March 24, 2006

Joe Guzzardi’s Promise: "I’ll Never Give Up!"

By Joe Guzzardi

The gloves are off. And the bare-knuckle fight is on.

Everyone in America knows that the future of the country, as we know it, is at stake when the Senate returns next week to debate which version of three disastrous immigration bills it may support.

A NumbersUSA.com analysis of the pending legislation—Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s S.2454, McCain/Kennedy’s S.1033 and Arlen Specter’s as yet unnamed proposal—would result in at least 20 million, 25 million and 30 million more immigrants respectively over the next decade.

 Rosemary Jenks, NUSA's Director of Government Relations, writes that:

The McCain/Kennedy bill will certainly add even more than that because it allows at least 400,000 foreign "guest" workers each year. And after four years of work here, they would be allowed to get permanent green cards. But we decided not to make all the many guesses involved with that one when figuring out the overall 10-year effect. But it would be reasonable to estimate that the McCain/Kennedy numbers could go as high as 30 million.

If Congress becomes stalemated and passes no legislation, past recklessness by Congress will still result in another 10 million foreign workers and dependents permanently settling over the next decade. [Rosemary's detailed analysis of all these bills here.   Rosemary's numerical calculations here.]

Through an outpouring of letters, phone calls and FAXes, the Senate knows that the American people want illegal immigration ended and also want a significant reduction in legal immigration and non-immigrant visas.

So with Congress set to reconvene March 27^th, the two sides—the American people vs. the U.S. Senate and the open borders lobby that controls it—go to their respective corners.

Since I have already written about the Senate Judiciary Committee, truly the most villainous of all, I’ll omit it from the following—and because of space considerations incomplete—list.

I’ll also point out that even in the challenges that are headed our way, underlying advantages for us are always to be found..

In one corner:

The Rats

In full page ads titled "A Message from Mexico about Migration" that ran in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Mexico spent approximately $250,000 to regurgitate the same tedious message it has been promoting since Vicente Fox became president. That is, immigration is "a joint responsibility" of the U.S. and Mexico and that Mexico must play a central role in formulating any U.S. guest worker programs.

Good news: the ad is a complete waste of money and could not possibly persuade one single reader to change his mind.[Mexico’s New Immigration Strategy: Full-Page Ads, Daily Bulletin, Jeff Keating, March 22, 2006]

Writing in his March 21^st Global View column titled "Exam Week for the GOP Congress," [Link may require subscription] George Melloan (e-mail him) feeds off the bottom by referring to "vigilantism," "macho guys packing six-guns searching for wet-backs," "the U.S. needs labor," and finally, "they (the aliens) need to be given amnesty".

The good news: the WSJ is preaching, with increasing desperation, to its own special interest choir.

Despite the lofty language and the pious pleas for "Justice for Immigrants," ugly pedophilia charges continue to unfold. On March 21^st, the Chicago Tribune reported that a new list of 55 diocesan priests faced charges of sexual misconduct with minors dating back to 1950. And a new audit says that the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago repeatedly failed to act on multiple abuse allegations against Rev. Daniel McCormack.[Audit Says Archdiocese Botched Abuse Inquiry, Manya A. Brachear and Margaret Ramirez, Chicago Tribune, March 21, 2006]

While these disgraceful and sickening developments can by no means be called good news, they prove that the Roman Catholic Church has no right to claim the moral high ground on any social issue until it cleans up its own mess.

In the opposite corner:

The American People

Will Adams from Tancredo’s Washington D.C. office told me that the Congressman will travel to various states this week to appear on talk radio and local television programs. [Brownback’s Stance on Immigration Soft, Conservatives Say, Matt Sterns, Knight Ridder Newspapers, March 21, 2006]

Among the many replies to FAIR include suggestions to visit two important websites that emphasize the urgency of immigration reform: Border Film Project and We Hate Gringos (Caution! The latter contains vulgar language and sexually offensive gestures.)

Writing on March 17^th in an Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times, Hanna stated that 70 percent of Americans favor "a secure physical barrier" along the Mexico/U.S. border that would "cost far less than securing the border with manpower alone or providing medical and social services to illegal immigrants."

Hanna says Americans demand a "fence, not a farce." [A Real Fence for a Real Problem, Colin A. Hanna, Los Angeles Times, March 17, 2006]

As we go forward into next week, two important points are in our favor.

Tancredo, in his confrontation with the Senate Judiciary Committee, makes one of them when he repeatedly asks the Senators how many messages they get from their constituents demanding guest worker programs or amnesty.

Since the answer is always, "None," it makes the Senate’s argument a harder sell even to the Senators themselves.

And second, although the date is late, I still believe that the will of 70 percent of the American people can neither be marginalized, as our opponents try so hard to do, or ignored, as the politicians wish they could.

Keep the faith! The other side counts on us giving up.

You can be sure that I never will.

Joe Guzzardi [email him], an instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM.