10/09/09 - A Distinguished Immigration Patriot Is Disgusted By The "New Patriotism"
From: C.T.M. (e-mail him)
Re: Edwin S. Rubenstein's National Data Column: More Claptrap From Cato On Immigration
Regarding his analysis of the Cato Institute's motives, Rubenstein is spot on. [VDARE.com note: Ed was refuting Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform (PDF) by Peter B. Dixon (email him) and Maureen T. Rimmer (email her)]
I moved from Sacramento four years ago, two years before Joe Guzzardi left for Pennsylvania, to southwestern Michigan.
It's rare to see Hispanics (legal or illegal) in the trades that they completely dominated in California. The lawn care and snow removal jobs are filled by American men, the car washes do not have large throngs of illegal aliens standing at the exit to dry your vehicle, you can still speak English when you order at the fast food restaurants to the teenager or young adult working behind the counter, and if you are looking for handyman work to be done on your house or a house to be built, you can find many local American-owned business that will do the construction.
In my hometown, there are only two Mexican restaurants run by local Hispanic families. The jobs that Hispanics hold are, in general, proportionate to their overall population in town.
As a Libertarian who studied Austrian Economics, I can confirm every word Rubenstein wrote.
It's sad that so many people still believe that Cato is an unbiased Libertarian think tank.
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From: Henry Houston (e-mail him)
Re: An Iowa Reader Explains Why Senator Dianne Feinstein Keeps Losing On AgJobs
Letter writer Dick Kryhoski is partially correct in his analysis of why Dianne Feinstein keeps failing during her "umpteen attempts" to pass an AgJobs amnesty. Feinstein's legislation is, as Kryhoski points out, more about immigration than farm labor.
But a simpler explanation is that Feinstein and all her treasonous colleagues overreach.
One its face, a guest worker program could work. On the whole, Americans don't want to do stoop labor. Most of the poorest can figure out how to get welfare or Supplemental Security Income so why sweat in the fields?
Instead, invite in whoever wants to pick crops, mostly Mexicans and Central Americans, and pay them. They're happy to earn a salary that looks like a fortune to them.
But then make sure they go home when the season ends: no schooling for the kids, no medical treatment except for life-threatening emergencies, no anchor baby citizenship and no other inducements to stay like drivers licenses or instate university tuition.
That's where Feinstein goes wrong. Her legislation always includes "paths to citizenship," Obamacare coverage and whatever else La Raza writes in for her.
The only "path" available to guest workers should be the one back home.
Still, I'm opposed to guest workers in any form because the federal government has never been able to manage or enforce any kind of immigration program.
But Feinstein's devil is in the details. If she weren't so greedy, she'd have a better chance.
Houston's previous letters about former Sen. Pete Domenici and former governor Bill Richardson are here and here.
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From: Ali Sharma, Ph.D (e-mail her)
Re: Patrick Cleburne's Blog: From The Minneapolis Fed: Puerile Immigration Propaganda
In a recent conversation I had with a George Mason University economics Ph.D. student, he took the same position as Minneapolis Fed economist Tobias Madden, whom Cleburne cited in his excellent blog.
He (the student) contends that we should have unlimited immigration to drive down wages and prices, thereby, as he incorrectly sees it, benefiting the economy with cheaper goods. What it really does is improve conditions for immigrants at the expense of Americans.
It doesn't matter to the student that:
Most of the benefits would accrue to the immigrants themselves
Therefore, we'd actually be re-creating the conditions that many immigrants are fleeing, namely overpopulation and high unemployment. (He points to Europe's sustained high unemployment but ignores that that Europe also has more social programs than we do to support unemployment.)
Workers are also consumers and as wages decline and fears about job security increase, immigrant employees are less inclined and less financially able to buy so they therefore don't actually benefit from lower prices.
My naive friend also has a touching but misplaced faith that lower labor costs will be passed on to the consumer.
I earned my doctorate in marketing and promise you that businesses look to maximize profit. Companies won't pass on lower costs unless it's essential to their strategy and fits in with the existing economic conditions.
For many products, low cost hasn't been as important to consumers as design or styling which is why, for a while, Wal-Mart tried to emulate Target by offering upscale goods.
Some economists contend that the recent drop-off in the level of immigration proves that immigrants are responding to the declining American labor market.
However, that analysis ignores illegal aliens who don't leave because they can collect welfare on behalf of their U.S. born anchor babies and have medical care and educations that are free to them but expensive to us. Finally for the aliens, there's always amnesty's lure.
I note with interest that Madden is a government employee. Like most federal workers, he's insulated from having to compete with immigrants because government jobs have citizenship requirements.
Sharma teaches marketing at a state university and has taught in the Middle East. She writes that her experience gives her a real appreciation for how bad many people have it overseas—and why immigration policy to this country should be in the interest of America and Americans first, immigrants second. Sharma adds: "Nations are more than economies, a fact that economists don't want to recognize."
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From: Raymond Golich (e-mail him)
Re: Today's Letter: An Illinois Reader Says Obama Is Listening To The Wrong People
Let's be candid.
Obama's problem whether it relates to "comprehensive immigration reform," health care or all his czars, is that he has zero executive experience, zero business experience and zero military experience.
During Obama's five-minute career in the US Senate, he was the most left wing senator, always supporting whatever liberal legislation was put in front of him.
Obama's whole life has been spent around anti-American radicals, communists and anarchists. Now that most Americans have caught onto him, Obama's tanking.
Obama has all the makings of a one-term president, his Nobel Prize notwithstanding.
Golich's previous letter about Islam's takeover of his lifelong Dearborn hometown is here.
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