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6/14/2010
Haering: Build the wall
I’m an open borders guy. Deep down. But you’d have to go a ways to see it in my proposal to build the Great Wall of the Americas, from San Diego to Brownsville, to keep out the illegal aliens.
I really love my country. I render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. – and with super-sized zeal. I want to paint the whole continent red, white and blue.
My dream is to drive a Pennsylvania Turnpike from Baffin Bay to Tierra del Fuego, staying at Holiday Inns and eating McDonalds with my dogs.
But Mexico is too different. We cannot just throw open the borders. The Mexican culture has yet to truly embrace free market capitalism. Capitalism that defines our society and has conveyed our wealth, power and freedom.
(Except the drug cartels, whose staunch capitalism builds through destruction.)
I live in California now, where I often feel like the alien. Non-Hispanic whites like me are only 42% of the population. 43% speak a language other than English at home. Demographic trends show Hispanics may grow to a majority here over the next decade.
Think about that in a Wisconsin that is still 90% white.
The Latino workforce I know, mostly Mexican Americans, do not embrace the soul of capitalism. Frankly, neither do most of us white folk anymore. You see, in the golden age of capitalism, beginning during WWII, entrepreneurs started businesses because they were driven to become rich. As rank and file workers, our jobs were to see how much money we could make FOR the boss. Hoping of course, the boss would see and reward our industry.
As bosses were blinded by wealth, unions took hold, and over time more of us have become workers who try to see how much money we can make FROM the boss.
Yeah, so what?
The Latino workforce I observe does not fall in either category. They are not trying to make as much as possible FOR the boss or FROM the boss. The Latino workforce here wants to see how little they can work and still get paid.
Scream here. Many of you will stop reading now and write a nasty comment. I bet you’re Democrats. Go ahead. I asked for it. The stroke is broad and bold. And surely ignorant.
Yes, we white folk have plenty of workers in the least-possible work category. And the low-skill Latinos I know hardly represent the whole population. And I know a few extra-mile Latinos who work hard as hell, or “hella hard,” in the local idiom.
But if there was not a kernel of truth in there, why is it virtually a one-way border-crossing? Where are the 20 million Americans risking life and freedom to get into Mexico?
NO, there is more than language separating our countries. We need to learn the language of Hispanics, as they are learning ours. But they need to get with capitalism. And we need to refresh our memories as to how we became so mighty that we can take on dozens of millions of illegals and still thrive. And it sure wasn’t with the likes of ObamaCare or the Recovery Act or TARP.
It was by nurturing a free economy where hard work and perseverance made dreams come true and amassed fabulous fortunes. Where our leaders do not publicly wonder why anyone would need all that money.
I don’t want great wealth and power. I don’t necessarily admire or want to hang with the wealthy and powerful. But they are the stars of capitalism and I am a supporting actor. And they create the jobs with the paid 2-week vacation I need to drive that turnpike from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
So, put up the wall. Preserve a risk-and-reward America without pre-emptive penalties for those who go for the gusto. Then further engage Mexico so that billionaire magnate Carlos Slim is not singing the capitalist ballad alone.
Tim Haering lives today in Concord, CA and is a former policy advisor to Gov. Tommy Thompson.
COMMENTS
"how little they can work and still get paid"
I am not a Democrat, however when I read the above I did quit reading and take a deep breath.
So much to think about. Imagine trying to "stem" the tide.
David (Mon Jun 14 08:31:37 2010)
Change some words and this author sounds like a New Yorker in the mid-to-late 1800s when our great grandparents poured into the land of opportunity from Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, Italy. One big difference...we didn't have immigration quotas. While the nation then lacked the social safety nets of the 21st Century, free land was a huge governmental handup to these largely uneducated, economically poor folks seeking a better life. The seeds for our post-WWII prosperity were sown in the magnificence of our open borders albeit to the chagrin of those who were faced with the challenges brought in by the vast swarm of these immigrants. Sharing and sacrifice are two vital characteristics we have lost touch with as a country. Without these values practiced widely in our culture the future does indeed appear bleak.
Dennis (Mon Jun 14 08:38:50 2010)
Perhaps it’s time for “outside of the box” thinking with our immigration conundrum. Since much of the Southwest from Texas to California was a part Mexico before it was taken (stolen) by the U.S., simply give it back. The benefits would be incalculable. Hollywood, Sun City, the Dallas Cowboys and Nancy Pelosi as well as the people flowing north would become Mexico’s headache. The upside list of positives seems endless. There may be a real opportunity for us here!
Dennis (Mon Jun 14 10:00:13 2010)
I love how Dems rewrite history.
Maybe they have to since they do not study it ?
"We" stole Manhatten
"We" stole Texas
"We" stole California
What about the 26 dollars paid for Manhatten? ( You stole it you capitalist pig !)
What about the 15 Million paid for Texas and California ? ( You stole it you capitalist pig !)
No where do you read it was Presdient Polk, a Democrat who did this (after the Mexican War)..?
Ahh, thats because History needs to be written and Americans need to be banished for poor and illegal behavior !
Yes, they live among us folks, those who wish to rewrite history and not accept facts. We saw it with Helen Thomas and her comment that Jews should leave Israel to the Arabs. We saw it with Chamberland when he Said Hitler had a right to the Sudetenland.
These are people who find fault with History rather than understand it.
They want to correct the fault (in their mind) by rewritting it, and the worse thing is..
They base their premise on this rewrite which is a false assumption.
How illogical !
Rich (Mon Jun 14 11:19:27 2010)
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Immigration and Nationality Act
"The Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA, was created in 1952. Before the INA, a variety of statutes governed immigration law but were not organized in one location. The McCarran-Walter bill of 1952, Public Law No. 82-414, collected and codified many existing provisions and reorganized the structure of immigration law. The Act has been amended many times over the years, but is still the basic body of immigration law.
The INA is divided into titles, chapters, and sections. Although it stands alone as a body of law, the Act is also contained in the United States Code (U.S.C.). The code is a collection of all the laws of the United States. It is arranged in fifty subject titles by general alphabetic order. Title 8 of the U.S. Code is but one of the fifty titles and deals with "Aliens and Nationality". When browsing the INA or other statutes you will often see reference to the U.S. Code citation. For example, Section 208 of the INA deals with asylum, and is also contained in 8 U.S.C. 1158. Although it is correct to refer to a specific section by either its INA citation or its U.S. code, the INA citation is more commonly used." (see http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=f3829c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD&vgnextchannel=f3829c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD)
This is a federal statute from 1952 that says, "Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him."
"From 1882 until 1943, most Chinese immigrants were barred from entering the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the nation's first law to ban immigration by race or nationality. All Chinese people--except travelers, merchants, teachers, students, and those born in the United States--were barred from entering the country. Federal law prohibited Chinese residents, no matter how long they had legally worked in the United States, from becoming naturalized citizens.
From 1850 to 1865, political and religious rebellions within China left 30 million dead and the country's economy in a state of collapse. Meanwhile, the canning, timber, mining, and railroad industries on the United States's West Coast needed workers. Chinese business owners also wanted immigrants to staff their laundries, restaurants, and small factories.
Smugglers transported people from southern China to Hong Kong, where they were transferred onto passenger steamers bound for Victoria, British Columbia. From Victoria, many immigrants crossed into the United States in small boats at night. Others crossed by land.
The Geary Act, passed in 1892, required Chinese aliens to carry a residence certificate with them at all times upon penalty of deportation. Immigration officials and police officers conducted spot checks in canneries, mines, and lodging houses and demanded that every Chinese person show these residence certificates.
Due to intense anti-Chinese discrimination, many merchants' families remained in China while husbands and fathers worked in the United States. Since Federal law allowed merchants who returned to China to register two children to come to the United States, men who were legally in the United States might sell their testimony so that an unrelated child could be sponsored for entry. To pass official interrogations, immigrants were forced to memorize coaching books which contained very specific pieces of information, such as how many water buffalo there were in a particular village. So intense was the fear of being deported that many "paper sons" kept their false names all their lives. The U.S. government only gave amnesty to these "paper families" in the 1950s." (from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu)
"Emigrating to the U.S. wasn't the magical solution for most of the immigrants. Peasants arrived without resources, or capital to start farms or businesses. Few of them ever accumulated the resources to make any meaningful choice about their way of life. Fortunately for them, the expansion of the American economy created heavy demands for muscle grunt. The great canals, which were the first links in the national transportation system were still being dug in the 1820s and 1830s, and in the time between 1830 and 1880, thousands of miles of rail were being laid. With no bulldozers existing at the time, the pick and the shovel were the only earth-moving equipment at the time. And the Irish laborers were the mainstay of the construction gangs that did this grueling work. In towns along the sites of work, groups of Irish formed their small communities to live in. By the middle of the nineteenth century, as American cities were undergoing rapid growth and beginning to develop an infrastructure and creating the governmental machinery and personnel necessary to run it, the Irish and their children got their first foothold- on the ground floor. Irish policemen and firemen are not just stereotypes: Irish all but monopolized those jobs when they were being created in the post-Civil War years, and even today Irish names are clearly over-represented in those occupations (Daniels, 1990). Irish workmen not only began laying the horsecar and streetcar tracks, but were some of the first drivers and conductors. The first generations worked largely at unskilled and semiskilled occupations, but their children found themselves working at increasingly skilled trades. By 1900, when Irish American mend made up about a thirteenth of the male labor force, they were almost a third of the plumbers, steamfitters, and boilermakers. Industry working Irish soon found themselves lifted up into boss and straw-boss positions as common laborers more and more arrived from southern and eastern Europe- Italians, Slavs, and Hungarians." (from http://library.thinkquest.org/20619/Irish.html)
Nowadays, too many illegals DO get welfare, and DO run drugs. I know some in our area! Perhaps we should do away with all selfare, and let anybody come in and WORK
emily matthews (Mon Jun 14 12:23:02 2010)
My malnourished, non-English speaking, ill-educated, pond-crossing European ancestors of the 1850's, have much more in common with border-crossing Mexicans of 2010, than they do with Mr. Haering, whose reading of American economic, social, and political history is highly dubious.
In 2010, he and many others are bothered by Mexicans. Pick out any year in our nation's chronology, and you will find various degrees of hostility toward Germans, toward Irish, toward the Dutch, toward Eastern Europeans, toward Chinese, etc.
There are compelling arguments to be made for immigration reform. Mr. Haering's is not one of them.
Kole Oswald (Mon Jun 14 12:24:46 2010)
Oops, misspelled welfare. Also, since my husband is a LEGAL immigrant, and I know what hoops he had to jump through to get here, allowing illegals to come in willy nilly is a slap in the face to folks like him.
emily matthews (Mon Jun 14 12:25:02 2010)
Go here to see what was hauled in at the boarder earlier this month. These are peaceful future citizens 60 minutes should do a show on this.
Rich (Mon Jun 14 13:47:44 2010)
I will ignore the manifestly racist comments in this disgusting blog. I don't think this blog is worthy of the usually standards of FoxPolitics.net.
But just one fact not in the blog followed by a question. Fact: The vast majority of illegal and legal immigrants come here to work, And are invited here to work by employers either known at the time or unknown. So why is it that the tools we have to prevent the improper use of social security numbers are not used? The reason why is that unscrupulous employers like the cheap and compliant illegal labor. If the economic incentive to hire illegal labor didn't exist there wouldn't be illegal labor. Period. Oh, by the way, do you think the drug cartels exist because the Mexican Government is so corrupt? The root cause of course is our (the US) insatiable hunger for drugs backed up by an internal drug policy that creates a criminal element and lax gun laws that allow the cartels to obtain guns so they out gun the Mexican police and army. Thousands of Mexican police and Army have died in the past few years battling these cartels. And you blame them? Look in the mirror my friend, you won't like what you see.
dave allen (Mon Jun 14 16:02:42 2010)
****The vast majority of illegal and legal immigrants come here to work, And are invited here to work by employers either known at the time or unknown.****
But they do not come here to become Americans the way previous generations of immigrants did, who themselves faced hostility because they brought a different culture with them. They intend to keep their own culture, unlike those who came from other countries and who willingly embraced American culture.
****So why is it that the tools we have to prevent the improper use of social security numbers are not used?****
Not sure what you mean by this. There is e-verify which Liberals have been fighting. The tools against people coming into this country illegally are in place. There is a strict federal law against it which those in government have chosen to ignore and some states, including Wisconsin, have actually forbidden police to ask whether people are here illegally even though there is every suspicion to believe they are.
****The reason why is that unscrupulous employers like the cheap and compliant illegal labor. If the economic incentive to hire illegal labor didn't exist there wouldn't be illegal labor.****
This is a Democrat talking point and is true to a point. The fact remains that the laws against employers hiring illegals have not been enforced either which has exacerbated the problem.
This also presupposes that the people who come here illegally are too dumb to know the difference. I submit they do know and that's why they sneak into the country with the help of coyotes instead of walking down the road across the border.
Somehow those on the Left have come to the belief that the only people in the world who have barred aliens from walking into their country without a by-your-leave are Americans. Wrong. There is no country in this world that has open borders. Try sneaking over the border into Mexico and see how fast you go to jail and are fined.
I think Haerling is foolish for being a proponent of open borders.
All countries have fought wars to get their land or to remove other people from their land. It didn't start in 1492 or 1620, either. Check out Alexander the Great's exploits.
I'm really tired of reading and hearing these specious juvenile arguments about how America stole this ones land and that ones land. Americans have for the most part paid for their land which is more than the Spanish did for the Indians in Mexico.
C. R. Stevenson (Mon Jun 14 20:18:27 2010)
Thank you all for some wonderful and edificatory comments. Dave, you’re right. My blog was not worthy of FoxPolitics, but Jo Egelhoff is very gracious and a fine editor. You should have read it BEFORE her help.
I don’t agree that I am “manifestly racist” simply because I question a culture’s commitment to the capitalism which generously supports their rising tide. If Central Americans are going to stream here without asking, they should support the economic system that enabled their presence.
Many of the critics here accused me of racism, but I made no hateful remarks [racism = hate], merely questioned the Mexican work ethic, as I might some of yours. Though it is hard to pry apart culture and race, so I forgive your confusion.
Maybe open borders are a bad idea, C.R. But it would be nice if Mexico was a little more like Canada, which is at least 50% more like us than Mexico is. Especially with Venezuela so cozy with China. I’d feel safer if capitalist Democracy governed everything north of the Panama Canal. Who knows what the next century will bring. The US has already been longer atop the economic food chain than previous world super powers.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
tim h, author (Mon Jun 14 21:36:19 2010)
C.R. The e-verify system is yet another example of the hidden compromises in laws that allow one side to say they're accomplishing something while there are so many loopholes that those who want to go around it can do so legally. Basically E-verify is voluntary. Employers can state that they have made a reasonable effort to verify someone's documents as correct and not have to use e-verify. Huge loophole. Federal employers must use e-verify and so must Federal Contractors. Various states have different requirements.Secondly, Congress has not appropriated funds to bolster the Social Security database to eliminate problems with conflicting or incorrect information. therefore the e-verify even if used properly often results in false rejections or false acceptances of someone's Social Security information. These loopholes and oversights are intentional because of the reasons I mention above. Congress has not chosen to bolster funding for e-verify and make it mandatory for all.
dave allen (Tue Jun 15 06:24:11 2010)
1. Thank god Tommy Thompson is no longer the governor of Wisconsin if this is what his former staff people believe
2. Not sure how much more overt racism can get when you say, "think about it in Wisconsin where the population is still 90% white"
3. History: The United States of America has been the perpetrator and accomplice of incredible human rights abuses from the Panama Canal north, all in the name of "capitalist democracy," but truly in the pursuit of military and economic dominance and profit. How about the genocide of over 200,000 Mayan people in Guatemala from 1960 - 1996, after a CIA coup of democratically elected President Arbenz in 1954 in order to defend the United Fruit Company's right to own land that was laying fallow while peasants were starving? Go capitalism! Human life means nothing. Money means everything.
I am glad you no longer live in Wisconsin, where the good people of our state don't need this kind of poison, myth, racism and hate.
Keep living in your dream world of the continued rule of white supremacy.
Cindy Jeanne (Tue Jun 15 12:44:05 2010)
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