This is interesting. Ann Coulter is bashing Bush’s speech, and when Ann bashes something, it stays bashed.

Also, someone must have finally told Bush that the point about America being a “nation of immigrants” is moronic. All nations are “nations of immigrants” – as Peter Brimelow pointed out brilliantly in his 1992 article in National Review on immigration, which left nothing for anyone else to say.

Of the “nation of immigrants” locution, Brimelow says:

No discussion of U.S. immigration policy gets far without someone making this helpful remark. As an immigrant myself, I always pause respectfully. You never know. Maybe this is what they’re taught to chant in schools nowadays, a sort of multicultural Pledge of Allegiance…Do they really think other nations sprouted up out of the ground? [Read My Lips: No New Amnesty by Ann Coulter

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Later she goes on to say

How about the proposal made on Brimelow’s website, Vdare.com, that illegal immigrants be told they have two months to leave the country voluntarily and not have their breaking of our immigration laws held against them when they apply for citizenship from their home countries – or not leave and be banned from U.S. citizenship forever?

If you’re interested, you can read our coverage of Ann Coulter’s firing from National Review here, and Sam Francis on Ann Coulter’s book Treasonand its critics here.

The President and a significant number of Senators appear to be intent upon pushing out guest worker legislation. Given that we have already shown that neither illegal aliens nor guest workers are needed to prop up the US economy now or in the foreseeable future, we are forced to conclude that the purpose of these guestworkers is to reduce the labor costs of employers, and to enable employers to offer a decent likelihood of US citizenship-free of charge. Why does the phrase corporate stooges come to mind?

If these senators are so committed to their corporate supporters that they persist in a advocating a guest worker program, then a few simple protections would reduce its burden on citizen taxpayers and avoid having the phrase “guest worker” continue to be a code word for slave (or in not too egregious cases, indentured servant). So, some proposed amendments:

1. The number of guest worker visas should be keyed to jobs growth in the United States. If Jobs growth relative to the workforce of American citizenship shrinks, then the number of guest worker visas should be gradually curtailed.

2. Guest worker visas should not be offered to work in geographic areas in which US citizens are moving out.

3. Companies sponsoring guest worker visas should bear responsibility and full civil liability for the criminal actions and accidents of their guest worker employees and their dependents, including all costs of prosecution, legal defense, and imprisonment.

4. Any guest worker should be able to return home at any time at employer expense. Guest workers returning after being denied citizenship should be provided a generous resettlement allowance at employer expense.

5. Guest worker visa fees should be raised to include funding for legal fees so that it is more difficult for employers to legally abuse these vulnerable employees.

6. Free medical, dental and vision care should be provided at employer expense to all guest workers and their dependents both in the US and Mexico so that the cost will no longer fall on emergency rooms and hospital overhead.

7. All children of guest workers shall be educated
in the guest workers home country, or the employer shall reimburse the schools for the cost of their education in the US.

8. The IRS and SSA should immediately start reporting likely use of false Social Security Numbers to employers and require the employer to sort this out.

9. Employers should pay the fair market value for the visas they sponsor. Those visas should be priced so that they are always readily available. This might be done by an auction of the fixed supply of visas–or simply rasing prices of the visas gradually until some are unused.

I really find this whole practice of using US citizenship as a corporate benefit highly offensive. However, these are basic protections that I would like to think that any conscientious senator would be hard pressed to object to.

They may claim that this bill isn’t going to be used to replace US workers–and if it isn’t the first clauses wouldn’t kick in. They may claim that the guest workers aren’t going to be abused-so why wouldn’t they acception the protections I’m suggesting? They may claim that guest workers will not place additional burdens on the infrastructure, then the corporations shouldn’t mind paying to ensure that at least some of the public costs are covered. They may claim it isn’t a subsidy to business, then they shouldn’t object to having businesses pay fair marked value for guestworker visas.

And, if they object to these amendments, then what does that say about them?

The George Mason U. economist Tyler Cowen, who recently became a New York Times columnist, wrote on his prominent blog Marginal Revolution that he favors large-scale immigration from Mexico, but that “I will look for data on Mexicans per se and let you all know if I find anything useful.”

Quite a few of his readers then attempted to acquaint him with the data in a lengthy and impressively documented comments thread, but apparently Cowen has not found this data “useful” in supporting his preconceptions.

Of particular value were the comments made by a Ph.D. student in economics calling himself “Teller,” who is himself an immigrant from a Third World country.

Here’s a sample of his many contributions to the comment thread.

Getting data on illegal immigrants is particularly difficult, so he had the clever idea of looking at Census data on individuals born in Mexico, of whom many were, at least originally, illegal aliens.

More facts (evil evil facts)

I am going to, using the US-2000 census, compare the 250 million Natives, the 9.2 million Mexicans foreign born, and the 22 million other immigrants.

http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/native.pdf
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/STP-159-Mexico.pdf
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/foreignborn.pdf

(the 22 are obviously all foreign born minus Mexican foreign born)

Let us start with labor force participation of those hardworking Mexicans.
Natives 60.2%
Other Foreign-born 57.1%
Mexican 54.3%

Per capita Income?
Natives $22,000
Other Foreign-born $25,000
Mexican $13,000

Perhaps the best proxy for success in society overall and welfare dependency in particular, is the rate of poverty
Natives 8.3%
Other Foreign born 11.4%
Mexican 24.4%

Share speaking English at home, as good a measure of assimilation as anything
Natives 91% (remember 8% of natives are already Hispanics)
Other Foreign born 22%
Mexican 5.6%

Education? Surely only a nazifacistracist uncultured bigot would suggest Mexican immigrants are not well educated.

Share of population with no high school diploma
Natives 17%
Other Forign born 25%
Mexican 70%(!)

This is the share that have college education:
Natives 25%
Other Foreign born 32%
Mexicans 4%(!!)

Lots more of “Teller’s” highly informative comments can be found here.