very much as we remember Smoot-Hawley, the supporters of the high-tariff legislation that launched the Great Depression...
...Instead the bill contains an amnesty provision which will tend to increase the number of people coming across the borders...
...The past brought to us last month is a past strewn with the confused ideas of the present...
...The operative word here is "control...
...Universityeducated Europeans are now of dubious value, if you ask me...
...Chris Matthews, an aide to House Speaker Tip O'Neill, told me that this bill should really have been named after the American Newspaper Association, or words to that effect...
...Hardcover $30.00 the set...
...In by Tom Bethell this, they could not be more wrong...
...The country wishes to reflect on the lessons of the event...
...So the argument for amnesty was couched in terms of a non sequitur so astounding that no one seems to have pointed it out...
...This feature in itself tacitly acknowledges what should have been obvious to the Republicans all along--that the bill never did have anything to do with controlling our borders and a lot to do with controlling the people within those borders, whether they be employers or employees...
...Many of them Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...The reason of course is that the liberals and the Hispanics were not about to countenance any such measure...
...O'Neill's instincts to kill the bill were correct the first time around (last October), but he was subjected to a Hive hberty hbertyChss Works o f Fisher Ames As Published by Seth Ames Edited and Enlarged by W.B...
...But now, I suspect, we do have one, and it will need endless tinkering and fixing and adjustment, and we may even have to go through the immigration equivalent of gas lines...
...Nice Guy," and that approximately 20 percent of the people employed in the world's most productive and technologically advanced spot are illegally employed and should be sent back home immediately...
...Republicans (some of them carrying about in their hip pockets dog-eared copies of The Camp o f the Saints, a cautionary but non-germane tale about alien hordes overrunning France) are more often inclined to believe the rhetoric of crisis as applied to immigration...
...What America needs now is people from all over the world, low income and uneducated people especially, because they are the ones who will appreciate the country, will defend it and perpetuate it...
...Some Republicans (and conservatives) think of the United States as a country which should be primarily European in composition, and all these Mexicans and Orientals worry them, frankly...
...These amount to a new layer of regulation for businessmen, who are now called upon to enforce the immigration laws...
...Thus it is possible, I have to admit, that the bill will simply increase the number of aliens coming into the United States, and if that were its sole and certain outcome, I would say: Well done Simpson, well done Mazzoli, well done nativist, Eurocentric, Republican congressmen...
...The Smoot-Hawley of immigration are Alan Simpson and Romano Mazzoli, the former a Republican senator from Wyoming, and the winner of this year's "Strange New Respect" award from the Washington Association of Liberal Journalists...
...The idea here was to appease the newspaper editorial writers (about the only visible backers of the legislation) by supporting the bill, but to maintain, by the tepidity of one's support, the affection of Hispanics, at an earlier moment targeted by the White House as potential Republicans...
...Moreover, the cut-off date is quite irrelevant because most illegals, if they want to stay, soon learn about the thriving market in forged documents...
...Translation: The White House hoped the bill would fail despite its support...
...Most Republicans understand that the only energy policy you need is laissez-faire...
...THE AMERICAN SPEC'FATOR AUGUST 1984 11...
...supported the measure ostensibly on the grounds that a "country has the right to control its borders...
...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U.S...
...Likewise most Democrats have not been too rigid about establishing a "national immigration policy...
...There was, of course, a lesson to be learned from the great war against Nazism, a lesson that makes World War II strikingly relevant to our times...
...Consider the Republicans...
...Professor Allen has added many pieces, which have come to light since the original publication or were omitted from it...
...Stupidity is even more prevalent than in the 1930s...
...The Allies waged war to destroy Nazism, and there are very few Nazis around to tell us that war was futile...
...World War II had begun...
...They are inclined to think that America would be fine if only it were more like Europe...
...The country honors those men who fought and occasionally died, for their sacrifice preserved its history and its values...
...After the signing of that pact the Nazis invaded helpless Poland from the west, and Russia gluttonously gobbled up Poland from the east...
...Allen In Two Volumes Fisher Ames was not only the Federalist leader in the House during Washington's presidency, he was his party's greatest orator, a brilliant essayist, and perhaps the most accomplished man of letters among his contemporaries in public service...
...Softcover $15.00 the set Prepayment is required on all orders not for resale...
...In the America of 1984 these two goals are not as easily accomplished as in the past...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S WHAT IMMIGRATION CRISIS...
...As though that were what the liberals were planning to do if Simpson-Mazzoli had failed...
...According to Lou Cannon's column in the Washington Post, the White House, which supported the bill, "did not expect it to pass," and when it did, "there was no rejoicing in the White House...
...The precedent of rewarding with citizenship those who arrived ilTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1984 9 legally (before January 1, 1982) is bound to create the expectation that such illegal behavior will be rewarded once again in the future...
...they stay away from union organizers, from social workers, welfare-fights workers, Legal Services agitators, ACLU busybodies--in short from the whole range of meddlers whose activities are guaranteed (and intended) to make the individual more dependent on the state (in the name of championing his cause and "protecting his rights...
...The editorial campaign on behalf of Simpson-Mazzoli was a triumph of opinion-making, with newspaper stories conveying the idea that we are experiencing a"crisis" of immigration when no such thing is remotely true...
...For such people, the potential allure of the welfare office is subordinated to fear of the Immigration and Naturalization Service...
...Hence the other main component of the bill--employer sanctions...
...Simpson-Mazzoli could turn out to be to immigration what Jimmy Carter's National Energy Policy was to energy...
...I assume that it will pass in one form or another...
...So the idea of amnesty was to get these people to come forward and claim these "rights" by eliminating the one crucial deterrent: their illegal status...
...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...
...Again, the liberals obviously could not very easily come right out and say that what they wanted was to get control of the lives of millions more people, although that was exactly what they did want...
...Both Republicans and Democrats, of late, have tended to miss the point that America needs all the people it can get--a point that may be more apparent five years from now than it is today...
...dollars...
...It could actually create the crisis that was illusory until someone tried to repair it...
...That, we can be sure, will remain porous, whatever happens...
...10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1984 But here again the actual effect of the legislation is hard to foresee, and could be perverse...
...That could mean labor shortages, ultimately...
...Currently there is a provision in the bill that makes most amnestied aliens ineligible for most federal welfare benefits for five years...
...If wise men give up the use of power, what madmen will seize it, what fanatics...
...This is true, but, as Patrick Buchanan pointed out in his excellent newspaper column, the unacknowledged reason for support was racialist and nativist sentiment about America...
...Alas, this also is one of the confused ideas of the present...
...The way the good liberal sees it (and he is very likely working as a reporter for a newspaper these days), there are all these people in America toiling away at jobs, productively at work and paying their taxes--yet they are "out of control...
...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...
...Time and again we heard repeated the line "never again...
...but in the end no one did anything except let them come, which was undoubtedly the best policy...
...The sanctions will certainly be a nuisance for small businesses (but not large, which is why the bill was supported by the Business Roundtable and opposed by the Chamber of Commerce), but it is possible that the sanctions will be mild enough not to make a great deal of difference at hiring time (and again, think of every determined illegal as having a fake ID in his pocket...
...If this provision survives, and we do not get any horrid HHS types luring aliens astray with "benefit" (dependency)packages, the bill just might be ineffective and therefore comparatively harmless...
...the latter a Democratic congressman from Kentucky...
...West Europeans are increasingly turning out to be a cowardly, spoilt, and effete bunch...
...Then too we heard people speak o f war as futile...
...remove the controls and let buyers and sellers agree with one another on a price...
...Which is exactly what we don't want...
...Perhaps the best chance is to give everyone amnesty, hope that they have already acquired the habit of working and so will avoid welfare, and trust that the employer sanctions will lack teeth, thus encouraging a new wave of aliens to come pouring in across the border...
...Nevertheless, some legalized aliens will go on welfare since in some states they will be eligible for state welfare immediately, and at the federal level left-wing agitprop lawyers will be sure to file suit against the "discrimination" involved in denying welfare "rights" to a specific group of previously "victimized" residents...
...In the Carter years there was similar talk of an immigration "crisis" (with, on the surface, more justification at that time in the form of the Mariel boat lift from Cuba, Vietnamese refugees, etc...
...In 1932 he wrote, " I f those who make use of the force of France lose heart, not only will our country be menaced, but the very harmony of the general order of things will be shattered...
...I mean, if you really think your country should "regain control of its borders," then why not simply vote for the money for a greatly enlarged Border Patrol...
...As I write the new immigration bill has passed the House of Representatives by a five-vote margin, but still has to go to conference committee and then return to be voted on once again by both houses...
...No, I do not think that the nation that conspired with Hitler can shame us for not having invaded Normandy sooner...
...Many Americans, often in influential positions, are not so certain of the goodness of our history and our values...
...Thus all official entanglements tend to be avoided: On the whole illegal aliens don't go near government offices, unemployment bureaus, voting booths (although there is some illegal voting, I have heard...
...What does this mean, that we shall never again come to the aid of democracies threatened by aggressive totalitarians...
...As evidence of Republican dimness on this issue, George Gilder tells me that INS agents have recently been snooping around Silicon Valley, of all places, telling employers that there would be "no more Mr...
...Ames' letters, speeches, and essays offer an excellent sustained commentary on the American founding from the time of the Constitutional Convention through Jefferson's reelection as president...
...My impression is that when it comes to immigration, the country is better off with Democrats in power...
...Before the carnage began Charles de Gaulle anticipated it, though few listened...
...Why did the journalists support and the liberal Democrats vote for the bill...
...And with that absurdity as the alternative, Simpson-Mazzoli maybe doesn't look so bad after all...
...Rarely has any legislation been supported and passed both Houses with such a lack of candor all 'round...
...The Republicans who supported the bill for undisclosed nativist reasons seem not to have noticed that its effect may be the opposite of what they anticipated...
...This, of course, is what Winston Churchill had in mind when he lamented at war's end that "there never was a war more easy to stop," but first you need wise men and not too many madmen...
Vol. 17 • August 1984 • No. 8
