Tag Archives: immigration

A Thought on $3.7 Billion

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President Barack Obama thinks it’ll take $3.7 billion to handle the explosive flood of unaccompanied children pouring over our border as a result of his decision not to enforce our existing immigration laws. Obama wants the money to plus up existing border security, illegal alien housing in the border area and elsewhere, dealing with the health problems these children are unavoidably bringing with them, transportation, handling legal matters, and so on.

Assuming the money should be spent (a position I don’t endorse, but stay with me), I have a thought on how the money should be allocated. I’d pass a $3.7 billion appropriation that allocates the money in this way:

  • $3.5 billion as block grants to go directly to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, the border states most affected, for use in plussing up existing border security, illegal alien housing in the border area, dealing with the health problems these children are unavoidably bringing with them, and so on. Notice that this money does not through Federal hands; it completely bypasses the Feds and goes directly to the states.
  • $0.2 billion allocated 80:20 between the states (the 80) and the Federal government for the express purpose of handling transportation back to the children’s home country. This is a generous sum of money, and it gives the states the wherewithal to transport the children, if the Feds are too reluctant to do so.

Notice that there’s not a dime for “handling legal matters.” There aren’t any; existing law makes clear that these children are eligible for immediate transport to their country of origin. To those who cry these children are running from gangs and violence: there has been no surge in any of that in the last few months; the gangs and violence have been extant for years. That doesn’t mean we should ignore the children’s plight today; it does mean claimed urgency is wholly a cynical political ploy by the Left.

These children and others like them should, indeed, get the benefit of American help and largesse—as part of a proper reform of our immigration system.

The EU, Immigration, and National Sovereignty

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Germany can’t require the spouses of Turkish immigrants to show a basic knowledge of the German language before granting them visas, the European Union’s top court ruled on Thursday, overturning a condition aimed at preventing forced marriages and at promoting integration.

Foreigners, after all, shouldn’t be expected to assimilate into the culture and country to which they emigrate; they should continue to live apart from their new community, leading in the aggregate to the fractionation of their new “country.”

There are complications in this particular case (there always are when law is involved), but that’s the thrust of this ruling. The court went on:

A new restriction might be permitted if it were justified by an overriding public interest, and didn’t “go beyond what is necessary in order to attain it,” the court said.

However, Germany’s language requirement didn’t meet those conditions, the court said.

Because assimilation and integration into the host society, the host and sovereign nation, isn’t an overriding public interest. But then, the EU doesn’t want its constituent members to be unified and sovereign countries, anyway—fractionation facilitates the current push for political union of the European Union into one nation by weakening government’s ability to resist the push.

It’s Not Me, It’s Them

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Regarding the current children’s crisis on our border with Mexico, and following a private meeting with Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) which President Barack Obama is masquerading as a suitable sub for him personally visiting that border area, President Obama had some comments.

I urged the Governor to talk to the Texas delegation, which is obviously at the heart of the Republican caucus both in the House and has great influence in the caucus in the Senate. …if the Texas delegation is prepared to move, this thing can get done next week.

And

[T]he only question at this point is why wouldn’t the Texas delegation or any of the other Republicans who are concerned about this not want to put this [Obama’s request for nearly $4 billion] on a fast track and get this on my desk…?

And

I suggested to the Governor he has, I suspect, some influence over the Texas delegation….

And

One of the suggestions I had for Governor Perry was that it would be useful for my Republican friends to rediscover the concept of negotiation and compromise.

And so on.

It’s never Obama’s fault. He’s just a helpless pawn of a pernicious House of Representatives and of Evil Republicans.

Obama and our Border

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Howard Kurtz has said,

Would a presidential visit solve anything? Not really.

Not by itself, no (and that’s the thrust of his piece—not by itself, but it would help).

However, it’s always important—overtly useful, even—for the guy in charge to go to the scene and see with his own eyes, hear with his own ears, smell with his own nose, touch with his own hands, the situation that’s of such grave concern, like the children’s humanitarian crisis currently expanding along our border with Mexico.

For President Barack Obama not merely to avoid this necessity here but actively to refuse it is to raise a question: of what is he so terrified that he might see, hear, smell, touch? The reality of the situation?

Obama says that members of his staff have been to the border many times, and they keep him closely informed. Recall, though, that this is the same staff that have been keeping him so closely informed that he usually doesn’t find out about this or that until he reads it in the newspapers.

Obama also says that he didn’t go because he didn’t want just another photo opportunity. He’s only projecting his own failing here, though; no one else who wanted him to go—not Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), not Congressman Henry Cuellar (D, TX)—were interested in that; they were interested only that Obama go see for himself, go speak with the personnel on scene for himself, go talk to the children himself.

Obama’s not interested, though.

Another Thought on Immigration

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Gordon Crovitz, in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, pointed out some statistics.

The Congressional Budget Office last year estimated that legalizing the 11 million undocumented immigrants would boost federal revenues by $48 billion over 10 years while costing $23 billion in public services. Adding more skilled workers would bring in $100 billion over a decade, mostly from increased income taxes.

In addition to this, I add (and reiterate) immigrants start more businesses than Americans who’ve been here for two or three or more generations. Those businesses employ people, and more so than “just” immediate family members.

There’s also the demographic question: the Unites States has only just returned to a birth rate that even barely replaces our death rate. We need immigration for continued population growth; we don’t want to face the population implosion risk from aging that Russia, the People’s Republic of China, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, and lots of other nations are facing. When Social Security was enacted, there were seven workers to contribute to the SS payments for every retiree, and that retiree had a retired life expectancy of some five to seven years. Today there are three workers per retiree, and that retiree has a retired life expectancy of nearly fifteen years. If we don’t intend to change the structure of Social Security, we need immigration.