It's all too easy to get discouraged as well as disgusted, watch guys like Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) grandstanding to "pay back" his Hispanic supporters for his squeaker election win in Nevada by trying to ram through the DREAM Act in the lame duck session now sitting.
Since new Open Border laws were passed in 1965, they have been central in bringing our present population from 194 million to its present level of 310 million—on the way, as a Roy Beck video recently projected, to a population of 400 million by 2050 and 625 million by 2100. There has been no effort since to slow unneeded numbers, to even measure need, or even to calculate the impact on our environment, our culture or our general well-being.
In short, no effort by Congress to have a really reasoned debate. These elitist worthies simply sold out, lock, stock and barrel, to the Cheap Labor crowd, the big bucks manipulators on Wall Street, and the religious and ethnic lobbies.
But, the above notwithstanding, I am now more than ever optimistic that we can shortly win real patriotic reform.
Why? Because our present economic situation bids fair to stay lousy for years and years.
The American people are going to find out that "more and better" is not their future—as it has been since WWII. The competition from Asia, which I just visited again a couple of weeks ago, has gotten extremely keen. Cheap labor, growing use of better technology, much of it simply off-shored from the USA, and the intensely hard-working folks out there bent on catching up, will have a pressure on living standards far into the future.
Maybe Reid will ram this DREAM Act through. But if he does, Americans will soon realize that every DREAM Act kid they pay for from their diminishing tax stream means one American citizen's kid will not have a place. This DREAM Act giveaway could be the trigger poster child that sets anger at a new level, perhaps with a combo of bad news, building into a tsunami. How dandy can things be with nearly 10% unemployed and likely to be so for a long time?
The Tea Party has many members who see the connection between immigration and their best interests. While its objectives are far from focused, the visceral reaction to the prospect of less for all (except perhaps those on the Federal payroll) has gotten completely through to even some of the thickest skulls.
Nobody is so dumb that they don't see that the Federal Government employees at every level have been cut a fat hog—good salaries, no layoffs, and assured pensions, the later perk having long nearly vanished in the private sector.
So when Obama says no Federal employee raises in 2011, so what? My Social Security payments aren't going up either. But the greedy Republicans in Congress are still balking at taxing the rich and the extension of the Bush tax cut bill will likely be extended with that little absurdity intact.
Controlling expenses of government? The Republicans have no plan either. Neither the newly-anointed Republican House nor the already unpopular Obama Administration are going to be looking great in 2012. While a Third Party is not likely, the independents will again be the swingers in the equation. Betcha new faces will emerge.
And how about those scintillating deficits in states, cities, towns and hamlets? The so-called riskless municipal bonds are no longer riskless. Should substantial defaults keep coming, turning some major mini issues into Greek tragedies or Irish wakes, the squeeze on citizens at the local level will make bringing in those work visa employees even more unpalatable than the million-plus numbers of the alien workers now allowed every year by Congress.
Bottom line: Immigration must be reduced. Politicians in both parties will do everything they can to avoid it, but they will be forced to cut because of the sheer inability of our system to absorb any more.
When will this reduction begin? Probably soon, although of course counting on the American legislative system to act promptly on anything is uncertain. However, the forces at work to thrust this real reform reality in the faces of everyone on Capitol Hill and in the White House are powerful indeed.
After 45 years of excess immigration, the opportunity for real reform is on the horizon.
Immigration patriots—our time is at hand! Illegitimi non carborundum!
Donald A. Collins [email him], is a freelance writer living in Washington DC and a former long time member of the board of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. His views are his own.
