January 07, 2004

Bush’s Bartley Memorial Bill: None Dare Call It...Amnesty?

In announcing his support for what can only be called the Robert L. Bartley Memorial Open Borders Bill this afternoon, President Bush singled out “members of citizen groups who have joined us” in the audience. The list, in its entirety:

“Chairman of the Hispanic Alliance for Progress, Manny Lujan. Gil Moreno, the President and CEO of the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans. Roberto De Posada, the President of the Latino Coalition. And Hector Flores, the President of LULAC.”

Not one non-Hispanic “citizens group” seems to have been judged worthy of an invitation. Apparently, Bush thinks that America’s citizenry is already entirely Hispanic—like the waiters in his country club.

The Bartley Memorial Open Borders Bill is astounding in its ambition. Only a year ago, the trial balloon floated by Bush Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza—who was described by Bush today, in a slip both fawning and Freudian, as “El Embajador of Mexico”—envisaged amnesty restricted to only 15 percent of only Mexican illegals. But now, the Open Borders Bill proposes

1] A Temporary Worker Program. It will “match willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs.”

If they wish, however, these so-called Temporary Workers will be allowed to apply for citizenship in what Bush called “the normal way.”

2] Amnesty For Illegals. Illegal aliens can join the Temporary Worker program on payment of a fee. Then, of course, they can apply for citizenship etc. etc.

Incredibly, President Bush also claimed “I oppose amnesty.” This, quite simply, is a lie.

3] Increased Legal Immigration. Bush says he wants to increase the number of green cards. This, of course, would facilitate the legalization of the illegal alien presence, which the White House estimates as at least eight million.

Three points should be made about this screamingly radical social engineering plan:

It will integrate U.S. and Third World labor markets. There is to be no effective limit on the number of “Temporary Workers” admitted. Employers can hire foreigners if “no Americans can be found to fill the jobs”—with no mention of wage offered. (The Washington Times’ Joseph Curl today quotes a White House official saying that the fact that a job is open will be assumed to mean that “the marketplace” has determined a need for immigration.) The impact of immigration on American unemployment and wage rates, already significant, will become enormous.

It will be uncontrollable. Nowhere in the Bush proposal is there any discussion of the current disastrous interpretation of the 14^th Amendment, under which any child born in the U.S. becomes an American citizen, regardless of the status of its parents. Yet any Temporary Worker presence will become permanent as a practical matter if its children are “Americans.”

It will liquidate the American nation. Already, the Census Bureau projects that whites—known to history as “Americans,” the founders and until recently the overwhelming majority of the country—will become a minority in 50 years. The Bush-Bartley bill can only accelerate this unprecedented attack by a government on its own people.

Joshua Michael Marshall, a liberal who writes for the Washington Monthly and blogs very hard, has posted on his TalkingPointsMemo website (scroll down) a transcript of the conference call between “senior administration officials” and various mainstream media types, including Marshall, briefing them on the Open Borders Bill.

This is a little indiscreet of Marshall, because the point of Not For Attribution briefings is to avoid providing incriminating quotes with specific official names attached to them.

Presumably Marshall has redacted any sentences that started “Mr. Rove, what is the...” or “Secretary Ridge, how are you going to…”

But most people should have no trouble attaching a name to the “senior administration official” who said, in response to an immigration-related question “And this is addressed for me at Homeland Security, I assume. ”

And even Washington outsiders might guess at the identity of the Great Brain who said

“[T]his program should promote compassion by understanding the current broken system that we have with as many as 8 million people who are currently undocumented in our country, and provide a way to put them as part of the legitimate part of our economy.”

The conference was a shambles. “Senior administration officials” proved unable to answer even the most basic questions as to how the proposal would work.

At VDARE.COM, we’ve already anticipated most of the silly things they said. For example:

“Senior Administration Official: Those principles are that we must protect the homeland by controlling our borders, meaning that we need to know who is here and what their status is.”

VDARE.COM said: It seems that the main problem the Homeland Security chief sees in the millions of “undocumented” is merely that they are not carrying Homeland Security-approved documents—rather than that they’re in the US illegally, and might pose a threat.

“Senior Administration Official: Next, it would provide incentives for return to the home country, such as totalization agreements, as we have with several foreign countries around the world.”

VDARE.COM said: The role of the US government in not only allowing, but in subsidizing the growth of immigration has been frequently underestimated. It's not just welfare. There are a thousand governmental and quasi-governmental programs for transferring money from rich (and not-so-rich) Americans to poor (and not-so-poor) immigrants.

“Senior Administration Official: Finally, it will protect the rights of illegal workers who now live in the shadows and are fearful of coming out of the shadows, for fear of deportation. They will now enjoy the same protections that American workers have with respect to wages and employment rights and the like.”

VDARE.COM said: As soon as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 took place, we were treated to weeks of sermonizing by both government officials and media-appointed experts to the effect that we must all now adjust to enjoying fewer liberties and putting up with more restrictions on our freedom.

No one ever suggested we might have a real problem with both massive illegal immigration and even more massive legal immigration that allowed the 19 mass murderers of 9/11 to come here in the first place (along with other mass murderers like Jamaican Colin Ferguson and Washington sniper Lee Boyd Malvo, and the list could go on).

What we should hear from the Bush administration and officials like Mr. Ridge is not how we now, after decades of government failure, need to legalize millions of illegals, but how we can and will round them up and kick them out before they murder anybody else.

Faced with this confusion, liblogger Josh Michaels concluded his posting by asking—

“Here's a question: how many people actually think the president expects to or even wants this 'policy' to pass?”

The reality is more horrible. Bush does want his plan to pass. It is not merely the Middle East that he proposes to remake.

Peter Brimelow is Editor of VDARE.COM and author of the much-denounced Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster (1995).