Here are a couple of easy immigration
questions — answerable with a simple “yes” or “no” — we might ask any American
of any political stripe: Does everyone in the world have a right to live in the
U.S.? Do the American people have a right, through their elected
representatives, to decide who has the right to immigrate to their country and
under what conditions? I believe that most Americans, even today’s open-borders
people, would answer “no” to the first question and “yes” to the second.
There’s nothing new about this
vision. Americans have held this view throughout our history, during times when
immigration laws were very restrictive and when they were more relaxed. Tucker
Carlson, host of Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” gives us an
interesting history lesson about immigration at Prager University (http://tinyurl.com/ydylykfk).
It was prompted by his watching a group of protesters who were denouncing
President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. They were waving Mexican flags
and shouting, “¡Sí, se puede!” (“Yes, we can!”)
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Unbeknownst to the protesters, the expression “Sí, se puede” was a
saying of Cesar Chavez’s. When Chavez, the founder of the United Farm
Workers union, used the expression “Yes, we can,” he meant something entirely
different: “Yes, we can” seal the borders. He hated illegal immigration.
Chavez explained, “As long as we have a poor country bordering California, it’s
going to be very difficult to win strikes.” Why? Farmers are willing to hire
low-wage immigrants here illegally. Chavez had allies in his protest against
the hiring of undocumented workers and lax enforcement of immigration laws.
Included in one of his protest marches were Democratic Sen. Walter Mondale and
a longtime Martin Luther King Jr. aide, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy.
Peaceful protest wasn’t Chavez’s only
tool. He sent union members into the desert to assault Mexicans who were trying
to sneak in to the country. They beat the Mexicans with chains and whips made
of barbed wire. Undocumented immigrants who worked during strikes had their
houses firebombed and their cars burned. By the way, Chavez remains a
leftist hero. President Barack Obama declared his birthday a commemorative
federal holiday, an official day off in several states. A number of buildings
and student centers on college campuses and dozens of public schools bear the
name Cesar Chavez.
Democrats have long taken stances against both legal and illegal
immigration. In 1975, California Gov. Jerry Brown opposed Vietnamese
immigration, saying that the state had enough poor people. He added, “There is
something a little strange about saying ‘Let’s bring in 500,000 more people’
when we can’t take care of the 1 million (Californians) out of work.”
In his 1995 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton said:
“All Americans … are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens
entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or
legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers.”
On a 1994 edition of CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,
declared: “Border control is a federal responsibility. We simply don’t enforce
our borders adequately. In my state, you have about 2,000 people a day,
illegally, who cross the border. Now, this adds up to about 2 million people
who compete for housing, who compete for classroom space.” She added: “In 1988,
there were about 3,000 people on Medicaid. There’re well over 300,000 (people
on Medicaid) today who are illegal aliens. That presents obvious problems.”
Tucker Carlson has a four-part
explanation for the Democratic Party’s changing position on illegal
immigration. He says, “One: According to a recent study from Yale, there are at
least 22 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. Two: Democrats
plan to give all of them citizenship. Read the Democrats’ 2016 party platform.
Three: Studies show the overwhelming majority of first-time immigrant voters
vote Democrat. Four: The biggest landslide in American presidential history was
only 17 million votes. Do the math. The payoff for Democrats: permanent
electoral majority for the foreseeable future. In a word: power.”
Walter
E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George
Mason University, and a nationally syndicated columnist. To find out more about
Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and
cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page.
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