By Paul Nachman
02/04/2013
By Brenda Walker recently distilled the key point about the looming attempt at shoving a final, nation-killing amnesty down our throats into six words that bring crystal clarity:
The work permit is the amnesty.
She also urged us to "repeat this phrase until it takes hold."
Absolutely. The national conversation about the threatened amnesty has already been heavily muddled by all the blather about how promptly (or not) "immigration reform" [cue sound of patriots' teeth grinding] would yield "a path to citizenship." As Brenda pointed out, even the usually savvy Pat Buchanan has let himself get confused about this.
In short, attaining citizenship (i.e. naturalizing) yields benefits that are of zero or minor concern to illegal aliens:
1. The right to vote.
2. The obligation to serve on juries. (Many present citizens don’t consider this a "benefit," and one can reasonably guess that most of today’s illegal aliens who ultimately naturalize would share that attitude.)
3. The opportunity to sponsor for immigration a wider range of relatives than a green-card holder can.
4. Citizens, unlike green-card holders and legal visitors, can’t be deported for crimes.
Instead, what illegal aliens crave is to live (and maybe work) in the U.S. without having to worry about deportation to their Third-World-hellhole countries of origin.
Brenda’s point will need to be made over and over again as we embark on the coming death match, and her six words should serve us well in talking to the great, ill-informed masses and in writing letters to the editor. (I'd previously taken a crack at this subject in late 2011; see here.)
However, it’s always useful to have other, memorable ways of communicating a crucial point. Immigration-sanity pioneer Lawrence Auster had done just that several days before Brenda, casually tossing off at his View From The Right blogsite the version that’s my title above:
Amnesty does not mean giving citizenship to illegals, it means legalizing illegals.
To even more definitively pound home the reality that U.S. citizenship is of scant concern to illegal aliens, it’s pertinent to quote a recent utterance from special pleader and Professional Hispanic* Ruben Navarrette:
Illegal immigrants don’t care about citizenship nearly as much as politicians do. Their concerns are practical, not ideological. They want driver’s licenses, the freedom to go to work without living under the threat of being picked up and deported and the ability to go back and forth between the United States and their home country.
[Solve immigration without a quick path to citizenship, CNN Opinion, January 16, 2013]
Of course Navarrette is just being tactical there, recognizing that disputes about "Citizenship — When?!?" may delay the Amnesty Express which he so obviously craves:
[T]he people who lose are the very ones who [the politicians] say they want to help — those 11 million undocumented immigrants who live in the United States and contribute to our economy. They're caught in suspended animation, not belonging to one country or another. They deserve a pathway to legal status, and a final resolution to a debate that really isn’t as difficult as some make it.
In the looming war for survival of the U.S. as a First-World nation, let’s generously employ Navarrette’s words …
Illegal immigrants don’t care about citizenship
… along with Lawrence Auster’s …
Amnesty does not mean giving citizenship to illegals, it means legalizing illegals.
… and Brenda Walker’s …
The work permit is the amnesty.
… to help make sure that Navarrette’s amnesty dreams remain permanently unfulfilled.
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* Re Navarrette’s recognition by VDARE.com as a Professional Hispanic, here’s a recent illustration of his penchant for grinding, tribalistic grievance:
Here is a president who won 71% of the Latino vote, and yet now — with the departures of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis — presides over a Cabinet with no Latinos serving on it.
The nominations for the top four Cabinet jobs have already gone out, and three of them went to white males. It’s nice to see that group get ahead. They never get anything.
[Obama’s pretty words on immigration ring hollow, CNN Opinion, January 22, 2013]
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