THE UNMENTIONABLE SUBJECT IN CAMPAIGN 2000    The Business, Politics--and Consequences--of Immigration

If you struggled through the three major Presidential debates as I did--and are also a fairly conscious, free (and right) thinking American--one issue must have been as obvious to you as it was to me by its absence. Time and again, Al Gore would attack George W. Bush and vice versa, the one blaming the other for shortcomings in areas such as education, the uninsured, too many people still in poverty, the woes of black Americans and more. Whatever the specific question and however it was answered, the chief reason for the majority of these ills was ignored every time. That reason is the open borders policy of the United States, that has resulted in out-of-control immigration, to the point where legal and illegal immigrants now swell our population by some 1.2 million people per year.

"IT’S ALIENS--OR INFLATION"

In pushing incessantly for the increase, Corporate America--with the public support of Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan--warned of dire consequences for the economy, inflation and more if the increase was not enacted. Business has regularly fretted about the decline in the growth rate in America’s existing working population and the related fact that--horrors!--this means that business must pay more in wages to attract people. This would be "inflationary"; and we can’t have that! There is simply no alternative, they claim, other than having a huge and continuing increase in immigration in order to fill jobs that business claims they don’t have the (cheap) workers for.

This argument is as disingenuous as it is treasonous. American workers have once again been heartlessly betrayed by the corporate and political planners behind America’s economy. You’ve heard the story. When shoemakers, steelworkers, textile workers, auto workers and others first started to lose their jobs in large numbers, we were all told not to worry. The US would be the high tech economy, they said. "We’ll retrain you for the information age." In fact, a few still recall the specific promises made after NAFTA’s passage that both government and industry would come up with substantial budgets so that folks in these doomed professions would soon find work in the New Economy.

It was a lie.

Many of us now believe that Corporate America never had any intention of keeping its promise. Nor did Washington help. Instead, high tech workers in America must now compete with hundreds of thousands of foreign workers brought here to take increasing numbers of these jobs as well. This is not because companies can not find workers, and do not have the money and means to keep their promise to equip American citizens for the new jobs.

It’s simply because many of these companies simply do not want to hire Americans--PERIOD.

Immigrants under H-1B in essence become indentured to their employer; they are unable to switch jobs for any reason. Further, as other immigrants, they are willing to accept much less in wages and benefits than American workers generally get. Make no mistake--the process of bringing foreign workers to America under H-1B is little different in practice than corporations setting up shop in foreign countries in order to hire cheaper labor. The one added pitfall is that in addition to wrecking our domestic economy, the stability of our nation and culture is also threatened.

IT’S IMMIGRATION, STUPID!

In the same sense as my initial comments here, I was struck by a comment that "journalist" Al Hunt made on CNN’s The Capital Gang of October 14. Parroting the Gore line on child poverty and generally poor access to health care in Texas, Hunt mentioned, "If you’re a poor kid in Texas, it’s like a third world country." A man with the credentials of Mr. Hunt, of course should plainly see that--as it has increasingly become an outpost of Mexico--Texas is part of a third world country!

The October 23 issue of US News and World Report, in a chart on the state of children’s health care coverage in America, showed the percentage of uninsured children by state. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of those states with the highest proportion of uninsured children (including Texas, at the top of the list) are those with--surprise!--the largest numbers of recent immigrants. Yet Bush, for his part, will never point to immigration as a chief cause--and Gore, while correctly--and conveniently--pointing out the facts where Texas is concerned, will not address the subject either. As Denver Post columnist Al Knight wrote in a Sept. 24 piece, "Any attempt to address the problem of the medically uninsured without dealing with one of its major causes will be both an exercise in futility and an example of shameful political cowardice."

In the August 21 issue of Forbes, that edition’s "Charticle" was entitled "Poverty’s Roots"--and was subtitled, "One of them is high immigration rates.") The piece points out that the long 1990s boom has, as many liberals claim, "not significantly reduced the proportion of the American population living in poverty." That’s true. The piece points out that some major studies of the causes of poverty neglect to mention immigration at all, a chief cause of this; at least Forbes had the nerve to do so. Here again, though, neither Gore nor Bush will point this out.

The damage of immigration is plainly obvious to anyone who lives in areas where high numbers of foreigners are moving in. As Forbes points out, ". . .through public policy, the US is importing poverty." In addition, as I mentioned above, even the more "desirable" imported tech workers are adding to the overall "race to the bottom" in keeping wage growth and prosperity for many Americans in check (along with "inflation"--Hooray!) Most acutely--though the proponents of unfettered immigration never shrink from calling the rest of us "racists" for expressing our concerns--it is actually black Americans who in many areas are suffering the most. Up and down the income and class ladder, they must compete with newly imported Latinos, Asians and others who, whether we’re talking about mowing lawns or working in Silicon Valley, will work for less and will demand less benefits. Grossly under reported by the media in the H-1B battle was the fact that some of the most vociferous opponents of the legislation were groups representing black workers. Then again, the media can’t report that very much and continue with their straw man "racist" attacks, can they?

One of Gore’s embellishments in the first debate centered around the school girl in Florida who allegedly did not have a desk to use and had to stand in class. The truth as we now know, is that it was the first day of school and someone had simply counted wrong. The girl in question had a desk the next day. Here again, though, since this incident--embellished as it was--was used to point out the problem of overcrowding in some public schools, is the vice president (and his opponent for that matter) that stupid as to not understand a key reason for school overcrowding?

In Florida, Texas and California particularly, public schools are in fact bursting at the seams. The problem does not stem, as the Democratic side would have you believe, from too little money. If there’s anything the national education industry does not need, it’s more money. Nor, as Republicans claim, would overcrowding and other problems go away if only more school choice and voucher plans were implemented--though that would certainly be an improvement on the status quo for other reasons. The trouble is that, as the April 24 issue of Business Week pointed out in regards to California, the education infrastructure of that state (not to mention others) has become "public school system to the world."

Perhaps even more than Texas, California’s education and social services infrastructure has been called on to do the impossible. According to the Business Week piece, Los Angeles County alone spends $2 billion a year on illegal immigrants alone. The city of Los Angeles last year provided free medical service to 108,000 illegal immigrants. In Anaheim, classes for elementary school students--80% of whom are first or second generation Hispanics--are held in metal trailers, since the present school buildings can not hold them all.

Municipalities in California and other besieged states have vainly tried to address the problem. Thus far the Federal government--whose policies in the end allow this--has been unwilling to reimburse local schools, hospitals and governments for the burgeoning financial costs of so many immigrants. You’ll also recall that in 1994--naively believing that the United States really is a free country and that "democracy" reigns supreme--Californians overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative denying public health benefits and education to illegal aliens. The proposition was overturned in court.

ANOTHER ROUND OF AMNESTY

As if all of the above was not enough to put you in a rebellious state of mind, yet another "amnesty" is being contemplated in Washington. As I write this President Clinton, hoping to get a few more cheap immigrant votes to help out his junior partner’s shaky campaign, is threatening to keep Congress in town until amnesty is granted to nearly one million illegals. Of course, we were told in 1986 that "this is it"--and that the amnesty passed that year would be a one-time phenomenon. Henceforth, nobody should come to America illegally. But as the critics predicted, all this did was encourage larger numbers to come here illegally, who correctly perceived that (in the case of Latinos) the growing numbers and political clout--combined necessarily with spineless politicians--would translate eventually into another amnesty.

By the time most of you read this, we’ll know which "side" wins the debate in Washington: Clinton, who wants amnesty for everybody, or the GOP leadership which wants to save a little bit of face with the American people by imposing at least a few conditions. Either way, the American people--as well as straining school, public health and municipal budgets--lose.

POLARIZING ISSUE

To say that this issue is one of the more controversial and polarizing in America is an understatement. As with any such hot issue, name calling and diversionary tactics unfortunately seem to win out over sensible discussion and problem solving.

Some of you may be familiar with an organization know as Project USA (whose excellent web site is at www.projectusa.org.) This organization, among other things, has erected billboards in several places around the country highlighting the long-term problems posed by out-of-control immigration. The billboards--which have been widely attacked by the Establishment media as well as so-called human rights groups as "racist,"--merely show pictures of small children with the caption, "Immigration is doubling U.S. population in your child's lifetime." In many cities, these billboards have been either vandalized or removed by cowardly public officials; the latter solons also make sure to find the first available camera to denounce the "hate" and "racism" evidenced by people pointing out that America is being invaded.

Anyone else, of course, who talks about the out of control problem of immigration is similarly attacked. An organization known as FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) has received special scorn for appealing to many peoples’ concerns about suburban sprawl--and linking them to immigration. I suppose this means that sprawl is caused by too few people? FAIR and others have struck several chords, in fact, in appealing to liberals/progressives on issues like sprawl and the environment, eloquently and factually describing how these and other problems are, as should be obvious to anyone, simply caused by too many people.

Though he has been registering as little more than a blip in most (controlled) polls, Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan’s biggest presence in the news recently also dealt with the subject of immigration. Buchanan’s campaign started running a clever--and controversial--ad in California attacking immigration and multi-lingualism; it showed a man choking on a meatball after hearing startling news on a media broadcast that English may no longer be America’s language. After dialing 911 to seek help, he is treated to a menu of languages in which to give his "SOS"; before English is reached, he collapses.

The ad’s message obviously struck a chord, as both Democrat and GOP state officials in the Golden State tripped over each other in a rush for the first camera, before which they could denounce the candidate’s "racism."

FUTURE IMPLICATIONS

It is unpleasant to think about the long-term consequences to our national, cultural and economic fiber of such high levels of immigration--especially if the time does indeed come again when America faces prolonged economic trouble. In the depression of the 1930s, at least America was more homogenous racially and culturally than most sections of the nation are today. In addition, a much higher percentage of the population was based in rural areas and could eke out an existence much better--and with far less complaint--than today’s crop of Americans. Imagine being in southern California or southern Florida, in particular, were we to endure another major and prolonged economic downturn.

Thankfully, there are some voices out there still who understand the larger context of America’s insane, unlimited immigration policy. Writing in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, which is published--gasp!--by the Council on Foreign Relations, San Diego Union-Tribune foreign affairs columnist James Goldsborough wrote a piece on "Out of Control Immigration." Following is one excerpt from his outstanding, sensible, scholarly (i.e. "racist") article:

"With the US economy soaring, few care that immigration to the United States is at its highest absolute levels. But what happens when the economy falls back to earth? High-tech immigrant workers are already competing with Americans for jobs, while unskilled immigrant laborers are becoming a permanent underclass. High immigration is creating imbalances in education, income distribution, employment, and welfare demands--as well as tensions between immigrants and citizens and among the federal, state, and local governments. An economic slump will mean crisis. Congress and the White House need to cut back now."

But, alas, Congress and the White House will do no such thing. Nor, most likely, will their next occupants. Instead, both major parties and their allies in Corporate America coolly reap the temporary political and financial benefits of slowly destroying the economic and cultural fabric of America. Those who vote for candidates--including Bush and Gore, as well as House and Senate candidates--who refuse to stop this destruction should not complain as the consequences descend upon us all.

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