"John, you really should read up a little before trying to play the immigration card.
frontpagemag.com
"
Indeed, a good article.
And the effects on America and on some of our states (such as my state, California) have been devastating. For every skilled immigrant from the Indian Institute of Technology we are getting twenty Guatemalans, Mexicans, Hondurans, Thai, and so on. Often as part of families, subject to no quotas, as the article notes.
And these are the ostensibly legal immigrants.
Several years ago, circa 1995-7, the grand plan to halt further illegal immigration (or drastically slow it down) was revealed: Simpson-Mazzoli. It proposed to amnesty the many millions of illegal aliens with the solid promise, the stipulation, that no such amnesties would occur again. (Those conversant with psychology know about "random reinforcement," i.e., if the Mexicans and Guatemalans think another amnesty will occur, they'll swarm to the U.S. in hopes of being here when it happens.)
Simpson-Mazzoli passed. Many millions got their green cards and qualified for Social Security (despite insufficient work history...we credited them with years in Guatemala, ha ha).
But even now there's talk of another mass amnesty. Mexico is demanding it. (And this will accelerate the migration, as now Uncle Sugar is definitely proved to be a liar when he says "Just this one time!")
I look around me in California. I see many of my well-paid and otherwise wealthy friends leaving. Some went to Las Vegas, some to Oregon, some to Texas, some to other places. Partly it was taxes (CA has high tax rates, especially on capital gains, where the CA taxes are half of the overall Federal taxes, that is, no reduced rate). Partly it was less crowding, bigger houses for the same amount of money, more land, and less crime.
The population of California is still increasing, but the mix has changed a lot since I first arrived here in 1956. More gangs, more barrios, more single mothers, more young Mexicans pushing baby strollers, more tattoos, more shaved heads, more drive-by shootings, more Vietnamese gangs raiding houses and executing everyone inside, more negroes and Mexicans burning down their neighborhoods, more rapes, more murders.
California now has a $34 billion budget deficit. This despite high income taxes, high property taxes, high sales taxes, high energy taxes, and hundreds of "user fees" for what other states do for free. (I don't mind paying a "user fee" when someone is doing something for me that's a benefit for me, but requiring me to complete some form and then tacking on a $15 "user fee" to process it is too much.)
Our governor, the aptly named Gray Davis, recently declared that the reason California needs to raise its income tax rates to even higher levels is because California is the world's sixth or seventh largest economy.
Sounds reasonable...if we got exempted from _Federal_ taxes. But to pay taxes to a state with delusions of being a nation while also paying taxes at the Federal level just plain beggars the imagination!
No wonder a lot of high tech is either moving out, planning to move out, or looking for ways to shift income production (with California trying to find ways to "recapture" income earned in Arizona or Oregon or Malaysia).
I'm not opposed to immigration per se. But I am strongly opposed to an "open door" policy that lets Guatemalans and Hondurans and suchlike come here, apply for AFDC, WICC, food stamps, and welfare, and use the emergency room at our hospitals like it's their private doctor.
(Naturally I have solutions to these issues. If a penniless person uses taxpayer-funded resources, make them work off their debt. Why am I hiring gardeners when Mexicans are using hospital resources that even I cannot use? (Because they won't let folks like me just show up and see a doctor, as I obviously am not indigent.)
Sometimes I think that when the pot finally boils over, what we as a nation will do to these Turd World mutants will make what Hitler did to the Jews looks like an evening at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant.
Too many folks on the dole, too many government programs, too many taxes. Payback time is coming.
--Tim May |
