Perhaps that is how Rove is thinking, but I think Bush sincerely wants it to happen, which is frightening. HRS

It is dangerous to think so optimistically about defeating this amnesty. About 90% of House Democrats would support this plus about 30-40% of Republicans. That is far more than needed to win. The key factor is whether Hastert & DeLay are willing to bring an amnesty bill to a vote. Based on Hastert’s record, I’d say there is a 50/50 chance. Senate approval would probably be even easier for Bush, except for some opposition from Robert Byrd & a few others. It is a given that the likes of Chris Cannon & Orrin Hatch will try to get something passed as an amendment to an unrelated bill or when they think nobody is looking (late at night or before a long wkend.)

I dunno, President Bush seems awfully sincere, nay, fervent about this. As Mr. Auster himself pointed out in a reply to some other blithering of mine on another thread, the president has been obsessively urging similar programs (except this one is even worse) since long before he was elected.

And even if nothing at all were done to force this through Congress, the president has sent the message loud and clear to every single public employee (private, too, for that matter): don’t you dare get in the way of anybody from Mexico Lindo.

And if you’ve ever “worked” in a bureaucracy, you’ll find it easy to imagine the result of this at various “law” “enforcement” agencies - the vast, whispering plains of folded hands and twiddling thumbs. So peaceful.

Write your congressman, especially if he’s in the House Judiciary Committee.

I personally don’t care is Bush is “serious” or not. If he is serious he is a traitor and if he’s not serious then I’m mad at him for wasting my time. I’m sure we all have better things to do then sweat over Bush’s “tactics”.

I was only presenting a theory about Bush’s thoughts and intentions. If there was an optimistic note struck here, it was by Rep. Tancredo, who knows more about the issue and the prospects for passage than we do. As for my own thoughts, Bush’s proposal is so extreme that I have a hard time believing it stands any chance of being passed. We can start by writing letters to Congress and the White House. If Republican members get flooded with a couple of million letters passionately denouncing this insane proposal and threatening a withdrawal of support from Bush, that will have an effect.

Mr. Auster is correct. Letters can be effective. Lest anyone think the letters will “not be read” please consider that my state representative was persuaded by a “COUPLE HUNDRED!” constituent letters to oppose FCC approval of media consolidation. He regarded this a “public outpouring”. Needless to say I was amazed that so few letters had such an effect. In this vein however, I might suggest that letters to representatives will be more “effective” that letters to your senators.. and these more effective that letters to the President. So do not neglect your representatives!

oops, please insert “than” 2X in the last sentence of my previous post.

I am not sure it is sly. In one sort of management style - and Bush is primarily of the corporate management persuasion - you just plant the goalpost as far out as you think you can reasonably plant it without losing your job. You don’t necessarily personally expect to get all the way there. If you do get all the way there, great; if you don’t you’ll at least have moved the epicenter of the issue in your direction.

His comments on the PA, on imposing democracy, and on amnesty for illegals are all easy to understand in this light. Bush simply says what he means. He will be ecstatic if the goal is reached although he expects to end up at some compromise that gets things overall closer to where he wants them to be.

Bush is best understood as completely sincere and straightforward, in my opinion. You don’t need to ask yourself how far he will push things if he gets the chance, or what sly things he is up to - he will tell you outright.

And based on what he has told us outright, we would be better off with almost anyone else in the oval office.

Another of the many bad consequences of the Bush proposal is that it leaves the Democrats unlimited room for Leftward maneuver on immigration. They will not be restrained by Republican opposition, only by voters who vote on the basis of issues rather than party. HRS

That’s a shrewd analysis by Matt. I’ve spent a fair amount of bandwidth at this site cracking my head over the contradictions between Bush’s statements and his actions. Matt’s may be the best explanation I’ve seen yet.

Here is the letter I am sending to me senators and representative. It obviously borrows from Auster, Sailer and others — but I am sure they will forgive me:

_Dear Sir:

I write to convey to you my profound alarm and disgust at the proposal by President Bush for a large-scale amnesty and “guest worker” program for illegal immigrants; and to urge you, as my representative in the august institution of which you are a member, to do everything in your power to scuttle, obstruct and finally defeat it.

I write as a supporter of the President, and it brings me no pleasure to break with him so drastically: him whose words and actions after September 11 have inspired in me a real sense of loyalty and admiration; whose determination in an awkward and taxing war has been commendable; whose moral clarity, beleaguered on nearly all sides by the relativism, despair and unbelief of the decaying modern world, has been worthy of esteem. I have other disagreements with Mr. Bush, some large, others more trivial; but nothing approaches the level of disappointment and frustration provoked by this brassbound amnesty proposal. If he persists in this obduracy, this near-madness, I do not know whether I can in good conscience lend him my support in November, loath as I am to see someone like Gov. Dean elected.

I will not mince words: This proposal is as radical an innovation on the constitution of this nation as has ever been recommended. It is revolutionary in nature; if pushed to its logical conclusion, it would mean the gradual overthrow of what we all know as the United States of America, and its replacement by something else altogether —- in sum, something less secure, more disorderly, and less free, and less worthy of the admiration of its citizens and loyalty of its patriots.

The proposal counsels that a nation may strengthen its laws by their subversion; secure its borders by their obliteration; enrich its citizenry by their impoverishment. Its idle and pompous implication is that the law of supply and demand does not apply to the labor market; and in its intransigent ignorance it slanders the American people with the facile charge that they “disdain” to do certain jobs; that only illegal immigrants “will do the jobs that Americans are unwilling to do.” When exactly the Editors of, say, The Wall Street Journal took leave of their usual economic sense is anybody’s guess, but it is clear to anyone retaining it that Americans will do said jobs, if only they are paid well enough for them. It is clear, moreover, that Americans cannot do said jobs when illegal immigrants, because they exist outside the minimum wage laws, payroll tax laws, etc., can outbid them in every case.

The proposal offers “temporary” employment to —- well, to anyone on earth; and though we are assured it is indeed “temporary,” no end date is set for the program, meaning that it is in fact not temporary. President Bush is, as many have pointed out, essentially recommending the merging of the American and Third World job markets. Nor is not all: as others have pointed out, the proposal also includes some vague promises that, in the event that a temporary worker returns to his native country after working a number of years, the United States will cover the cost of his retirement benefits. President Bush is thus recommending the merging of the American and Third World welfare bureaucracies. Nor is that all: the President and his spokesmen have repeatedly talked solemnly about the government “matching” employers with employees —- first, we are assured, with American employees, but then, failing that, with immigrant employees. In short, the President recommends state planning of our private employment structure. Rare indeed has there been so brazen an assault on our traditional American system of free enterprise. Nor is that all: the proposal in effect recommends that we bring in and legalize a whole new working class in competition with the working class we already have. In other words, it recommends that we besiege those among us most vulnerable to economic pressure and insecurity with a massive new influx of economic insecurity in the form of dramatically amplified competition. Marketed as compassionate, it is in fact cruel and iniquitous. It is positively Marxian in its capacity to unleash anarchy and discontent among the proletariat.

The President insists that he opposes “amnesty” —- this in the teeth of the plain fact that his bill does exactly that, by offering a path from illegal alien status to permanent resident and ultimately, citizenship. In addition, he proposes to increase the number of green cards issued, which would also facilitate the movement of illegal immigrants to legal status. In short, he misrepresents his proposal.

There is a great host of other solid reasons to oppose this stupidity —- economic ones like the fact that an artificially depressed labor market will retard technological advances and mechanization, political ones like the fact that more means of documentation present more opportunities for forgery, a particularly worrying prospect in light of our threat from terrorism —- but at base it must be opposed because it constitutes a radical and ultimately, perhaps, fatal attack on one of our most cherished possession as Americans: our citizenship. It undertakes to annihilate the honorable distinction made in very first words of the United States Constitution: “We the People of the United States.”

We the People will be no more —- abolished by the cupidity of business, the cynicism of politicians, and the astonishing folly of intellectuals. And so I beseech you to apply your common sense, the common sense of your constituents which you hold in trust, and lend your strength to the effort against this proposal; that it might die the unmourned and lonely death it deserves.

Sincerely,

Paul J. Cella III_

While Mr. Cella’s letter is a very good statement of the problem, may I suggest that it is more appropriate as an article than as a letter to a Congressman? Such letters need to be short and pithy and no longer than one page. Just make your point, that you think this proposal is terrible; briefly list the reasons; and then say it would force you not to support Bush.

Yes, these people are not royalty, they are public servants, they work for you, and they are failing miserably. Don’t be RUDE but..

Well, I confess that I planned the letter as working “double duty”: as a blog-entry and a letter.

http://cellasreview.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_cellasreview_archive.html#107366581580429741

One must agree with what the judicious Matt suggests, that President Bush is above all things an MBA who sees America as little more than a giant corporation.

Furthermore, it would be remarkable if he had failed to imbibe some of his parents’ manifest contempt for any American who lacked the foresight to have been born a member of the ruling class.

I can never forget that First Mother “Bar” telephoned “Princess” Bandar to apologize for the mild dust-up when it was revealed that she had funded some of the 9/11 terrorists. Yet I don’t recall reading about “Bar” bruising her patrician fingers on her touch-tone calling any of the tens of thousands of bereaved after 9/11.

So I guess it’s only natural that these people see little problem with replacing the uppity American working-class with the teeming hordes of the third world.

Remind me why we fought the Civil War.

Shrewsbury,

Patricians that the Bushes are, why do they prefer the peons of foreign countries to what they presumably see as the peons of their own? At least we American peons are their countrymen. Perhaps that counts for nothing, but the evident preference for foreigners over the natives is galling, to say the least.

As for the War between the States, no points for guessing which side the Bushes of the day were on (they ain’t a Texas family). HRS

Preferring foreign peons to their own has become standard for the Ruling Class. For some time now, they have seen the Middle Class as an obstacle to the Leftward reconstruction of the country.

What David says appears true, but I don’t believe the motivation is as conscious as he paints it.

I have plenty of upper-middle and upper class WASP friends and neighbors who use hispanics (usually illegal aliens, I suspect; it is a matter of indifference to them) for menial tasks of all sorts. They do it for convenience and are often relieved that they don’t have to use American blacks instead. There is no political or cultural motivation that I can discern, it is simply cheapness and convenience.

When I attempt to discuss the larger ramifications of what they are doing (with the very few I’m comfortable being so frank with), they are genuinely puzzled. They give no thought to the consequences, and suspect that I might be racist for raising them. They don’t want to live in a hispanicized (or Moslemized, or africanized) America, but they don’t worry about it. They just don’t think (if they think about it at all) that anything like that could ever happen, despite the evidence proliferating all around them. While some have been “globalized” in ideological factories like Columbia, Harvard and Yale, most attended more normal universities.

I am pretty sure most of the people I am describing are Republican voters, although I can think of some who vote Democrat. As I am talking about a New York suburb, these people may be a bit more liberal than the national average, but they think of themselves as somewhat conservative. What will it take to wake these people up? September 11th did not, and several of them experienced the WTC attacks first hand, as I did. HRS

It is worth noting that even the New York Times(!) has an article, on A12 of today’s edition, admitting that the effect of Bush’s plan will be to increase illegal immigration, just as the 1986 amnesty did. Even a majority of the letters to the editor on the subject opposed the plan.

My observations of native-born white New Yorkers who live in the five boroughs rather parallel those of Mr. Sutherland. However, I have encountered a fair amount of obvious distaste, expressed in private, for immigrants, especially Hispanic ones. There seems to be friendlier feeling toward Asians — usually East Asians though Indians are often included — with the hint of “if only other immigrants were like them.” Rather surprising, in fact, is the dislike of recent immigrants from ONE’S OWN GROUP. There is a good deal of hostility, by older Jewish New Yorkers, toward Israeli, Iranian, and especially Russian Jews. I believe analogous attitudes exist among other groups, even Hispanics. The main problem is that this dislike of immigrants and immigration is not transformed into recognizing it as an urgent issue. There is a feeling that somehow things will turn out right in the long run. Worse, there is a widespread attitude that people have no moral right to oppose immigration.

Re the NY Times, the liberals have already got their message out that the Bush plan is really too “conservative,” i.e., that it is about exploiting poor Hispanics. I saw that said in the NY Times, and then later today I was speaking to an older gentleman, a long time friend of my parents, and mentioned the Bush immigration proposal to him, and he said it was no good, that it just about exploiting immigrants. I KNEW he had been reading the Times!

So there you have it. Bush sells out his own side to the left, and all he gets in return is more contempt and distrust. If he announced a proposal to turn America into a dictatorship of the proletariat, the Democrats would still say that he was a “right wing conservative.” But that’s the nature of the dance. The conservatives keep moving left; the left keeps denouncing the conservatives as racist exploitative right-wingers; and the conservatives move farther to the left.

That is Bush’s governing philosophpy, which he announced with complete honesty in 2000, “setting a new tone in Washington,” and which he demonstrated in advance by showing that he would never do anything to discomfort the left, other than trying to win the presidency.

I have been voting in presidential elections since becoming a naturalized US citizen in 1984. So far I have always voted Repub, Perrot has tempted me in 1992 but I still voted for papa Bush.

No longer. 2004 will be my first time voting for not Republican (assuming GWB is the only Repub running). As far as I’m concerned GWB should become president of Mexico, he cares much more about mexicans than his countrymen.

To MIK: Please write to Bush and to the Republican congressmen in your state telling them what you just told us.

What can we do to stop this soft treason?

This website is among the most intellectual sites that are right on Bush immigration proposal. What we as individual can do? What resources are there? Perhaps some people have experience in letter/call issue campaigns.

Speak up people.

As has been said, calls and letters, when in significant numbers, do have an impact—and we know that lots of people are passionate on this issue. Also, there is the Constitution party, which is planning a conference in Lancaster, PA on January 24th. Howard Philips, the head of the party, is on the right side of the immigration issue, but I’m not sure how central the immigration issue is to their overall concerns. In any case, they are the closest to a traditionalist conservative party in America. Apart from planning to run a presidential candidate, they also seem to have many state-level candidates all over the country.

Suggesting Action.

Since I have asked people to have suggestions, here is mine:

Send some cash to FAIR, Dan Stein organization, www.fairus.org. FAIR is a single issue organization, they warned people about immigration excesses for decades.

Senator Spencer Abraham became a FORMER senator in 2000. FAIR played a huge role in his demise. I recall FAIR claimed they have spent $1M helping to defit Abraham. I like to think that my modest contribution helped to send that high-tech lackey into retirement.

We despertately need more successes like Abraham reelection.

Ike was the last American President, and perhaps the last major American establishment figure who understood the nature of an ordered society and respect for the rule of law. He deported millions of Mexicans in “Operation Wetback”, and had the “inate” sense that the majority, “Whites, ” owned the culture, conserved the culture, and were its natural leaders. America was not an employment-agency to him, but a Nation, a home, a place our children dwelled in. This all went unsaid, of course, because it was so natural, and healthy. Every single President since Ike has shown a lack of natural affinity for his fellow citizens. There is not one figure in the elite ruling class in the U.S. who could, or would, stand up and renounce Bush on this immigration amnesty. Who is out there anyway: Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter ? Steve Jobs, Donald Trump ? America has been running on its reserves in education, capital, and science for a long time; seems we are about on empty now ! Unless citizens from the gound-up take back the culture, all is lost because the elites in the U.S. are divorced from reality.

In respose to Mr. Levine’s post of 4:39 p.m., a further argument I’ve seen, in the NY Times (!), is that if the temporary workers’ term under the program runs out, and they’re expected to return to their home country, they will just come right back over the border as illegals. An illegal was quoted saying this. This is pretty obvious when you think about it. Further, are we really to believe that in the midst of throwing open the doors to America, Bush will simultaneously succeed in closing the borders _more effectively_ to prevent the very increase of illegal immigration that is likely under this bill?

Here’s my prognosis on this proposal (subject to change of course!):

This proposal is to legislation what Howard Dean is to presidential candidates. Notwithstanding some initial excitement about it in some quarters, even a sense of its “inevitability,” it is so far off the chart that as soon as people start looking at it carefully, its total speciousness will doom it.

P.S. Just to avoid any misunderstanding, the prognosis is not intended as a substitute for action. We have to fight this thing.

Mr. Sutherland graciously notices some earlier blithering of mine, and asks, in plaintive apostrophe I presume, since he like all of us knows too well the answer, why do the Bushes prefer foreign to home-grown peons? And the answer of course is that the foreign sort are much cheaper and presumed to be more docile (by people who don’t have to go to school with or live near them).

Moreover, it seems to me that the elites of our fair country, I mean the gamut from George Bush to Peter Jennings—and it’s not much of a gamut, come to think of it—, are getting to that Bourbon France or Tsarist Russia state of mind where they don’t really perceive us as their countrymen, and indeed seem rather to regard us as their most dangerous potential foes.

And I guess in wondering why we fought the Civil War, my point was that President Bush and his ilk are now behaving like the most aggressive of the Southern plantationists who objectively strove to displace the white rural yeomanry with negro slaves - and that what the president is proposing is nothing short of a 21st-century Peculiar Institution.

And it’s mighty peculiar.

Mr. Auster is correct that this effort by Bush is most likely dead; for now ! But this is an opening for us. We have a chance to show the rot that festers in the leadership class of both the Republicans and Democrats. We need to drive home the fundermental “perversion” of what Bush, and the rest of the elite is trying to do. This could be the beginning of the long march back to securing our borders. We may yet fail; for we have lost much, and this Nation looks nothing like the one I grew up in; but still we must go on, what other choice is there.

Watching Larry Kudlow, who I worked with at one time, try to dance away from the bad jobs report today is funny. Like most elites; he’s a stooge, he puts his time in for the Republicans. Though a nice guy who I personally like, he’s full of it. GWB can be hurt by this jobless recovery. His immigration plan, in the light of today’s numbers, looks to be even more vile to the common American worker. As the job numbers keep faltering; and I believe they will, Bush is going to be looking more and more like the clueless fool I’m starting to think he is. This jobs report is another way to attack this massive third world immigration. There are openings abounding to attack the elites on this issue, we need to take them.

Regarding Shrewsbury’s post of 6:50PM: I disagree that this proposal in particular or massive Third-World immigration in general can be reasonably or helpfully compared to slavery. Other worlds or concepts such as “displacement, invasion, cultural change, competion for jobs, etc.” are more helpful. After all, the illegal aliens currently here are here of the own accord. The proposal itself is extreme; we do not need stretch our metafors our use implausible rhetoric to combat it. :-)

On another note: I wrote snail-mail letters to my represenative and senators denouncing this plan.

My comment of 9:17PM is meant only as an attempt at edification and not as an attack upon Shrewsburry. :-)

Regarding the Constitution Party, I am very encouraged that there appear to be a fair number of candidates for the various state houses and for the US Congress. This might very well be a way to begin. If it were possible to secure a 25 percent share of seats in the US House and 15 seats in the Senate, the Constitutionalists could drive a hard bargain with the other parties. A sufficiently large block would be a force to be reckoned with politically. The major weakness of third party movements in this country has been their over-emphasis on winning the Presidency, when much more could be accomplished by gaining seats in Congress and in the State legislatures.

Under Bush proposal a willing employee from anywhere can fill a job listed by an employer if no willing American can be found.

There is no mentioning of job’s wage, so apparently any wage will do as long as it is equal or above Federal minimal wage. Not clear if it has to be above a state minimal wage, some states (California is one) have min wage above Fed minimum.

And how do the Feds know that no willing American has materialized? Accordingly to one of the Gov officials, the very presense of a job on the job list means that no American is available. Apparently Bush trusts all employers to search long and hard for a willing American before listing jobs on that list.

Bush trusts that his voters are idiots and he is probably right as a curse reading of lucianne.com board indicates.

A suprise: Feinstein Opposes Bush Plan as Unrealistic.

“Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Thursday she would oppose President Bush’s immigration plan because it could increase illegal immigration.

“I think the program is unrealistic,” Feinstein said in a statement issued by her office.

As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Feinstein said she expected to take a closer look at the plan in the course of committee hearings. But she stressed, “I will not support a plan that could be a magnet for more illegal immigration.”

Read the whole thing at www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-senatebox9jan09,1,729332.story?coll=la-headlines-nation.

Gentlemen, ultimately nothing will change at this point in history without violence. Arab MEN are not afraid of violence. They believe in something and are not afraid of death - or losing their job.
The problem is that when violence finally comes, we don’t know where it will start or where it will end.
By the way J. Hagen, never waste your time listening to L. Kudlow. He’s just a whiskey swilling, coke snorting basket case. You can look it up.

Well, Bartelson, nice to see you are an expert on Arab manhood, and its brave exploits worldwide.

Bartleson makes a point. Where are the MEN in our society? Undoubtedly there has been a long standing leftist campaign against manhood, correctness, morality and the like. I fear we have taken the bait? I do not advocate unnecessary violence but at some point it may be necessary to stand - physically.

I agree with Shrewsbury’s comment, but he is a little bit unfair to the elite of Imperial Russia, which, below the very top, in the Tsar’s court, contained not a few able and patriotic men. I would have to say that even the last Romanovs, notwithstanding their arrogance and stupidity, did not regard the Russian lower classes — except for the Jews — with as much contempt as our “leaders” seem to muster for the rest of us. The Roman upper classes, bringing in slaves to displace their peasants, and then evading taxes and military service, might be a closer analogy. Even they had some pride in Roman civilization, however.

First, I do not want there to be any advocacy of violence at this website, except in the context of discussions of legitimate war, police powers, and self-defense.

Second, I sadly agree with Mr. Levine’s comment about the contempt our “leaders” have for us. It is a testament to the profound penetration of liberal attitudes in our society that even a supposed “tough cowboy, West Texan” type like Bush sees white Americans as basically and forever guilty (his disgraceful slavery speech in Africa) and as having no right of historical existence. In August 2000 he said that people either “welcomed” the Hispanicization of America, or they “resented” it. Thus any opposition to open borders is mere “resentment” in Bush’s mind, deserving of no consideration and no respect. That’s what he thinks of us.

Perhaps the single most astonishing and revealing thing about Bush’s announcement this past week was the way he defined the problem of immigration. Immigration, he said, is a big problem for America. And what does this problem consist of? It consists of the fact that life is hard for illegal aliens! The notion that uncontrolled and illegal immigration harms AMERICA was virtually absent from his presentation.

I think it is fair to say that Bush is more radical on immigration than Clinton ever was.

Bush was a lot more careful in the 2000 election in NH, and respectful of the problems immigration can bring than he is now that he has the White House. He was asked pointed questions on the National question for months, and this radicalism we see now was not mentioned. So we know he is very aware of this issue; and the strife it can generate.

In regard to Mr. Auster’s statement on “the contempt our leaders feel for us,” I have an anecdote:

A few years ago, I was listening to Chuck Harder’s radio show. Harder is pretty good on the immigration issue, and openly favors everyday Americans. Harder once mentioned that his own family was wealthy. Thus, he had socialized with very rich people sometimes. Harder said that the wealthy in private refer to the rest of us as, “The Little People.” He said that the Rich are totally dismissive of middle and working-class Americans, behind their gates.

This attitude often includes a romanticized view of “racial monorities,” similar to GWB’s worship of Mexicans. Meanwhile, they make sure they are completely insulated from the people they claim to love so much.

David should try to get into a “Gated Community” in California or Florida without proper ID, then he would really see how the elites take care of their own. The concept of “Gated Communties” as little as 25 years ago in America would have been seen as absurd. Now in parts of Southern California and Florida even the middle-class flock to them to hold back the human tide.