Chilton Williamson

U.S. Leaders Plot New Amnesty Strategy

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

he defeat of the Grand Bargain in the Senate last June proves to have been the opening battle of the public phase of the Second Civil War that had hitherto smoldered underground, like a fire in a coal mine. This war, like America's First Civil War-known more accurately as the War Between the States-is being fought over the future of the United States, but with the roles reversed: Unlike the Confederates, the new "rebels"-that is to say, the country at large--are fighting to keep the United States intact, against the Federal government and the economic interests intent, this time around, on its dissolution.

The Grand Bargain was the country's First Manassas, a wholly unexpected victory over Behemoth. But more-much more-than a brief four years will be necessary to determine whether constitutional principles prevail finally over established power, or the reverse, in the course of this war.

As everyone expected, Washington and the interests, so far from accepting defeat gracefully by heeding the will of the country at large, without so much as breaking step set about at once to accomplish by subterfuge what they were unable to achieve by open and direct means. Senator Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.), a fervid supporter of the Grand Bargain, has just proposed a bill that would grant citizenship to illegal immigrants who have graduated from high school and completed either two years of college or military service. The bill will likely be brought up in September, following the congressional recess, and enjoys bipartisan support in the Senate. Shortly before Durbin introduced his proposal, Senators Diane Feinstein (D.-Cal.) and Larry Craig (R.-Idaho) began agitating for so-called AgJobs legislation that would "streamline" the guestworker program and ease the path to residency for at least some illegal farmworkers. Though the Senate refused to consider the idea, whose prospects look dim for now, the plan is certain to hang around offstage in some form or another, keeping company in the Senate lobby with a scheme to expand the H-1B visa program that permits well-educated foreign workers entry into the United States.

Concurrently with these maneuvers by the open-borders forces in Congress, the Bush administration announced its intent to enhance border security by enforcing existing laws and policies aimed at halting illegal immigration and initiating new ones as well, among them the prosecution of employers whom it has warned may have illegal workers on their pay-rolls and workplace raids on businesses suspected of hiring illegal immigrants. The announcement of this "crackdown," by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Carlos Gutierrez, Secretary of Commerce, raised cries, plaintive and angry, from the various business and immigrants' rights groups. Their distress would be gratifying, save for two considerations. The first is that the Bush administration, owing to its record in such matters, deserves-and gets-no confidence where issues of border security are concerned. "I won't be happy," Senator Charles Grassly (R.-Iowa) warned, "until I see action that's more than just a press conference and words on a piece of paper. I'll be taking a closer look at the initiatives, but from what I can tell at first glance these reforms could have been implemented a long time ago." The second is a suspicion that, in this instance, George Bush really does have action in mind-action he expects to result in social, economic, and political turmoil, aggravated by actions carefully taken by his government to that end. That is to say, Bush's plan following the defeat of the Bargain is to seem to give the country what it wants-and let it choke on it. The media, of course, can be counted on to play up and exaggerate the "disaster" that crackdown has induced, while La Raza, MALDEF, the Roman Catholic Church, and other advocates of mass immigration deplore what the New York Times has already attacked as "the misery strategy," and the heads of state of the Latin America countries denounce (the president of Argentina already has done so) the new American policy as an insult to all Latinos, backed up perhaps by the United Nations. In these circumstances-Bush may be hoping--the American public will cry Uncle and plead for comprehensive immigration "reform" of the sort Congress rejected in June. In this respect, a paragraph in the New York Times, 11 August 2007, is ominous:

Mr. Chertoff suggested that employers
[concerned about the "crackdown"] should
focus their ire on Congress for failing
to pass the broader immigration measure.

"We can be very sure that we let Congress
understand the consequences of the choices
that Congress makes," he said.

On the other hand, the misery strategy-as aptly named as it is apt-seems already to be working very nicely. Illegal immigrants around the country report difficulty in finding employment, remittances to their families in Mexico have fallen off sharply so far in 2007, half of those residing in "new destination" states informed a recent poll that they expected to be gone from the U.S. in five years, many or most complain of "discrimination" and a lack of "appreciation" on the part of native Americans, and some are actually returning home. And, for their part, state and local governments are taking steps to encourage them to do so: The nation is awash with legsialtive proposals aimed at curtailing further immigration and dealing with the problems and crises created by the immigrants who are already here. The misery strategy is, in fact, ideal for dealing with the immigration crisis, and we should all be grateful indeed to the Times for recognizing it as such and giving it a name, especially so fetching and catchy a one.

The point to be taken is that, whatever the President's intentions behind his "crackdown," and no matter the pain it inflicts both on the foreign invaders and their greedy and exploitive economic facilitators alike, the realized-and loudly expressed-sentiment of the nation grows more and more anti-immigrant with every passing day. "Give up, America," William Rusher counseled in a recent column. "Durbin can outlast you." Rusher's pessimism is only somewhat discountable by reason of his dismal prophecy two months ago, only days before the Grand Bargain exploded and crashed like the Hindenburg (another ambitious but ill-fated gasbag), that what the politicians and the interests wanted, the interests and the politicians would get in the form of an amnesty and guestworker bill. Though it didn't happen that way, Rusher's prediction that the Durbins among us will not go away cannot be gainsaid. But neither will the country as a whole that opposes them. Rusher worries that "It is extremely difficult to focus the attention of the people at large on any policy, however bad, that is wanted eagerly by an influential minority." His concern is justifiable, of course. Only 2007 is unlike 1965 or even 1986, when the last major immigration bills were passed. In 1965, the Third World presence in the United States was miniscule, barely observable; a generation later, in 1986, America was still a country of European-Caucasians, for all those not prepared to take a hard and searching look around them. Today, when a majority of the populations of a third of the ten largest counties in the United States are composed of actual "minorities," the transformation of the country is unignorable. Because the mass of illegal immigrants and their descendents, like Senator Durbin, are not going away either-at least, not in the immediate future. And perhaps we Americans, prone to distraction and forgetfulness as we are, should be thankful for that, as a constant reminder that we need scores of millions fewer, rather than more, of them.

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