Apr 19 2008
Michelle Malkin Balks At Her Own Handy Work
It is rare when I take on the far right. It is usually a waste of time since they refuse to listen and then I get a bunch of blow back for daring to point out their mistakes. But I am a glutton for punishment, and I have to point out things that are just blatantly misguided.
When the far right tanked the last chance for immigration reform last year I went on record that they now OWNED every result of that short sighted act. If there was something in the laws they blocked – like the immediate deportation of aliens who commit violent crimes -those acts are now on their shoulders. I have posted on this responsibility shift forever – it is no longer a Bush or Congress responsibility for these problems, they had a plan in place and heading for passage.
So when I see Michelle Malkin holding up an example of a problem with immigration which she and her Amnesty Hypochondriacs are responsible for, I have to point it out.
WRAL reports on a new statistical breakdown of illegal alien drunk drivers in North Carolina. It’s a blood-pressure-raising look at the deadly revolving door, catch-and-release, the deportation abyss, and the danger of sanctuary policies embraced by those sworn to defend and protect the public:
And the deportation abyss is because the laws did not get passed and there will be no new laws for years to come. This is as much Michelle’s fault as those she lambastes – she just won’t admit her efforts to stop the legislation kept the status quo in place. I want to remind people why I call Michelle and Tancredo and their ilk Amnesty Hypochondriacs:
The far right literally lied when they claimed all we had to do was exercise current law and we could fix our immigration problems. They crafted this lie because there was a chance the comprehensive immigration bill would pass the senate, and those here illegally for a long time would only be punished by a fine and back taxes, and held to the promise to stay crime free and register with the new immigration system. They called this less-than-deportation punishment “amnestyâ€. That is why I call them the Amnesty Hypochondriacs. There never was Reagan-style amnesty on the table – but they lied about that too.
As people know I will not debate on false pretenses and lies. As the comprehensive immigration reform got closer to reality some panicked and started to believe exaggerated and extreme theories. They became invested in myths just as the left has invested in myths that Iraq is a defeat.
I have no choice but to remind people that actions have results, and you better take responsibility for all the results of your actions, not just the ones you wanted but all those you did not think through. That is the essence of law and order: ignorance is not an excuse. You cannot say I had not realized that would happen and get a pass on vehicular manslaughter. You can only get the lowered punishment for negligence verses premeditation.
Michelle and the Amnesty Hypochondriacs traded endless drunk drivers for the opportunity to try one more time to deport the illegals, either directly or through coercion from lost wages, etc. There never was going to be the removal of 10-20 million people who have lived here for years, but they were not thinking straight, they had to stop the bill which would not have provided the punishments they wanted. They did not care the vast majority in this democracy did not agree with them, and therefore they should have accepted the fact they did not have the numbers and let as much reform get passed as was possible.
The fact is we had two choices and they gave us the worst of the two. Choice one was (a) comprehensive reform passes with its imperfections, (b) the long term illegals get a process to prove they should, and then pay, to stay, and (c) we get to deport the violent criminals without minimal resistance from the judicial branch (there would be some test challenges, always are.
The second choice is where we are: (a) no immigration reform, (b) long term illegals get to stay and (c) we still cannot deport violent criminals. The lie back then was we could fix our problems with current law. I have many posts on why that was a lie and is a lie. So when Michelle holds up these examples of what she and others wrought last year when they killed immigration reform I can only shake my head and ask “what were you thinking?” Remember Michelle, all those dead children might have been alive if the Immigration Reform package had passed and these criminals would have been deported instead of given a second chance. You all own this issue now, since you left us with this mess.
Update: Pam over at Right Voices is hosting a neutral debate corner – I suggest folks also comment there as well as here and at Michelle’s site. As Pam notes, it is a debate worth having.
AJ,
“The new laws would have limited the ability of the judiciary to ‘interpret’.”
First of all ” limited” opens up a lot of possibilities, however you say my mind is closed and I’ve asked for the information. I was unaware there was this type of provision. Where is it found in the bill? I couldn’t find it.
“new immigration laws” will be roughly as effective to our immigration problem as “new tax codes” are to our convoluted federal tax structure. AJ, as an “independent conservative” (whatever that is), should have know that long ago. But that aside, I’m curious why AJ thinks that enforcing current law isn’t a solution but new law is? You’ll have to explain that one to me.
After careful review, anyone with a even a modicum of logic can come to no other conclusion: illegal immigration must be halted, illegal immigrants here now must be deported and legal immigration needs decreased from the approx. 2 million allowed in per year currently.
Please review the following report on the FISCAL COST OF IMMIGRATION by economist Edwin Rubenstein just released this past week:
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf
A partial summary of the report:
The Fiscal Impact on 15 Federal Departments surveyed was: $346 billion in fiscal related costs in FY 2007.
Each immigrant cost taxpayers more than $9,000 per year.
An immigrant household (2 adults, 2 children) cost taxpayers $36,000 per year.
Legal immigrants were not separated out from illegal immigrants for the fiscal impact study, but if they had been, the fiscal cost per ILLEGAL immigrant would be even more shocking than the figures quoted above.
The most extensive and authoritative study, prior to economist Edwin Rubenstein’s “The Fiscal Impact of Immigration” (April 2008 ) , is the National Research Council (NRC)’s The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration (1997).
The NRC staff analyzed federal, state, and local government expenditures on programs such as Medicaid, AFDC (now TANF), and SSI, as well as the cost of educating immigrants’ foreign- and native-born children.
NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal annual expenditures and pays $10,664 in federal taxes—that is, they generate a fiscal deficit of $2,682 (1996 dollars)per household.
In 2007 dollars this is a deficit of $3,408 per immigrant household.
With 9 million households currently headed by immigrants, more than $30 billion ($3,408 x 9 million) of the federal deficit represents money transferred from native taxpayers to immigrants.
Our national immigration policies have to work for the United States. While improving the plight of the world’s poor is a laudable goal, the finite resources we have available to fulfill that goal would be swamped if there wasn’t some orderly and manageable system in place to limit entry into the United States to what this nation can actually support. The more illegal aliens that are permitted to subvert the immigration system, the fewer immigrants we can accommodate who might actually produce a positive benefit for our country.
The more we become a nation of illegal immigrants, the deeper we fall into anarchy.
I’m curious why AJ thinks that enforcing current law isn’t a solution but new law is?
Plus lets not forget that Kennedy authored the law… he’s the one that authored the older laws too.
Is he suddenly writing immigration laws that dont make things worse?
For those who naively think current laws can be used to deport illegal aliens I turn your attention to one Michelle Malkin who admits the opposite is true (my post on it):
it is obvious that we cannot use current laws to deport illegals, even ones who commit crimes. This used to be openly admitted by the Amnesty Hypochondriacs when they were pushing for mass deportations – this was the barrier to their dreams. They needed stronger laws to be able to deport the immigrants.
But when the Comprehensive Bill was going to pass all of a sudden the laws they said needed fixing for years were just fine and we could do what we needed under current law. Sort of a strange shift in views since nothing new was passed in the interim.
You’re being so Democrat-like in the way you talk about this. It’s sad.
No Vince,
I am just not being far right – which is a small, small minority. Bush, Kyl, Grahm, McCain – all good conservatives who don’t buy into the heated immigration BS. All I have done is shown why Malkin is not being honest with herself, the conflict in her own arguments, the illogic of her shifting positions. I don’t bow down to any one – and if they are on an emotional tirade of illogic I will point it out. Too bad for them, not for me.
What is sad is the far right have become the elitists. They are the ‘pure’, above the riff raff. They are the ones who have belittled others for not agreeing with their narrow views. They are the ones looking for pure true conservatives. They are the ones in-sighting the mob.
I am not a democrat – but you definitely have your nose up in the air when you compare me to one. Which is worse? An elitist who turns on his allies or people who sit down and hammer out progress. Purity is for the insecure, not for me.
AJ,
I didn’t ask for perfection. I asked the root of the problem be addressed: an end to continued illegal immigration or at least a reduction. You seem to feel that any old bill was good regardless of whether of not it addressed the root problem. In other words, let’s do it all over again in 20 years (for the 4th time).
I am forced to conclude that you prefer to do nothing to prevent continued illegal immigration and concentrate on those who are already here. That is not perfection, that is abandoning the problem. Should we now call you an immigration abandoner?
Sorry Rick, you asked for a fantasy. The comprehensive bill, as I noted in the list of things it covered, would have eliminated illegal immigration because workers would fill the need or not be able to register. Illegals are mostly those who entered legally and overstayed. Some are illegal simply because the annual quota set by congress is too low for the demand for workers.
Your silly effort at projection is quite hillarious. I was for broad, historic reform and you and your ilk gave us the status quo – so I am for doing nothing? It is idiotic conclusions like this which led me to conclude the Amnesty Hypochondriacs had lost their minds and all ability to reason.
You do grasp how silly your statement is in the light of what I have championed and you have championed – right? Or did you just make up a lie to hide behind?
AJ, just “what” in current immigration efforts would you consider to be “broad, historic reform”? You’ve rejected the broad and historic ideals of conservatism for the usual give and take pandering of D.C.
Just what is this burr you have under your saddle for conservatives? Clearly it’s a sore subject for you.
LOL! 75,
The comprehensive reform package from last year was historic because it touched on all aspects of the problem (see my list of contents of the bill above).
What I have against the Amnesty Hypochondriacs is the idiocy the use to rationalize keeping the status quo – and then blaming others for their actions and results. This is one of a few areas where the far right (not conservatives – who are a much broader and more diverse group) lost their minds, insulted fellow conservatives and lost congress to the dems.
And you wonder why I give them no credibility and only scorn? Geez, anymore success like that and we will be living in a communist state.
Horse pockey. I work right across the street from the Homeland Security and INS office. There has been a tremendous upsurge in deportation proceedings where I live as the result of that last debate on the issues and pressure brought to bare on every level. There are “bus loads” of illegals being processed for deportation there every single day. Bus loads. How do I know this? They stop us (on both sides of the sidewalk) to bring them through nearly every day. Mostly, these days, it’s hispanics and eastern bloc.
The last attempt at a bill was like organizing getting a bigger, more efficient pump to pump water out of a bailing boat, and putting the intake hose near the hole in the boat. The more water you pump out, you get twice as much back in. And with us stopping you from using the pump and insisting you focus on the hole in the boat, you offer this lame argument that had we just let you pump, that at least it would have been something, a start. And what we are trying to do…is take your head with both hands…and shove it down to the hole in the boat and screaming IF YOU DON”T FIX THIS FIRST WE ARE GOING TO SINK ANYWAY. And you look up, and say….at least we could be pumping the water out better, that would be something?? Sheeesh.
It doesn’t matter that you can deport one person in obvious need of deporting quicker/easier/more efficiently, if you’ve got 2,000 more coming in right behind them!! I fail to see how the logic of that could escape someone who has a brain. The national problem we have is not that there are too many drunk driving alien criminals. It’s that there are too many people coming here “illegally”. The fix for this, other than having to deal with 12 million illegals and growing BECAUSE we have not fixed the real problem, is to address how people are getting here illegally and staying. NOT how to put them on a path to citizenship if they register once they get here and stay out of trouble. We have a fundamental disconnect on what the problem actually is. OR, as you have suggested before, you do understand the problem, but figure dealing with half of it is better than not chaning anything. That of course is making the VERY large assumption (that history on this issue does not support), that things will get better, not worse, with the new laws that primiarly focused on the people who were already here and put off issues of how they got here for another time.
Lastly, if the idea was to “start somewhere” and only address one part of this issue, they could have well just started with a bill that primarily focused on enforcement and legal obstructions to deportations, and they’d have HAD a bill they could have passed. And the reason that didn’t happen is because that’s not what the proponents of this bill wanted nor had in mind. That seemed clear enough to me at the time and I’ve found nothing since in further discussion about it that has changed my mind about that (despite some people declaring it so). We didn’t misunderstand the intent of that bill and what it was designed to do. We understood it perfectly, which is why we opposed it.
DC – get real. The deportations you see don’t even offset the new imports.
LOL! Believe whatever you want. Processing at INS is not getting them through the judicial hoops.
All your saying is the forces who wanted one thing couldn’t get the votes the comprehensive bill could because compromise was required in a dem controlled congress.
Well duh! Same lame arguments. We only wanted the parts we wanted and none of the parts the others wanted – who made it possible to get the numbers to pass! But hey, we have the hype-partisan victory and now everything is perfect. The hypochondriacs have the status quo they demanded – so don’t blame others for your results.
We are all awed with admiration in what you folks left us – honestly. We are just simply awed – with the same old crap we had for decades. And no control of Congress to boot. Stunning work there folks.
And if you want to make assumptions, then lets at least be honest about the probability here. Similar inititives have already been tried twice and resulted in exponentially more illegals here than ever. At least at the time, they recognized that they were not really addressing the core of the problem….but were leaving that for another time (that never happened).
So, the position that a yet “3rd” try at this without addressing the core issues of how people are getting here, is somehow going to have an impact on or reduce illegal immigration is …at best….at odds with the past and not likely to succeed in doing what it’s intended to do (like “most” gov legislation that requires gov oversight). Some would call that an assumption not based in logic or common sense.
The position that such an attempt would in fact cause increasingly MORE illegal immigration is not only a more objectively tangible position, but historically the most likely outcome. It would seem at that point, the argument is…yes…but at least as our boat sinks at the bow from the hole there, we’ll have perfected and instiituted a much better bailing process??
DC,
You want to be honest? Admit your success was a dismal defeat. Admit that all you did was retain the results of those previous failures. Admit this bill had things in never before seen (like no path to citizenship for migrant workers).
Don’t start spewing hypochondriac BS around here and expect anything less than being called on the BS.
You have no proof of your theory – none. You folks just make up myths to deny what happened. There was a chance for major change, but because there was no pressure to remove the long term illegals (thus the moniker “Amnesty Bill” something your side coined) the entire package of progress and you folks left us with the status quo.
Now you folks own the status quo since it was your efforts to keep us burdened with it. Not my fault you did this, not my problem you don’t like being reminded of what you brought this country – more of the same. You did congratulate yourselves when you did it – right?
LOL! And now you get to wallow in the fruits of your efforts. Those killed by criminals we could have deported are now your fault for not letting the new laws passed. You left them in this country. Not what I wanted.
AJ, The problem wasn’t created by “hypos”. And yes…we did in fact succesfuly defeat that bill (2x); it wasn’t hard….it did not have the support of the American people to pass. That’s why they tried to ram it through as they did…because it would have been the only way to do it.
I have NEVER argued that a migrant worker bill, etc., were “bad things”. That has never been the crux of my argument. That has been the crux of a disingenious response to our arguments (along with caling us bigots, etc.,). It has never been the cause that I have argued that we do not “also” need such inititives. But, even by your own admission, the bill was not focuse on, nor did it address the fundamental issues of how people were getting here illegally. That’s where the “it’s good enough” or better than nothing.
No, it’s not better than nothing if it actually serves to make the problem worse than doing nothing!!!! Which is exactly what the 2 previous “better than nothing” attempts did. We are BOTH assuming results here. You are basing your assumption on results based on a gov that is efficient, could oversee and mangage a 12 million and growing data base, and enforce written laws, rules and regs.
I’m basing mine on the history of legislation that never does what it’s intended, gets left behind unattended (Regardless of what it actually says), is not enforced, and is severely underfunded and undermanned to do the job. That and 2 previous attempts at “immigration reform” by only dealing with people that were already here…and causing the problem we have “now”.
What do you think the odds on that bet would be and who do you think it would favor??
And if you want to use BS statements as argument…..you let him in here illegally to start with….not what “I” wanted.
AJ,
I don’t read the views of those opposed to the reform bill as changing their views at all on the laws currently on the books. You’re missing the point…the laws on the books aren’t adequate and the laws that were in the new bill were not adequate (in their opinion) so why replace one bad law with another? They wanted definitive change and they didn’t see the new law as having that.
You never showed me where, in the bill “The new laws would have limited the ability of the judiciary to ‘interpret’.†Since I’ve yet to see any law that hasn’t been interpreted extensively I’d like to know what provision will prevent this.
AJ, just what makes you think it is the far right or conservatives who want the status quo? You’ve got your work cut out for you trying to sell that one. I’d say your failure to answer some key questions on this subject is more than enough evidence that you are out in the wind on the subject. And what’s with the LOL responses everytime? No offense but it conjures up images of the Hillary cackle……the nervous-I-don’t-have-an-answer-response we’ve come to know an love.
The proposed law from last year was all about securing the future voting bloc for the Democrat Party and the institution of slavery in the United States and that’s all.