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Hard Choices - The United States Of Immigration Pretense
Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com,
The New York Times editors seem to think that if they tell enough sob stories about illegal immigrants in their ongoing sentimental series “The Way North,” that the national debate will turn into a giant pity party and the nirvana of a human peaceable kingdom will come true, with no consequences — except for more interesting cuisine in states that formerly subsisted on Salisbury steak and pie.
The New York Times, like just about every other institution in the progressive orbit, has surrendered its collective brain to a morass of feelings, longings, and promptings that leads ever deeper into a wasteland of dishonesty. As a long-time registered Democrat who started voting in the year of Watergate, I resent being taken for a ride to the place where anything goes and nothing matters. And especially where nothing matters less than clear thinking and straight talk.
We could start with the practice — especially popular on National Public Radio — by which illegal immigrants are called “undocumented,” as if some unjust bureaucratic mistake was made in their journey across the border and to blame them for it amounts to persecution. It is really too obvious to belabor, except to say that the cumulative effect of such programmatic lying, day after day, will eventually discredit the basic principles of social justice, if it hasn’t already.
The popular story is that America was built by immigrants and that therefore everything about immigration is good and leads to a more successful society. This narrative is so devoid of historical context that it should embarrass anyone beyond a second-grade education. In fact, the surplus populations of industrializing European countries were off-loaded onto a more sparsely-populated New World that also happened to be in the throes of rapid industrialization (including industrial farming), offered a lot of cheap land under plain terms, and held a bonanza of untapped resource wealth in everything from timber to iron ore.
A few things that progressives leave out of the story these days: immigration was rigorously controlled at its ports of entry, and particularly at the height of immigration between the 1880s and the 1920s. A lot of people may have been pouring in from foreign lands, but they were carefully scrutinized on the way in, and not a few were sent back. Secondarily, these immigrants were required to assimilate into a recognizable common culture. There was no handwringing over the question of whether children from Italy or Lithuania should have to learn how to read, write, and speak in the English language. A strong consensus required it of them, and it must be fair to say that most of them were eager to enter that new common culture. We also conveniently forget that immigration quotas were severely restricted in 1924, not out of meanness, as the sentimentalists would suppose, but because the public and its representatives correctly apprehended that the situation had changed in some of its obvious particulars, requiring a consensus about limits.
In the 21st century, The USA is no longer sparsely populated, except in the regions that are typically hostile to settlement anywhere else in the world — places where there is no water, or too hot, or too cold, or too swampy. North America is a settled continent at a moment in history when virtually every nation including the USA can be fairly considered over-populated. It is also too obvious to belabor the point that fossil fuels have produced an algae bloom of human reproduction and that, whether we like it or not, the decline of fossil fuel is certain to lead to a decrease in human population. The question is how disorderly and cruel that journey might be if we don’t make the management of contraction a supreme political priority. And managing the movement of people into this country is a necessary part of that.
Currently, progressive America is pretending that the conditions of the 19th century still prevail here - boundless material resources and land for the taking - and that we can happily accommodate the overflow from our equally overpopulated neighbors, Mexico and the countries of Central America, any way they can manage to get here. The sentimental approach as represented by The New York Times, is exactly what will prevent the kind of hard choices that national leadership is faced with. Both established political parties could founder on this issue.
It’s rather funny that the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in 2016 titled her current book Hard Choices, because that is the chief pretense of the party she represents. The last thing Hillary wants to do is take a stand on anything, other than her entitlement to live in the White House.
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So Hillary, what are your feelings about the Mexicans?
pods
Immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island at the end of the 19th century couldn't simply walk to the nearest Dept. of Human Services and get Food Stamps, Cash Aid, TANF, WIC, Section-8 Housing, Medicaid, and Earned Income Credits...
You either made it on your own, relied on your family, or you starved.
Today, the incentives for immigrants to integrate and become productive, tax-paying citizens are virtually non-existent...
But, in reality, immigrants do get jobs. California agriculture (including the wine industry) wouldn't exist without Mexicans. I was talking to a farmer at a local farmers market on Saturday about the drought and his crops (berries) and he said he's had problems finding pickers this season. It seems there just aren't enough Mexicans to go around anymore.
I had another guy from Commiefornia tell me earlier that there was no plantation work for immigrants because of the drought. Which is it?
Actually, we would have a cheap and abundant supply of young, able-bodied laborors; if we didn't pay them to sit at home, watch TV, eat Twinkies, and breed instead...
Well, the same applies to all of the Trash Class, including the honey boo-boo white trash.
I thought that's who I was talking about...
To some people everything is about race.
Indeed. It appears that NOTaREALamerican inadvertently displayed some sort of BIASorBIGOTRY.
It seems there was a pause in the Mexican immigration over the last few years . Plus there's lots of a different ag areas. Not sure they're all the same. The wine industry is expanding every year and also pays relatively well. The Mexicans are also the primary employees in restuarant kitchens and nothing is growing faster than restaurants in Cali. As an aside, I believe Mexico is now the worlds largest auto producter, so that might have something to do with things. It might just be simple supply and demand, with spot shortages of Mexicans observed in different areas.
Mexicans are like honey bees. Once they are gone we are truely fucked - Albert Einstein.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/830697...
Nobody around to pollinate...and nobody around to pick...means an empty lunchbox for little Johnny.
You mean little juanny?
Last year we harvested 13 tons of grapes by hand at our friends boutique vineyard/winery. Took 4 weekends 5-10 people a day. This meant carrying 50# buckets per person to the crusher. All of us are in good shape and the average age was 45. This is back breaking work in the sun and we look forward to doing this every year to help our friends.
I can appreciate the contributions Mexicans do for our agriculture but Americans could do the same if they had to. Unfortunately, they are so out of shape at this point one 1/2 hour of work such as this may kill them.
Miffed;-)
Who do you think are the fattest/"most out of shape" 'Americans' these days (also most illiterate and lacking of basic skills)? That was rhetorical, it is the Mexicans and other Central Americans. Why do you think obesity and diabetes have surged? Agian, that was rhetorical, as we all know it is the Mexicans and other Central American 'squats' (a Spanish term BTW). If there was a people singularly unfit for the 'American' lifestyle it is the 'squats'. The constant MSM propanganda against Americans has clearly overwhelmed your ability to even notice basic facts; and good luck with those human bowling balls that, according to you, have contriobuted so much (sarc. off).
Um no. There just aren't enough who want to do that kind of shit work when they can take construction jobs and steal the living off of Americans. I sure as shit didn't see any price decreases from illegal labor floating my way when I bought my house during the boom. Pure profit to CEOs and executives off the backs of slave labor and the middle class.
Hey, j0nx.
I am pleased to see You posting here.
I hope You are well.
How are things in the Forum Of The Photocropped these days?
Could it be that all the Hard Working Unemployed Americans are home collecting benefits and watching Oprah, while eating and drinking to their heart's content using SNAP cards?
Hell, that's a two-for-one deal. Keep americans unemployed and dependent, and import more dependents.
Sorry dude but you are sooo wrong. Only 1% of immigrants work in any aspect of agriculture. Machinery now outpaces immigrants in almost every way ... from lettuce picking to grape picking. Immigrants concentrate in cities that pay the most benefits.
"the more people we send back at the border, the smaller our carbon footprind, and the fewer greenhouse gassed we emit" ... except Hillary knows no science.
2nd
Smothering-mommy welcomes all the children of the world. How could she not, when there are so many needy children? Smothering mommy can't say no to any of her children. Smothering-mommy has a warm loving heart.
Smothering-mommy doesn't have room for all the 'gumballs.'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE
Just wanted to note that it's now less than a half hour till the market has it's scheduled move higher. Get in now or be priced out forever!
There's always tomorrow, because BTFATH.
No.
Government dependents is what they want. Both sides, but Dems benefit more in the political world (Republicans probably more in the business world). Vote for me (forever)!
Did the owners of the company store not want people dependent?
You load sixteen tons, what do you get.
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go.
I owe my soul to the company store.
assuming government services are not given away freely amd strong property rights are protected, what is wrong about immigration? setting limits smacks of central planning. allow the natural equilibrium to prevail.
Re: setting limits smacks of central planning
OOOOO, good one. I'm going to start using this.
Nothing.
Except both assumptions are false.
Services are given away.
And the money to pay for them is taken from those who followed the rules.
So anyone who wants can come into America and stay there? Are you serious? Go back on your meds.
Votes for the demicans, cheap labor for the republicrats, and misery for everybody else. It doesn't get any more bipartisan than that.
to hell with white-thing hitlary. we need a wise latina president next [/sarc]
I read it as "wide assed latina"...
Funny, I read it as "fat assed bitch".....
Edit.... uh oh, I upset the kanklasaurus.
I think I need to give you lessons on letting go of the hate and learning to love them for the their incompetence, as it makes it so easy to simply make them meaningless. Even with their cankles.
If I am going to imagine a woman, it's not going to be Hillary in other words.
"...wide assed latinas" seems like a good place to start IMO. Come on, just say it with me, "wide assed latinas."
Perhaps you haven't met any of those in your life.
Just think of the people in charge of Death Star I, pure incompetence...
Tyler, why have you guys moved from disecting this great new revelation? http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/judge-throws-out-evidence-in-sergey-aleynikovs-code-theft-case/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
@firstdivision Thanks for the link
Strictly speaking since America has fucked a lot of the world then they should accept more of those ppls they have displaced e.g the muzzies. ;)
If you wanna play World Policeman then expect the consequences.
Tylers, You missed a perfect opportunity for some accompanying humor...
Sam Elliot's Humor/Perspective on Slow Government Responses...
(A Must Read)
Sam Eliot's Humor
http://livingprepared.blogspot.com/2014/06/sam-eliots-humor.html
LOL, I wish I could give you more up votes!
Why are there so many MORONS thinking that this is a Red vS Blue team issue?
Even before Ronnies timeframe both sides were fracking this up so bad.....
Do you drink some drink that only kills the Red side or Blue side brain cells?
Because ZH is in reality a right-wing site. It's like reading the online version of Fox News. "Tyler" pretends to be libertarian, " a pox on both houses" bs, but in reality ZH has turned into an organ of the Tea Party.
If you (and I don't mean RaceToTheBottom) specifically, but rather all readers, don't realize it, you're not paying attention.
You are confusing "conservative" with conservative. Overall, you are right, but this site is not that much like Fox News. It's much more anti-authoritarian which means - over all - the Red Team isn't liked very much. The only topic it agrees with Fox News on is "those people". As "those people" are a major reason that people vote, the Red Team is more supported than the Blue Team.
I'm not confusing anything. If this site is, as you say, "anti-suthoritarian" answer me why the guy posting up top who quoted what a farmer told him about not having enough workers got 20 (as of now) down votes?
I live in California, I've talked to plenty of farmers and they almost uniformly say the same thing at various times of year. I tell them I have no sympathy, as they're just looking for cheap labor and just interested in their own profits, but really why would a guy get 20 down votes if it weren't for the far right wingers who inhabit this site, and to whom "Tyler" is pandering?
That's not "anti-authoritarian." That's just right wing bs.
It is much easier to misconstrue anarchist, true libertarianism and/or anti-statist values as being 'conservative' values; thus the evidence of misinformed tourists and malignant denizens and opposition mercenaries within the forum.
'Conservatives', 'Tea Partiers' and 'right wingers' make claims to seeking a reformation of the system, although it is often a false defense for defending the status quo or seizing power and wealth via securing or increasing socio-economic and political hedgemonies and fiefdoms.
I, and those akin to me; seek to dismantle the present socio-economic and political constructs entirely and create new unencumbered institutions and freely associative and/or disassociative relationships devoid of coercive and/or exploitative predicates. We are the erasers of odious debts.
Maybe you should turn on your brain.
It seems there just aren't enough Mexicans to go around anymore.
from that guy with now 28 down votes (including mine) is just a bullshit statement.
Yes, I know Mexicans do most of the fruit/nut/whatever picking jobs at the left coast, but anecdotal evidence can be cherrypicked just as well, plus where did he believe the Mexicans, who did those jobs the previous years, all went?
Living on the dole now?
Back to Mexico?
All moved up the ladder into better jobs?
So together with the rest of his post the implied statement that "we need a steady inflow of new Mexicans to keep the picking jobs filled" is just framing things into another false choice, i.e. propaganda in its dumbest form.
And if you read here for some longer time, you would know that poster NARA is (in)famous for half-assed conclusions.
lulz...
lol...Rupert Murcock wants as many illegals in here as he can get, same with Sheldon Adelbrain.
Is that Tea Party enough for you? ;-)
No party would have me, and that is the way I like it!!!!
Essentially unlimited immigration across the Southern border begain in 1968, the same year as the collapse of the London Gold Pool.
Unlmited southern immigration was and remains an explicit policy to dispossess the native US population and change the voting demographics to those more accepting of the policies think tanks like the CFR (amongst others) believed would be necessary to retain order (ergo for THEM to stay in power) in the event of a Dollar Collapse.
'Floating' the currency has delayed the end. But clearly the policies they wish to enact, and have been enacting more resemble Hitler and Stalin than Jefferson.
So... basically, the same people who turned the greatest collection of real material wealth in the history of history into the greatest debt in the history of history want to extend their rule from the barrel of a gun.
And they believe immigrants from places historically featuring authoritarian regimes will be more apt to go along with it.
That is my view too, gcjohns1971.
I believe that a lot of people want to look at the runaway political problems in North America as due to incompetent stupidity, however, more and more I have been driven to conclude those runaway problems are due to evil insanity.
Some links: Overshoot in a nutshell:
As usual, what happened in the USA
also happened inside of Canada too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muw22wTePqQ
Immigration by the Numbers -- Off the Charts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxcEIpbNBjU
Who opened America's borders?
It appears TOO LATE to stop this social experiment?
I thought that the most important passage in the article above by Kunstler was this:
"North America is a settled continent at a moment in history when virtually every nation including the USA can be fairly considered over-populated. It is also too obvious to belabor the point that fossil fuels have produced an algae bloom of human reproduction and that, whether we like it or not, the decline of fossil fuel is certain to lead to a decrease in human population. The question is how disorderly and cruel that journey might be if we don’t make the management of contraction a supreme political priority."
One of the main themes of my comments on Zero Hedge has been that the history of successful warfare based on deceits segued into a political economy based on enforced frauds. Therefore, it is almost impossible to overstate the degree to which our civilization has become criminally insane, and is necessarily headed towards debt insanities driving death insanities, inside of the overall context of Peak Insanities, because everything has been controlled by lies backed by violence, too much, for too long! That drove society to become more and more psychotic, as the runaway systems of legalized lies backed by legalized violence get worse, faster, due the basic underlying problem that enforcing frauds never can make those frauds become true, but their enforcement can only make society more insane.
In my view, North American civilization has become about 99% insane, while about 99% of the people can not perceive that properly, because they still tend to take the well-established systems of legalized lies for granted, since they have adapted to living inside of the entrenched systems of enforced frauds for generation after generation.
One of the comments above made the laughable assertions that somehow Zero Hedge catered to the right wing. In my opinion, Zero Hedge delivers to the those in the radical center, that have just begun to go down the rabbit hole, to different degrees. After one begins to do that, it is clear that "right" & "left" are both puppets, performing in Bizarro Mirror World. It is typical for everything to be backwards, so that the "progressives" got that label while promoting the banksters' agenda, which was actually retrogressive.
I regard Zero Hedge as currently delivering to the mostly still relatively superficial radical center, which is a growing audience of people who have partially "woken up," but usually not yet gone deeper, into what I have discovered appear to be infinite tunnels of deceits.
One could ask:
"How far down the rabbit hole does Alice go?"
In my opinion, none of the authors featured in Zero Hedge articles go down very far, but they do share some awareness that there is a black hole there. My view is that we have already passed beyond the event horizon of a social black hole, and so, more and more people are beginning to be more aware of that. Therefore, most Zero Hedge articles begin to discuss some of the preliminary levels of going down that black hole, into the radical center, which is neither "left," nor "right," but rather the awakening (to some degree) that both were in an overall puppet show.
I have found that a significant minority of the people who post comments under the main articles on Zero Hedge go somewhat deeper down into the black rabbit hole. Of course, I tend to vainly believe that I have traveled somewhat further down into that radical center, as I have expounded upon in my comments here for the last year or so.
My response to the question "how disorderly and cruel that journey might be" is to ask another question: how insane could Peak Insanity become?
immigration is all about vote buying. look at the fucking parties fighting for who gets to grant amnesty.
"Jobs for americans you say? Or, our 'budget' can't handle millions more on welfare" Posh. The vampires need to stay in power, and that takes vote fraud, useful idiots AND vote buying.
Back in the Ronnie timeframe it was about cheap labor. Can you imagine places like Palm Springs without hundreds of gardeners? I cannot believe any but a few % have citizenship or some paperwork....
Playing at Indian Wells would just become too expensive, not even talking about Big Horn....
Open borders...bullish for Correction Corp.of America and related "service industries".
The problem is not immigrants, it is entitlements. Somebody in DC please understand this.
Dear Mr Kunstler,
Do not confuse the Rhetoric with the Apparatchik.
The myths of immigrants past is rhetoric meant as an anasthetic, and wholly unrelated to the policy itself.
Unlimited immigration is not general, but only to those from certain places, most notably South of the Border.
There are SIGNIFICANT barriers to entry for other foreigners that grow in parallel with what the immigrant has to offer, and shirnk with the lack thereof.
If you are uneducated, latin, marxist or from a marxist country, you are welcome to come without barrier. If you are educated, capable, self-reliant with savings (unless you're a billionaire), there are barriers against your entry.
IMMIGRATION is (and has been since the Johnson Administration) about disposessing the current citizenry of their political influence by means of dilution.
Where do the H1B Indians, from about 5 years ago, fit in here?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/for-indian-engineers-h-...
"The visa program, created in 1990 to allow highly trained professionals to work on specific projects in the United States, has become a contentious element of the comprehensive immigration reform bill the Senate approved Thursday. The bipartisan legislation would increase the annual cap on the visas from 65,000 to 110,000, and possibly up to 180,000 per year, depending on demand and the U.S. unemployment level.
The bill also seeks to place new restrictions on companies that make heavy use of H-1B visas.
Critics of the program say the visas, which in India are used mainly by IT engineers, allow foreigners to take jobs from Americans. And while the documents are valid for just three years and can be extended to a maximum of only six, many who get them find legal ways to stay longer in the United States."
Los Angeles is 80% Latino. Just saying.
more like 60% asian, 40%mexican, and then there's you,
Hard choice? Put up a fence and man it with soliders and shoot anyone that tries to come across. Ship the rest of them out.
Erecting oppressive border control similarly used by communist and fascist countries wouldn't solve the problem of the welfare state. Which is the sole reason why immigration has become a problem today. If there was no gigantic welfare state, the only Mexicans/other Latinos that would be immigrating would be ones that would provide actual labor and capital to the country instead of just draining the system.
Just remember, the same fence you want to keep people from entering the USSA will be the same fence that inevitably gets used to keep people from leaving.
Regarding the leaving part - I couldn't agree more. I now live in Mexico and my 30 year long relationships with brokerage houses etc are very strained. They make me feel like I am un-American because I live in Mexico. They hide behind 'money laundering'. I worked all my life and now I retire outside the US and I am therefore a criminal.
Mexico is not as backwards as many in the US might believe. It has a lot to offer. I believe that in the next ten years the tide will turn and the flow will be southward. This is a very family-centric society with ethics.
It is not so much that Mexico isn't backwards.
It is that the US has also become backwards.
actually Mexico is not at all backward, it is a member of the G20, which are the world's richest nations. Fred Reed, a person many here at ZH are familiar with lives in Mexico and writes frequent articles on various news sites including lew Rockwell, he is very positive regarding Mexico and the Mexican people. Conditions in Mexico are much,much better than in Central America
The "oppressive border control" used by commies & fascists was to keep their people in, not other people out.
But of course we don't have oppressive border controls here anyways, by virtue of the fact toddlers with droopy, soggy diapers are apparently crawling all the way from Guatemala & El Salvador THROUGH THE LENGTH OF Mexico, through deserts and drug cartel territory...with ladders & grappling hooks strapped on their backs in order to scale the "oppressive border" fence.
But you're right, they're here for the free shit and a diaper change ;-)
Israel already has one... (oppressive border fence)
I thought Kunstler was an intelligent guy. But this article is full of his emotions (and his Gorilla hairs showing up the collar of his shirt), and very little reason behind his quasi hateful (or resentful) diatribes. What Howard's missing is that immigration reform looks mainly to assimilate populations who by not the regular ways, have already entered the country and has been living on it for a certain amount of time. The simplistic and not very open minded might think the solution to this is strict justice: enter illegally, get thrown out. Forgetting that God created several worlds before ours, but they all failed because they were ruled by strict justice; and only succeded when justice and piety ruled together (to get friendlier with god fearing ZHers). To do that would be a mess, not only for those being expelled, their families. But the economy as a whole who depends on such workers. Manage to "kick em all out" and I'll bet you'll wake up in the worst of your nightmares.
Oh God, not this HATE meme again! Anything that offends against the Cathedral's doctrines gets dismissed, not by logical argument, but by designating it as HATE.
Call me when we impose serious employer sanctions. Anything else is useless.
We're the indians, James.
And PLEASE do not refer to the 'Ted Kennedy' Immigration Act of 1965.
http://irishsavant.blogspot.ie/2014/04/the-ted-kennedy-immigration-act-not.html
Obviously none of you bleeding hearts are living near the border, where these poor souls are swarming across like flies to a carcass. In Texas they aren't coming to pick fruit, the children who are getting educated here in Austin aren't even learning how to speak English proficiently. They're just coming here b/c they know that they get free stuff for their whole family.
The situation on the Mexican border is completely out of control,
90,000 children will have crossed over to the US by the end of fiscal
2014, some experts from homeland security believe that up to 142,000 additional children from three central American countries will enter the US next year. only 2000 children were returned to their home countries last year. That means that all of these children will remain in the US.
Adopted children are worth real money to women who are collecting aid to dependent children, refundable tax credits, medicaid, EBT, section 8 allowance etc.
That is why you see smugglers are transportin central american children to the border and then dumping them. They are being paid to do so.
What happens to hispanic welfare queens once they are past child bearing age and the bennies run out?
Three guesses as to where the money for the smugglers comes from.
Hispanics like to vote for Communistas, like in Cuba and Venezuela. When Communistas destroy economies of their native countries, Hispanics immigrate to other countries and start voting again.
I jumped on a death train and broke my legs, i still crawled to the Rio Grande where Joe Biden was touring, he said to the border guards....
" look at the scrappy dreamer kid, God luv ya' kid, stand up and introduce yourself...oh crap, my bad, you're a cripple"