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Jewish World Review May 5, 2010/ 21 Iyar 5770 Twelve Million Illegals --- or Thirty? By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"Once Americans are satisfied that the borders are secure, the immigration policies they will favor will reflect their — and the law enforcement profession's — healthy aversion to the measures that would be necessary to remove from the nation the nearly 11 million illegal immigrants, 60 percent of whom have been here for more than five years. It would take 200,000 buses in a bumper-to-bumper convoy 1,700 miles long to carry them back to the border. Americans are not going to seek and would not tolerate the police methods that would be needed to round up and deport the equivalent of the population of Ohio."— George Will
It is no surprise that the American left is in hysterics regarding the new immigration law passed by Arizona. In the fevered constitutions of those raised to believe feelings matter most, hysteria, race-huckstering, name-calling and outright lying are considered a viable substitute for a logical argument.
Intellectual dishonesty has been the left's stock in trade for decades.
Unfortunately, there are many on the right who, while they may not be intellectually dishonest, exhibit demonstrable signs of intellectual laziness, as the above quote from a recent column by George Will indicates. I'm not singling Mr. Will out. There are plenty of other conservatives who are equally squishy when it comes to dealing with wholesale law-breaking. Much like their liberal brethren, expediency trumps the rule of law: illegals are here to stay, so we may as well make the best of it.
Yet expediency is precisely what got us to where we are today. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 provided a pathway to citizenship in exchange for stricter law enforcement against those entering the country illegally, and those who hired them to work. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the amnesty provision in that bill provided lawful permanent residence to approximately 2.7 million people. Just before amnesty was enacted, our illegal immigrant population was estimated to be 5 million people.
By 1997, new illegals had replaced former illegals and the illegal population was once again estimated to be 5 million.
To those of us who understand the machinations of leftist politics—even when those machinations are embraced by non-leftists—this is totally unsurprising. Much like the health care bill, the formula is simple: make all sorts of promises, then break them with impunity. The health care bill will save money? An abject lie. We will vigorously enforce laws in the 1986 immigration bill in exchange for amnesty? An even bigger lie.
And the numbers tell the story—or do they? Apparently I didn't make myself clear enough in a previous column on the subject. Take a good look at Mr. Will's comments above. He, like so many others in media and government, are doing their damndest to hammer home what may be the biggest lie of all:
We have "approximately" 11-20 million illegals in America.
Every single aspect of immigration "reform," aka amnesty, endorsed by both hard-core, open-border lefties and intellectually lazy, fearful-of-Hispanic-backlash conservatives is predicated on the idea that America can absorb millions of border-busters—again—because 11-20 million illegals is a "manageable" number. It doesn't even matter that this estimate which, by itself, has an eighty-one percent spread between the low number and the high number, is invariably considered the gospel truth in virtually every discussion of the subject.
Question: how many Americans would be willing to put, say, 30-40 million illegal immigrants on a "pathway to citizenship?" How many Americans, like George Will, et al, would be OK with legalizing a group equivalent to ten percent (or more) of the entire population of the United States of America? Sort of changes the entire discussion, no?
You bet it does—which is exactly why no one in the tank for amnesty will touch it.
And never forget: even the 11-20 million estimate doesn't include the extended families of illegals who would likely be brought into the country once their relatives were legalized.
Here's another number no one else is talking about: according to www.census.gov, the number of legal immigrants admitted to this country from 1901-2000 was 46.9 million. Again, would Americans embrace the possibility that Congress and the White House could craft a law which would legalize as many people in one day as we did in a substantial portion of an entire century?
Ronald Reagan's Attorney General, Ed Meese lll, reminds us that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it: Here's what he wrote in a 2006 editorial for the NY Times regarding the 1986 amnesty bill:
Question number two: how many times in the last year alone have we heard about "expert" predictions that "didn't meet expectations?"
Predictably, the American left couldn't care less. They would grant amnesty to a hundred million illegals if they could get away with it. Their America is all about permanent one-party rule by any means necessary. But what in the world can Republicans and conservatives like George Will be thinking? It is a testament to the utter lack of intellectual rigor that perhaps the most important question regarding immigration reform has never been asked:
If the population estimates of illegals are off by a considerable margin, does it affect your position on the issue?
Until this question is asked and answered, all other aspects of the immigration reform debate are moot. I'm asking. Is there anyone with the guts to answer?
Mr. Will believes Americans would not tolerate deporting the "equivalent of the population of Ohio." Wrong question, Mr. Will. Better question: would Americans tolerate granting amnesty to a population possibly the equivalent of California?
The ball's in your court, George.
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