On Thursday, April 30, The Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees held its first hearings under the leadership of its new chairman, Chuck Schumer.
Judging from the session's defensive title, it appears expectations are limited: "Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?"
In an effort to get the answers it was looking for ("Yes, we can" and "We'll achieve comprehensive immigration reform by pushing the Obama administration despite the overwhelming odds against us") the committee assembled a panel of what it claims are experts.
As we learned late on April 30, Alan Greenspan, Former Federal Reserve Chairman and one of the "experts" summoned, was off to the races as he has been so many time—saying that illegal immigration makes "a significant" contribution to the economy. And, Greenspan added, legalizing the alien workforce would make things even jollier.
My reaction: I give Greenspan credit for brashness, given his starring role in allowing the immigrant-fueled Minority Mortgage Meltdown morph into the Diversity Recession. If I were Greenspan, I wouldn't leave my house for the next ten years for fear I would be assaulted on the street. Greenspan is totally unqualified to testify on any subject, most especially if it has to do with immigration.
Anyway…
Because I understand the importance of your time, I will spare you an individual breakdown of what each "expert" said in defense of "comprehensive immigration reform" a.k.a. Open Borders. All their remarks are universally predictable, collectively meaningless and we have heard them, in one form or another, thousands of times.
Instead, I'll go to the more important matter of analyzing what impact, if any, a small random group of citizen immigration enthusiasts working in tandem with assorted Senate immigration fanatics can have on the overall amnesty question.
But before proceeding, however, and in order to give you the full flavor of the degree of deceit at work, you should meet Greenspan's fellow panelists and review their pro-immigration resumes.
Apparently, Roger Cardinal Mahony was unavailable. I never heard of Hunter but figured that if he's a church guy and the committee is flying him up from Florida, he must be bad. And so it turns out. Hunter is a popular evangelical whose mission is to get "…people from various backgrounds to work together constructively rather than negatively."
A patriotic immigration lawyer—yes, there are a few—once wrote to us that: "the INS under the dreadful Meissner was a Bolsheviki nightmare. They definitely hated European Americans, European Africans, European Europeans, European Asians, and European Latinos." Now that Meissner is openly subverting America at Migration Policy Institute, her Opens Borders fanaticism has likely deepened.
See if you can figure out where Medina's coming from. Medina was born in Mexico, is a farm worker's son, a former grape-picking bracero and once a member of the United Farm Workers board of directors. Furthermore, Medina is credited with making the ultra-radical, illegal alien dominated SEIU California's largest union.
What a completely amazing group! Luckily for us, our good friend Kobach is a well-tested immigration war veteran. Otherwise, he might feel out of place among the other seven Treason Lobby advocates.
Obviously, the Senate doesn't want a level field. Otherwise it would have invited Roy Beck, Mark Krikorian or Dan Stein. All are certified Beltway herbivores who would never say anything to shock the politically correct and are only a quick Metro ride away from the Dirksen Office Building where the meeting convened. (Stein did weigh in through a press release that called Schumer's panel a "kangaroo court.")
So here we have a panel made up almost entirely like-minded, amnesty-crazed people feigning a debate about one of America's most pressing issues while presenting their conclusions to the committee, another stacked deck consisting of six open borders Democrats—Patrick Leahy, Vermont; Dianne Feinstein, California; Richard Durbin, Illinois; Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island; Ron Wyden, Oregon and Schumer, and four Republicans—John Cornyn, Texas; Charles Grassley, Iowa; John Kyl, Arizona and Jeff Sessions, Alabama.
Of the ten, patriots can only count on Grassley, Sessions and, most of the time, Cornyn.
But what credibility does the sub-committee and its handpicked stooges have within Congress' broader spectrum?
The problems start at the top.
To begin with Schumer, who replaced Senator Edward M. Kennedy as sub-committee chairman, is considered a lesser light without his predecessor's political skills. Even though "Schume," as some on the Hill unflatteringly refer to him, has compiled an immigration voting record that puts him in the same league with Kennedy, his biggest fans express only guarded optimism about his abilities.
Ali Noorani, the annoying Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, takes a particularly cautionary stance, damning Schumer with faint praise.
According to Noorani: "No human could possibly fill the shoes of Senator Ted Kennedy when it comes to his stewardship of the immigration issue across decades of shifting political winds and economic ebbs and flows, but we have high expectations for Senator Schumer nonetheless."
Remember, Kennedy—the Senate's beloved Kennedy—couldn't push amnesty through during booming economic times. Why should we believe that a less skilled pol like Schumer would be able to do it during a financial meltdown?
Here's more reason not to get overly agitated.
Recently I wrote that the revival of the DREAM Act represented a repeat performance taken from multiple failed amnesty strategies in the past.
The Senate subcommittee hearings are a page from that same book.
In 2004, then-President George W. Bush urgently wanted to pass a Guest Worker program. A Sub-Committee meeting assembled to address the topic: "Evaluating a Temporary Guest Worker Proposal."
Then—as now—the odds against immigration patriots were formidable. Of the ten who spoke only Doctor Vernon Briggs, Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, represented our position by calling Bush's plan hurtful to American workers.
And Briggs had to go up against tough opposition, including various Bush flunkies such as the General Counsel, U.S.- Mexico Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor, the Director of U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services and another Migration Policy Institute shill.
(For the traitors' names and all the other gory details, read my column that summarized the event here.)
Briggs was outnumbered 9-1, the economy was strong and Bush, still in his first term, was riding high. Despite it all, no guest worker legislation passed that year or any year since.
Look—this is what the other side does best. They convene meetings, make noise, get massively uncritical press, bully, pontificate, scold, threaten and berate.
But they lose. In fact, the last victory of any kind that the amnesty crowd scored was in 2000 on LIFE Act, a roll over of the now virtually forgotten 245 (i)
No one is more frustrated and irritated about their antics than I am. I'm post-retirement age and should be in my test kitchen or studying baseball statistics.
I know though, that if VDARE.COM and other patriotic immigration reform groups went away, we'd be steamrolled within a year.
So my columns continue. But after more than twenty years of fighting to save my country from being overtaken by mass immigration, I know when to be alarmed. I'm not alarmed Schumer and his lackeys—yet.
Joe Guzzardi [email him] is a California native who recently fled the state because of over-immigration, over-population and a rapidly deteriorating quality of life. He has moved to Pittsburgh, PA where the air is clean and the growth rate stable. A long-time instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, Guzzardi has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It currently appears in the Lodi News-Sentinel.
