Current Immigration Bill WORSE than the Last One

Here's the letter I sent to my Senator, Lindsey Graham, when he was pushing the McCain Kennedy Immigration Bill last year. The letter is an executive summary of my research into immigration, assimilation and acculturation:

Dear Senator Graham:

I’ve heard your defense of the McCain-Kennedy Immigration Bill on multiple news programs and talk shows . I am sorry that I cannot share with you any enthusiasm for this legislation which fails to address a host of issues which have recently become vital to our national security and national unity.

President Vicente Fox of Mexico spoke at the Cancun Summit and described Mexican immigration as a “human rights” issue. That may be true. Mexico is consistently violating the human rights of the mostly illiterate, indigenous peoples that are actively being “encouraged” to leave Mexico and go to the United States.

In "Reframing Mexican Migration As a Multi-Ethnic Process", Jonathan Fox of the University of California, Santa Cruz describes Mexico’s abandonment of rural agricultural programs and the effort to shift the indigineous populations of Indian ethnicity either to Mexican cities or the United States. The United Nations Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination concluded it’s most recent session in March by condemning Mexico for using forced sterilizations against these same peoples.

What we are witnessing is a sanitized version of Soviet-style collectivization and ethnic cleansing. Mexico is dumping into the United States an underclass of what Mexican elites view as undesireables. The bonus for Mexico is that they will no longer be a drain on Mexico’s social services, nor will they agitate for change in the corrupt Mexican system that leaves that nation unable to offer these poorest of the poor much hope for their future.

Meanwhile, the bill you support in the Senate indulges in a fantasy of transforming this growing underclass of illegal aliens by assimilation. That might have worked decades ago when we had a public school system that promoted the idea of an American identity. But as you are no doubt aware, the multicultural crowd is in charge of public education today.

Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies in a 1997 piece titled "Will Americanization Work in America?" describes a study by Sociologist Ruben Rumbaut which surveyed students in San Diego who are children of immigrants or who immigrated themselves at a very young age:

In terms of ethnic self-identification, the change was dramatic. Three years of high school caused these students to see themselves as significantly less American; there was a 50 percent drop in the proportion (already small) of those who considered themselves simply "American," a 30 percent drop in the proportion of those considering themselves hyphenated Americans, and a 52 percent increase in the proportion of those describing themselves exclusively by national origin.

Furthermore, there is a profound reluctance by many immigrants towards assimilation or learning English. In 1998, the Washington Post ran a series of articles on the immigration problem. The third article in that series "Immigrants Shunning Idea of Assimilation" reports the experience of Maria Jacinto, who became a U.S. citizen, but like other members of her family living in Omaha, Nebraska she does not speak English, nor considers herself an American: "I think I'm still a Mexican," she says. "When my skin turns white and my hair turns blonde, then I'll be an American."

The McCain-Kennedy bill, and your public support for it place a high value on these immigrants learning English. Yet come down to Southern Beaufort County sometime. I’ll take you to visit neighborhoods where these aliens can live their entire lives without using English. And many do not want to learn, or are not capable of learning.

What will you do when the time for these folks to assimilate has come and gone? Will we round up every single one who cannot speak our language? You know the answer to that as well as I do. The McCain-Kennedy Bill will have legitimized a new underclass of mostly illiterate foreigners living in this country unable to speak our language and with absolutely no allegiance to our history or ideals.

The time for half-measures is past. As President Bush has requested, we need a truly comprehensive bill on immigration that solves the security and cultural problem, not just the employment problem for meat processing plants and landscape companies.

After your stalwart support of Justice Alito during his confirmation hearings, I was prepared to forgive you for joining the anti-constitutional “gang of 14.” However, your failure to recognize the national security and cultural cultural issues that are of such great concern to the citizens of our state makes me wonder about your commitment to represent South Carolina values in the United States Senate.

An update to this letter might underscore how the current legislation walks further away from the fantasy that illegal immigrants want to, or will be assimilated into the American way of life. The new "Z" visa will allow current illegals to stay as long as they renew the visa with NO requirement for learning English or taking the path towards citizenship.

The dangers of an unacculturated underclass segretated from society by language and culture can not be overstated.

Does anyone really think the latest immigration bill is an improvement?

What is so very wrong with assuring secure borders FIRST?