George Rebane
Never accept effort for achievement.
No, we’re not going to deport 11 million illegal aliens. But we do have to solve the illegal alien problem by allowing those already here to become legal, and preventing those still there from becoming illegal. That requires that we put a cork into our border with Mexico, and knowing the population of inveterate liars and scumbags in Congress, we must ‘seal the border’ first before all those constructive amnesty provisions start kicking in for the 11 million. If we don’t do that, then we’ll be like the double dummy bailing the boat without plugging the leak. Now this is not rocket science, even the liberals understand the concept perfectly, perhaps too perfectly.
So how do we get an ‘immigration reform’ bill passed that solves the above described problem? Let’s put the politics on the back burner for a moment and just see how progress is made in Washington. Given the great flock of isheeple that dominate our landscape, the solution is easy – both sides volubly sign up for something called “border security”. And then both sides get busy selling it to their constituencies. The Repubs are saying, ‘See, we got the Dems to agree to secure the border with all kinds of high tech gizmos, lots of new fencing, and more regiments of Border Patrol boots on the ground. Once all these spiffy things are in place, the border will be harder than ever to cross illegally, and it will never have been more secure. OK? sign here, press hard, three copies.’
The Dems are saying to their people (wink-wink), ‘Relax, this legislation is a velvet amnesty sieve. Before you know it, everyone will become a citizen, and all of them will know the answer to ‘Who loves ya baby?’ The border? fuggettaboudit. Those rightwing schmucks are totally dazzled by all that Berlin Wall technical crap in the bill. But you know what? it’ll take years to put in place and there is a lot of enabling legislation and appropriations between here and there. In the meanwhile, things will be business as usual down Mexico way because those poor bastards will still be counting how many infra-red sensors they’ve installed instead of how many more of your friends and family have made it across.’
And there’s the point, both sides are in on the bamboozle with only the Dems having and working a sane plan to achieve their objectives. For example no one cares, or should care, that the Del Rio Texas sector will install between points of entry, (quoting the bill's text):
"(I) 3 integrated fixed towers; (II) 74 fixed camera systems (with relocation capability), which include remote video surveillance systems; (III) 47 mobile surveillance systems, which include mobile video surveillance systems, agent-portable surveillance systems and mobile surveillance capability systems; (IV) 868 unattended ground sensors, including seismic, imaging and infrared; (V) 174 handheld equipment devices, including handheld thermal imaging systems and night vision goggles; (VI) 26 mobile/handheld inspection scopes and sensors for checkpoints; (VII) improved surveillance capabilities for existing aerostat; (VIII) 21 sensor repeaters; and (IX) 21 communications repeaters."
When a high level delibearative body like Congress wants to procure a complex system such as the one that is to augment what we already have on the border, they should write into law system performance requirements, and not try to design the goddam thing within the thousands of pages of garbage that will certainly be obsolete with the advance of technology by the time they get around to building it. A smart, let alone sane, legislative body wanting to make a material contribution to this law would instead include something like –
‘Before the other provisions of this law are implemented, appropriate enhancements will be made to border security such that the demonstrated, unapprehended entry rate from Mexico is below 5,000 illegal entrants per year, and that such rates can be maintained in perpetuity.’
I have promoted the 5,000 number as a performance requirement (estimated by the Border Patrol using established methods) that for all intents and purposes defines a secure border for a nation the size of America. Perfection is unachievable and its pursuit ruinously costly. If you don’t like 5,000, then put in another number that reasonable people would accept as a secure border. But let’s not continue the practice of substituting and celebrating effort expended in place of achievement at the national level. Sadly, both sides know that this switch continues to work with the isheeple which today includes two generations of youth raised on Self-Esteem über Alles!
As a minimum, the Repubs should stick to principle, point out this error, and then go on to support the amnesty provisions of comprehensive immigration reform if they must. But the bill should specify that such provisions should kick in only after the border has been shown to be measurably secure.
Never accept effort for achievement.
No, we’re not going to deport 11 million illegal aliens. But we do have to solve the illegal alien problem by allowing those already here to become legal, and preventing those still there from becoming illegal. That requires that we put a cork into our border with Mexico, and knowing the population of inveterate liars and scumbags in Congress, we must ‘seal the border’ first before all those constructive amnesty provisions start kicking in for the 11 million. If we don’t do that, then we’ll be like the double dummy bailing the boat without plugging the leak. Now this is not rocket science, even the liberals understand the concept perfectly, perhaps too perfectly.
The Dems are saying to their people (wink-wink), ‘Relax, this legislation is a velvet amnesty sieve. Before you know it, everyone will become a citizen, and all of them will know the answer to ‘Who loves ya baby?’ The border? fuggettaboudit. Those rightwing schmucks are totally dazzled by all that Berlin Wall technical crap in the bill. But you know what? it’ll take years to put in place and there is a lot of enabling legislation and appropriations between here and there. In the meanwhile, things will be business as usual down Mexico way because those poor bastards will still be counting how many infra-red sensors they’ve installed instead of how many more of your friends and family have made it across.’
And there’s the point, both sides are in on the bamboozle with only the Dems having and working a sane plan to achieve their objectives. For example no one cares, or should care, that the Del Rio Texas sector will install between points of entry, (quoting the bill's text):
"(I) 3 integrated fixed towers; (II) 74 fixed camera systems (with relocation capability), which include remote video surveillance systems; (III) 47 mobile surveillance systems, which include mobile video surveillance systems, agent-portable surveillance systems and mobile surveillance capability systems; (IV) 868 unattended ground sensors, including seismic, imaging and infrared; (V) 174 handheld equipment devices, including handheld thermal imaging systems and night vision goggles; (VI) 26 mobile/handheld inspection scopes and sensors for checkpoints; (VII) improved surveillance capabilities for existing aerostat; (VIII) 21 sensor repeaters; and (IX) 21 communications repeaters."
When a high level delibearative body like Congress wants to procure a complex system such as the one that is to augment what we already have on the border, they should write into law system performance requirements, and not try to design the goddam thing within the thousands of pages of garbage that will certainly be obsolete with the advance of technology by the time they get around to building it. A smart, let alone sane, legislative body wanting to make a material contribution to this law would instead include something like –
‘Before the other provisions of this law are implemented, appropriate enhancements will be made to border security such that the demonstrated, unapprehended entry rate from Mexico is below 5,000 illegal entrants per year, and that such rates can be maintained in perpetuity.’
I have promoted the 5,000 number as a performance requirement (estimated by the Border Patrol using established methods) that for all intents and purposes defines a secure border for a nation the size of America. Perfection is unachievable and its pursuit ruinously costly. If you don’t like 5,000, then put in another number that reasonable people would accept as a secure border. But let’s not continue the practice of substituting and celebrating effort expended in place of achievement at the national level. Sadly, both sides know that this switch continues to work with the isheeple which today includes two generations of youth raised on Self-Esteem über Alles!
As a minimum, the Repubs should stick to principle, point out this error, and then go on to support the amnesty provisions of comprehensive immigration reform if they must. But the bill should specify that such provisions should kick in only after the border has been shown to be measurably secure.
Here we go down the road again. The immigration bill is 1,000 pages long and just one amendment is 1,200 pages long. If nobody has read it before voting on it, then it probably means nobody voting on it wrote it. Guess we have to pass it to find out what is in it.
Drudge Report said yesterday there is a clause in there that Janet does not have to built the fence if she deems it inappropriate or too costly. Promises, promises. Of course Congress can do what has always done, i,e.,pass the security measures and not appropriate the money for securing our porous borders. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
Bottom line is who are these brain dead amoebas that think legalizing 11 million grass cutters will make them suddenly part of the middle class and prosper??
Think changing their legal status will vastly improve the wealth of our Nation??? Think the 11 million don't have Uncles and son-in-laws that aren't chomping at the bit to bring the whole clan here, none with a high school diplomat.
We need first and foremost a secure border. A secure border means an orderly process. Of secondary importance, we need educated skilled workers. Many countries throughout the world will let you emigrate to their country only IF you possess the skills they have a shortage of.
To put it bluntly, we should allow educated people from Austria, India, Japan, China, Iran, and a few other places. Only the brightest and best deserve to lay eyes on our exceptional nation via the visa process. The highest privilege one could ever dream to obtain. Letting in grammar school dropouts from Latin America ain't going to keep Social Security solvent, not to mention Obama care.
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 24 June 2013 at 03:14 PM
There was a day when America also looked after its own interest and was very discriminating about whom they let in. Popping up on this side of the fence and fogging a mirror was not enough to qualify you for citizenship, let alone being able to stay in the country on your own recognizance.
Posted by: George Rebane | 24 June 2013 at 03:51 PM
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/24/silicon-valley-banks-on-immigration-bill-for-access-to-foreign-workers/
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 24 June 2013 at 07:40 PM
Not a single mention of the industries that exploit the workers and give them the incentive to sneak or stay in the country.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/special-report-raiteros/major-american-companies-benefit-undocumented-workers
1) E-verify must become the law to hire all employees
2) CEO's of companies that exploit foreign workers need to do jail time not paying fines that are the figured into the cost of doing business
3) Create worker program for seasonal migrant workers so people aren't forced to stay in the country.
4) End NAFTA, CAFTA, and get US out the WTO
Illegal Immigration and NAFTA
http://economyincrisis.org/content/illegal-immigration-and-nafta
"Since NAFTA was signed into law, illegal immigrants in the U.S. has increased to 12 million today from 3.9 million in 1993, accounting for an overall increase of over 300 percent. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 57 percent of those entering the country illegally are from Mexico."
Posted by: Ben Emery | 25 June 2013 at 06:57 AM
If we are going to build a wall along our southern border, the least we should do is follow the example of the Chinese and build a good looking rock wall. We could drop the rock right on the border and hire cheap foreign labor to construct it from the Mexican side. Think of the money we could save!
Posted by: Brad Croul | 25 June 2013 at 07:00 AM
Mr. Croul. Great idea. We can have cheap foreign labor build our wall. After all immigrants built our railroads through the Sierras.
Mr.Ben: E-verify is another good idea. Just a month ago, all employees at my company had to dig through their stuff and produce their original Social Security cards, government issued birth certificates (hospital records not accepted) CDL and US passports if your can't find one of the the first two. Everybody from the big wigs to the peons and exploited workers like myself. Heck, they only give me 7 1/2 weeks vacation a year with full bennies, gas card, truck, tools, 24/7 free mental health counseling, generous top rated 401k plan, free access to top financial advisers, generous bereavement allowance, and free coffee served in Eco-friendly cups. Plus 24/7 3rd party anonymous tip hotlines if we b exploited along with free laptops and cell phones and free access as I type this. Yep, E-verify is a must for us exploited workers and send Da Man to jail if he hires one single not allowed illegal in this country. Put them in stocks I tell ya. Public humiliation before placing them on the rack. Too bad the Supreme Court declared involuntary castration unconstitutional in the later part of the 1800's.
Best way to hurt an employer is to hit them in the wallet. They would prefer torture to taking a hit in the pocketbook. Ya gotta know how to hurt them and you apparently do.
Mr. Ben, I do like your point 3. Seasonal workers are necessary, but for goodness sakes don't let them stay through the winter or attend our community colleges. Be nice to them and give them a ham for Easter, but don't let them in your home. Maybe adult education, but that is the only bone they should get. Mass migrations of birds are common, just like the swallows returning to Capistrano. After they poop, they should leave until the next strawberry season.
Love it when we agree. This calls for a group hug.
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 25 June 2013 at 07:40 AM
Bill,
It is obvious by your tongue and cheek response you don't have much experience with immigration and immigrants.
no jobs = no migration
Nobody will risk life and limb leaving their home, friends, and family to come to a nation that has no jobs. The problem with many is it takes so much to get into the country it is not worth the risk to try to go back and forth, so they stay permanently.
I don't like competing with a powerless labor force for wages is the traditional labor position and I share it.
Posted by: Ben Emery | 25 June 2013 at 01:40 PM
Hello again my friend Mr. Ben. I think you missed a point. People come to America for freedom and opportunity. Hey, if they had freedom of the press and freedom to speak their minds without having the secret police come and take them away in the dead of night and were eating steak and lobster every day, they might stay home. But it is the American Dream that attracts our neighbors from the 4 corners of the world. The Dream. The Dream is better than they have at home. Poverty is worse at home. Heck, people here on welfare got flush toilets, public drinkable water fountains, microwave ovens, hot water and electricity on demand, and some even have a television. I understand why they come to America. The worse thing that could happen here is probably a good day in the old country.
My American friend Ben; I have been a peon on construction crews cleaning up job sites with a bunch of my brown skinned brothers from the south. Only me was a white skinned brother from the North. (Its pays more to be bilingual, or at least speak some English when conversing with the Boss man.). Among my co-workers ( all legal immigrants with green cards) was a highly educated lawyer, one doctor, a chemist and engineers back in Me-he-co. Why were they here??? Why I was there on those job sites is another story. We all got along just fine. I remember the chemist said he came here and asked "where is my lab?" He was handed a broom and we all got a big chuckle out of it, especially the chemist. I was seeking a tank of gas and a little mula while they were seeking a better life. We would sit around after work having a few dozen cervesas and they would all pull out pictures of loved ones back home. The lawyer made more picking up scraps of wood on a construction site that he did doing the legal thing in Me-he-co City. That is the point you miss, Mr. Ben from California, a region north of Me-he-co.
Hey, why do they call them green cards? The ones I have seen are red. Odd.
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 25 June 2013 at 02:18 PM
Bill,
You are talking to a fellow laborer who worked with my friends from the South in construction, agriculture, and in restaurants my 30 years of being in the work force. I have also worked with people from Italy, Ukraine, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Turkey, Canada, UK, Sweden, India, Korea and probably a few more I am forgetting.
I know from having very close friends from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Brazil, Peru, and Chile that political and corporate influence from US is more of the reasons for the migration than the reasons you state. Those reason you state are most of the people who come here through legal channels.
With my US white male privilege I have chose to live a very exciting young adult lifestyle. Working poor in very nice places. My theory was to live in destination spots so when I wasn't working I was on vacation I couldn't otherwise afford. I spent years in Hawaii and Colorado while going for months at a time in Mexico and Alaska. Live simply, work hard, play hard, save money, make friends, and travel to the next spot is what I did for about 12-14 years. Getting on average 75- 100 days on the mountain snowboarding while working as a cook, server, and bartender 7 nights a week. Being a handyman in Hawaii from May - November surfing almost everyday.
Posted by: Ben Emery | 26 June 2013 at 07:07 AM
I also drove a truck and then managed a warehouse for a cargo company in San Jose/ San Francisco area. One of my fellow drivers tried to arrange a marriage between myself and his very attractive sister from Guadalajara. I passed on the offer but became friends with his entire family when I went down to visit with him one time.
Posted by: Ben Emery | 26 June 2013 at 07:12 AM