Shall we pause here so you can claim that I am being “politically correct” and that “wetbacks” is used exclusively to refer to illegal aliens entering the United States from Mexico? Go ahead, try. Slugger’s readership is sophisticated enough (translation — watched enough American cop shows and movies) to know the term “wetbacks” is often employed as a derogatory, racist term aimed at any and all Hispanics regardless of how many generations they’ve been in the US.

So, continuing on with our magic carpet tour of mainstream American editorial opinion, today we touch down in Washington, D.C. The lead editorial from yesterday’s Washington Post:

Decency on Immigration
Apart from John McCain, it’s hard to find that quality in the Republican presidential contest.
Saturday, November 24, 2007; Page A16

THE SPEAKER was discussing the human face of illegal immigration. “People are continuing dying in the Sonoran desert, and it’s just a very sad thing to see,” he said. “One 3-year-old baby died, a 16-year-old girl with a rosary in her hand. There’s a side of this that grieves me terribly. These are God’s children. They’re not from another planet, and the whole thing . . . frankly, this whole issue saddens me a great deal.”

These statements were moving, but they would not have been especially remarkable except for the fact that the person speaking is a presidential candidate — a Republican presidential candidate, in fact — at a time when the campaign has taken a particularly toxic tone when it comes to the issue of immigration. In a meeting with Post editors and reporters the other day, Arizona Sen. John McCain described the toll that he believes his championing of comprehensive immigration reform took on his campaign. “It was the issue of immigration that hurt my campaign,” he said. “I have not encountered a domestic issue that has provoked the emotional response that this issue does with a lot of Americans.”

Indeed, even as Mr. McCain was speaking, his GOP rivals were busy turning an ugly immigration debate even uglier. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who said in 2005 he thought that the McCain-Kennedy comprehensive immigration approach was “sensible,” and former New York mayor
Rudolph W. Giuliani, who as mayor protected illegal immigrants from being reported to immigration authorities when they sought police protection or hospital care, competed to see who could sound toughest.

“As governor, I opposed driver’s licenses for illegals, vetoed tuition breaks for illegals and combated sanctuary city policies by authorizing the state police to enforce federal immigration law,” Mr. Romney said in a statement. “As president, I will secure the border and reject sanctuary policies by cities, states or the federal government.”

The Giuliani campaign shot back, in a statement by communications director Katie Levinson: “On Governor Romney’s watch, the number of illegal immigrants in Massachusetts skyrocketed, aid to Massachusetts sanctuary cities went through the roof and Governor Romney even went so far as to hire illegals to work on his lawn.” Mr. Romney and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson have also taken shots at former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee for allowing the children of illegal immigrants in Arkansas to qualify for in-state tuition and academic scholarships if they graduated from high school there. As Mr. Huckabee told Fox News, “the basic concept, and I know this is still an anathema to some people, I don’t believe you punish the children for the crime and sins of the parents.”

Illegal immigration provokes strong emotions, understandably so. But it would behoove all the candidates to engage in a little less chest-thumping and speak with more of the decency and compassion that Mr. McCain exhibited.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/23/AR2007112301493.html

Given the breaking down of the NYT walled garden, I know that access there is not an issue.

The WSJ is hit or miss, although I understand that Murdoch is looking to break down the walled garden there as well.

That said, as I have pointed out, none of what you suggest on illegal immigration will cure the problem or change the dynamic — so why bother with it? Legalizing the illegals will do nothing to wean those businesses who want illegal labor off of it, nor will it correct / change Mexico’s policy of exporting it poverty to the United States to deal with. All you are doing is insulting those who go through the legal process and rewarding those who chose to break the law.

Now, should there be a guest worker program? Yes. But that should not be made available to those in the nation illegally. Nor should it be enacted before the government lives up to its obligations and enforces the laws regarding the border. Lastly, those municipalities and other entities who have been actively undermining enforcement of the law should be brought back into line. University systems offering in-state tuition should have access to Federal monies cut, those states offering sanctuary should have law enforcement monies cut, with those amounts cut re-purposed to that state’s INS / ICE offices, etc.

Cheers.

Who benefits more from that transformation, the legalized worker or the American tax-payer? I would argue is isn’t the tax-payer, in so far as the damage, in the form of credit ratings, IRS hassles and the like are still extant — normalizing their status does nothing to correct the damage inflicted and the pathetically low fines will not go to the injured parties. Likewise, since their presence in the United States is an economic calculation that ignores legal considerations, unless the increase in pay received by legalizing their status exceeds the taxes that will be removed, what is their incentive to normalize their status?

Likewise, the US half of the problem is that businesses are addicted to illegal labor they can pay sub-par wages — how is legalizing the illegal immigrants going to fix that problem? In the same vein, it does nothing to “cure” Mexican poverty — they will simply maintain their monopolistic and oligarchic politics and export their poverty to the United States.

Lastly, the loss, in terms of the deformation of the social compact, the toleration of illegal behavior and the encouragement of the next wave of illegal immigrants, far outweighs the benefit.

Several million hard-working, tax-paying, legal workers.

No, my argument is that if we do away with those structural contradictions that have the effect of giving aid and comfort to illegal immigrants, they will leave.

But, regardless, that does not answer my question *WHY* should the United States simply forgive the crimes these people have committed? Why should the bar for illegal immigrants be lower than that for citizens?

susan: “I am under no illusions anything I say here would possibly change your personal opinion, Dread. I don’t take that personally, I can understand where your frustrations are coming from. ”

No, susan… unless you’ve had the joy of sorting out your credit rating because someone else was “borrowing” it, making it impossible for you to get a mortgage, you have not the slightest idea where my frustrations are coming from.

Your position is wholly emotional, ignoring the history of the issue. You want us to embark on a second iteration of the 1983 amnesty, despite its obvious failure. You want me to believe, for no adequately explained reason, that liberals will hold up their end of the grand bargain this time, despite all history to the contrary. They refuse to accept their role in creating the problem by their unwillingness to aid Federal agencies and their creation of sanctuary cities,.

susan: “I am simply providing access to informed opinions from other sources within the United States that do not concur with your opinions. ”

Bollocks. I have all the access I could ask for, susan. Besides, calling a NYT editorial an “informed opinion” is a bit like calling Jayson Blair’s articles and the non-reporting of the Ukrainian famines in said broadsheet “honest news.”

You are hiding behind a pavise of “cut-and-pastes” in an effort to avoid answering questions to which you have no useful or persuasive answers. You want us to forgive crimes for which an honest citizen or legal resident would be heavily fined and jailed — there is an amnesty right there, btw — in exchange for normalizing their presence and making available to them a whole raft of social programs. What exactly, as a law-abiding citizen who doesn’t commit fraud or tax evasion, do I get out of this “grand compromise?”

I am under no illusions anything I say here would possibly change your personal opinion, Dread. I don’t take that personally, I can understand where your frustrations are coming from.

I am simply providing access to informed opinions from other sources within the United States that do not concur with your opinions.

Bollocks — without borders, there is no nation. Likewise, the Mexican “solution” to their own poverty is to export it across the border, including supplying “migrants” with maps and instructions on how best to make it across the border. Until and unless that is addressed, either internally by Mexico or externally, by the United States addressing its weak border, the problem will continue.

Similarly, there is no point in “normalizing” the status of the illegal immigrants within the United States’ borders unless a firm grip on the border has been gained, else whinging bleeding hearts will want the next batch legalized in the next ten to fifteen years, just as now is to 1983. The amnesty crowd made a bargain — normalization of illegal immigration in exchange for controlling the borders. They then “opted out” of controlling the border once they got what they wanted — amnesty. This time, we do it in the other order, since the amnesty crowd has demonstrated themselves unworthy of trust or anything resembling confidence in their motives.

Fool me once, shame on you. The amnesty crowd has already had its free bite at the apple… if you want another one, you’re going to have to work for it.

Again, you also ingnored my questions, hiding behind pavise of “cut and paste.”

What lesson does this “not-an-amnesty” process teach those individuals who are going through the process of legal immigration?

Why should the US forgive the crimes committed — the fraud, the tax evasion, etc.?

You’re not going to persuade me with slash-dab cut and paste arguments, particularly if they don’t answer the questions I ask.

These illegal immigrants have shown no respect for American law. Why should the social compact be expanded to make space for them, when they have shown nothing but disdain for it?

The definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over and expecting a different result. This is the same deal as was passed in 1983, only with four times as many wet-backs. You seen to think I should expect a different result this time, as compared to 1983? What makes you think so?

Dread, if anyone else out there is still reading this days old thread, I hope they make note that rather than analyse the substantive points raised in yesterday’s New York Times opinion piece, you are referring to the New York TImes as some vague sort of Stalinist apologists. Duly noted.

Here is another editorial arguing against the economic infeasibility and futility of an enforcement-only approach to US immigration, brought to you by those left-wing Trotskeyites (cough) at The Wall Street Journal:

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Tom Tancredo’s Wall
The Colorado Congressman tries to make America the world’s biggest gated community.

Thursday, December 29, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

“We have a supply and a demand problem. The supply problem is coming across the border. We are in this bill doing something very specific about that with the inclusion of the amendment, with the passage of the amendment, to build some barrier along at least 700 miles of our southern border. I hope we continue with that, by the way, along the entire border, to the extent it is feasible, and the northern border we could start next.”

–Rep. Tom Tancredo (R., Colo.)
So there you have it. Tom Tancredo has done everyone a favor by stating plainly the immigration rejectionists’ endgame–turn the United States into the world’s largest gated community. The House took a step in that direction this month by passing another immigration “reform” bill heavy with border control and business harassment and light on anything that will work in the real world.

For the past two decades, border enforcement has been the main focus of immigration policy; by any measure, the results are pitiful. According to the Migration Policy Institute, “The number of unauthorized migrants in the United States has risen to almost 11 million from about four million over the past 20 years, despite a 519% increase in funding and a 221% increase in staffing for border patrol programs.”

Given that record, it’s hard to see the House Republican bill as much more than preening about illegal immigration. The legislation is aimed at placating a small but vocal constituency that wants the borders somehow sealed, come what may to the economy, American traditions of liberty or the Republican Party’s relationship with the increasingly important Latino vote.

Besides mandating the construction of walls and fences along the 2,000-mile Mexican border, the bill radically expands the definition of terms like “alien smuggler,” “harboring,” “shielding” and “transporting.” Hence all manner of people would become criminally liable and subject to fines, property forfeiture and imprisonment–the landscaper who gives a co-worker a ride to a job; the legal resident who takes in an undocumented relative; a Catholic Charities shelter providing beds and meals to anyone who walks through the door.”

The Wall Street Journal piece can be read in its entirety at

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007740

What sort of twisted logic rewards a criminal for his crime? And what message does this send to those individuals who actually respect the laws of the United States and are in the process of legally immigrating? We have cities — major cities, such as San Francisco and New York City — aiding and abetting the anonymity of these criminals. We can’t honestly say the laws are enforced, since, on a local level, the laws are being undercut.

The Times is hardly “middle of the road,” just a point of fact. It has also long ceased to be the paper of record, although one could point out that their history of politically expedient coverage goes back to their non-coverage of Stalin’s engineered famine in the Ukraine. Throw in the this is an editorial that is long on rhetoric and short on fact.

That I disagree with the opinions of these folks is not something I find troubling. That you consider capitulation “middle of the road,” however, is. This is a de facto reward to folks who broke the law when they crossed the border, broke the law when they gained employment and continue to break the law. They are aided and abetted by municipalities who, in turn, go unpunished for their complicity in these crimes. This is a slap in the face to ever legal immigrant and naturalized citizen in this country, with the possible exception of those illegal immigrants who received the same deal in 1983.

This “policy” is simply a re-hash of that deal. The Democrats have shown no appetite for securing the border. They will talk a good game, then sit back. This “not-an-amnesty, honest” would go forward, attract greater illegal immigration, as folks try to get into the nation ahead of the dead-line, hoping to lie their way through the process. In the end, the problem will be worse, not better.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/opinion/23fri1.html?hp

A few relevant paragraphs:

“Fixing immigration is not a yes-or-no question. It’s yes and no. Or if you prefer, no and yes — no to more illegal immigration, to uncontrolled borders and to a flourishing underground economy where employer greed feeds off worker desperation. Yes to extending the blanket of law over the anonymous, undocumented population — through fines and other penalties for breaking the nation’s laws and an orderly path to legal status and citizenship to those who qualify.

These are the ingredients of a realistic approach to a complicated problem. It’s called comprehensive reform, and it rests on the idea that having an undocumented underclass does the country more harm than good. This is not “open-borders amnesty,” a false label stuck on by those who want enforcement and nothing else. It’s tough on the border and on those who sneaked across it. It’s tough but fair to employers who need immigrant workers. It recognizes that American citizens should not have to compete for jobs with a desperate population frightened into accepting rock-bottom wages and working conditions. It makes a serious effort to fix legal immigration by creating an orderly future flow of legal workers.

Americans accept this approach. The National Immigration Forum has compiled nearly two dozen polls from 2007 alone that show Americans consistently favoring a combination of tough enforcement and earned legalization over just enforcement. Elections confirm this. Straight-talking moderates like Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico thrive in the immigration crucible along the southern border. Those who obsess about immigration as single-issue hard-liners, like the Arizonans J. D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, have disappeared, booted by voters. Voters in Virginia this month rejected similar candidates and handed control of the State Senate to Democrats.

It may not be “amnesty” that gets Americans worked up as much as inaction. They seem to sense the weakness and futility in the enforcement-only strategy, the idea of tightening the screws on an informal apartheid system until it is so frightening and hopeless that millions of poor people pack up and leave.

That is the attrition argument, the only answer the anti-amnesty crowd has to comprehensive reform. It is, of course, a passive amnesty that rewards only the most furtive and wily illegal immigrants and the bottom-feeding employers who hire them. It will drive some people out of the country, but will push millions of others — families with members of mixed immigration status, lots of citizen children and practically a nation’s worth of decent, hard workers — further into hiding.

We are already seeing what a full-bore enforcement-only strategy will bring. Bias crimes against Hispanic people are up, hate groups are on the march. Legal immigration remains a mess. Applications for citizenship are up, and the federal citizenship agency, which steeply raised its fees to increase efficiency, is drowning in paperwork and delays. American citizens are being caught up in house-to-house raids by immigration agents.”

Ah, but it is an *assumption*, kensei, not a fact.

Must I remind you of what happens when you assume?

Likewise, if having illegal immigrants is so swell, why does Mexico work so hard to keep Central Americans from crossing their southern border?

From the link I posted earlier:

“But if pushed, I would tend to adopt the simplifying assumption implied by a fully functioning, competitive labour market, that on average migrants create exactly as many jobs as they fill. If 1.1 million migrants are employed, there are probably 1.1 million extra jobs.”

This remains just as true for illegal immigrants.

First of all, you assume, incorrectly, that all Latin-US citizens are part of some great under-class. My boss, the Puerto Rican audit manager, now a big-wig with one of the major healthcare concerns, would be suprised…

Second, you build upon for first error, assuming they have disproportionately less access to health care. Now, me being someone who knows the Federal laws regarding the operation of healthcare providers, knows that your thesis is bunk — any healthcare provider that accepts *any* Federal money, be it for research, Medicare or what have you, cannot discriminate against patients on the ability to pay. Third, were I to hazard a guess, I would have to say that diet played a major role, but that’s little more than a guess.nnLastly, your introduction of data regarding US citizens of Lating descent into a discussion of illegal immigration seems a bit misplaced — apples and oranges.

MR: “Those who “run the border” (now, who could that be?) may even be better off outside the Californian public health service: look at what it does to its native-born African-Americans—Black males die ten years earlier than the “average”, and even four years younger than Mexicans who don’t “run the border”. ”

African Americans, Malcom. (to refer to them as “blacks” is racist, Malcom)

I can think of a few issues that feed into this — illegitimacy rates, poverty rates, poorer life choices, poorer diets, etc. Ironically, when one breaks out the data and compares the outcomes of African Americans to those outcomes of recent African immigrants and Africans of Caribbean extraction in the US, one finds similar results. But again, citizen data, not illegal immigrant data.

MR: “The evidence for immigrants (documented or not) suppressing wage rates is disputed.”

Who should I believe, you or mine own eyes? The meat-packing industry in the mid-west is rife with illegals (hundreds arrested at a time in some raids) and, in the aftermath of the raids, the plants are hiring local whites and blacks at a higher rate to replace the arrested illegal aliens.

MR: “No: what depresses wage-rates is trapping workers in a collapsing economy, without the means to reskill. That suggests a weakness in education and training (and, yes, that’s a chronic weakness of the UK economy, as I have oft rehearsed). ”

So how is allowing / normalizing the status of millions of ill-educated illegal aliens supposed to correct this situation, Malcom? It sounds as if you wish the United States to undertake actions Ireland, Mexico or a host of other nations would never countenance.

MR: “In passing, the GNP (2006) of California was $1.7 trillion. Repeat: trillion. The “cost’ of $10B you quote is derived from FAIR figures (an anti-immigration pressure group) and seems to have been swallowed hook,line and sinker. That total is made up by education ($7.7B, a very dubious estimate, since the status of the parents is merely assumed, and could equally be construed as an essential investment in the next generation), health ($1.4B: shock, horror! Unregulated manual workers get sick and injured!) and prisons ($1.4B: why lock ‘em up, for heaven’s sake?). Serious stuff indeed.”

Throw in the lack of tax revenue (California is an income tax state), the disproportionate participation in gang activity by illegal aliens, the social problems that arise from a disproportionately male population without roots in the community adn you have quite the problem. Over a quarter of the prison population in the United States is are foreign born nationals (hint: the “law-abiding” illegals are either handled on a “catch and release” basis or deported), so the prison price-tag would seem low, but that’s just a guess.

MR: “An alternative version comes from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which quotes the State of California reckoning that “the net cost to the state of providing government services to illegal immigrants approached $3 billion during a single fiscal year”. ”

Fine, let’s take your number (which comes from a self-described pro-immigrant think-tank, btw), for the sake of argument — on what rational basis should the law-abiding, tax paying and legal residents of the state of California should shell out three billion dollars to pay for illegal immigrants?

You pirated your pseudonym from HP Lovecraft, I mine from … well, it doesn’t matter. However, one of the polite punctilios of debate is to learn to spell your opponent’s name. If nothing else, failing to do so casts doubt on the accuracy of everything else you say.

As for research on immigration, the Cato Institute are pretty sound. Free marketeers, too.

Interesting paradoxes on life expectancy: why do Latin-US citizens have a longer life expectancy than the population as a whole, while having less access to health services?

Citation:
“Census data also show that Latina women have a life expectancy of 83.7 years and Latino men, 77.2 years—compared with 75.1 and 68.4 for African Americans and 80.1 and 74.7 for non-Hispanic whites. Yet health surveys show they have less access to health care services (63 percent of working Latinos have no health insurance) and to state-of-the-art treatment.”
Source: http://www.paho.org/English/DD/PIN/pr040609.htm

(And, no, that does not conflict with my earlier point about death rates for immigrants).

Those who “run the border” (now, who could that be?) may even be better off outside the Californian public health service: look at what it does to its native-born African-Americans — Black males die ten years earlier than the “average”, and even four years younger than Mexicans who don’t “run the border”.

The evidence for immigrants (documented or not) suppressing wage rates is disputed. Since they are more productive than the population as a whole, where is the excess product going? Cui bono?

Since such workers enter the least-skilled end of the labour market, whose wages are being depressed? Is it all those unemployable junk-bonds-salesmen and stock-brokers, the realtors, the public relations officers who are not sufficiently skilled to work in a manual job or tend a bar? No: what depresses wage-rates is trapping workers in a collapsing economy, without the means to reskill. That suggests a weakness in education and training (and, yes, that’s a chronic weakness of the UK economy, as I have oft rehearsed).

In passing, the GNP (2006) of California was $1.7 trillion. Repeat: trillion. The “cost’ of $10B you quote is derived from FAIR figures (an anti-immigration pressure group) and seems to have been swallowed hook,line and sinker. That total is made up by education ($7.7B, a very dubious estimate, since the status of the parents is merely assumed, and could equally be construed as an essential investment in the next generation), health ($1.4B: shock, horror! Unregulated manual workers get sick and injured!) and prisons ($1.4B: why lock ‘em up, for heaven’s sake?). Serious stuff indeed.

An alternative version comes from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which quotes the State of California reckoning that “the net cost to the state of providing government services to illegal immigrants approached $3 billion during a single fiscal year”.

Now, quite frankly, you have long become boring, repetitive, assertive and trite. Can we renew our acquaintance at another time, on a more rewarding topic? Over and out.

Hardly, Malcom.

But then, the sort of fellow who casually accuses those who disagree with him as being or favoring Nazism aren’t usually known for their clear sight or rational thought.

MR: “Those inflictions of which you so glibly write are poor payment for all pain, grief and suffering endured in the filthy servile jobs these upstanding American citizens couldn’t or wouldn’t bring themselves to do.”

Your argument neatly ignores that the presence of illegal aliens suppresses the cost of labor. This, in turn, makes alternative — paying what an honest market would bear or automation — less attractive. At best, you’re arguing one half of a “chicken vs egg” proposition.

MR: “Every evaluation shows that the social and economic benefits from immigrants, prepared to work in menial jobs for basic wages as a deposit on their children and their children’s children hopes to rise the ladder, far outweigh any costs.”

Not so, Malcom, not every one. And we are not talking “immigrants,” we are discussing illegal immigrants. They do not provide benefit beyond their costs — as noted elsewhere, they cost California 10 billion dollars, net cost, a year, in public goods.

This doesn’t even get into the personal loss inflicted upon citizens and legal immigrants — that is simply the cost to the state. This also doesn’t include the personal damage they inflict.

MR: “For one thing, by denying them basic healthcare etc you make sure they have a painful, tedious, careworn and short life. ”

They are not denied healthcare, Malcom, and I have the bad debt logs to prove it. Hell, I have one with a comatose illegal for the past five or six years, with the state Medicaid picking up all of one of those years. A “catch-22″ in the regulations prevents them from shipping them to a nursing home, which is all the care they need, and keeps them in an ICU or CCU suite.

The emergency rooms close because the illegals run the border to pop out an anchor-baby and run out on the bill. They pay little to no taxes and freely consume public goods, creating a net expense to the state. As a result, the emergency rooms get closed, because that causes less harm to the community than closing the hospitals, which operate at a loss. As a result, everyone suffers, because now, the ER is further away. I would caution you not to vacation too near the Mexican border.

MR: “You don’t have to believe me: go check your life-expectancy rates. ”

And how, he asks, him knowingly, does that life-expectancy rate compare to what they would have in their home country, Malcom? If the treatent in the states is so bad, why do the numbers work better for them here than there?

… the personal damages, financial and personal, that illegal immigrants have inflicted on American citizens …

Catch yourself on, man. Grinding the faces of the poor is the ugliest form of capitalism. Wrapping yourself in false hurt, dignity and ideology while doing so is doubly despicable.

Those inflictions of which you so glibly write are poor payment for all pain, grief and suffering endured in the filthy servile jobs these upstanding American citizens couldn’t or wouldn’t bring themselves to do. Who is your stoop-labour? Who cleans the bedpans in your private-enterprise hospital? Who digs your sewers? Who prepares your corpse for burial?

Every evaluation shows that the social and economic benefits from immigrants, prepared to work in menial jobs for basic wages as a deposit on their children and their children’s children hopes to rise the ladder, far outweigh any costs. For one thing, by denying them basic healthcare etc you make sure they have a painful, tedious, careworn and short life. You don’t have to believe me: go check your life-expectancy rates.

And it would amount to pennies on the dollar, susan. Not even enough to re-open the emergency rooms that have been closed, let alone refund the school expense, the personal cost to individuals, the cost of prisons for those criminals who jumped the border to continue their criminal careers here, etc.

susan: “Of course it is a shameless attempt to garner more popular and bipartisan support—I simply do not know how else a bill would become a law—but it might do some good, if it could be worked out. ”

Shameless pandering and vote-buying for an idea that cannot stand on its merits, in other words. Might work if no one bothers to actually do the math.

Like I said, it would amount to pennies on the dollar lost. It also won’t undo the personal damages, financial and personal, that illegal immigrants have inflicted on American citizens.

Susan: “And on the whisky, I know Portaferry’s Feckin launched in several US cities a little while back. And there’s plenty of other options on your shores—don’t tell me I don’t know whisky, one of my first jobs was repping Macallan in London. Tell me what whisky it is you want to see in the shops, Dread. ”

It’s not the number of labels I care about, its the contents. Having had the same label purchased both here and there, I can tell you the contents just weren’t the same. Given I know that bottling ends the maturing process and that the bottles are sealed for transport, it is not the transport process damaging the product.

I have a set of options — it pays to know where to look and who to know, but it costs as well.

As for the rest, I’ll work up a list… although if the exchange rate continues the way its going, it might be more of a “wish list” than originally intended… :/

If I were a legislative aide to an American senator or congressperson attempting to craft and sell comprehensive immigration reform, I would look into the possibilities of channeling fines and back taxes rec’d from those seeking legalisation directly back to the communities and/or healthcare systems most directly and unfairly impacted by illegal immigration.

Of course it is a shameless attempt to garner more popular and bipartisan support — I simply do not know how else a bill would become a law — but it might do some good, if it could be worked out.

And on the whisky, I know Portaferry’s Feckin launched in several US cities a little while back. And there’s plenty of other options on your shores — don’t tell me I don’t know whisky, one of my first jobs was repping Macallan in London. Tell me what whisky it is you want to see in the shops, Dread.

And no, there is no limit to my helpfulness in pursuit of an objective. You might as well attempt to interrupt or insult the tides. ;o)

The unit of government that handles immigration, i.e. the Federal Government. From there, it will fall down the rabbit hole. I dare say the whole of the fine revenue wouldn’t cover the 10 billion dollars that illegal immigrants cost the state of California each year, let alone the national cost.

The Dubliner: “you’re consistently missing the point due to your defeatist attitude, finding reasons why ethnic groups can’t lobby successfully.”

No, I’m trying to be realistic, whilst you’re playing “let’s suspend our disbelief with a block and tackle.” Israel is a fairly unique case, having enjoyed a wealth of residual sympathy from the post-WW2 era, a history of collaberation on intelligence issues and military development. What does Ireland bring to the table? Y’all don’t even export the better whiskies to the States and you want special favors?

The Dubliner: “The only reason that Israel exists is because the Jewish lobby successfully promoted a Zionist agenda. The only reason that the US continues to support it is because of the power of that Jewish lobby. It has nothing to do with other pretexts.”

Dub, you’re plain wrong. I cannot put it any plainer than that. First, Israel exists because the Arab nations couldn’t fight their way out of a paper sack in three successive wars, including one they started with a suprise attack. Second, given the mis-steps of the Jewish lobby, including espionage, I think you overestimate their power at this point in time. Third, if it was simply a numbers game, I would think that the pols would do far better pandering to the Muslims, what with the petro-dollars and the larger number of voters extant, given they live in ethnic enclaves, making them a more potent political force, esp. for the House.

The Dubliner: “It is down to sheer fear of the power of the Jewish lobby to wreck the political careers of US politicians who oppose it.”

What, with 2% of the population? Even if you buy into the anti-Semitic tripe about the Jews controlling the media, that’d be a hard sell.

The Dubliner: “The potential power of 45 million Irish-Americans can be, and should be, organised by the Irish government for the greater good of Ireland both politically and commercially.”

It is far too late in the game to start now, Dub. That ship has sailed decades (if not longer)ago.

1) Most Irish Americans, while having an affection for Ireland, aren’t going to be swayed politically by Ireland and certainly aren’t going to drop everything and lobby for Irish illegal immigrants.

2) Most Irish Americans don’t vote in a bloc and aren’t likely to start.

3) Ireland does not have the clout or the tenure to suddenly claim ally status and make demands upon the United States. It is under no external threats.

4) Ireland’s economic success does not make it a particularly sympathetic case, nor has its positions vis-a-vis the United States in the past.

5) Attempting to organize an Irish-American lobby would resurrect a whole host of ugly stereotypes that most Irish Americans would just as soon prefer to leave buried, or are you too young to remember Kennedy having to explain that as an Irish – American Catholic, he wouldn’t take orders from the Pope?