Newt for President
By Randall Nunn (04/01/06)
Over the last week, the airwaves and the press have been filled to capacity with a lot of sappy-headed comments from pundits and pandering from politicians ranging from President Fox of Mexico to President Bush about the immigration bills pending in Congress. While leftist magazine publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel says illegal immigrants are “the backbone of this country”, polls show that well over two-thirds of Americans support tougher border enforcement. In the face of the dithering by President Bush on the issue and the inability of most Republicans in the Senate to effectively protect the country from what has become an unarmed invasion, it is refreshing to see former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich address the issue with candor and intelligence.
Last night on Fox, Gingrich suggested that if the laws were toughened so as to penalize employers who hire illegal immigrants and the borders secured, the flow of illegals would slow and many would return to their country when they realized they could not get illegal employment. Gingrich is one of a few who doesn’t seem to be stampeded by the refrain that we cannot round up 11 million illegals and deport them. That may be true, but there are other ways of attacking the problem besides giving “amnesty” to illegals, thereby insuring that the problem will continue and, in the process, rewarding the lawbreakers at the expense of those who are sincerely interested in becoming American citizens legally and assimilating into American culture.
The Senate bills are being passed off as some kind of a tough program that will secure our borders and keep our economy humming, by providing a “legal channel for workers” and freeing up border agents to patrol for criminals and terrorists (as stated in a recent Wall Street Journal article). What leads these people to think that some significant numbers of the illegals here are not criminals if we don’t even know who they are or where they are? Certainly when one makes the decision to cross the border illegally and work for cash without paying taxes, it might safely be assumed that other forms of criminal activity would be open for consideration as well.
We are told daily that the illegal immigrants are here doing jobs that no American wants to do. I don’t buy that argument and even if I did, does that justify giving amnesty to people here illegally so that those jobs can continue to be done at a low wage rate? Perhaps there is a country in the world whose citizens are poorer, more hopeless and more afflicted by corruption and incompetent government at all levels who would work for even less. If so, should we turn the other way when traffickers start sneaking them across our borders so that we can get disagreeable jobs done even more cheaply? If that is what corporate America and the two major political parties suggest, then I think most Americans would register their disgust by voting them out of office. And maybe the wages for those jobs would rise to a level where we could find willing workers without the need to create a phony “guest worker program” that is nothing more than amnesty for illegals.
I have long thought that Newt Gingrich is one of the brightest and most capable politicians to inhabit the Republican Party. Gingrich’s biggest drawback is that he uses logic, reason, a powerful intellect and an excellent grasp of history in analyzing problems facing our country instead of relying on an arsenal of snappy “sound-bite” ready slogans and one-liners. But as the country watches the so-called “debate” on immigration, it may come to realize that what the country desperately needs are real thinkers and problems solvers, not panderers and poll watchers.
Randall H. Nunn
(Printer friendly version) Email: Randall Nunn
