Close the border. Don't be demagogued by false charges of nativism and racism. Worry more about unemployed American citizens and stressed taxpayers than Mexican nationals fleeing a nation rich in natural resources. Hanson

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5/6/13, "Illegal Immigration: Who Benefits? ," "Why does the well-off California suburbanite stand shoulder to shoulder with La Raza?" Victor Davis Hanson, NRO

p. 3, "In any Gang of Eight–style caucus, assume that its Democratic members would not wish to endanger the present political realities that have changed the electoral map of the southwestern United States. In cynical fashion, Democrats will grant concessions on guest workers to pacify Republican grandees fronting for business, in exchange for amnesties that will maintain demographic dividends and their own political futures. As a general rule of thumb, any time a Democratic legislator praises a Republican counterpart for being reasonable and sensitive, we can equate such magnanimity with private guffaws about the naïveté — if not greed — of his opposite number. How ironic that the “Latino” vote is probably not what lost the Republicans the last election — instead, it was the working-class whites who stayed home because they sensed that they were not a part of Mitt Romney’s world, and who mostly oppose blanket amnesties

unless they come with ironclad assurances of closed borders.

And what about the American people? The public that feels most immediately the social costs of illegal immigration bitterly resents the cynical non-enforcement of the law. Whereas professors in Maine or Wisconsin may see a liberal civil-rights issue, ranchers along the border or parents whose children are at a school in Tulare see only illiberality: the public bearing the social costs of employers’ greed, and an ethnic lobby practicing a disturbing chauvinism concerned not with illegal immigration per se, but only with illegal immigration from Latin America. (Were 1 million Chinese arriving illegally each year, La Raza would be decrying non-enforcement of the law and unfair competition to American workers.)

In the same manner in which principled skepticism concerning gay marriage became homophobia, support for fracking made one a polluter, doubts about the government’s responsibility to provide wealthy women with free birth control equated with misogyny, or worries over curbing the Second Amendment were synonymous with redneck heartlessness, so too border enforcement is now tantamount to nativism and racism — charges analogous to chmild molestation for most Americans today.

Solutions? Close the border. Deport illegal aliens who are not working and have been regularly on public assistance, have violated U.S. criminal laws, or have just recently arrived. After that, allow the law-abiding, employed long-term resident to pay a fine and remain on U.S. soil, while learning English and applying for citizenship — from the rear of the line. Aid the transition of American citizens off state support into the labor force; take the moral high ground with Mexico and demand respect for U.S. sovereignty and U.S. laws. Do not be bullied by La Raza, and instead understand the basis of its philological reality. Do not let yourself be demagogued by false charges of nativism and racism. Worry more about unemployed American citizens and stressed taxpayers than about Mexican nationals who are fleeing a nation rich in natural resources and in need of millions of reformers.

All that should be the basis for immigration reform — and thereby will ensure outrage from the special interests that are so heavily vested in the present violation of the law."


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