Support our troops, Washington has made them, political collateral in many ways, prosecuting and persecuting while doing photo-ops, to say we are behind you, Yeh right!
One Old Dog

Gallop recently did a poll that suggested that worldwide, something like 700 million people wanted to immigrate and the USA was by far-and-away their preferred destination. Of course the vast majority of these people are desperately poor. If they were allowed to come and if they were given the vote they would almost certainly be voting for Democrats. Most of our current flow of immigrants vote for Democrats and there is no reason to think these newcomers would vote differently. They would vote themselves a heaping serving of socialism and pillage the treasury and the taxpayers. The very libertarians who supported such a misguided policy would quickly find themselves tossed from power and they would watch economic and just about every other kind of freedom be replaced by leftist stat-ism.

The problem with the open markets and free movement of people argument is that immigrants are totally different than goods and services because they are people and when you import people it comes with consequences that extend well beyond their impact on the economy. They have cultures and traditions that are radically different than our own. If that in itself is not worrisome enough, they vote.! I can’t think of an example in human history where hundreds of millions of desperately poor people voted for small government. low taxes and economic freedom when the alternative was the (false) promise of socialism and free stuff and cradle to grave government catering to their needs.

I have a lot of sympathy with libertarian positions and I don’t much like big government stat-ism from the right any better than I like it from the left. But almost any ideas when pushed to its extreme becomes absurd. Open borders libertarianism is an example of this absurd extreme because it sews the seeds of its own destruction. The very freedom it championed would quickly be over-whelmed by the new voters who would replace it with socialism and stat-ism from the left.

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

It is simply absurd to posit that when the Constitution was written that these great men did not have a particular posterity in mind. The truth was affirmed in Federalist Paper No. 2, in Washington’s Farewell Address, in Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia Query 8, and in the writings and speeches of numerous other leaders of the founding generations. If you take the time to research it, you’ll learn that original intent regarding who we are was reaffirmed numerous times in the Congressional record during the crafting of the 14th Amendment.

If you can read the documents and history and come away with the notion that any of our forebears intended for this nation to be populated willy-nilly by just anyone with an urge to make a buck while intransigently keeping alien cultures and loyalties, I can’t help you. It seems a symptom of too many of those exposed to leftist indoctrination since Hart-Cellar. Indoctrinated egalitarianism is usually incurable and often fatal if left to metastasize into a reason for having no checks upon or preferences regarding the comportment of the peoples and the numbers of them that a nation brings into the polity to share the ballot.

If our nation’s notions of who we are have devolved to the point at which we will put short-term market interests and profit ahead of our solemn responsibility to care for our culture or above our founders’ charge to remain bound by our particular established social contract, then we will surely fail the generations that follow.

If you believe in our Constitution, it’s Preamble must be prescriptive or the rest of it is meaningless.

The immigration problem is twofold: A) immigration laws are too restrictive, which requires people to take an illegal path to come to the U.S. and B) we should stop the funding programs everyone is complaining about paying for.

Conservatives — who claim to be pro-liberty — should stop complaining about people trying to enact the free market by coming to America to work. This is always anti-market protectionist nonsense. It’s like Prohibition for travel, and has the same bad results. It’s morally wrong to try to restrict someone’s freedom when they don’t want to harm you, but add to the economic productivity of this country.

I am also amazed when conservatives cite the economic conditions in this regard. Since when does freedom result in less economic prosperity? Careful, you’re sounding like liberals. The idea that cheap workers coming here will hurt us is utterly false.

The government has absolutely no right to keep *peaceful* individuals out of the U.S. You should be able to come and work by passing a simple background check, period. Your ancestors are all lucky they squeaked through the gate to come to the U.S. when they did.

If we have a problem with paying taxes to support them, then eliminate the entitlements.

The proper free-market, prosperity-oriented approach is to support amnesty, eliminate immigration restrictions, and eliminate the welfare entitlements we are spending money on. Waffling on such principles is precisely what has driven advocates of limited government and personal liberty out of the GOP.

Jeff Montgomery
http://funwithgravity.blogspot.com

It derives from their deception and play on words such as refusing to call illegal immigrants illegals. To the Dems, if the GOP is against illegal immigration, then the GOP is against all immigration, which is of course a lie.

But the people should know by now that everything the radical left does and says is a lie and senseable people will not be fooled again,..I hope.

Why is it that I don’t ever hear anyone pointing out the vital fact that history provided our nation with blessed – I’ll contend Providential – time outs in the flow. This “nation of immigrants” nonsense was the title of a book by JFK, and prior to that publication the notion would have been deemed laughable in most parts of the USA.

I’ll quickly review history: Firstly, there was a nearly four-decade break from our founding to the first significant new wave of immigrants (the term “immigrant” was coined in 1789 by an American cartographer, and it was considered far from being a term of endearment). Then there were moderate flows, lulls and even some negative net migration years up until the great wave beginning in 1890 – the numbers you might see never count the level of repatriation, but if the repatriation levels of the great wave are at all informative, there have to have been some “zero net” years after 1840 and before 1890. Nearly one in four of all great wave migrants repatriated.

In response to outcry over the great wave’s length and intensity, Congress stepped in and did what world economics, famine and war had previously done to regulate the flow by passing the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924. This put a near net halt (comparatively) to immigration for 41 years until the Hart-Celler Act gave us the structure for this awful mess we have today. I sometimes wonder what this nation would have done had, at the outset of WWII, its major cities been populated with huge German and Italian communities not assimilated but in diaspora instead of the smaller, well-assimilated and more dispersed ones it actually had. That’s what we would likely have had to deal with without the time-out. That’s why I believe time outs are necessary and vital. One doesn’t have to be “anti-immigration” to be for time-outs. Without them, we would likely not have made it this far as a nation.

Your idea about “job creation immigration” is far better than what we have now, but nearly anything this side of amnesty would be better than we have now. Still, I would oppose it based on my belief that so long as the GOP plays its ethnic pandering games, no matter how colorful and prettied up they may be, it is simply casting itself in various shades of Democrat-lite, just another caboose on the hyphenation-nation train.

While it’s a nice idea at first blush, by intentionally pandering to and reinforcing societal and cultural divisions you’re still playing the whole ball game in left field. This sort of unprincipled pandering is the very thing that makes me retch when I happen across my voter registration card while thumbing through my wallet. I can hardly glance at the hideous thing the “R” has become; its divvying us all up like lords did serfs is a Democrat thing. I really don’t want any part in it.

http://www.heritage.org/research/labor/wm1916.cfm

I’d trust this over anecdotal comments.

Also, there’s no basis for equating libertarians and anarchists.

The push for amnesty if anything has alienated a demographic we were doing well with until we tried to play identity politics.

There has never been a more forceful advocate on the Republican side for amnesty than John McCain in an attempt to win the Hispanic vote, and yet he received the lowest amount of Hispanic voters for a Republican in several generations.

I’m hoping Republicans learned their lesson on this front. Not only is amnesty bad policy, it’s political loser to boot.

I HATED the Bush/Rove strategy of playing identity politics with Hispanics. I have no problem with reaching out to minority groups and communicating our principles and letting them know they are welcome to join us. But, if like the Bush/Rove Strategy, this reaching out involves making promises and particularly promises that are contrary to our principles like promising amnesty, then it is a terrible strategy. First, it makes us no better that the Democrats and second it is guaranteed to be a losing strategy because when it comes to pandering, NOBODY can beat a Democrat.

I’m not sure what you were getting at with coalition building with Asians. If the idea is that they would basically join us because they agreed with our principles on immigration being focused towards job creators I am OK with that. If the idea is that somehow Asians are going to get special or preferential treatment under the new policy I think the strategy would be unprincipled and I am opposed.

I like the idea of immigration being focused towards job creators. I think that is good for Republicans and good for the country too. If that happens to be an attractive idea for Asians that is a bonus. If blacks and Hispanics like it, even better. But identity group politics should not be driving our platforms.

The whole gang of Redstaters tries to write the flipping legislation

I love you guys for that

let’s use this health care “crisis” for example. is there ANYONE who is really completely satisfied with all aspects of their health ins/care situation. no. most people would LOVE to have the ability to shop nationwide for coverage, so they could tailor their plan. or, they would like to purchase it themselves, with the same tax benefits that corps get. or just buy a catastrophic care plan, to cover the worst scenarios cheaply, and pay for more regular care out-of-pocket. gee, didn’t the gop have control of the white house, and both houses of congress? yeah, i thought so.

so, why was none of this ever done? you mean they couldn’t get off their collective fat a$$es to get this done for the [people? there’s our problem folks, they didn’t do $hit when they had the chance.they have zero credibility with me, and a lot of those like me. when i hear them screaming about spending, it’s all i can do to not throw my satellite radio out the window. bush began a lot of this crap,0bama just put it into hyperdrive!
tarp-bush
gm bailout-bush
choosing which firms were “too big to fail”(lehman,bears stearns,agi,goldman-sachs)-bush!
not at least trying to cut the budget to pay for the wars(or just to cut for general principle)-bush.

A firm I worked for year ago that had someone from Pakistan on a visa performing a highly-skilled engineering job for around $25,000 a year as opposed to the firm hiring someone for around $70,000-$80,000 a year. He was a great guy, and he was ecstatic to have the job, but I really don’t see how it benefits our economy when firms start paying high skilled labor less than burger-flippers.

My job isn’t effected by this type of labor, but I know a large amount of people that justifiably feel threatened by the thought of billions of people all over the planet that want to come here and work for substantially less wages.

I’m for free-markets, but I absolutely reject the libertarian/anarchist, open-borders argument that anyone who wants to come here and work we should allow.