Dick Morris offers thoughts on Bush and immigration

Dick Morris to president Bush: "Get serious about immigration reform" (link). Unfortunately, the reform he has in mind is the kind with quotes around it.

In the hawk category, he supports the idea of a fence, an idea that does have its downside. Perhaps big fences in some areas and DMZ zones in others would be the better approach.

However, in the "reform" category, he supports Bush's Temporary Worker Plan, with one minor refinement: he wants to turn it into the Kennedy McCain massive amnesty by offering a "path the citizenship". The result?

A guest-worker program will end the leper colony within our borders of disenfranchised, invisible illegals who have no rights and no responsibilities.

Well, they aren't really that though. First, illegal aliens count towards determining congressional districts.

And, there are plenty of far-left organizations working night and day to get them more and more benefits. Are those organizations going to just disband if we get a wonderful new guest worker scheme? No, they're going to keep plugging away trying to get more and more for anyone who doesn't have everything that U.S. citizens have. Nothing in Bush's or Morris' scheme does anything about that. Some of those organizations even have links to the Mexican government.

And, there are plently of far-left racial demagogues who currently basically represent illegal aliens. The name Gil Cedillo springs to mind. And, people like him would get even more power in the case of a guest worker scheme, enabling them to bring in more people of their same race, thereby getting even more power. Once again, neither Bush nor Morris have a solution to that.

Morris also confuses OTMs with visa overstays. The reason we can't do anything about the latter is because there are hundreds of thousands of them, and just a few dozen agents who go out and pick them up. Meaning they only concentrate on the really bad ones. And, even when they do that the far-lefties whine.

Continuing with our tour of bad ideas:

A vital form of foreign aid for Mexico and the impoverished countries of Central America is the remittances sent each week by illegal immigrants to their families back home.

The "foreign aid" line is straight out of the Cato Institute playbook. When even the Bush administration says they're bad, you know they must be really, really bad: U.S. Amb. Tony Garza: "Reliance on remittances from the U.S. is not a viable economic policy."

It's not "foreign aid", it's an unhealthy crutch. And, it's also a huge incentive for those countries to keep sending us more people and to make sure that those people keep sending money home. How do they do that? One way is sending consuls to pitch city councils to accept Mexican ID cards.

Then, Morris uses the word "Anglo". And:

But it is also in our interest to allow immigrants to come and settle here legally.

Generally speaking, it is. However, we also can't allow Mexico to worm their way into our political system, something that massive immigration from that country - legal or illegal - will allow. All those people sending billions back to Mexico provides a huge incentive for them to keep the money flowing, and that threatens the U.S. Morris should think about this whole issue in a bit more depth.

Comments

Like you, I am ill disposed against moochers who want the government (a.k.a. "the rest of us") take care of them.

Unlike you, I do not distinguish between moochers foreign and moochers domestic. Therefore, my own political focus is on the curbing of mooching per se, not on the discouiraging of hard wordking soulmates who just happen to be foreign.

"thoughts"

You're being generous.