CAPITOL IDEAS: Welfare State Immigrants
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS Tom Bethell Welfare State Immigrants MMIGRATION BENEFITS AMERICA—as an imnugrant I am the first to agree. I would go so far as to say that immigrants are often more...
...Such progress is gradually strengthening Democratic prospects not only in Nevada and New Mexico, but also in Colorado and Arizona, which the GOP has dominated...
...Since hospital emergency rooms are now frequented by ordinary (if unscrupulous) Americans for the treatment of almost any condition, including cold symptoms, illegals can in effect claim the right to treatment for almost any medical condition without fear of refusal...
...Increased border surveillance in California and Texas has funneled more and more Mexicans through Arizona...
...Poor people especially would much rather work in their own country...
...200 from a quasi-GOP perspective, arguing that "a polarizing, partisan fight would have serious repercussions for the state Republican Party...
...Those campaigning for progressive causes in the TOM B E T H E L L Southwest have focused on one thing: registering Hispanics to vote...
...I hope that immunizes me against the charge of nativism, for my thesis is that all is not well in the field of immigration...
...It's hard to predict the long-term consequences—immigration policy is fraught with unintended consequences—but here is one that is likely: Political support for immigration will be under-mined...
...Over 400,000 a year are arrested trying to enter the state, and the flood of illegals has forced some hospitals in Arizona into bankruptcy...
...Republicans say: "We can't afford to keep them` out...
...Still, it passed with 56 percent of the vote...
...Federal judges would take about five minutes to strike down any such provision to restrict access to citizenship...
...Their children constitute 15 percent of the state's K-12 student body...
...From 1968 through 1998, the Southwest was so reliably Republican in the nation-al vote that it was rarely contested...
...When things are fetter here, as they often are, we can see it right away...
...The Wall Street Journal worried that the proposition had been put on the ballot with the help of "restrictionist out-fits" which see all immigration, legal or not, "as a net negative for the US...
...Her articles in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere confuse opposition to the Mexican flood with opposition to immigration proper...
...let them remain in their "shadowy" state of legal limbo...
...We are reassured that that would not put them on a path to citizenship...
...The best thing may be to do little...
...A new study claims they cost the California taxpayers alone about $10 billion a year for medical care, education, and incarceration...
...They see the U.S...
...200, a federal judge put it on hold within weeks, saying there were "serious questions whether it passes constitutional muster...
...In response, Proposition 200 was put on the Arizona ballot in November...
...Spectator...
...The amnestied would in due course be registered to vote, and (optimistically) would go 60-40 to the Democrats...
...The reporters followed organizers knocking on doors in Nevada, who "signed up 3,000 new voters...
...Democrats sup-port the newcomers because they figure they can enlist them as foot soldiers in progressive causes...
...What are those "barriers to political participation...
...immigration was essentially unrestricted, and I would be in favor of that today were it not for two things: the welfare state, and the campaign against the melting pot, waged over the past generation with some success...
...Get the voters to wise up that way...
...Republicans are afraid to enforce the law because that will make them look mean...
...Sure it wouldn't...
...And they are a reliably Democratic bloc...
...May I say this...
...I would go so far as to say that immigrants are often more pro-American than the native born...
...They are "a reliably Democratic bloc...
...Such comparisons are difficult for the home-grown, who are inclined to take their surroundings for grant-ed...
...In the 1890s, U.S...
...But if this means they must also be exempted from the normal procedures of immigration and naturalization we have lost control of our country...
...I favor the latter but oppose the former...
...As to Prop...
...They would like to reduce us to an arts-and-crafts economy in which they could flourish anew...
...200 was opposed by the entire political class: "the Chamber of Commerce, the entire Congressional delegation, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, civil rights groups, church groups, human rights groups, trade unions," and more...
...She vehemently opposed Prop...
...50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR February 2005 When a country has reached the point where it cannot deny tax-funded benefits to those (or their off-spring) who arrived illegally, then the rule of law has broken down...
...Nationwide, 31 percent of all immigrants now come from Mexico—up from 16 percent in 1980...
...Maybe the Bush team could help Vicente Fox figure out what's wrong with Mexico's economy...
...less as a great country than as one in which their own ancestors were more important and often more prosperous than they are...
...Finally, the Mexican economy...
...Opposing a flood of illegals crossing the border by midnight is not the same as opposing immigration...
...law has decreed that two major components of the welfare state cannot be denied even to those who came here illegally: education and "emergency" medical care...
...It's tilting that way already...
...This has already happened in England, where refugees threaten "the apparatus of the welfare state and National Health Service," as the Spectator in the UK noted recently...
...Immigrants are not so crazy...
...Within a decade the entire Southwest would be Blue State territory...
...According to a left-wing activist working to defeat the measure, Prop...
...In 1890, when immigrants were 14.8 percent of the U.S...
...population, the welfare state did not exist...
...February 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 51...
...Opposition to a flood of illegals crossing the border by midnight is not the same thing as opposition to immigration...
...By all means let them know that Republicans are their friends...
...Here is a condensed news story from the Los Angeles Times last September...
...No words have been changed, but I have removed ellipses: "Slowly but inexorably activists across the region are moving more Latinos to the polls...
...But they are unable to do so because Mexico has bad laws...
...A comparable proposition in California in 1994 had "all but killed the party's chances with Latino voters...
...Property rights are messed up, and I have been told that the collectivized farms of the ejido system have never been properly privatized...
...The Bush administration position is that we should create a guest worker program In one proposal, illegals already here would be granted a de facto amnesty...
...Increase the Border Patrol, and withhold further supplemental appropriations for hospitals on the border...
...Because they (we) grew up somewhere else, we have a basis of comparison...
...U.S...
...Democrats say: "We can't wait to get them in...
...We might as well give up on politics...
...Today immigrants are 11.9 percent...
...In fact, the illegal swarms from Mexico are not real immigrants at all...
...I am all in favor of President Bush putting Latinos in his cabinet and in the judiciary...
...CAPITOL IDEAS T O M B E T H E L L Welfare State Immigrants MMIGRATION BENEFITS AMERICA—as an imnugrant I am the first to agree...
...But they "also contacted 20,000 Latinos who were not eligible to register...
...Let's review the argument here...
...In all four states, Latinos made up a larger share of voters today than in 1992...
...Disgruntled, they vote for the most left-wing candidates on offer and dream up insane environmental schemes to bring economic activity to a halt wherever possible...
...Undocumented applicants would be ineligible for state benefits, including the privilege of voting...
...T xE LEADING PROPONENT of the argument that we should do nothing to stand in the way of Mexicans who want to come is Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute...
...To do otherwise would be difficult for anyone...
...The ordinary taxpayer is ready to cough up for a system that ensures that Doris down the road can have her hip operation, but does not want to pay for the central African AIDS crisis...
...There are said to be ten million illegal aliens in the United States...
...The GOP hierarchy seems to have tacitly bought, into the idea that nothing can or should be Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American done at the border...
...Grumpy old New Englanders who have come down in the world illustrate the point...
...At any given moment, thousands of Mexicans are braving the rig-ors of the Sonora Desert to find work in a country where they don't even speak the language...
...Neither "crackdowns" nor rewards are needed for those already here...
...But] they are unlikely to become decisive until they overcome the barriers to political participation...
Vol. 38 • February 2005 • No. 1
