November 09, 2006

OK, Fellow Democrats, We Got Lucky, Now Fix Immigration Or We’re Out Soon.

By Donald A. Collins

Alan Alexander Milne’s famous children’s rhyme seems apt these days. Of course few observers are in any doubt as to why the American public has voted out the Republicans in the House and produced a likely dead heat in the Senate. Unlike the mother who couldn’t understand why her daughter was so cranky and upset. A couple of Milne’s familiar verses may suffice for me to make my point:

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's crying with all her might and main,
And she won't eat her dinner - rice pudding again -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I've promised her sweets and a ride in the train,
And I've begged her to stop for a bit and explain -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

Like Mary Jane’s mother, who kept feeding her that dreaded rice pudding again, Mr. Bush just didn’t get it, stupidly, even though we citizens kept protesting about being served the same fare day after day. “Stay the course” has been recently replaced by other nostrums equally idiotic, but it was very likely Iraq and the perceived lack of an exit plan that the public felt was reason enough to make a major change. Bush has now admitted if we leave we lose control of the Iraq oil. Remember, it wasn’t about the oil when we went in? Uh huh.

Bush will now have the worst two years of his Presidency and he deserves them. Iraq has proved us Democrats best friend, a horrible policy which gave us a chance to govern.

Not that what we will see from the new Democrat control of the House will necessarily be good for America. Incoming House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues will likely embark on a long series of punitive hearings which will probably unearth levels of Iraq corruption that will make earlier scandals such as the 1920's Tea Pot Dome scandal look like penny ante play. While it is good to know the truth, we can only hope that in their rush to make Bush and his bad guys look worse, they will not forget why they got elected.

It was to make our lives better. So what will do that? There are many issues that could be mentioned, but the fear mongering which has helped hugely to keep Bush in power needs to be replaced by real objectivity about the dangers of terrorism, an practical assessment which relates this threat to other dangers which have much more effect on our lives than even the likely recurrence of some sort of Osama replay.

How about starting by fixing our broken borders? How about making sure those here are legally here? What about enforcing our existing immigration laws? What action can be taken against those who hire illegal labor? How about an ID system which can facilitate airport boardings? The voting record so far of the incoming Democrats has been appallingly against doing any of those urgent actions.

Hope the first thrust of the Democrats in the House will not be to send a clone of the Senate’s S.2611, a “comprehensive reform” travesty calling for huge legalization of millions of illegal aliens already here and millions more to come, over for a House Senate conference and hence to a waiting Bush signature. If they do, I predict our tenure in power will be 2 years.

In the past several years, the vast majority of Americans have fully awakened to the dangers of this immigration invasion, supported in no small measure by the corporations who have bought Congress and White House.

Americans now intensely feel the crowding, the sopping up of their birthright services and the filling of their urban spaces by the hordes (over 40 million,) who have arrived since immigration laws were changed in 1965. They know that 300 million, the presently reported level of US population, is not only an underestimate, but only a way station on the road to 500 million by 2050, when Social Security will be bankrupt and the urban messes we now have will seem almost benign.

Real reform, real emphasis, real spending on core issues such as infrastructure, education for our next generation of leaders, including benefits like the G.I. Bill for veterans, and recognizing that endless growth in the numbers of unskilled, culturally alien slaves is a fool’s delusion, a policy which with no benefit to American security, prosperity or staying power as a great nation.

We need a national growth policy, one which recognizes our limited ability to absorb aliens without severe damage to our way of life, giving reasonable numbers of newcomers the chance to blend into our world, not try to transform whole sections of our country into their vision of dysfunctional homelands where life for these migrants had become untenable.

So, fellow Democrats, we have a real challenge. If we fritter it away, we will lose again. And believe me, the Republicans know the power of doing real immigration reform as evidenced by the survival of a number of Republicans who used that issue to stay in Congress. They know that Iraq needs fixed, but they also know that the American majority will support fair, enforced limits on immigration and that Americans are dead set against another big amnesty to please the ethnic lobbies, the immigration bar and the businesses who hire illegal aliens. So, Ms. Pelosi, with your open border agenda, be aware, be wise, and be willing to do what most Americans have asked Congress to do. Stop another big amnesty and tighten our borders now.