What 'Comprehensive' Immigration Reform Compromises?
Whatever your views about Immigration Reform, the "Comprehensive" part of recent proposals means imposition of a national identification scheme on American citizens. A little-known core provisions of the “Schumer-Graham” proposal mandates a biometric worker ID system: it requires a national ID card with two-biometric features, and computer tracking system for all U.S. "workers." That means most American citizens would have to carry a national ID.
The U.S. labor force of 160 million men and women dwarfs the estimated 10 million "illegal immigrants." Yet every employable citizen would have to be dually biometricizes-fingerprinted and digitally photographer, perhaps retina scanned. Every “worker” would have to get a "tamper-proof" ID card and have to carry it whenever working on a job. It would have to be produced on demand by employers or government inspectors.
Since the 1930s, multiple schemes for a national ID systems have been rationalized as ways to ferret out fascist or communist infiltration, streamline government services, stop terrorism, or end illegal immigration. New justifications and foolproof schemes pop up every few years like outbreaks of mushrooms. Every one is aimed at the "bad guys," but each one actually undermines the fundamental freedoms of the "good guys." A national ID would compromise what it means to be an American citizen.
Furthermore, this scheme one would even "bait-and-switch" legal immigrants: expecting to shred their green cards on naturalization, they (and other "legal" workers) would instead get shackled to red-and-blue cards. Worker IDs would also become a hugely expensive waste of tax dollars, no doubt tens of billions of dollars more than any large estimate.
Whatever you think is the solution to illegal immigration -- from tall walls to open borders, to guest worker contracts -- a national ID system won't solve the problems. Countries like China and Germany have both strict household registration system and national ID card requirements and bureaucracies. But they still have extensive illegal immigration problems. Both are centralized state provider of order and services, though the Federal Republic is a democracy. Neither represents the American way.
Rationalized and ineffective, a national ID system sadly, too, reverses the proper relationship of consent of the governed to government. Rather than the people delegating democratic power by consent, in a national identification system, the ID imposing government gives, and can take away, consent for the subjects to have identities, rights and benefits. Like the individual health insurance mandate, worker ID systems are the state telling citizens what rights they have, or don't have, to prosper and how to manage their lives in their best interests. Neither is a proper government position.
If you don't like health insurance mandates, you won't like mandatory biometric national worker IDs. Whatever your views of the benefits of immigration reform, any proposal needs to drop the worker ID schemes from consideration. Like arguments for nationalizing the driver's licenses in "Real IDs," the debate around IDs to end illegal immigration, is just another excuse for an unnecessary, outlandishly expensive, compromised and detrimental federal program. Here’s a chance to let your government know now that you oppose any form of a national ID plan.
SOURCE
Violent "refugees" in Australia
Are these the people we want in Australia? All offenders should be denied permission to stay
THREE critical incidents are being reported each day across detention centres in what insiders claim is a system out of control.
Documents revealed to Federal Parliament show there were more than 3400 incidents reported across the detention network in the nine months to February this year. Of those, 850 were deemed critical.
According to reporting protocols adopted by Serco, the company contracted to run the centres, critical incidents include assaults, bomb threats, chemical and biological threats, death, sexual assaults, riots, escape, hunger strikes, damage to facilities or protests.
"Are things out of control? They have been out of control for five years," one worker said.
SOURCE
Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
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