7/14/2018
- Andy Schlafly Townhall.com
“This will be our last
chance, there will never be another opportunity!” to protect Dreamers,
President Trump properly tweeted as the U.S. Senate plunged into a debate about
immigration policy. The Left wants amnesty for Dreamers, who are illegal
aliens who entered our country as young adults.
President Trump is
right to insist on funding for a border wall, which would cost less than 1
percent of our national budget, and an end to chain migration whereby relatives
of immigrants are brought in with little or no screening. President
Trump’s approach is welcome relief to the failed, open-door policies of the
prior Republican leadership.
Meanwhile, an
unexpected voice weighed in from the other side of the world. In Abu
Dhabi, an oil-rich emirate in the Persian Gulf, former President George W. Bush
was speaking at a conference organized by Michael Milken, the junk bond king of
the 1980s.
“Americans don’t want
to pick cotton at 105 degrees,” Bush said in response to a question, “but there
are people who want to put food on their family’s tables and are willing to do
that. We ought to say thank you and welcome them.”
Bush was right that Americans
don’t want to pick cotton at 105 degrees, as we can tell you from personal
experience. But he was wrong to say we ought to welcome people from other
lands so poor that they are willing to do that kind of work to put food on
their family’s tables.
When we were teenagers,
we spent a memorable summer vacation working on a cotton farm in the
Mississippi delta east of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It was a miserable
experience, but fortunately for us, it lasted only about two weeks.
It was too early to
pick the cotton when we were there around the Fourth of July, but we learned
how to chop it. Chopping cotton means chopping weeds with a hoe without
damaging the cotton plant.
After awhile, we
wondered why we saw no one else doing this backbreaking work in the 100-degree
heat of the Mississippi delta, where cotton fields extend as far as the eye can
see. That’s when we realized that chopping and picking cotton were
already being done by machines, and the people who used to do it by hand had
moved on to better jobs.
Once upon a time, more
than 200 years ago, Americans imported African slaves to do the unpleasant work
of cultivating cotton. Slavery was abolished in 1865, but African
Americans continued to toil on cotton farms in conditions of extreme poverty that
prevailed in the defeated Southern states.
About 75 years after
the Civil War, some inventors finally made a successful cotton-picking machine.
This invention came years later than the famous harvester invented by
Cyrus McCormick, because cotton is so much harder to pick than wheat, corn or
soybeans.
During the same period
in which mechanization swept the cotton fields of the South, millions of
African Americans moved north in search of economic opportunity and greater
freedom. During this period known as the “great migration,” many black
Americans found higher paying jobs in the factories of Chicago and Detroit,
while others achieved success and fame in sports and entertainment.
Thanks to a legal and
economic system that rewards invention and innovation, our high standard of
living means that no American of any race has to chop or pick cotton at 105
degrees anymore. Bush grew up in Texas, which grows more cotton than any
other state, and he should know that.
Bush’s foolish comment
combined two of the worst slogans of the pro-amnesty movement, the myth of
“jobs Americans won’t do” and the myth of “crops rotting in the fields.”
On the contrary, the enormous growth of computer-aided automation,
robots, artificial intelligence, and driverless vehicles is eliminating
whatever opportunity there used to be for poor people from other countries to
earn a living here.
While the debate rages
in Washington, another debate is roiling the state of California, which has
more immigrants (10 million) and more illegal aliens (2.4 million) than any
other state. California’s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, is warning
that state’s employers not to cooperate with the federal government.
“Businesses are
increasingly caught between California and Washington,” the Wall Street Journal
reports. A new state law imposes fines of up to $10,000 on employers who
provide information about their employees to federal immigration officials.
In the last
presidential election, California went in a markedly different direction from
the rest of our Nation. But the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution
requires that California obey the same federal laws on immigration with which
the other 49 states must comply in protecting American workers against illegal
aliens.
In the end,
Californians might thank President Trump for taking a strong stand against
illegal immigration, which is estimated to be costing that state about $30
billion per year. That’s far more than the costs of building a border
wall to permanently solve the problem.
John and Andy Schlafly
are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case
for Trump, was published posthumously in 2016.
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