December 26, 2013 By Brandy Baron
OCALA, Fla., December 26,
2013 — Illegal immigration will be a top political issue in 2014.
With midterm elections around the corner and an
enraged pro-amnesty base firmly out of the shadows, unlawful immigration will
dominate Republican Party politics as well.
The political discussion rarely hits the heart of
the matter, focusing instead on the politics of race. Opposition to amnesty for
illegal aliens often perceived as anti-Hispanic bigotry.
“This ‘perception’ is false and pernicious,” says
Dr. Stephen Steinlight of the Center for Immigration Studies. “No solid data or
body of empirical evidence suggest let alone prove bigotry motivates the great
majority that opposes amnesty. It is a smear disseminated by amnesty advocates
to advance their cause.
“‘Immigrant advocates’ lack compelling arguments to
support their position. By labeling opponents ‘bigots,’ they rationalize
refusal to debate them and camouflage fear of responding to opponents’ ideas
with a fraudulent moral justification. ‘One Nation, After All,’ an exhaustive
study of American attitudes towards Third-Rail issues by Alan Wolfe, finds no
evidence that bigotry plays a role in opposition to Hispanic immigration.
Americans oppose illegal immigration, not immigrant ethnicity.”
Indeed, standing against amnesty for illegal aliens
means ensuring a bright national future.
“For NPG, immigration is strictly about the
numbers,” Craig Lewis, the executive director of Negative Population Growth,
explains. “It is not a leading contributor — it is THE leading contributor to
our nation’s population growth. Studies have shown that immigration — legal,
illegal, and the children born to immigrants — is responsible for 80 percent of
U.S. population growth.
“America has an estimated population of over 11
million undocumented immigrants, with some estimates ranging to nearly 20
million. Each year, we permit over one million legal immigrants to arrive. The
average immigrant family (regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, religion, or
nation of origin) has more children than the average American-born citizen, and
the children of those immigrants also tend to have larger families.
“The fact is simple: The United States must slow,
halt, and eventually reverse our population growth to preserve an enjoyable quality
of life for future generations. To do so, we must reduce our immigration
levels.”
There is more to illegal immigration than this,
however.
“First, everyone thinks they understand the
immigration system because they’re descended from immigrants or know
immigrants, or are immigrants themselves, just as everyone thinks they
understand the tax system because they’ve been paying and reporting their taxes
for years,” says Jan C. Ting, a Temple University professor who served in the
George H.W. Bush Administration. “But they don’t. Both systems are immensely
more complicated than ordinary citizens believe or understand.
“We have to choose between either enforcing a
numerical limit on the number of immigrants we allow every year or,
alternatively, having no limit on immigration as was the case in the first
century of the republic. It’s a binary choice. There is no third way, such as
pretending we have limits, but then not enforcing those limits and instead
amnestying violators of the limits whenever they attain a large number.
“I respect proponents of unlimited immigration,
which is an intellectually coherent position to take. I do not respect
proponents of a ‘third way,’ because keeping limits on the books, but not
enforcing them, is intellectually incoherent and expensive beyond our means.
“I personally believe that a democratic society is
morally entitled to set and enforce a limit on the number of new immigrants
admitted each year. I believe we are threatened with overpopulation that
endangers the economic and environmental future of the Americans already here.
We already have many millions of Americans looking for work who can’t find any.
We face a future of advancing technology and robotics that will reduce the
number of needed workers.”
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