Illegal immigration is still illegal: An intellectually honest argument
By Alan Moore | Tuesday, November 30th, 2010 | PolicyDespite the rhetoric of many liberals and some conservatives-in-name-only, the fact of the matter is that illegal immigration is fundamentally wrong. As much as the leftists would have you believe that this battle is based on some inherent racist belief, it is actually about fairness and the fact that we live in a nation guided by laws and principles. To stray from those principles will result in our country ceasing to exist and real conservatives must fight such a transgression with every fiber of our being.
As far as Corey Stewart is concerned you can attack his immigration policies all you want, just arm yourself with facts instead of insults. I find it ironic that most of the criticism comes from people who have no connections whatsoever to Prince William County. I lived there for almost my entire life, my family still lives there, and I live a stones throw away now in Fairfax. Since the Stewart policies have been law crime has gone down, school enrollment and other need for County services precipitously dropped thus easing the tax burden of paying for illegal aliens, and Americans are being paid decent wages to do the jobs illegals used to do for below minimum wage.
And how did they do it? When someone is suspected of committing a crime they are asked to provide identification, just like any white, black, red, yellow, or brown suspect would have to do. If you can’t produce identification further research is done to inquire on your residential status. Illegal aliens are turned over to ICE.
The opposition to these procedures makes it sound like Corey Stewart is banging down the door of Prince William citizens and randomly arresting Hispanics. Some have even likened them to Stalinistic tactics. Such arguments are intellectually dishonest.
Yes, most illegal aliens come here to make a living and provide for their family. I sympathize for them but I have more sympathy for those who apply to be citizens by going through the legal process. Why should they suffer because of lawbreakers? And when you don’t know who is coming into this country you get the bad with the good. Terrorists and criminals enter this country at will. To leave such a system unregulated is a serious risk to our national security.
Quite frankly I’m tired of no-nothing leftists screaming raacccciiissssmm every time conservatives dare to challenge their positions. It’s a classless tactic perpetrated by an even more classless group of people. To declare your opposition as racists without a shred of proof is not only illogical but it’s downright dishonorable.
Its one thing to have a legitimate policy disagreement, but it’s quite another to propagandize your opponent. Such tactics equate to a societal tantrum devoid of any moral character.
I don’t fancy that the left will ever cease these shameful tactics. I do however think conservatives need to do more to challenge them when confronted with this strategy.
After all, isn’t it ironic that the left assumes when a conversation on illegal immigration takes place we without a doubt must be referring to Hispanics? Why do they insist on labeling all illegal aliens as Hispanic? I won’t go as far as stooping to their level and accuse them of being racists but they are certainly stereotyping.
Of course, I wouldn’t suspect anything less from those who lack honor.
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Alan Moore is a conservative activist and public relations expert in NoVA. Follow Alan on Twitter: @SecPress
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23 Responses to "Illegal immigration is still illegal: An intellectually honest argument"
“Conservative in name only”? I’m sorry, but deporting up to 20 million people will require one of the most massive expansions of government power in the history of the United States. And at what cost?
How on Earth is that a Conservative principle?
First, I’ll leave the logical fallacies of decrying the rhetoric of racism while arguing the rhetoric of “honor” (whatever that means).
Second, the sixth-paragraph, first line “no-nothing liberals”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing
While the Know Nothings and modern liberals share an awful lot in common, it helps to know (1) the history behind both the Know Nothings and modern liberal movement, (2) why the juxtaposition is both odd and reflects poorly on whoever is making the statement, and (3) how to spell.
Lastly, rage and intellect aren’t the same thing. No matter how passionately you feel about this (I tell my liberal friends this all the time) it doesn’t make you any less wrong.
Calling Shaun and Jason “conservatives in name only” is second in ridiculousness only to Lowell Feld calling J.R. and me “extreme right wingnuts.”
Come on, man.
“Its [sic] one thing to have a legitimate policy disagreement, but it’s quite another to propagandize your opponent. Such tactics equate to a societal tantrum devoid of any moral character.”
…
“Of course, I wouldn’t suspect anything less from those who lack honor.”
Translation: “We shouldn’t personally attack our opponents, unless their my opponents.”
“I won’t go as far as stooping to their level and accuse them of being racists but they are certainly stereotyping.”
Translation #2: “I won’t call them racists, but they’re racists.”
Do people usually take you seriously? I’d be quite shocked.
Alan Moore needs to familiarize himself with PWC policy before commenting. He stated:
That simply is NOT PWC policy. PWC checks immigration status post arrest. No one is exempt. There is a huge difference between probable cause and checking the immigration status of anyone who has been arrested.
Moore has also been fooled into thinking Corey Stewart has strong convictions about illegal immigration. The conviction is he wants to be elected. Nothing more. He rode that horse to down in 2007 and foolishly thinks he can wave a few illegal immigrant atrocities around and hearts and minds will follow.
Most people in Prince William County have moved on. They are trying to get their home values and reputations back after the debacle of 2007. Their worries are around traffic, the economy, and jobs. Now they can also worry about no federal raises for 2 years.
And Mr. Moore, trust me, when Corey speaks of his ‘illegals,’ he most assuredly is speaking of Hispanics.
Brian – I agree. You’re no wingnut. I, however, am:
http://www.sports-gallery.com/product_details.php?products_id=1164
Go Wings!
I’m still rolling over “no nothing liberals”.
I mean, first off — liberals are people, too. In fact, many of them are highly educated, well-spoken, and you can pick one up at your local SPCA.
Second, the “Know Nothings”? I’ll let Wikipedia to my heavy lifting here:
Say whaaaaaaaaaat?!? NATIVISTS!?!
Like, people who don’t like them foreigners (like the Irish?) entering this country because dey tuk er jbs! and they weren’t invited to begin with?
And then — and here’s the magic — to COMBINE THEIR POWERS INTO VOLTRON and form the “no nothing liberal!”
I guess certain people have an assumption that the “other” in any arrangement is some how less than yourself. Liberals “no nothing” — so I can see how someone who treats their ideology as a religion can make that mental slip up. I’m sure there are many liberals who have criticized me over the course of time for being a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal.
Then again, I can take it one step further and see how the very same person — who views liberals with such disdain — would view other individuals with the same disdain.
Food for thought.
What part of ILLEGAL don’t you liberals understand. Illegal is illegal I don’t care what it is from steal a paper chip from the job, to murder, to people coming into this country without proper documents it is illegal and is punishable by law.
Let us begin with facts first. Crime has been steadily decreasing in PWC even during the height of the immigration influx. Don’t just trust me, go directly to PWC police crime stats and you will see the facts.
Second, what is the definition of “liberal” :
“Liberalism first became a powerful force in the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting several foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as hereditary status, established religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. The early liberal thinker John Locke, who is often credited for the creation of liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition, employed the concept of natural rights and the social contract to argue that the rule of law should replace absolutism in government, that rulers were subject to the consent of the governed, and that private individuals had a fundamental right to life, liberty, and property.”
Guess what philospher Thomas Jefferson BASED the Declaration of Independence on? My hero, John Locke. In fact, I penned under that name when I first became involved in fighting for sanity when it came to the immigration debate.
Immigration is a very complicated issue in this country, always has been, always will be. Many people who adjust their status do it AFTER they are here. One day “illegal” the next day “legal”. Is their character miraculously different once their status has been altered? No, they are the same person. My family has came here, not so legal back in the early 20th century. I challenge every person to learn their OWN history before they throw that first stone.
For those who keep a death grip on the fallacy that “you can’t deport 20 million people” so instead you just have to succumb to (and perhaps facilitate with offers of amnesty) an invasion by foreign nationals, I’d urge you to briefly review some recent history that suggests otherwise.
Back in the 50′s President Eisenhower managed to get millions of illegal aliens to voluntarily return home by simply enforcing the law. More recently states like Oklahoma and Rhode Island enacted measures to ensure that employers wouldn’t hire illegal aliens and not only did illegal aliens voluntarily depart, but the unemployment rates in those states dropped considerably — by about half in Oklahoma, in fact. More recently Arizona also required businesses use E-Verify and illegal aliens left, dropping their unemployment rate.
When ICE raided a meat processing plant in the midwest a couple years back and found hundreds of illegals, everyone wondered who would fill those jobs. The very next day there were five lawful job applicants waiting at the door for every new opening. You want to improve the economy, you first have to throw away this “doing the jobs we don’t want to do” baloney and let legal workers get work, ensure employers comply with labor laws, and stop this modern version of indentured servitude by unscrupulous employers.
Prince William couldn’t mandate E-Verify by county employers, but had law enforcement as pretty much the only avenue available. Just checking all persons detained (later all persons placed into custody) for their immigration status allowed the county to turn over nearly 3,000 illegal aliens for deportation.
Aggravated assaults dropped by over half, the number of persons driving without a license plummeted, and instead of having cases where five of the nine persons murdered in Prince William County, Manassas and Manassas Park in 2007 die at the hands of an illegal alien, the number of people murdered by illegal aliens has dropped to about one a year on average. Neighboring localities have seen rises in aggravated assaults by as much as 75%.
I find it interesting that many of the people who are screaming that legal residents departed along with illegal aliens are the same ones who were telling minority communities that the gestapo was coming to town and that our police department was going to start ripping children away from their parents. They’ve never owned up to the fear they deliberately spread among minority communities, something they blame others for.
I’m sorry, but adopting Operation Wetback’s policy of randomly stoping “Mexican looking” people and asking for their papers is hardly a model we should want to repeat.
Or should we just adopt FDR’s round ‘em up into camps philosophy since that worked so well to halt any domestic issues with Japanese during WW2?
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On some things I agree with Alan Moore on others I don’t.
They are here illegally and continue to do so. By “they” I mean ALL illegal immigrants from ALL parts of the world. I have to be that specific because of all the disgusting race baiting.
Alan calling obvious conservatives as being “in name only” is wrong. Why Alan? Because they disagree with you?
But Alan is right about the race issue, Shaun. I disagree with you on some issues, but I recognize you as mostly being a conservative. That said, the vast majority of those taking an approach YOU don’t like are not racist, but you paint them all with the same broad brush with your race baiting comments. I find it to be ugly. And racist why,
Shaun? Because you disagree with them?
If somebody really is a racist…..fine call them out. If they really are a RINO….fine. Call them out. But this crap about name calling simply to attack someone daring to oppose your belief or policy preference isn’t helping anything. It just. Makes your arguement look weak and desperate if you have to resort to that level.
$1 million dollars to the first person who can show me where Kenney called anyone a racist. A wooden nickel for every time the racists got their feelings hurt and called Kenney a name, though.
Anyone else detecting a double-standard here? Hmm…
The GOP needs more Shaun Kenney’s. I applaud Kenney for refusing to hold his nose and make chicken salad out of Stewart’s chickenshit. Not your average conservative, indeed!
We don’t need to spend money to deport the illegals. We can make money on it.
Hire an illegal alien and get caught…first time five thousand dollar fine. SECOND TIME 25 large, third time you lose your license and 50 large.
It won’t take long for the illegals to find their way home.
Illegal aliens are a large portion of this economic mess we are in today, for so many reasons. They have pretty much ruined the construction industry in Central Virginia. Large projects are being done by firms from Atlanta, who bring their own south of the border types and house them here. Local contractors cannot begin to bid low enough to compete. I’m sure all the money paid to them stays right here in America, aren’t you?
@Jason Kenney,
Deporting 20 million illegals would not require a massive expansion of government power for at least two reasons. One, controlling immigration is specifically a power given to the federal government in the Constitution. And two, it has been done before, although on a smaller scale. Recommend you check out Operation Wetback (that really was the name, not a bigot/racist) under President Eisenhower.
2 million lose jobless benefits as holidays arrive. I wonder if any of those 2 million will be willing to take some of those jobs that illegals have now.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/01/million-lose-jobless-benefits-holidays-arrive/
Greg,
You can attempt to rewrite history, but the record, written and otherwise, demonstrate your lack of honesty. You, who tried to paint Chief Deane as a criminal traitor, is one to talk about “rule of law”. You can try to moderate the truth of BVBL and HSM, but anyone can see through your smoke and mirrors.
You can distort the facts as you will, but people only need to READ the crime stats by the police dept as it refers to “illegal aliens” and the real picture is MUCH different than you pretend narrative. I have to say thank you actually. Keeping track of illegal aliens and crime statistics has actually shown how LITTLE impact illegal immigration has on crime.
2009, of all persons arrested or summonsed only 2.2 % did not have legal status AND ONLY 6% OVERALL committed criminal offenses.
http://www.pwcgov.org/docLibrary/PDF/12155.pdf
2008 crime stats from PWC:
http://www.pwcgov.org/docLibrary/PDF/009958.pdf
“As defined by the FBI’s UCR program, Part I
crimes include murder, rape, robbery,
aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and
motor vehicle theft.”
“Overall, a total of 63, or 3%, of the 1,802
arrested for Part I offenses in 2008 were
determined to be illegal aliens.”
Greg, I empathize with the severity of the neighborhood issues, but to suggest that we needed to spend MILLIONS to deal with very specific neighborhood issues is misguided at best.
Is there any chance we get beyond screaming past each other with “illegal means illegal” and “Hispanics are people too”?
Terrorist organizations are using our porous border to sneak sleepers into the country. Many localities and some states are drowning under red ink driven in part by mandated costs for services to illegal aliens. Yet most of the open borders crowd would rather cover their eyes, while restrictionists and attritionists refuse to adapt their message in re partolling the border or proposing policies that could help localities and encourage the feds to keep illegal aliens out in the first place (like allowing localities and states to sue Washington to redresses of moneys they have to pay for said mandated services).
Meanwhile, Mexico itself is in the midst of a massive drug war, which could lead to a collapse of the government; or the election of a Chavezista in 2012 (one nearly won the election of 2006). What if either event happens? Are restrictionists and attritionists prepared to accept that illegal aliens from Mexico could very well become political refugees over night? Have the open borders folks really thought through intergrating these people into American society; indeed, do they consider these 12 million or so as anything besides political props?
This is not aimed at Shaun or Allan in particular; both men have dedicated some time to their views and likely would have well-thought out responses to the above. I wonder, frankly, about the rest of us.
The open borders group is definately not mainstream, I am not even sure I know anyone that is an “open borders” advocate. I certainly am not.
The question one must ask themselves is how much money are you willing to spend on a population that accounts for less than 4% of our country. If there is an all out war in Mexico, that is a game changer and then we deal with humanitarian visa’s, just like we did with Nicaragua.
I’m utterly shocked that “Operation Wetback” is the grand solution to deport 20 million people. Truly, not a proud moment in American history, as anyone who has touched a history book knows.
Haven’t encountered a soul who advocates for open borders… the question (again) is how to treat the 8-20 million people already here.
Curious to see that — still — no one is willing to explain how the mass deportation of millions of men, women, and children should proceed. Much less who is to pay for it (fine the people here? seriously? best of luck collecting…) and what powers people are willing to give to their government. Folks are screaming bloody murder about scanners at airports… I doubt anyone is going to be comfortable with Israeli-style checkpoints, random searches, and watching cable news as parents are torn from kids Elian Gonzales style when they find one of them is an “illegal”.
Just a quick Q: Can anyone who advocates the mass deportation of 8-20 million people explain a single instance when an involuntary mass extradition of people by a government has gone well?
Name a single instance. Just so we can all understand what will be involved here and expected of every American to comply.
Again, I am still utterly shocked and dismayed that so many so-called conservatives, who typically fight against big government and Big Brother, scream for the totalitarian police state when “illegals” are mentioned. What a shallow, shallow political philosophy…
Shaun,
You’re again fighting against straw men. Who is advocating the box car and concentration camp approach (much less the “checkpoints, random searches” and Elian Gonzalez-style jackbooted home invasions)? It’s easy to impute racism to your opponents when you put thuggish arguments in their mouths. But, you seem to avoid engagement when it comes those of us who are making serious arguments about enforcing existing laws regarding criminal aliens and hiring of illegal workers as a means to induce voluntary return of illegals to their home countries.
Common Sense,
See here: http://bit.ly/fH5VSo (“note” at the bottom of the comment). I’ll take my $1 million in small bills, please.
Steve –
I did not make those arguments as solutions. I tossed them out there, because I have yet to see a single serious argument as to how the mass deportation of 8-20 million people would occur.
And yes, there are pitfalls. Whether I should avoid them for those who believe in mass deportations is not my role. That’s for the opposition to describe how this can reasonably, affordably, and without gross intrusions on civil liberties this project should take place.
Now if you believe mass deportations are racist, well then you have led yourself to a conclusion. Do I make that charge? Certainly not… but I will say that precious few have thought this project out in terms of economic or social cost.
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