07/18/2005
Finally steeled myself to read Business Week’s Cover Story panegyric to firms pigging out at the trough of providing services to illegal immigrants. [Embracing Illegals — Business Week July 18 2005 ]This was due to the prodding of A.C. Kleinheider’s excellent blog Hard Right- see his later intelligent post on Muslim immigration to the US here.The article itself is a professionally-executed, human-interest- enlivened summary of the situation. It gives reasonable space to the problems caused by the immigrant flood:
Their growing numbers put downward pressure on U.S. wages and new demands on schools, hospitals, and other public services. Fears of heavier social burdens and higher tax bills have led citizens and local officials to object with renewed vigor to what many perceive as an unwanted invasion from Mexico and other countries …
It takes note of the Bear Stearns/Justich study:
While most analysts peg the number of illegal immigrants at 10 million to 11 million a recent study by Bear Stearns Asset Management (BSC ) concluded that data on housing permits, school enrollment, and foreign remittances suggests there could be as many as 20 million.
makes reference to the burden they place on the health care system:
"Our view is that these people are already here. They are part of the drain on the health-care system," says Michael Chee, a spokesman for Blue Cross of California "It’s a health-care issue, not an immigration issue"
(Email Chee)
and the GWBush shutdown of employer enforcement:
Big U.S. companies' embrace of undocumenteds as consumers has intensified as it has become clear in recent years that — no matter how loudly the anti-immigration lobby complains — the U.S. isn’t about to deport illegals en masse. The 1986 law forbidding their employment may still be on the books, but the feds have almost completely given up enforcing it
BW even reports Craig Nelson’s FILE triumph in intimidating an Alabama bank, New South Federal, into delaying their program to give mortgages to local Hipanic illegals:
By providing mortgage loans that help illegals buy houses, says FILE Executive Director Craig Nelsen, New South is aiding their ability to remain illegally. In June, the bank delayed a broad rollout of Casa Mia pending a legal opinion on potential liability.
(Southerners have a term for parties like New South — Scalawag)
Of course, there were mistakes. Zapotec is referred to as a "Mexican dialect". It is not. It is a totally different language from Spanish. Blue Cross of California is having trouble developing a marketing program in the "ancient Mayan dialect, K'anjobal", not because it is "so old that it’s no longer written" but because it was never written. All good news for the bilingual education business!
Business Week also says Representative Tom Tancredo was bullied out of his idea of taxing the home remittances of foreigners because of the campaign funding might of local corporation First Data. I hope that is not true.
Articles like these in Big Media are mildly heartening because it is clear the MSM is developing the pattern of scalping the immigration reform websites for their stories. All the non-anecdotal BW material has appeared earlier on VDARE.COM and other similar webzines — and nowhere else. We have succeeded in establishing ourselves high up the media food chain (applauding donations, please)
But what is really heartening is the quality and character of the long thread of comments the article has attracted on the BW website. The usual loony-libertarian, neocon proposition-nation and Hispanic ethnocentric partisan posters are totally outgunned by a barrage of highly articulate, well informed and polemically skilful contributions. Any immigration reformer feeling lonely should spend a few minutes following the debate.
I was particularly taken by a post on July 9 by "Tom Tancredo supporter":
The reason this administration has backed-off on work site and interior enforcement is because they know it is the most effective way to curb illegal immigration … Illegal Immigration is the 21st Century’s version of the 18th Century slave trade and there will be a heavy price to pay somewhere down the road. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.
The Natives are restive!
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.