President Lyndon B. Johnson was no friend to Blacks. Reports consistently point out that Johnson referred to them with the most racist ethnic slur that can possibly be directed at an African American, even when he was using the powers of the White House to benefit them. Even Thurgood Marshall, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Johnson, was referred to in this way. Yet when he realized that the Black call for civil rights was such that it would be to his political advantage to reverse his opposition to these rights, President Johnson led the way in order to ‘have those n*****s voting Democrat for the next 200 years.’
I am reminded of this by the current debate over illegal immigration. The parallels between recognizing the rights of African Americans and giving rights to illegal immigrants are obviously thin, but there is a similarity in the motivation behind them. That similarity is that it is motivated by selfish interest of the Elite – the Politicians, and the Unions and Big Business groups that lobby them – rather than their altruism towards others.
Despite their appeals to our Christian values, pro-illegal immigration advocates can scarcely argue that they are acting in the best interest of the illegals themselves. They are directly responsible for the humanitarian crisis on our borders involving thousands of children abandoned by their parents so that they may enter illegally into our country; an “act of love” as Jeb Bush would say, all in the hope that these children can benefit from the DREAM act, free education, free medical care, welfare, and all the other promises they are being promised by our politicians by way of the Spanish language newspapers that spur this hope.
Rape trees – trees where those who smuggle illegals across our border hang the underwear of the women they rape as part of their payment – have long been found in border states, serving as stark reminders of the price many illegals pay to enter our country.
Furthermore, because they are able to effectively ship their poor into our country, foreign governments have less incentive to fight poverty in their own nation, so the poor who are unable to immigrate illegally to the US suffer needlessly. Why would the Mexican government, i.e., do more to find work or provide aid to their unemployed when they can have them come into the United States, not only saving them a fortune in care for their underclass, but allows them to receive over $20 billion dollars a year from the illegals who find jobs in our country?
Just as Mexican politicians who aid illegal immigration do not have the best interest of their citizens in mind, American politicians who promote illegal immigration certainly do not have the best financial interest of the American people in mind. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, illegal immigration costs Virginia $1.7 billion a year, or “about $625 per Virginia household headed by a native-born resident.” It is no wonder why Dave Brat was able to upset House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary.
Doctors Robert Rector and Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation also report staggering cost figures related to illegal immigration. As Dr. Rector wrote, and spoke about on our radio show, “In 2010, the average unlawful immigrant household received around $24,721 in government benefits and services while paying some $10,334 in taxes. This generated an average annual fiscal deficit (benefits received minus taxes paid) of around $14,387 per household.”
The true cost of illegal immigration cannot be measured simply by adding up how much we must spend on education, medical care, incarceration, and welfare benefits however. Perhaps a greatest cost from illegal immigration comes from how much the addition of illegals to our labor pool depress our wages and employment. Especially in the Black community. Although experts may not agree on the exact numbers, they seem unanimous in agreeing with Professor Carol Swain’s statement that “[Illegal immigration] hurts low-skilled, low-wage workers of all races, but Blacks are harmed the most because they’re disproportionately low-skilled.”
Excess labor does not just affect the wages of low-skilled workers however. It affects even many highly skilled employees. Politicians – Paul Ryan, for one – often claim that there is a shortage of STEM workers in America, therefore we need “comprehensive immigration reform.” Yet Professor Hal Salzman of Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy says the STEM worker shortage is a myth, pointing to the flat wages in many areas where it is claimed employers face a STEM worker shortage as evidence that such a shortage does not truly exist.
The addition of approximately 20 million illegals in the labor market can be illustrated by what we are seeing in North Dakota. Unlike most of the nation, where an employer can post an opening for a minimum wage job and be rewarded with countless applicants, there have been tales that the labor shortage in North Dakota is so severe that even a McDonalds must pay twice the minimum wage, plus give a signing bonus, to attract employees.
Rather than heed their fiscal responsibility to the people they represent, politicians of both parties push for amnesty in hope of ‘having those illegals voting for us for the next 200 years’. But it is more than that. Politicians push for amnesty because of the pressure put upon them by the strange bedfellow partnership of Big Business and Unions.
Big Business wants excess labor to push down wages. Unions – although they were previously very anti-illegal immigration, or simply anti-immigration, in order to protect the salaries of its members – are now illegal immigration advocates. Somewhere along the road they have decided the better approach would be to allow illegal immigration, and to make as many illegals as possible union members. Illegals workers can potentially cause shrinking union memberships to suddenly soar.
(Interestingly, unions undertook a similar “evolution” when it came to minority workers. Although roughly 40% of union members today are Blacks or Latinos, unions have a history of attempting to protect their White members by the use of racial discrimination against non-Whites.)
Another one of the great falsehoods of the immigration debate is that once we secure the border, a pathway to citizenship could come next. It will be much easier to claim that the border is secure than to actually secure it (which may be an impossibility).
With both parties facing pressure to enact comprehensive immigration reform/amnesty, it is unlikely that the issue died simply because the 7th district of Virginia choose Dave Brat over Eric Cantor, despite what many pundits claim. But even if this does become one of those rare incidents where politicians fear the voter more than they fear the special interest groups, it seems to me that to think, after over five years of his presidency, that something Obama wants will not happen simply because neither the American people nor Congress wants it to requires a special degree of naiveté.
— dk
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Well, it was Jocelyn Elders who said Medicaid must have been invented by a white slave owner. Well, Ms. Elders, even a broken clock is right one time a day, it was LBJ! Now we are all enslaved by the socialist’s “War on Poverty.”
I was so pleased to read this commentary. The issue of negative impacts of immigration on the African-American community is an old one! The first major race riots in the United States were between very poor Irish immigrants who had escaped the Potato Famine and the newly freed former slaves. Even though I’m a descendent of those immigrants, in all fairness I have to say the African Americans were right to resent the Irish whose presence was pushing down the wages they received for their labors. Same thing is happening today with the influx of large numbers of Mexicans and Central Americans. Of course the Democrats had their fingerprints all over the number of Irish coming into the country in the 19th Century just like they do today with the open invitation to poor Latinos. If for no other reason, I’d say this is a cause that many African Americans need to have a serious discussion with Democratic politicians about. I would be very happy to hear anyone else’s comments on this.
Nicely written. I feel it is either time to open the borders completely, or truly seal them. As a sovereign nation, we need to hold that other sovereign nation to our south accountable for securing their border. Time to stop sending money to Mexico. Stop everything. Mexico is breaching our borders. That, or just open it up wide.
Time for a sales tax. For every % of sales tax increase, reduce income tax by the same. Make citizenship worth something. Even illegals have to buy stuff.