Since the question of what constitutes a job which Americans are “unwilling” to take is key to the Bush proposal, I’m reposting this interesting comment by Clark Coleman from an adjoining thread:

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Contra the assertion that illegal aliens do jobs that Americans won’t do, I will wash dishes in a restaurant, clean toilets, etc., for the salary of $100,000 per year, indexed for inflation each year until I retire.

If the American employer objects that this is too much money to pay a dishwasher and toilet cleaner in his restaurant, then at least we will have flushed the problem out into the open: Americans won’t do certain jobs for the amount of money that certain employers are willing to pay. (Of course, I am likely to be underbid on my $100,000 offer by another American, even if there were no illegal aliens around to drive down wages.)

Then we can discuss why it is that an employer has a RIGHT to employ persons at a wage that HE chooses, rather than at a wage chosen through supply and demand in the marketplace.

To take another example, if I can hire an American software engineer for $70,000, and the same $70,000 would get me TWO software engineers from Russia or India, who would be glad to share a cheap apartment together and send part of their money home, where $5000 sent home in a year wold seem lavish, then I guess I should offer such jobs for $35,000. If American software engineers with a B.S. and M.S. in computer science and 15 years experience don’t want to work for $35,000, then I guess we can add “senior software engineer” to the list of “jobs that Americans won’t do”, just like picking crops and washing dishes and cleaning toilets.

Posted by: Clark Coleman on January 6, 2004 02:11 PM

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We have entered the looking glass here folks; where black is white, and white is black. This foolishness most likely will not get past Congress, for now, but the trend is clear. The political elites are making it clear that the massive immigration we have endured these past 30 years is not enough.

I now have to agree with Howard Sutherland: George W. Bush is a traitor. Cursed is the day he was born.

To Mr. Hagan: The possibility has been mentioned, and still hangs overhead like a Damoclean Sword, that President Bush might enact such foolishness by executive order. This would, of course, be an unconstitutional exercise of presidential power, but that’s irrelevant in world we live in.

I offer this link from Mrs. Schlafly on “Where Are the Jobs Going?” which is applicable here:

http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2003/june03/03-06-04.shtml

Mr.LeFevre brings up the nightmarish vision of Bush using an executive order to bring us closer to the joys of diversity with endless, massive third world immigration. I don’t think his administration is that confident, yet ! But Mr.LeFevre has a point: anything is possible in this world gone mad.

A President Bush emboldened by such successes as passing the USA Patriot Act and by a re-election victory might impose all or part of this program by executive order. His contempt for the Constitution, which may be due in his case to ignorance of it, is as thorough as any Democrat’s and hearkens back to the Father of Republicans, President Lincoln. There is even a precedent: Bush has, by executive order, waived the requirement that aliens in our armed forces serve for three years before being eligible for citizenship. Repopulating the United States with brown foreigners and giving them instant citizenship is clearly very dear to President Bush’s heart.

The very complexity of these proposals ensures that, if enacted, the restrictions they contain on alien movement and employment will never be enforced. Do we enforce the immigration laws we have now? The casual laxity of the test to determine whether no legal worker is available for a given job makes it blindingly obvious that the Bush administration will have no interest in enforcing any part of the amnesty that might restrict alien entry and residence here. This is a blanket, unrestricted amnesty and a program calculated to increase our importation of aliens. It is intended to be exactly that. All talk of matching employers and workers is obfuscation of what, I believe, is a deliberate attempt to import and naturalize tens of millions of foreigners. We can debate why our rulers consider Americans unworthy of having our own country, but plainly they have decided that we are.

We are in for a very hard fight - Senate Majority Leader Frist is in Mexico preparing the way for President Bush’s ceremonial self-abasement there next week. We should expect no help from Republican Congressional leadership. It is more likely than not that some or all of this will pass in the Congress. Don’t assume it won’t be worse; Cecilia Muñoz and other hispanic loudmouths are already complaining that it doesn’t go far enough. Bush and Rove are very sensitive to their criticism.

Alex Hamilton makes a good point on VDare today: as always in these fights, language matters. We need to do all we can to call this what it is: amnesty and subsidized invasion. Euphemism about “guest workers” and “matching willing workers and willing employers” is just happy-talk designed to fool ordinary Americans about what is happening, and to keep them from thinking about it. Sadly, that probably won’t be too hard. We also need to call our president what he is: a traitor to his oath of office and his country.

Mr. Sutherland has called Bush’s actions the dispacement of Americans by Mexicans. This has some precedent. Many of the Scottish Highlanders (including an ancestor of mine) were forced out of their country in the 18th Century. They were replaced by sheep, who were considered more economical. The highlanders were disdained and feared by their rulers. Sound familiar?

I had predicted on this Forum that Bush would wait until he was reelected to do this. Evidently, he thinks it will help him with the Mexican vote in 2004, while his somnulant base stays with him.

There is but one hope to derail Bush’s plan for Mexican Lebensraum. Some wealthy individual must step up and announce an independent candidacy for president based on a single issue: immigration. No, not Buchanan. Not another Perot, either. But somebody who wants to make an articulate, sedate argument against immigration and nothing else. “Like a laser beam,” as one notorious candidate for the presidency once said, albeit when speaking about the economy in 1992.

It may also be of some use to review last night’s media treatment of this story. Last night apparently was THE night for discussing the issue.

Lou Dobbs: Still the only person in the major media (CNN) who has the intelligence to connect the dots and make an effective presentation to us proles. Frankly, when I mentioned the need for an independent presidential candidacy to carry the banner against immigration, I was thinking of Dobbs. I don’t know, however, how wealthy he is.

The Howard Beal Show (er, uh, I mean, Bill O’Reilly): he brought on Michael Savage, about the only person out there who makes O’Reilly look like he’s in control of the subject matter. An appearance by Savage anywhere is good for Savage’s wallet, but terrible for this cause.

Joe Scarborough: deer-in-the-headlights Joe brought on some CATO open borders fanatic and Jared Taylor. Needless to say, Taylor scared the bejeebers out of Joe. By the end of the segment, Scarborough had cut off Taylor, allowed the man from CATO to scream “racism”, and Joe was going on about “nation of immigrants”, the “hard working family values” of Mexicans, and how everybody in the world is just so fuzzy-wuzzy equal and a real American at heart. Taylor’s crime? He mentioned Mexicans living 20 to 30 to a house and urinating in public. Taylor then asked if CATOman, Bush, and Joe would like to live in a “Mexican dominated neighborhood”. Apparently, all these points are unspeakable on cable news.

Hannity and Colmes: had five minutes on the amnesty. Sean H just can’t understand why Bush would do it. But the program couldn’t spend too much time asking questions. Hannity had to move on to a 15 minute interview with Dr. Laura on “How to Care and Feed Your Husband”.

Hardball’s Chris Matthews: apparently no mention at all—as usual on this subject for Mr. “Hardball”. But he did have a lengthy segment on Pete Rose.

Limbaugh: I think I posted yesterday how Limbaugh was trying to make the amnesty proposal palatable for his herd of sheep.

PBS: yes, they had a segment on the NewsHour last night. But you don’t need to be told who THEY treated it.

This includes most of the “alternative” news available on cable. You can imagine how the mainstream newspapers and networks are gearing up to propagandize in favor of the brown wave.

paulccc:

yep, yep, yep. Any dominant media “conservatives” save perhaps specific columnists (Michelle Malkin?) are increasingly revealing themselves to be hired guns to feed the otherwise properly conservative portion of the population the administration’s big-government, open borders disaster. Rush is on right now.. “yes, this is bothersome but we have to look at this fairly.. I know you are upset but we have to move on to other matters..” I fear his rotundity “El Rushbo” Hannity and the like are all bought and paid for. A new party, a new party, a new party..

Contrary to what is being posted, I listened to more than an hour of Rush over lunch and he presented two sides of the debate and was clearly favoring our side. He read Michelle Malkin’s column in its entirety and expressed agreement with it. He even read large portions of Mark Krikorian’s column from NRO today, which apparently exploded the myth of “Jobs Americans Won’t Do”. He even read the part where Krikorian noted that only 10% of the cost of a head of lettuce in a supermarket comes from the labor cost of picking it, so that doubling that wage cost would actually NOT be the consumer catastrophe that Rush himself had hinted at the day before. (Note: I have not yet read this column.)

A fair obsrevation by Mr. Coleman. Rush did say some “good things”, however I believe this is part of his “intricate” propaganda. His audience is arguably well-informed/intelligent and Rush must walk a fine line. It appeared most callers/listeners were BLAZING mad about the administration’s new amnesty so Rush had to use this as his jumping off point. If he did not give some “air time” to public sentiment he would appear to be what he is: an ambassador for the elites. I look at it this way: will the average “Rush listener” who is justifiably outraged at Bush’s betrayal walk away feeling “the same”, “better” or “worse” about Bush’s proposal? I think Rush’s job is to echo the public sentiment and then offer a few “logical counter-arguments” so we may slowly lap what they are feeding us. If Rush’s duplicity were transparent he would lose his audience.

I think Barry is on target about Limbaugh. I’ve heard him do this before. Occasionally, he will let a caller(s) vent about immigration. Then, he will drop the subject. This time, Limbaugh is probably going to echo the Party Line. Namely, that Mexicans will gratefully vote for the GOP.

Barry is correct. As for what Limbaugh said yesterday, see for yourself: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_010604/content/thebigtheory1.guest.html

Clark Coleman might want to add that Limbaugh either doesn’t understand what Krikorian is saying or is intentionally misrepresenting it. For what Limbaugh says in the above link I provided is as follows:

“If we had an immigration policy, which did not allow illegals, then the wage scale at the lower end for some of this work would be a little higher than it is, but at the same time, food prices would skyrocket. If you’re going to pay somebody 12 bucks an hour to pick your lettuce, guess what your heads of lettuce are going to cost. You know, folks, this is not as easy as you think. I mean, you like going to the grocery store and pushing the cart around with 15 heads of lettuce for two bucks, and you’re able to do that because some immigrant’s willing to be paid 50 cents an hour, whatever it is, to pick it. Now, you take the illegal out of the equation and bring an American in, who is going to demand 12 bucks an hour and 18 weeks of vacation and who knows how many sick days to go pick lettuce and you’re going to be paying for lettuce the same thing you pay for your Volvo, so, you know, this is not as easy as you think. I mean, you think you’re being screwed but at the same time food costs are among the cheapest in the world in this country because the price of production is efficient.”

This contradicts everything Krikorian wrote. BTW, I, too, listened to a bit of Limbaugh today, and his entire attitude consisted of this: immigration is something he doesn’t think is important enough to talk about and that most of us who oppose it are too stupid to understand what is really going on. Such as his comment:

“However, let’s not forget what’s on the table here. I have told you this I don’t know how many times, the strategery in the domestic agenda is pointed at the destruction of the Democratic Party, not the wounding of it. Not the damaging of it, but its obliteration. I think the purpose of the Bush domestic agenda is to tear the Democratic Party apart and to rip its strength and heart out. And they’re doing it by giving every group that makes up the Democratic Party something that the Democrats have been promising to give but haven’t. … Now, if an effort of like kind is being attempted by the Bush Republicans on the nation’s Hispanics and this immigration policy is Step 1, well, if they’re going to own a group, we’re going to own a group. No matter what we do, the group’s going to be with us. It’s going to be the Hispanic population is pretty affluent, becoming more and more affluent, and there are certain issues that matter to them, and the Democrats have been out there promising and promising and promising, but look at who is standing in their way.”

Was Al Franken right about Rush Limbaugh after all? If the Republican strategy is as Limbaugh approvingly outlines, it is suicidal. The groups (euphemism for non-whites) Limbaugh is referring to are not really in play for the Republicans. They are the safest constituencies for welfare-state Democrats imaginable and Republican pandering does not make them vote Republican, it just imports (in the case of amnesty) more Democrat voters in the long run.

There is research into how members of ethnic groups vote as they become wealthier. There is precious little evidence that non-whites become less liberal as they become richer. I recall seeing poll data in 2002 that showed that the highest-income hispanics were also those most inclined to vote for Democrats. HRS

I believe there is some tendency among older-established Mexican-Americans to vote more conservatively than newer ones, but that is a rather minor qualification to Mr. Sutherland’s evaluation. There is hardly any doubt that the Bush, or perhaps more appropriately, Rove “strategy” (is Bush intelligent enough to think in such terms?)is not only immoral and destructive, but completely unjustifiable in terms even of the interests of the Republican party.

Did Bush just shoot himself in the foot? How many white, black and legal(ized) hispanic votes did he just lose? Did the administration make a grievous miscalculation? Are they just “testing the waters”? What’s is going on?

Maybe - hopefully - Bush has indeed shot himself in the foot. However, my guess is that Rove carefully planned this for early January. In a little more than a week, the media will be concentrating on the Iowa poll, then on the New Hampshire primary. Rove wanted to get the potential firestorm out of the way before Iowa and Super Bowl Sunday so that the clueless Republican base will forget more easily. Meanwhile, the Republican mouthpieces like Limbaugh can work on spinning the whole thing as a grand brilliant “strateegery” to nuke the Dems out of existence in November. At this point, I fail to see how a Dean victory in November would be worse than Bush’s endless stream of betrayals.

Here is Mark Krikorian’s immigration column:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/krikorian200401070923.asp

The plan is totally unfair and stupid because once congress pass the proposal the illegal immigrants will swarm into US boarders and attempt to reside here permanently which will result in population explosion, 80% of those people give birth 10 at a time, and they have to education with a low paying job that isn’t enough to support their family. then they get on welfare and lay their lazy behind in their house while they get money from tax payers who pays for those lazy people. which isn’t fair. if the plan is passed, the United States of America is ruined.