Friday, December 17, 2010

Buchanan: Is This Our America Anymore?

By Pat Buchanan/Townhall ~ Buried in the Oct. 30 Washington Post was a bland headline: "Report Points to Faster Recovery in Jobs for Immigrants."

The story, however, contained social dynamite that explains the rage of Americans who are smeared as nativists and xenophobes for demanding a timeout on immigration.

In the April-May-June quarter, foreign-born workers in the U.S. gained 656,000 jobs. And native-born Americans lost 1.2 million.

From July 1, 2009, to June 30, 2010, foreign-born Hispanics gained 98,000 construction jobs. Native-born Hispanics lost 133,000. Black and white U.S. construction workers lost 511,000 jobs.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, from Jan. 1, 2000, to Jan. 1, 2010, 13.1 million immigrants, legal and illegal, entered the United States, a decade in which America lost 1 million jobs.

From 2008 and 2009, the figures are startling. In 24 months, 2.4 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrived, as U.S. citizens were losing 8.6 million jobs.

Query: Why are we importing a million-plus workers a year when 17 million Americans can't find work? Whose country is this? Why do we not declare a moratorium on all immigration, until our unemployment rate falls to 6 or 5 percent? Charity begins at home. Ought we not take care of our own jobless first before we invite in strangers to take their jobs?

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, each year between 300,000 and 400,000 "anchor babies" are born to illegal aliens. These newborns are entitled to citizenship, free health care and education, welfare and food stamps Their parents -- almost all are poor or working class -- rarely pay any state or federal income tax.


How long can we keep granting citizenship and full social welfare benefits to the children of people who break our laws and break into our country or overstay their visas? How long can we keep bringing in workers to take jobs when our unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent?

Again, according to the Pew Center, the number of anchor babies here now is about 4 million. Add to that 3 million to 4 million born each decade, and it will not be long before Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Texas resemble California, which is on the brink of default.

If no action is taken, the Republican Party will soon be unable, even in wave elections, to win the presidency, as it won nothing and indeed lost state legislative seats in California in 2010. The border will disappear, and America will be a geographical expression, not a country anymore.

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