The lettuce argument also parallels that for the retention of slavery.

2. There’s the “everyone’s an immigrant except for the ‘Native Americans’” argument. Well, the American Indians didn’t sprout from the land, they came across the Bering land bridge from Asia. So if the criterion is “You’re an immigrant if you had an ancestor who immigrated here,” then American Indians are immigrants, too.

In that case, “immigrant” is no longer a useful word, since EVERYONE’s an immigrant.

But actually, I’m not an immigrant — I was born in Chicago and have no other “native land” to return to. And, surely, most of the commenters here aren’t immigrants.

3. There’s the “the U.S. stole the southwest” argument. Well, the land in dispute was “owned” by Spain for a couple of centuries. Then by Mexico for about 25 years. During these periods, there weren’t more than a few thousand Spaniards or Mexicans in the entire territory. It’s been owned by the U.S. for about 160 years now, much longer than Mexico’s reign. And the U.S. has actually done something with the land, made it habitable for tens of millions. As Robert Kaplan has described, the difference between American and Mexican “twin cities” straddling the border is like night and day, yet the land is obviously the same. It’s not the dirt that’s important, it’s the people. Put another way, if culture didn’t matter, Mexico and Central America would be paradise.

4. There’s the “illegal aliens pay tons of taxes” argument. Sure, they all pay real estate taxes (in rent) and sales taxes (most states). Those working on the books (typically using stolen Social Security numbers) pay FICA and, perhaps, income taxes. But they’re mostly ill-educated and low-skilled and pay very low taxes connected to their working — in fact, many claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, i.e. negative income tax! If a family with both parents working has two kids in school, that’s at least $15k/year just for schooling, way more than the taxes on, say, $35k/year aggregate income.

Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation has done the systematic accounting on all this. A typical household headed by a low-skilled illegal alien is a net drain of about $20k/year for the rest of us, year after year. (Low-skilled Americans are a similar burden, but they’re part of the national family, not gate crashers from other societies.)

5. There’s the “illegal immigration is bad, but legal immigration is terrific” argument. Nope. If that were the case, legalizing (i.e. amnestying) the illegal aliens would solve the problem. But they’d still be (on average) low-skilled workers whose burden on the rest of us would continue. In fact, once legal they’d be able to access more public benefits programs, so their cost to the rest of us would actually rise substantially.

In short, most of the problems of mass illegal immigration are shared by mass legal immigration.

Finally, I offer my distilled observations of what mass immigration is doing to our country based on living in southern California 1996 - 2005, before I fled the madness:

- The flood of immigrants drives wages and living conditions in our central cities toward those of the Third World.

- The influx imposes both sprawl and gridlock on our metropolitan areas.

- Immigrant families needing services overwhelm our schools, taxpayer-funded healthcare facilities, and other public agencies.

- Those requiring services don’t assimilate and, instead, expect to be served in their native languages.

- American civic culture frays as each ethnic group establishes its own grievance lobby and pushes for preferences.

- Communicable diseases such as tuberculosis (new, drug-resistant strains) return.

- Shortages of water and other resources loom, especially in immigration-blitzed California.
12/19/2007 11:04:06 PM

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5386073.html

A provision sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, would modify the law that requires at least two layers of fencing and specifically spelled out where that fencing should be built in Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona.

“Signed by 84 leaders of Immigration Enforcement Groups!

In reaction to Jim Gilchrist’s (Co-Founder of Minutemen) lone endorsement of pro-amnesty Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee:

…”

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-94112.html

The bill is good, but it should have required any government contractor or subcontractor to verify its entire labor force, not just those employees working on gummint contracts. It should also have provided for a life-time debarring of a company, and its owners doing business under another company, for subsequent violations.

Sure beats the alternative we had in November, huh??….:)

Nichols should easily be able to stand up to any arm-twisting of this sort. If the DPVA pisses him off, he has the ultimate trump card that DPVA absolutely would never want him to play.