A friend has drawn attention to the extrordinary letter published last week by Congressman Steve King (R) of the 5th District in Iowa: Biting the Hand That Feeds You The Des Moines Register April 26 2006:

With help from the Mexican government, Mexican unions, Mexican political groups, and through the Spanish language radio and newspapers, the call has gone out to make America experience a total boycott, both here and in Mexico. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you

The May 1st anti-Gringo-fest is also being billed as “A Day Without Immigrants” which is a misnomer …The issue before Congress is illegal immigration. Perhaps the May 1st boycott should give America a glimpse into “A Day Without ILLEGAL Immigration.”

What would that May 1st look like without illegal immigration? There would be no one to smuggle across our southern border the heroin, marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines that plague the United States, reducing the U.S. supply of meth that day by 80%. The lives of 12 U.S. citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day. Another 13 Americans would survive who are otherwise killed each day by uninsured drunk driving illegals. Our hospital emergency rooms would not be flooded with everything from gunshot wounds, to anchor babies, to imported diseases to hangnails, giving American citizens the day off from standing in line behind illegals. Eight American children would not suffer the horror as a victim of a sex crime.

On the negative side, the price of a pound of tomatoes might go up from $0.79 to $0.80…

The emerging cheap labor “ruling class” in America is the strongest supporter of amnesty for illegals. Their anti-American “new servant class” has chosen to boycott them; the very definition of irony. On May 1st, Primero de Mayo, Americans will observe, as illegal immigrants celebrate, “Bite the Hand That Feeds You Day.”

I am bewildered to decide whether to be more surprised that a Congressman would write this, or that he would write so well. And despite predictable whining by The Des Moines Register, King appears to be standing his ground. WHOVTV.com reports he said on Tuesday

There isn’t any work Americans won’t do. What Americans won’t do is enforce our laws. We’ve failed to enforce are laws at the border. We’ve failed to enforce our laws at employee sanctions are concerned. And this has empowered a massive number of people who are here illegally,” said King.

Has a new planet swum into our sight?

The Federal Reserve has been one of the biggest cheerleaders we have had for open borders(as witnessed by statements by its new chairman).

There are real reasons for this attitude in terms of how the US banking system is set up. The more the US economy grows-and the more the US dollar is used overseas- the more money the fed can create without inflation. This mechanism is explained in Zarlenga’s book The Lost Science of Money.

The ability to create money is an enormous privilege. Productivity per worker –or living standards aren’t directly important to the ability of the Fed utilize this enormous privilege of creating money. What folks like Greenspan and Bernanke care about is seeing that the US economy grows at all costs–even if this means worse living conditions for working Americans. So long as the economy grows, the more the folks that run the Fed can finance the things they want to finance.

Long run, we need a mechanism so that the governance of the Fed is more representative of the American people as a whole-instead of the wealthy interests that dominate the Senate, the Presidency and the financial community.

A recent Christian Science Monitor editorial endorsed expansion of sanctions for employers of illegal aliens:

This is a step in the right direction. It means some elements of the mainstream press are getting much more realistic about immigration. However there is a problem:

As I wrote last year, even a $40,000 per violation fine as proposed in the house legislation isn’t enough to make illegal immigration truly unprofitable.

The closest thing we have to a market in immigration rights is the dowry market for Indian Engineers. An Indian engineer in India whose family participates in the dowry system can expect about $50K at marriage. That same engineer with an H-1b visa can expect $100K or more. An H-1b visa typically confers a 50% chance at a green card. Thus, we can infer that the market value of a green card is at least $100,000.

What that means is that employers able to help facilitate a green card for an illegal alien can expect about $100,000 in unpaid labor from that illegal alien. If the fines are $40,000/violation facilitation of illegal immigration still pays well-especially when you consider the chance of getting caught is low.

I think we need to look at violations for repeat offenders more at the level of $500,000–gradually ramped up over time so folks have a chance to adapt.

We also need to get serious about enforcement-which could mean funding local police to arrest illegal aliens the same way they currently can currently arrest military deserters.

In my personal opinion, it might be acceptable to couple these policies with a guest worker program if there were a net outflow of illegal immigrants and guest workers from day one-and a reduction of legal immigration (particularly work related visas in areas of declining wages) and we could eliminate the “anchor baby” laws and chain migration.

We also need to think seriously how to make sure that the workers that leave the US have jobs back home. A jobs program for Mexico and some serious support for political leaders in Mexico willing to help create jobs there could help with the transition.

At the moment, local police rarely do anything about illegal aliens except put them in US jails, at US expense. They are overwhelmed with their normal workload, and have neither the incentive nor the funds to help send illegal aliens home or turn them over to the Fed’s to do so.

By contrast, local police are almost always very effective in locating military deserters and sending them back to the Armed Forces. Why? Since the Revolution, the federal government has paid a bounty, a generous bounty, immediately upon a local law enforcement agency placing a deserter in federal custody.

Why not do the same for illegal aliens? Local police forces could be granted a bounty for each illegal alien they turn over to federal authorities or place on planes back to their legal homeland. In addition, the police officer who recognizes that an individual is an illegal alien and starts processing his repatriation, should be a guarenteed a share of that bounty.

You can pay 50 bounties for the cost of keeping one illegal alien in a US prison for a year. Why not pay for the bounties with the federal funds now used to subsidize the states for keeping illegal aliens in American prisons? It would help solve the problem, improve conditions in US prisons and save money.