One immigration lawyer's view

What a sobering piece, Rod. Especially the last three paragraphs. My calling doesn't allow me to take up the sword, but I see the last commenter's point.

Why not just enforce present laws against employers? If they can't get jobs, they'll go home on their own.

The country's going to hell in a handbasket. A great time to be a straw merchant.

Oh, and it's quite simply impossible to have a rational conversation about immigration policy when one party to the conversation places the other party's position out of bounds.

I sincerely hope no one takes dbkenner's advice. His advice follows the way to hell so many have taken before. In regards to your consultant, I call bluff on a major American city being destroyed by Al Queda in the next 5-10 years. I also call bluff on civil war in the southwest in 20-30 years.

To quote Dick Morris (emp. added): If the Hispanics are not massively turned off by a Republican rejection of immigration reform, they will drift into an increasingly pro-Republican orientation just as Irish and Italian Catholics did before them. Already Protestant evangelicalism has converted a third of the American Latino population, a clear precursor of GOP political support. Hispanics now account for 13 percent of the U.S. population (blacks are 12 percent) and will constitute 20 percent of our population by 2020 regardless of whether immigration reform passes or not. Key red states like Texas and Florida hang in the balance, depending on the voting intention of their burgeoning Latino populations. It's over, folk. Get used to it. Demography is destiny.

M_David, Your arguments on demography and IQ smack of fatalism. Fatalism has the idea of course that one's actions cannot substantively change outcomes. I'm not sure if you are a fatalist, so I hope you clarify this.

sigaliris your link doesn't work. Nor your logic favored solutions are paraded...white people should breed more I've never heard of this "solution" offered anywhere - primarily as it's utterly silly (impossible just due to the time lag alone even if the cultural shift happened today). Can you offer a single link of anybody showing this as a solution?

Sigalaris writes so many beautiful and well thought out posts. The health care system is broken and it has nothing to do with illegals. The country has always had uninsured people and the hospitals used to have the funds to provide them with the care that they've needed. Blaming the liberals gets to be so tiresome considering that Republicans have been in power for most of my adult life, and the only person to try to fix the system has been a liberal. Civil war? I agree that's silly. Wasn't it a Republican who started the War on Drugs? I've always wondered what kind of war we were fighting on drugs with an open border to the south. I'm not saying that illegals coming here for work are carrying drugs, but a sensible person fighting a war on drugs would close the border. Same goes for a war on terrorism. We're blaming the liberals? Helloooo? The American people elected GWB quite a few years ago because he's such a big, strong, man who will protect us from terrorists, AND he had a Republican Congress to boot. I would think that a sensible person fighting a war on terror would close the border. It should have been closed within a year of 9/11. GWB keeps saying that if we don't fight the terrorists in Iraq, we'll fight them at home. I always ask, "How are they going to get here?" Well, through Mexico....dah.
I agree that the porous border is a problem. But could we cut it out with the "blame the liberals" crap? Civil war? That's silly. Terrorist attack? That's not so silly. We have an open border.

My intention wasn't to put you on the defensive. You have made arguments about the future of Russia, France, and now the US based on demography. You made the arguments using assumption that subdemographic trends will persist over at least a generation. This is what I mean by fatalism. You assertiveness over the future is what leads me to suspect fatalism. Trends change all the time. We are all rational actors and the one's having children in the future are not the same rational actors as today. The circumstances under which they make their choices will be different.

MZ: You made the arguments using assumption that subdemographic trends will persist over at least a generation. This is what I mean by fatalism. You assertiveness over the future is what leads me to suspect fatalism. MZ, demography has been watched for along time. It's not rocket science or witchcraft. Follow me here: 1) You have the next 20 years of population already mapped pretty well. First, every person born today will typically live ~75 years. So we already know the upper bound of these groups as fact, not projection. We know as a solid number that Hispanics will be 20% by 2020 within a small error percentage. Dude, it's only 13 years! 2) You cannot change culture overnight - it simply has never been done before. Be reasonable. It's like an ocean liner. We know this from watching them over the years. It takes a lotta time to shift culture. We will see it when it starts to shift, and won't see the effects for decades. The Hispanic cultural invasion we see now started a hundred years ago.

We're not dealing with reality here. Here are some facts: 1. The economic and political situation in much of the developing world, most pertinently in Mexico, is so terrible that people are willing to risk their lives to come here illegally to work, usually under conditions we consider inhuman, but which look pretty good to them. 2. If I were in their position, the laws of the neighboring wealthy state would not keep me awake at night as I was trying to support myself and my family. And I suspect most of you would feel the same way.
3. I speak as a Californian. We are a big farming state, perhaps the biggest farming state. We cannot get the crops in without these people. If we cannot plant and harvest our crops we face economic catastrophe. All our big agricultural interests and all our farm labor associations are in favor of some sort of amnesty/guest worker program, mostly because we don't want to see the economy of California crash and burn. And those of you elsewhere who like food at reasonable prices should be on board with us. 4. Overall, the demographics of this country say that we cannot support our retired boomers and their children without a growing young working population. We are not producing this population ourselves. Again, we need these people. 5. Large scale immigration has always caused a Know-Nothing reaction here, nativist and exclusionary. This is no exception. Nevertheless, we've survived all this so far, in spite of assorted dire predictions, and I have no doubt we will this time too. Most of us in this discussion are the descendants of the people who were vilified in previous years. 6. We cannot simply open our borders to all comers without causing a disaster. I don't have the answers to the problem thus outlined, and neither does anyone else, so far as I can tell. But nothing is accomplished by talking about walls or vilifying the people who are desperate enough to come here.

NOBODY actually pays the cost of their own healthcare This makes no sense. Someone must be paying more than they take out of the system. This is similar to the problem with uninsured motorist insurance.
Higher stress on social service programs...higher costs of public education...in my state, it costs more to educated a non-English speaker than it does an English-speaking citizen, per an order by federal judge. I don't blame liberals for creating the problem -- heck there are enough businessmen and corporations to point the figure at. But they don't call me racist and xenophobic when I bring up these points, and they don't radicalize immigrants and encourage these irredentist arguments about "taking the southwest back." And if you think that last point is meaningless, I'd argue that many folks would support the legislation if they hadn't been demonized and had good reason to doubt the "benefits" of immigration over the last few years.

Franklin: Rod, next time please parse such things more carefully, and consider composing your own statements with citations to a source where needed. Important points are to be made in this topic. They are too easily overshadowed by (ahem) unfortunate choices of phrasing. Franklin, I didn't say that I agreed with everything my friend said. I just posted it. I didn't think it was fair to him, given that I'd asked him for his comments not knowing what he was going to say, for me only to post the parts I knew I'd agree with.

Susan: Your no. 6 conflicts with nos. 1 through 5. Scott, you don't think I know that???!? That's why this is such a thorny problem, yes?! One more thing. Let's stop talking about cities being nuked and civil wars and all that crap. That's on the same page with 19th century Protestant fears that the Pope was going to take over the continent. The US of A is the World Champion Of Assimilation. I have friends and family in Europe, and believe me, we are the envy of that entire continent for our ability to assimilate diverse populations in nothing flat. They don't have a clue, which is one reason they're in so much trouble. So, what if a few border states become largely Spanish-speaking? You think that means the end of Politics As Usual, Plasma Screen TV's, IKEA and kids with iPods? Think again.
You're threatened by Spanish? Get over it. It's not that difficult a language to learn, so learn it.

For those of you laughing over the civil war scenario, let me ask: how many Muslims in the former Yugoslavia do you think where involved in the jihad there? A majority? No. A minority of a minority, supported by outside funding and armaments and strengthened by foreign fighters. That's all. But it was enough.

Susan, My understanding is that this is pretty much the state of affairs across the SW, i.e. there are very few situations where one is forced to speak Spanish or English in order to conduct business.

sigaliris - M_David, you seem rather tetchy on this subject, so let me clear up any misapprehensions you may have that I'm accusing you, personally, of being a white supremacist: I'm not. I've never thought you have said I was a racist.
My question was: who ever said whites breeding more was a solution to the immigration problem? I've never heard this before. Because it wouldn't work, regardless, and anyone who thinks it would is none too bright. I assume this means you don't have a problem with Hispanic immigration. Am I misreading you there?...I'm curious because I don't understand the impetus behind some of your statements. I am not arguing from my personal point of view. I'm arguing from what I believe the truth is. You sound as if you are dedicated to preserving some particular cultural entity No. What's to preserve? I'm merely pointing out who the demographic losers are. In this case, the modernist West. All the pontificating and huffing-and-puffing about immigration ignores the demographic and political realities. I was just pointing this reality out. Note we are talking about massive numbers here; anything I want personally is absolutely meaningless outside of my tiny sphere of influence. More illegal Hispanics come into America every year than live in my entire state. I don't think my personal views matter much.

Correct, MZF. Most signs and most transactions are bilingual here.
Most people speak one language better than the other, and if you really want to get through to someone, you speak the language they're most comfortable with, but nearly everyone can function in either one. I do my best with Spanish when I'm dealing with native speakers of that language, just because I want to get the job done; if their English is better than my Spanish, we switch. This is a common calculation across the continent of Europe, and no one is making a big deal of it. Why this should be a Big Fat Problem for anyone is quite beyond me. Spanish really isn't all that hard; nor is English. You learned one language, didn't you? So learning another cannot possibly be beyond you, yes? We do have the old lady immigrants who cling to the old language. My German grandmother never did get English straight. Italian grandmothers were sometimes the same. My El Salvadorian sister-in-law just isn't going to learn English. So the rest of us live with it, and learn another language. Big deal. The kids and the grandkids are bilingual as a matter of course. The family next door to me have little kids who are learning German (Austrian father), Cantonese (Chinese mother) and English, of course. When the three-year-old and I run into a wall, we go to German, which she has a slightly better handle on, and which I speak sort of. The next house down has a Brazilian mom (Portuguese) and a Columbian dad (Spanish), and English of course. The kids and I do best in English. We have lots of problems collectively. But if we all have normal intelligence, language shouldn't be one of them.

Less than half of these people are US citizens, and there is no compelling reason to make them US citizens, unless you are either a Democratic politician or a fool. Or you want to get the crops harvested.

What bubble do you people live in that you only speak one language??

I am in total agreement with Susan, so there's not much need for me to say more. Most of us would feel more ethical feeding our families than adhering to American immigration law, if it came to that. Which it often does. My brother still lives on the border, though, which is a no-man's land of drug violence and almost uncontrolled human trafficking. He works on ranches and gives water to immigrants to keep them from dying of dehydration. He fears going to Nuevo Laredo because of crime - literally beheadings, in one case. We have got to control the border as a security issue. We do not have to demonize people who mainly come to this country for a better life, as did the ancestors of 99 percent of the people who post here (I suspect). It is interesting how scriptural argumens about loving the neighbor (and caring for the poor, for that matter) are "vague," but issues like birth control and abortion - not specifically mentioned, either - are crystal clear. Perhaps an ethos of life and compassion might cover both?

M_David, Complaining that your neighborhood is being destoryed by newcomers is not racist. Claming that immigrants have lower IQs is. Does poor and Hispanic = dumb. Is that your argument? I apologize if I have misinterpreted this statement, because I "racist" is often an unfair sledgehammer. As to 1) So if they moved to Ohio, as opposed to Texas, would this void your complaint? I'm ignoring, for now, the ethical double standard your're working under. 2) You're really arguing that, historically, immigrants haven't lived in enclaves? See, among other examples, the overcrowded, mostly Yiddish-speaking, lower East side of New York from 1880-1920. Of course, they DID really ruin Manhattan property values. 3) This one requires an answer? All Americans need to look the same? Should we be concerned about all the Asians in Seattle and San Francisco? 4) I already covered this. But, to stick with the same example, the Eastern European Jewish immigrants of the era I mentioned were not educated. Nor were the Chinese who built our railroads.
5) True, they did not live next to their native country. I guess I'm just not worried about Mexico annexing the southwest. Hell, I doubt most immigrants would WANT to be under the same government again. My neighbors in South Texas were not interested in forming their own country, either. 6) Right, we've had no Poles, Germans, Yiddish-speaking Jews, Chinese ... really nothing but Germans and Irish.
All of these, again, tended to live in ethnic enclaves during their early generations. Of course it's not PRECISELY the same. No group is precisely like the other.

last part should read "Irish and English." oops.

Claming that immigrants have lower IQs is [racist]. Not if it's true.

How about an exchange of populations between the US and Mexico? They send us their working-age people, ane we send them our retirees. To a certain extent, it's already happening, as American retirees discover the lower cost of living, the comfortable climiate, and the ready and reasonable availability of health care south of the border. Let's make it official!

Language really is a big issue here. I learned Spanish because I wanted to. But it has also helped me hold conversations with immigrants - legal and illegal - to understand who they are, where they came from, and why they're here. I agree immigrants should learn English, though. But I also think Americans visiting Mexico should learn some Spanish - including the American retirees who are "ruining" (as we might say here) towns like San Miguel de Allende, where Mexicans can now scarcely afford to live.

Language really is a big issue here. Why why why? I speak three languages, and I'm just a dumb Angelina who didn't have better sense than to move to San Francisco. Come on, you guys!! Learning languages just isn't that hard!

I find the position of someone like Susan, who says "learn Spanish" deeply offensive - this is an English-speaking country, and one should be able, anywhere in the United States, to conduct one's entire life and business in English if one so chooses. One should not have to "press 1 for English" EVER. Cato, what do you need? A forefinger transplant? Press 1, you're cool.

I think Scott's non-argument is transparently racist. I do not think that all immigration opponents are racists, but I think his comments show that claims of racism are not merely a red herring in this debate.

Down-er. The original post and the fingers-in-the-ear, la-la-la, who cares if we have to get a new culture and a new language response of some of the commenters.

Susan, this is our country and they should learn English. What is so hard to understand about that. I wouldn't move to another country and demand that they learn to speak my language. That is why people rightfully find it offensive. Also, I'm glad to see you are for helot Mexican labor. We can't ask California farmers to find more efficient ways of harvesting crops. No, they need their constant supply of near slaves. Of course we could get cheaper workers from southeast Asia. Some farmers in California are already doing that.
A lot of people don't realize that Mexicans are actually better off than a lot of people and the country is and has the potential to be wealthy. Of course that would require the Mexican people to straighten out their own mess instead of running across the border and bringing the same problems with them.

And do we agree that Scott's comments are racist then?

Susan and Ben: http://www.psychpage.com/learning/library/intell/mainstream.html Educate yourselves.
Ben, sheese, your: And do we agree that Scott's comments are racist then? Well this is witch burning, a sad attempt at getting people to shout and demonize. It's an old liberal trick.
A Christian can, and should, do better.

M_David Your link is garbage. A general statement on IQ. Do better.

M_David I guarantee that they simply won't accept anything as evidence. (Those scholars are all bought and paid for by the WSJ dontcha know?)

Susan: Read the article. Then, understand that it has been confirmed by empirical observation and is denied by only: 1. The ignorant who do not educate themselves on the topic 2. Those ideologically incapable of assimilating the information. Regards, jfruser

Susan, There are two fallacies to your assertion. 1) No country in the world explicitly forgives people who intend to live there permanently but refuse to learn the native language. 2) Multi-lingualism in Europe has one component you will never find in the US: daily immersion in the foreign language. Let me know if you want me to expand on either point. I'm trying to cut down on my frequent long posts.

M_David: A disciplined academic study of IQ, corrected for cultural and language differences, of (a) worldwide native speakers of Spanish versus worldwide speakers of English, or, (b) illegal Spanish-speaking immigrants to the United States versus legal residents (of whatever language group) of the United States, showing a statistically significant difference in IQ.
Please don't insult the intelligence of this group by some BS reference to some general definition of IQ. This makes me wonder about you.

I don't think Susan's point is that we all have to become multilingual. I think her point is that some folks protest too much on the matter. There is difference between thinking one has a right not to have to hear Spanish and one thinking he has a right to conduct business in a common tongue. I'm hearing more the former than the latter. Y'all wouldn't have wanted to live in Wisconsin after the big German immigration wave. German was commonly spoken in the State Legislature. I'm kind of tired of all the rights talk myself. The way most people use the term, it just means "something I believe I should have".

Richard Lynn, "Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis" 2006
Table 16.2 (indigenous populations) Average IQ
Arctic Peoples 91 East Asians 105 Europeans 99 Native Americans (north & south) 86 Southern Asian & Northern Africans 84 Bushmen (southern Africa) 54 Africans (subsaharan) 67 Australians (aboriginals) 62 Southeast Asians 87 Pacific Islanders 85
Susan, this data is not even considered to be much in question in the field. The details, maybe, but calling data that has held consistant for half a century "garbage" just tells me you are not open to scientific truth. And we see these statistics follow those in high IQ jobs in the correct proportions: lawyers, engineers, each have the expected percentage of people based on statistical IQ data. This is old news, Susan. Grow up. Stop trying to use the racist card when having an adult conversation. If you don't believe it, fine. We have all sorts of folk that deny science, like Creationists who deny evolution or the big bang, and that's just fine. There is room for us all. Just stop demonizing those who do believe it.

M. David, I notice that Hispanics aren't considered a race on that survey. I presume the mean Hispanic IQ is somewhere between the mean European IQ and the mean Native American IQ? Of course, Mexico is a racially stratified country and almost all countries these days are at least somewhat economically stratified by IQ so it wouldn't surprise me if illegal immigrants from across the borders tended to be on average in lower IQ bands.

MZ - ok,
...so you don't think it exists? ...or it cannot be proven? ...or people who believe it are racist, or what?

My personal belief is that the metrics are poor.

Thanks for confirming my point, Susan. It bugs you that some people have a preference for their birth language. Prefer away, Osvaldo. We all have preferences. If I prefer to speak, say, Sanskrit, I can do so. No one around me will understand what I am saying, but oh well. If you want to be understood, speak languages your audience understands. If "preference" is your goal, hey, gabble on.

The difference is that I'm not mad at you for wanting to speak Sanskrit, Susan. If you lived in a Sanskrit speaking area, I wouldn't be angry at you. I wouldn't push to bring in speakers of different languages so you were forced to speak others.

Given the pressing concerns of peak oil and environmental degradation, the impact of immigration, both legal and illegal, upon efforts of relocalization needs to be studied and taken into account. Saying that we can continue to plunder California (or any other state for that matter) through industrial practices (which ignore ecological health) in order to provide food (staples and luxuries) for the rest of the country is to miss the big picture entirely. Illegal immigration is a problem, but it must be understood in the light of a proper political concern for self-sufficiency and state sovereignty. As for those who want to talk about love of neighbor in a Catholic (or perhaps even a Christian context)--I would suggest that you study what Catholic theology teaches about the order of charity.

I read Read MDavid's link, MZ's, etc. Surfed around a bit. It seems now we're headed toward one of those debates about whose science is less biased. Great. Those always lead to consensus on blogs. Just to be clear: This debate has now moved to questions of whether Hispanics are dumber and more lecherous than the country generally. Blessed are the poor, the meek ... and groups with verifiably high IQs. Great.

It would be great if there were an IQ expert among us, given that - as far as I can tell - none of us have the relevant academic background to dispute or confirm any of the science based on more than simply wanting to be right.

All the Hispanics I talk to hate illegal immigration. It's their jobs in constuction, plumbing, etc etc where wages have been stagnant. In 1980 in my neck of the woods house framers were making 15 bucks an hour. Today framers are pulling down 12 bucks. 27 years later . Republicans can win by being more populist on this. Illegal immigration is driving down wages of working class Americans. Which includes millions of hispanics. Under Bush the Republicans are nothing but K Street and the Business round table. The GOP needs to be the party of mainstreet. That will play well. The idea that the GOP is going to win the hispanic vote by brining in more poor hispanics is the dumbest idea I've seen yet

Gotta tell ya a story. In the potato famine in Ireland in 1850, a lot of people died of starvation and disease. One kid, age 13, was the only survivor of his family. Somehow or other he managed to get to New Orleans, an unusual port of entry. All he had were the clothes he stood up in. He spoke no English. Only Gaelic. He was illiterate in any language. His IQ? By modern tests? Low, I'd guess. He was a common laborer all his life. He got a job stoking the fires on the river boats on the Mississippi. They told him that the black slaves were too delicate for this work, and he believed them. The real reason? They were worth something to someone. He wasn't. If he had died, they'd have tipped his body into the river, end of story. He survived, and in due course made his way to California, where he married a young girl, another Irish immigrant. She had come by sailing ship to the isthmus of Panama. No canal then. There was a train, but she didn't have the money. She walked, through Yellow Fever country. She caught a ship headed north from there. Her IQ? Honora? Not all that high, I'd guess. She didn't speak English either. She too was illiterate, all her life. From these very ones came the judicial and attorney class of Santa Clara County, San Francisco area. A descendant is head of the Superior Court at this day. A descendant was head of KQED, local public radio, until recently, when she moved to be head of another big foundation. I married into this family, now very distinguished. Not that my family was so much more exalted at entry! We're only any good if we test high on IQ tests? We're only any good if we speak English right off the bat? We have to be lawyers right off the boat? This kid, nothing much to look at, brought us a tremendous heritage, in his genetic endowment. Come on, you guys! Who were your ancestors?

M_David, You brought up IQ. Not us.

MDavid, Jeez. You played the "high IQ" card to defend an argument that sited "low IQ" as a reason to limit Hispanic immigration. By that rationale, it is one of many reasons we would disregard the fact that poor people come here to better themselves and, quite often, to feed their families.
And yes, I do think how we respond to that question is a moral issue. Which gives your argument about it a moral dimension - since it tends to exclude people. Do we really need to have a linguistic argument about how "dumber" is not another word for "low IQ." Do you not think this is a moral debate?

MDavid, The fact that you've once again moved back to IQ, in reponse to Susan, shows that this is, in fact, a factor you way very heavily. I still have to be convinced (but would be open to being convinced) that the evidence justifies it.

While I believe I'm on the opposite side of the fence from Franklin, I'd agree were in ad hominem territory. To which I say: blessing to all, and may all of us be open to changing our minds if the spirit leads.

Sorry, couldn't let that last one go: In your numbered response, IQ was #4. Yes, it was in response to my Irish suitemate example. If you did not, in fact, intend these factors to suggest that we should limit immigration from Mexico, I apologize. However, if you don't think IQ is relevant to the immigration debate, I don't see why you brought it up in the first place.

ben, I've been clear throughout.
IQ matters for assimilation. An Irish person (IQ 100 average) is going to get good jobs very rapidly once discrimination falls away. Others with lower IQs may not do so well. However, I don't personally believe this is any reason to limit immigration for any particular group. You just made the assumption I did. But regardless of my personal opinion, this is no reason to attack me or anyone else for being anti anything when all they do is point out the facts.

I do find it interesting that those who post most passionately about IQ seem to have the worst spelling.

And when relocalization becomes the primary political concern, cultural differences and identity will indeed have an impact.

Susan, emotional anecdotes aren't always the best basis for policy. My ancestor came to the United States after vandalizing a church back home. He made a good contribution here, but in general I wouldn't mind if we tried to exclude people who were fleeing crimes they had committed.

All things being equal, I would expect the Mexican to be illiterate, the Irishman to have at least a basic mastery of reading Gaelic. That's just cultural norms for the two countries. The ability to read is a primary indicator in the ability to learn a foreign language by immersion. But he didn't. Have the ability to read Gaelic. Or any language. My husband's ancestor. My ancestor came to the United States after vandalizing a church So what?
I do find it interesting that those who post most passionately about IQ seem to have the worst spelling.
Please be specific about my spelling.

This post leaves me thinking many things, but first and foremost: Wow. I mean, if you take Rod's friend's analysis at face value, how can anyone doubt that we have already reached American civilizational and Constitutional crisis stage? This is why I simply can't agree with his throwaway summary of the current illegal alien population here. "They're here, deal w/it." No, I'm sorry, we're NOT Germans or Romans. Yes, there is a difference between those that have been here over ten years and those that have come during Bush's "reign". All legislated law is arbitrary to some extent. So, pick a time frame. 5 years. 7 years. Whatever. But, basically we need a Wall. Not a fence, a Wall. I'm talking about a wall like the Israelis are building in the West Bank. From El Paso to San Diego. 1900 miles. Don't talk to me about how that's cruel or un-Christian or anything else. This is, however you may feel about him on other issues, EXACTLY what Buchanan has said it is, a NATIONAL EMERGENCY. I think Rod's pal is ridiculous saying one third of the GOP base is anti-immigrant, but that's neither here nor there, arguing uselessly over that. I'd say that one third he's thinking of in his mind, is the third that I think in my mind realizes how important a unified culture is to any people; American people, or any other kind of people. Free trade is great, but we are not an economy; we are a nation, a people w/an economy. So, basically, IMHO, we need to start building a wall immediately, a real FDR-style national project, to be completed in 6-9mos., and pick a line, like I said, 5yrs, 7yrs; if you've been here longer than that, you're put on the path to eventual legalization. Deport the rest. Don't tell me that's mean or we can't do it; we HAVE to do it. Or the doomsayers are right; we will lose this country; she will be unrecognizable as any kind of unified democratic constitutional republic. America will be a completely balkanized nation by the time I live to see any grandchildren. (And I'm no kid; I'm 36.) Hard & harsh duties are unfortunately sometimes necessary in life and take Courage. The only way this will ever happen is if America organizes to rally the sort of peaceful demonstration demands that would dwarf the illegals efforts in the last 2 yrs. I'm talking well over a million ON THE MALL in D.C. for days on end, to shut down Capitol Hill. Ideas, anyone? Tell me why I'm wrong...

Ben, should you revisit this spot, I've appreciated your contributions--especially your parting blessing. We can use it.

As a Catholic, who takes my faith seriously, that kind of glib, non-argumentative throwaway answer is insulting to me as an American AND a Christian who's been given the gift of reason by a loving God. By your "logic", or lack therof, all the world can come and be Americans. Do you think all the worl appreciates "Blessed are the meek..."? Or don't you watch the news?

Why the preference for Mexican poor over American poor (who are hurt in numerous ways)? And why not help them in Mexico? In my state, American taxpayers pay more to educate non-English speakers than English speakers. If you can't see the problem with that, perhaps no conversation is possible.

Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth. The poor of America first, and their ranks will increase once the various bubbles burst. Anon, as always your candor as to your identity is appreciated. Please supply gospel citation, especially for the "Poor of America first" part.

Susan, M_David offered a general point. You counter it with specific anecdotes. You are both capable of being wrong. I've offered the first (so far as I've seen) rational rebuttal to M_David's general point. I am not calling you irrational or anything else. I am asking for some avoidance of ad hominem on all sides, and I don't really care who "started it"... should I? Susan, be passionate. Be vocal. We definitely do not have nearly enough of that in the US. But please, as much as you are going to have feelings to how it's said, if you don't address what's been said, you haven't really said anything much at all. Anyway, IQ is not racist. Using IQ to justify how a race is treated is racist. You will not find one instance of racism in M_David's posts.

Susan, please supply the gospel citation for the proposition that America should have totally open borders. I missed this in my last read through the Bible.
In fact, oddly enough I don't remember anything much about immigration policy in there. The New Testament is set entirely within the boundaries of one sovereignty and the Old Testament is set in a world that doesn't even have sovereignties exactly, though it would appear to be consonant with the tone you've taken here for you to believe that American citizens were Canaanites and illegals were the children of Israel, ordered by God to ethnically cleanse us from the face of the earth.

Franklin, I don't get M_David's "general point". Perhaps you can explain it to me. Immigrants should be judged by their IQ? What?

Hi, Osvaldo, I'm confused. Please state your position more clearly.

My apologies for my snark about ethnic cleansing. I have no reason to believe that Susan believes that America is a wicked nation whose inheritance by God's will should be turned over to more righteous illegals. My more temperate response: I don't see anything in the Bible that is directly relevant to the immigration debate and I agree with anon's point about the natural law.

I'm confused. Please state your position more clearly. I'm not sure which position you're talking about so I'll guess. On immigration: I believe that Americans and recent immigrants would benefit from an immigration pause from those areas of recent and sustained high immigration. I believe in policies that encourage assimilation (like ending extended family chain migration). I believe it is not immoral for a country to not allow anyone who wishes to immigrate. I do not believe that on average the inhabitants of third world countries that send immigrants will be worse off in the long run if policies that allow emigres from those countries to assimilate are encouraged. On your grandfather's story: I do not believe that anecdotes nor our emotional attachment to our ancestors is a good basis for making policies for today.

Land is accidental to a Patria, it is does not define it.

See chapter 8 of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine on the Church and Aquinas's De Regno and his Commentary on Aristotle's Politics.

Franklin, Well, try this on for size. M_David, here is one rational rebuttal to IQ as a valid factor. I agree 100% there are tons of other more important factors here than IQ. I made 6 points about why Hispanic immigration is different than Irish. IQ was only 1/2 of those points. So I'm in the 1/12 catagory for IQ weight. I agree with you for sure on the sink/swim issue the Irish faced. Regardless of one's position on the issue, I cannot understand those who blithely think illegal Hispanic immigration of 400,000-700,000 each year of a country next door is has the same cultural effect of legal Irish immigration (typically English speakers used to British law) 100 years ago! But I don't think I can censor myself on IQ in the future, though, as you hint I should just to avoid trouble - I always try to tell the truth, regardless of the penalty. I can live with Susan and Ben's wrath against me, the latest that I think immigrants should be "judged" by their IQ, merely by my pointing out how this will effect assimilation rates. Sigh. It's educational, though, to run through the posts and see how one tiny little mention of the IQ issue as a potential assimilation factor creates so many cries of hate and racism, not to mention bible versus about the poor! I've counted so many comments that try to twist what I've said it has become funny. This is how witches were burned and science shouted down in the old days. So it's a pleasure to fight it. But I do appreciate that although we probably don't agree on this issue, you still take the time to stand up against slander. That's cool. I will go and try to do likewise.

417. The political community is established to be of service to civil society, from which it originates. The Church has contributed to the distinction between the political community and civil society above all by her vision of man, understood as an autonomous, relational being who is open to the Transcendent. This vision is challenged by political ideologies of an individualistic nature and those of a totalitarian character, which tend to absorb civil society into the sphere of the State. The Church's commitment on behalf of social pluralism aims at bringing about a more fitting attainment of the common good and democracy itself, according to the principles of solidarity, subsidiarity and justice.
Civil society is the sum of relationships and resources, cultural and associative, that are relatively independent from the political sphere and the economic sector. The purpose of civil society is universal, since it concerns the common good, to which each and every citizen has a right in due proportion .[853] This is marked by a planning capacity that aims at fostering a freer and more just social life, in which the various groups of citizens can form associations, working to develop and express their preferences, in order to meet their fundamental needs and defend their legitimate interests. Compendium http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html#Priority%20of%20civil%20society I'm assuming you weren't referring to that.

As a nation we have the same rights as we do as individuals. This unambigiously wrong.

Sorry, you don't. From para 384 of the CSDC: "The political community originates in the nature of persons, whose conscience 'reveals to them and enjoins them to obey' the order which God has imprinted in all his creatures."

You have missed the complete point of 384. To put it better, you are seeing what you want to see in 384.

My refutation was 417. There is a reason why I objected based on patria.

Civil war? With Mexicans? Not likely.
Also, it doesn't take illegal immigrants to take out a major U.S. landmark, along with 3,000 human beings. More likely, it will be perfectly legal ones, who've outlived their visa and have disappeared. An old American tradition, thousands of wanted U.S. citizens avoid the law by changing their identity and laying low. And it seems there are a few American citizens as willing to commit terrorism.
Be that as it may, this guy has a few good points.

I just wanted to address the claim that we should all start speaking Spanish, and the use of the European example to justify this. Back around 2003, when I was still something of a liberal internationalist, I spent several months in Europe. All my European friends thought it was bizarre that Americans would even bother learning foreign languages. Instead of being praised for trying to learn their language, I had my motives questioned all the time. It was as if they thought if Americans minded their own business and didn t want to rule the world, they wouldn t learn any foreign languages. After two such trips to Europe, I came home thinking that if a closed society was good enough for them, it was good enough for America, too. Also, although Europeans are learning each other s languages, how many non-Muslim Europeans are learning languages like Arabic or Turkish? Since immigration to Europe is overwhelmingly Muslim, that would be the more reasonable comparison.

re Richard Lynn s table of ethnic IQs (cited by M_David)... Bushmen 54...If this is the average IQ, then half the population has an IQ below 50...How can that be? Seems low to me too. And it's a weak number, because it's only based on 3 studies. Many of the others have thousands and are much better understood. But it's not necessarily incorrect; for your reading pleasure: Lynn lists the average IQ of Bushmen, estimated from 3 studies, as 54...this is a reasonable score by considering..."An IQ of 54 represents the mental age of the average European 8-year-old child, and the average European 8-year-old can read, write, and do arithmetic and would have no difficulty in learning and performing the activities of gathering foods and hunting carried out by the San Bushmen" (p 76). Lynn wrote: ". . . it strains one's credulity that a population could long survive the rigors of the Kalahari with a true mean IQ around 55". This should not serve as a "gotcha", because I agree that the 'age' comparison is more appropriate than the 'mentally retarded' comparison for thinking about lower IQ population (such as the 16% of Af-Ams who score below 70). At the same time this also demonstrates a theoretical deficit in intelligence research of distinguishing exactly how an average child with an age unadjusted IQ of 63, a below-average non-retarded adult with an IQ of 63 and a mentally retarded adult with an IQ of 63 all differ in what are fairly considered intellectual abilities (real world indicators of independent self care and adjustment).

For those who are interested in my essay -- thanks for the input (that is, thanks to everyone not advocating Shakespeare's approach to decreasing the size of the bar). To those who are talking about IQ -- I thought this thread was about immigration.... I'll try to post a reasoned reply in the morning.

Larry, Reread his last paragraph. Never said his clients were fomenting revolution. Yet certainly the inability of our elected leaders to disavow the "this is our land" argument by illegals emboldens them. Also, it's not per se immoral and shameful to enforce our immigration laws. And just as we didn't have to drive every illegal to the United States, with strict employer sanctions, airtight benefit programs, etc., we would not have to drive each one back.

Interesting. Once again the know nothings here take issue with someone who actually has EXPERIENCE and knows what he's talking about. Latinos really don't assimilate as readily as did the immigrants from Europe. Latinos really DO believe that the southwest belongs to THEM. I am for building the wall, and I agree that it is suicide if we do not take strong steps to secure our borders. I think that you'd have to be living in a border state to be able to make an intelligent well informed comment on this issue. We are under no obligation to learn spanish, not are we under any obligation to provide for bilingual ANYTHING. Yes, by all means, let's adopt Susan's open borders(essentially what we've already been doing) and continue to exploit the Latinos as slave labor. Now there's some good old down home Christianity for you! And invite Osama's buddies in, while you're at it!

If you honestly believe that your clients and/or their children are preparing to foment civil war against the United States, don't you have a professional obligation as a member of the bar in (I forget if you're from Texas or another state) to resign your job?! Certainly a moral obligation, if nothing else. >> 90% of my clients have US citizen children to feed. If I don't do my job and save their parents from unnecessary deportation for MISDEMEANORS, do YOU wanna pay for the kids they leave behind? Didn't think so. And I never said they were 'fomenting revolution.' What I'm saying is, we gotta stanch the flow or their kids will. Forgive me for not quitting in the meantime. The work I do is moral, whether you think so or not. See you in the morning.

Maybe if they were responsible parents they would take their kids with them. The parents are the one's who created this mess. So, I'm not going to cry a river.

What's this with the Kalahari bushmen? The HUMAN average intelligence is 100, with some 90 percent of us falling withing 15 points of that, and operating reasonably well. The Kalahari should be no exception, barring massive inbreeding. Which I suppose is possible, but the degree of inbreeding necessary to lower average IQ must be fairly high.
I've travelled around a lot. (Though I'm not HALF through with my wanderings!) And I'd have to say that every where I went, there seemed to be a similar mix of intelligence levels. My fellow soldiers are apt to call Iraqis, especially our enemy insurgents, dumb. I can tell you for a fact that they are not. I respect very much the intelligence and courage of my adversaries. I question only their moral reasoning, and to some extent, their political philosophy.

Where do people get the idea that Latinos do not assimilate? That's what I want to know. My children do not even speak Spanish, and both me and my husband spoke it much at home. This really is not true. I wish my kids had picked up better Spanish so they could be bilingual. What is so offensive about speaking more than one language? Most of my Hispanic coworkers and supervisors are lawyers, paralegals, judges, et cetera. How is it they became professionals without assimilating or speaking English? I know, I know, anectdotal, but this is really an argument based on anecdote, no?

Part II. Franklin Evans: until the asinine paranoia of losing a city and civil war...>> Is it asinine paranoia to discuss losing a city to a nuke? Not at all. It's entirely possible. The Iranians have already made it clear they'd love to do precisely that to us and to the Israelis. The North Koreans have been able to do this for five years. And losing it to a shipboard nuke is even less asinine. Einstein alluded to that very possibility when he first wrote FDR in 1940 about the Bomb. Asinine I may be, but if I'm paranoid, so was Einstein. Is it asinine paranoia to discuss civil war? Maybe in 1960. Not now. Read the post on Rod's blog about the poor guy who, every time he complains about deteriorating social conditions in his neighborhood like drug dealing and so on, he's called a racist. Classic projection. The underlying assumption that it is 'asinine' to discuss the possibility that the hispanics could take up arms is that the 'hispanics' are unwarlike and unaggressive and won't challenge up. We may be in for a surprise in that regard under certain circumstances. M.Z. Forrest: In regards to your consultant, I call bluff on a major American city being destroyed by Al Queda in the next 5-10 years. I also call bluff on civil war in the southwest in 20-30 years.>> I'll take that bet, and pray that I lose. M_David: Demography is destiny.>> Mostly so. Demographics however are subject to change. Incerase babies by one per family among non hispanic whites and the game changes fairly dramatically. "Make love, not war," baby. It's cheaper in the long run (and more fun too). :0) Joseph: how many people here believe that a civil war is coming in which Mexican immigrants wage war on the US? >> You have to pay attention not only to the flags but also the rhetoric of the organizations running the protests. La Raza is openly racist (they don't defend "the Race" for nothing). And MeCHA is made up of open Nazis. Add to this the fact that INTERNATIONAL ANSWER and other Leninistic leftist movements have been assisting these movements for years. No, these people are really not very nice, and we have not heard the last of them by a long stretch. M_David: Nor your logic favored solutions are paraded...white people should breed more>> White people SHOULD breed more. Or at least abort less. And so should black people, brown people, red people, and Aborigines. watsy: Civil war? That's silly.Terrorist attack? That's not so silly. We have an open border.>> Civil war is silly NOW. Not so silly in 20 years.
Look, I'm astonished at the degree of anti-American leftist rhetoric from the 60s that have been dredged up in reaction to the War on Terror. Whodathunk that we'd have soldiers spat on in airports again? But we do. Amazing what a united press can bring about if they chant in unison long enough.

Part IV. Susan: What bubble do you people live in that you only speak one language??>> It's a nation known as the 'United States of America.' Maybe you have heard of it. (For the record, I am personally multilingual, but by choice.)
Osvaldo Mandias: [W]hile not all open borders types are anti-American, they are at least deeply, deeply uncomfortable with trying to preserve American culture and American language. These are people who are ashamed that they have a homeland.>> I hate to admit it, but you just described a LOT of my fellow immigration attorneys. I don't share that point of view; my devotion to this field is more rooted in a fundamental hatred of seeing the powerful beat up the weak. RueHaxo: "It's heartwarming to see yuppie pro-abortion natives vanish, while watching pro-family anti-abortion Catholic Hispanics invade. " The Hispanic illegitimacy rate in America is far above the national average. Tell me again about those Hispanic family values.>> It is more moral to give birth to an illegitimate child than it is to abort it. Ahem. Osvaldo Mandias: About Rod's friends idea about civil war: he says that civil war will happen in 20-30 years even if we seal the borders because we already have millions of unassimilated Hispanics here. I disagree. If we seal the border, the Hispanics who are already here will assimilate, even given how broke America's assimilation machine is.>> No, I said that it is possible, indeed likely, and that sealing the border will delay or prevent it. It is not inevitable. But it is a lot more likely, particularly with racists like MeCHA and La Raza and with commies like ANSWER behind the political movement that controls the people. Marian Neudel>> I used to handle immigration cases, but have given it up over the past few years because it has become too complicated and the stakes are too high. Would I get back into it to do amnesty applications? Possibly--I need the money too. But la migra, whatever its current official name might be, is a disaster of an agency whether you approve of its purpose or not. It is understaffed, underfunded, and burdened with several contradictory mandates. It neither helps the eligible get into the country, nor keeps the ineligibles out. And whatever it does costs enormous amounts of time and money. The increasing level of fees ought logically to be solving the agency's funding problems, but it hasn't been. And any "reform" of our immigrations laws, regardless of which direction it tends in, will be a failure as long as la migra itself is not reformed.>> You, Marian, get a gold star on your term report. Excellent! La migra needs to be replaced from the top down. (Of course, so does NASA, but that's another rant. :0))

M_David:...White people SHOULD breed more. Rod's Lawyer, my point was that breeding more is no solution for the immigration issue for two reasons: you can't get white people to breed without force, and even if you could, the 10-20 year lag is exactly when a large chunk of the immigration is going to happen.
Heck, in 20 years, world population decline in the West (and Mexico) may make us want them to come! Somebody has to change the bedpans of the boomers.

Derek Copold: It's heartwarming to see yuppie pro-abortion natives vanish, while watching pro-family anti-abortion Catholic Hispanics invade...I trust you mean that sarcastically. If you don't then shame on you. Rod's Lawyer, that was me, not Derek, and sorry, not sarcastically. Why shame on me? Seriously. >> Then to Derek I apologize. To you I say: Because I've been in places where people who do things that other people don't like "vanish." It's not heartwarming. It's sickening.

"I wouldn't move to another country and demand that they learn to speak my language. "
Americans traveling abroad almost always can find an English speaker practically anywhere. I think as a general rule, most people overseas are very eager to learn English and other languages. The very poorest of the poor in places like Aruba, Curacao, Trinidad, etc. speak multiple languages, of course, among them English --
Why is learning another language so offensive to some Americans? Why is that?

Oui, mon ami, c'est vrai.

Those French, they have a different word for everything.

Why is learning another language so offensive to some Americans? Why is that? Why are some people so upset at Americans only knowing English that they want to force them to via immigration? I don't get the loathing of English speakers.

Rod's Lawyer: To you I say: Because I've been in places where people who do things that other people don't like "vanish." It's not heartwarming. It's sickening. Since you are a lawyer and work with words, you should be able to see how you have twisted what I actually said into something else. Not nice. You are talking about people who "vanish" by getting murdered or whatnot. I was talking about how a people willingly "vanish" by not breeding - i.e., how pro-abort cultures die off and get replaced by cultures that love children. I hate to dignify the implication that I enjoy seeing people murdered with a denial, but I do so now.

But it gives an entirely new meaning to "Make love, not war." If a given population is not willing to match another in breeding, then it deserves its eventual decline.
To be even more mischevious (it MUST be that time of month) I'd say, intermarry with the dominant culture and make it a moot point. What's there to defend against when your grandchildren start coming out half-Mexican? They'll learn English but WILL insist on violently beating pinatas on their birthdays and crushing emptied confetti-filled eggs on your head on Easter Sunday. Confound them.
I'm sure my aside has added NOTHING to the intelligent debate. Sorry.
:(

To Rod's Immigration Lawyer Friend: I agree, if you are working on behalf of clients with citizen children, you are doing good work. But my point stands. If you honestly believe we will see civil war in our lifetime -- and that such civil war will be caused by your clients or people exactly like them -- isn't there a disconnect between what you do now and your jeremiad about what is to come?

Some more crimes for which you can be removed: Shoplifting. Writing bad checks. Driveoff from the gas station. Struggling during an arrest. Getting into a fistfight in high school and the other guy loses a tooth. Driving 95 miles per hour on an Interstate. (That one was my first case. We lost.) Having sex with your fifteen year old girlfriend and you're sixteen. Committing an act of prostitution (although erotic dancing is OK--the Canadians even have a special visa for that one!). But there are rewards. I once had a woman from Zaire get down on her knees and kiss my feet and that of my cocounsel after we preserved her from returning to Zaire, which was then in the middle of the 1998 civil war. She was considered removable because she escaped death in Kinsasha (her family was murdered) by trading sex with ship crew in exchange for a spot on a trans-atlantic tramp steamer: the government said she was a whore entering the US for 'immoral purposes'. I work for the lawfirm of Holden Caulfield. And I am an immigration lawyer. There are worse things to do in life.

How do you reconcile in your mind your work for good people caught in bad situations now with the idea that those good people will (either themselves or through their children) become bad people who will ruin this country?>> If you can't find my answer in the answer I just gave you then you are not paying attention.