Tuesday, October 04, 2005

What About Immigration?

World class columnist Georgie Anne Geyer weighs in on the USA's mounting immigration woes:

"Other specialists, like the prescient political economist and author Pat Choate, convincingly developed the idea that along with the massive immigration over the last 40 years, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which was supposed only to accelerate trade between the two Americas, has 'released corporate America from its stakeholder responsibilities within the U.S. Today its only responsibility is to shareholders, not to workers.' And Doug McIntyre, popular host of Talk Radio 790 in Los Angeles, said it even more clearly: 'We have allowed Third World labor to set the standards for American workers. What we have is in-sourcing -- bringing in cheap labor -- Darwinian capitalism -- the belief that the U.S. is just a market. 'A nation that does not control its borders,' he concluded, 'is a nation in name only.'"

Click here to read the column.

Writing in the Richmond Times-Dispatch A. Barton Hinkle skillfully examines some of the confusing angles of the illegal immigration issue. It's getting harder to pin politicians down -- including our gubernatorial hopefuls -- these days on what to do about it. Meanwhile, it seems the Bush administration is content to allow as many Hispanic illegals to sneak into the USA as the construction industry is willing to hire, which, for one thing, seems to turn the notion of "homeland security" on its head.

Hinkle opens with: "The rising number of illegal immigrants in Virginia -- a number that has tripled in less than a decade reflects "federal failure on a grand scale" either to "enforce immigration laws" or "to change them to reflect" reality. Those are not the words of some cross-burning yahoo with more fingers than teeth."

Click here to read the rest of his OpEd piece.


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