Bush's immigration speech tonight and the conservative voters who hate it

Mexican President Vicente Fox called to express concern over the prospect of militarization of the border, and Bush reassured him that it would be only a temporary measure to bolster overwhelmed Border Patrol agents, the White House said.

I'm glad everybody's aware the troops are purely cosmetic so that he can mention them in his speech tonight.

Wow, Georgia, u r a treat!

from that WaPo article linked above

xpost

not really, i was referring to the "civilian contractors" bit

xpost

the embattled mentality is really getting out of hand. it's starting to feel more and more like radical muslim "permanent state of emergency" where one's identity is attacked both from without and within

i go back and forth on what i think is worse. i feel like i should visit these parts of the country because the hysteria is something i absolutely cannot understand. (despite visiting a mcdonald's this morning where literally all the crew talk was in spanish)

then they aren't Catholics

I currently work for a "privatized bureaucracy". What is wrong with a "federalized bureaucracy"?

How are we going to stop Al Queda (and other terrorist) operatives from penetrating our borders?

You make it sound like there are thousands of Them out there waiting to get in. It only takes a handful, at most, and it will be virtually impossible to keep so few out -- no matter what the government does -- short of TOTALLY closing down the country.

Plus, hello! homegrown terrorists.

This is just people linking the two to bolster weak arguments and keep the nation scared.

mexican immigrants are generally more socially liberal than america's pre-existing population, not further intolerent & theocratic

...does not mention Arabic nations in any way?? And is a completely baseless statement?

And then I just ramble on for a bit:

Over 95% of second-generation Mexican Americans speak English as their first language. The majority of fist generation Mexican immigrants speak English in their homes. This is actually a better track record than that of my Norwegian ancestors (who settled in clusters and maintained many "foreign" traditions well into the second and third generations). The American government literally gave away portions of this country to my immigrant ancestors. Mexicans have been settling here since there was a border to move across. Almost universally, when a large Mexican population moves into a neighborhood, the crime rate goes down.

If the immigrant issue hasn't substantially changed much over the past two centuries, why is this such a hot issue?

I just worked on a campaign for a pro-choice, liberal Catholic from Columbia who didn't know English when she got here, who is about to become a state senator, and my whole point is that she's a liberal Catholic immigrant from south of the border.

And then I stop rambling.

Not to totally derail, but I could swear someone on ILE quoted (or linked to) a statistic that said that 2/3 of first generation Mexican immigrants spoke Spanish at home. I don't know if this is us being sloppy with our language, or them, or whether these issues are so politicized that the only survey worth trusting is the one you do yourself.

and what implies that all or most european muslim immigrants are committed to theocracy if not jihad.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0001UZZOU.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/05/conservatives-debate-bush-iimpeachment.html

I was working from memory. Just by browsing various stats and surveys via Google, I see that my stats on 1st-gen Spanish-speaking immigrants must be off.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/05/conservatives-debate-bush-impeachment.html

Unfortunately, the electorate seems to be divded between a small group that wants unconditional amnesty and a large group that thinks we can actually round up 11 million undocumented workers and build an effective border fence without becoming a police state. Neither group appears willing to approach the problem rationally and humanely, and even if Bush wanted to do so, he has zero political capital, so we'll probably get some sort of Rovian pablum.

http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=282

High immigration levels of the 1990s do not appear to have weakened the forces of linguistic assimilation. In other words, the incentives to convert to English monolingualism by the third generation do not seem to have changed. Mexicans, by far the largest immigrant group during the 1990s, provide a compelling example. In 1990, 64 percent of third-generation Mexican-American children spoke only English at home. In 2000, the equivalent figure had risen to 71 percent. However, the level of English monolingualism dropped from 78 to 68 percent among third-generation Cubans between 1990 and 2000.

http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9221/spanish.htm

With respect to immigrant children, 70 percent of those 5 to 9 years of age, after a stay of about 9 months, speak English on a regular basis. After 4 years, nearly all speak English regularly, and about 30 percent prefer English to Spanish. After 9 years, 60 percent have shifted to English; after 14 years--as young adults--70 percent have abandoned the use of Spanish as a daily language. By the time they have spent 15 years in the United States, some 75 percent of all Hispanic immigrants are using English every day (Veltman, 1988, p. 44).

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JWcrawford/can-pop.htm

And it's a bipartisan issue, according to the poll, which found that 92 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Democrats approve making English the country's official language.

So, 82% of Democrats approve, yet 3 out of 4 Democratic Senators voted against? What gives?

Er what other language should the government use? COBOL?

What, are you trying to keep the oldsters in duckets? Wasn't Y2K gravy enough for you people?

(also for the record, I ain't an Arnie supporter but he was against the fence and said so publicly)

I'm sure the actual effects of the bill will be negligible -- but it really disappoints me that people thought it was necessary in the first place.

eh, I stand by my statement. but we can split hairs if you want to.

Huckabee Defends President's Immigration Plan

Embracing Illegals: Companies are getting hooked on the buying power of 11 million undocumented immigrants

I didn't know for instance that it's now often possible for undocumented immigrants to get things like mortgages, insurance, loans, bank accounts and other services that used to require a social security number.

Kudlow (last week) wonders at the fuss. Cella at RedState attempts to wonder back. Winner: nobody.

Malkin despairs, Levin cries, Hewitt whistles past the graveyard and probably is giving cause to just about everyone to strangle him further, which wouldn't surprise me.

The real gem this weekend, though, was from Sensenbrenner, your friend and mine. Thus RedState:

Sensenbrenner referred to those who hire illegals as "21st century slave masters," and he called them "just as immoral as the 19th century slave masters we had to fight a civil war to get rid of."

Of course.

http://progressive.org/mag_danticat0606

not on teh gays. John Harwood of WSJ said on MtP today that
1. the issue is being raised to drive turnout of old people and rural voters
2. Republican polling shows that people under 40 don't care, and
3. they know the issue is dead in "5, 10, 20 years"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5044428.stm

Last Updated: Saturday, 3 June 2006, 14:14 GMT 15:14 UK
Bush calls for gay marriage ban

US President George W Bush has called for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages.

Mr Bush used his weekly radio address to deliver a plea for the US Senate to formally define marriage as the union of man and woman.

He said the measure was needed because "activist courts" left no alternative.

An amendment stands little chance of being passed but analysts say Republicans see the issue as a vote winner in November's mid-term polls...

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41721000/jpg/_41721690_gap.jpg

demonstrating that even patriotic software engineers can form loving relationships, i guess.

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A growing number of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps leaders and volunteers are questioning the whereabouts of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars in donations collected in the past 15 months, challenging the organization's leadership over financial accountability.
Many of the group's most active members say they have no idea how much money has been collected as part of its effort to stop illegal entry -- primarily along the U.S.-Mexico border, what it has been spent on or why it has been funneled through a Virginia-based charity headed by conservative Alan Keyes.
Several of the group's top lieutenants have either quit or are threatening to do so, saying requests to Minuteman President Chris Simcox for a financial accounting have been ignored.
Other Minuteman members said money promised for food, fuel, radios, computers, tents, night-vision scopes, binoculars, porta-potties and other necessary equipment and supplies never reached volunteers who have manned observation posts to spot and report illegal border crossers.
Gary Cole, the Minutemen's former national director of operations, was chief liaison to the national press corps during the group's April 2005 border watch in Arizona. He was one of the first to raise questions about MCDC finances. He personally collected "tens of thousands of dollars" in donations during the 30-day border vigil. But despite numerous requests -- many directly to Mr. Simcox -- he was never told how much money had been collected or where it went.
"This movement is much too important to be lost over a question of finances," Mr. Cole said. "We can't demand that the government be held accountable for failing to control the border if we can't hold ourselves accountable for the people's money. It's as simple as that."

Reported, I should note, in the Washington Times, so the usual 'that liberal MSM!' reaction which would have otherwise followed hasn't. The Times put up a further editorial and even Malkin's been forced to whimper.

PS. I hope no one here thinks that this issue isn't squarely
about race. I live in Boise (projected to be one of the
nation's largest cities in 10 years) and brown people seem
to be widely despised and viewed as a "drain" on the economy,
by the same cross section of society that benefits from
their exploitation.

And I hope you realize that ALL undocumented immigrants
are victims of exploitation. They're basically a second
class of citizens who are lacking a lot of basic rights,
like access to police or hospitals.

“As Rome passed away, so, the West is passing away, from the same causes and in much the same way. What the Danube and Rhine were to Rome, the Rio Grande and Mediterranean are to America and Europe, the frontiers of a civilization no longer defended.”

So begins a new work of warning from Pat Buchanan.

And this time Buchanan goes all the way.

STATE OF EMERGENCY: THIRD WORLD INVASION AND CONQUEST OF AMERICA streets this week and is designed to jolt readers with stats/analysis of illegal immigration gone dangerously wild.

Buchanan warns: “The children born in 2006 will witness in their lifetimes the death of the West."

One in every twelve people breaking into America has a criminal record.

By 2050, there will be 100 million Hispanics concentrated in the U.S. Southwest.

Between 10 and 20 percent of all Mexicans, Central Americans and Caribbean people have already moved to the United States...

Good thing he juxtaposes those facts together like so.