'It's great that immigrants have more babies, we should let them in.'
- Jeb Bush, 13 June 2013
This statement has created a furore with the usual 'RAAAAAAACIST!'label being thrown around as if MSNBC's daily programming has brain-snatched pundits and politicians across the spectrum. In my opinion, whether one finds it racist is actually not the main problem with the 'immigrants have more babies, which will result in more workers paying taxes to sustain the entitlement state' argument. The real problems with it are ignorance and a refusal to look at the issue honestly.
Just having more babies is not necessarily a selling point. Look at the problems in the EU, not one of the member states has a FR above the replacement rate, but those having babies have a completely different idea of what the countries should look like.
FIRST,it ignores the fact that even though Hispanic women have more live births than white, blacks and Asians, their Fertility Rate has had the largest and most sustained decline in recent years. In 2010, the Fertility Rate in the United States was the lowest it had been since it last lowest ever: 1973, which was, coincidentally, the year Roe v Wade was handed down. More depressingly, middle class and educated women have a FR of only 1.6. To put that into context, the death-by-demographics EU has an overall FR of 1.5, although much of it is driven by Muslim immigrants, who have larger families.
And, before anyone says ‘Well, Mexican-Americans will replace disappearing white taxpayers!,’ hold on a minute. In just three years – between 2007 and 2010 – the birthrate for Mexican-Americans dropped an astonishing 23%.
From the NYT:
Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families
Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. Both immigrant and native-born Latinas had steeper birthrate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups, including non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians, a drop some demographers and sociologists attribute to changes in the views of many Hispanic women about motherhood.
As a result, in 2011, the American birthrate hit a record low, with 63 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, led by the decline in births to immigrant women. The national birthrate is now about half what it was during the baby boom years, when it peaked in 1957 at 122.7 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.
The decline in birthrates was steepest among Mexican-American women and women who immigrated from Mexico, at 25.7 percent. This has reversed a trend in which immigrant mothers accounted for a rising share of births in the United States, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, birthrates among all Hispanics reached their lowest level in 20 years, the center found.
Why do we need people? Well, apart from needing a tax base so that the entire country doesn’t become Detroit, you have to have enough young workers to pay for the ever-increasing aging population.
‘After eight years of President Obama’s economic policies, and quite frankly foreign policy, people are going to be looking around. But if we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016. We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community in my view is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who we run in my view.’
- Senator Lindsey Graham, (R-SC), shilling for his big corporate donors
Good graces? Bless his heart. Since when do Hispanics reward Republicans for legalising illegal aliens. They most certainly did not after the 1986 amnesty.,,
In 1980, Carter received 56% of the Hispanic vote while Reagan only got 37% — a difference of 19%.
In 1984, Mondale received 66% of the Hispanic vote while Reagan only got 34.82% — a difference of 31.18%.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 a/k/a Simpson-Mazzilo into law, which granted amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants, the vast majority of which were Hispanic.
In 1988, Michael Dukakis won 70.15% of the Hispanic vote while the Vice-President of the man who legalised millions of Hispanics, George H W Bush, received a mere 30.85% — a difference of 39.3%.
If Hispanics could be purchased with amnesty, then they would have overwhelmingly voted Republican in 1988. They didn’t so that should tell the “brains” in the GOP something.
Continuing on…
In 1992, Bill Clinton won 61% of the Hispanic vote while President George H.W. Bush won 25% – a difference of 36%.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton won 72% of the Hispanic vote while Senator Bob Dole received a mere 21% – a difference of 51%.
In 2000, Vice-President Al Gore won 62% of the Hispanic vote while George W Bush won only 35% – a difference of 27%.
In 2004, Senator John Kerry won 58% of the Hispanic vote while President George W Bush won 40% – a difference of 18%.
In 2008, Senator Barack Obama, who voted AGAINSTPresident Bush’s immigration reform, won 67% of the Hispanic vote while Senator John McAmnesty won a mere 31% – a difference of 36%.
In 2012, President Barack Obama won 71% of the Hispanic vote while Mitt Romney won only 27% – a difference of 44%.
SECOND, a high fertility rate, in and of itself, is not necessarily a net positive for either the children or society, in general:
* At 53%, the Hispanic illegitimacy rate is more than twice the white rate (23%) among whites, and Hispanic women have abortions at 2.7 times the white rate.
* Per capita income of Hispanics is one-half that of non-Hispanic whites, and household net worth is less than one-tenth.
* 50% of Hispanic households use some form of welfare, the highest rate of any major population group.
* Hispanics are 3.3 times more likely to be in prison than whites; they are 4.2 times more likely to be in prison for murder, and 5.8 times more likely to be in prison for felony drug crimes.
* 34.9% of all Federal prisoners are Hispanic (U.S. Bureau of Prisons)
* Young Hispanics are 19 times more likely than young whites (and slightly more likely than young blacks) to be in youth gangs.
* Hispanics drop out of high school at three times the white rate and twice the black rate.
* Even third-generation Hispanics drop out of school at a higher rate than blacks and are less likely to be college graduates.
* From 1992 to 2003, Hispanic illiteracy in English rose from 35% to 44%.
* The average Hispanic 12th-grader reads and does math at the level of the average white 8th-grader.
'There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it. There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly.'
- Enrique Gonzalez, aide to Senator Marco Rubio, (R-FL)
THIRD,we actually have real-life examples to look at in conducting a cost-benefit analysis. To begin with, we can look at the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Its supporters assured Americans that immigration would be miniscule and would never change the demographics of the United States.
On 10 February 1965 during a hearing of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalisation of the Committee on the Judiciary, Senator Edward Kennedy, the bill’s sponsor, said: ‘First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually.Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same … Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset … Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia… In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think…The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society.It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.’
At the same hearing, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said: ‘The present estimate, based upon the best information we can get, is that there might be, say, 8,000 immigrants from India in the next five years … I don’t think we have a particular picture of a world situation where everybody is just straining to move to the United States … There is not a general move toward the United States.’
Attorney General Robert F Kennedy said: 'I would say for the Asia-Pacific Triangle it [immigration] would be approximately 5,000, Mr. Chairman, after which immigration from that source would virtually disappear; 5,000 immigrants would come the first year, but we do not expect that there would be any great influx after that.'
Senator Hiram Fong (R-HI), said ‘Asians represent six-tenths of 1 percent of the population of the United States … with respect to Japan, we estimate that there will be a total for the first 5 years of some 5,391 … the people from that part of the world will never reach 1 percent of the population ...Our cultural pattern will never be changed as far as America is concerned.’
On 25 August 1965, Representative Sidney Yates, (D-IL), said: ‘I am aware that this bill is more concerned with the equality of immigrants than with their numbers. It is obvious in any event that the great days of immigration have long since run their course. World population trends have changed, and changing economic and social conditions at home and abroad dictate a changing migratory pattern.’
How far off were the above and their fellow immigration reform followers with their estimates? By 1968 — when the law fully took effect — the 1965 level of 290,697 had increased to 454,448, 'only' a 56 percent increase.
There were some Republicans that warned of the consequences, but two Democrats, in my opinion, nailed it…
Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN), the 1968 Democratic Presidential nominee, said:
The United States cannot regain its competitive standing in the world by importing low wage workers from other countries. On the one hand, it engenders conditions this country cannot and should not tolerate. On the other hand, in the modern age, a nation's wealth and prosperity is secured by high worker productivity and capital investment, not by the availability of low-wage labour.'
And, Theodore White, the American political journalist, historian, and novelist, Kennedy family intimate, coiner of the term "Camelot" to describe the Kennedy Administration, and author of America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President, said:
'The immigration Act of 1965 changed all previous patterns, and in so doing, probably changed the future of America … [it] was noble, revolutionary – and probably the most thoughtless of many acts of the Great Society.'
So, despite assurances from Washington, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 DID flood American cities with immigrants and change the ethnic mix of the United States, immigration DID far outpace the predictions made by the Washington elite, and the 'great days of immigration' were FAR FROM OVER.
Another example is that of Europe. I've written about this issue on many occasions, but let's go through it again, for those that have never read or given great thought about it.
Not a single country in all of Europe has a fertility rate of 2.1, which is considered the replacement rate, ie, the rate necessary for the population to remain stable? Even before the financial meltdown, Spain and Greece, in particular, had fertility rates so low that their populations would halve themselves with successive generations.
Several decades ago, white Europeans decided that they just couldn’t be bothered to have children. Of course, this presented a huge problem given the fact that they not only loved their luxurious welfare hammocks, they believed they were entitled to them. Konstantinos in Athens thought he was entitled to retire to his Speedos at 50 at 97% of his highest annual salary and it was up to the government to figure out how to pay for it. And, while Marina and the rest of the bamboccioni in Italy find it perfectly acceptable to be sleeping in their childhood bedrooms when they are in their late 30s and have absolutely no problem with suing their elderly parents for allowances, they aren’t having children, which is probably a good thing, nor is anyone hiring them, which is likewise understandable. Soooo, there aren’t enough workers paying taxes to support the retirees.
In the UK in the 1990s, Labour made the decision to take an 'open borders' position and champion massive immigration. They did it for two reasons, which will be very familiar for everyone here:
A. They believed in multiculturalism and that nationalism was a bad thing. “Countries” and “patriotism” were bad things. Brits needed to become “citizens of the world.”
AND
B. They knew that they would be able to get the votes of the, mainly, third world and Eastern European immigrants.
But, something happened that they never foresaw:
They lost their entire base of blue-collar, union voters…even many of those “on the dole” turned on Labour. Why?
Because they felt that Labour put immigrants and, especially, illegal immigrants ahead of native citizens.
Imagine being a veteran of WWII or a child, whose father died fighting Hitler, and being told that an illegal, who managed to stay undetected in the country for 6 weeks, was entitled to all of the rights and benefits that they are afforded?
On top of that, if these people even mentioned immigration, they were labeled racists and bigots. One of the defining moments of the 2010 election was when former Prime Minister Gordon Brown was caught on tape calling a life-long Labour voter — an elderly woman concerned about the influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe –a “bigot.” She had legitimate concerns and his words about her were so elitist, arrogant and insulting that no amount of damage control and personal apologies could save either him or Labour. More devastating for Labour was their failure to recognise that she wasn’t some old, oddball crank — a one-off aberration. Sadly for the myopic idiots in Labour, she spoke for much of their “base.”
Now, even Labour’s leaders like “Ed the Red” Miliband (they call him that for a reason and it isn’t because he has red hair) have admitted that their immigration and multicultural policies have been a disaster for the country and their party. Oh, and guess what? We’ve been given “permission” by Labour and the other Leftist elites like the BBC to actually discuss “immigration.” It is no longer “racist” to do so. No word yet on whether the ridiculous British press will stop referring to all Muslims as “Asian immigrants.” In London, you’ll hear some of the really “smart” people referring to a Muslim immigrant from, say, the Bahamas as an “Asian immigrant.” It is not unlike the idiocy of calling all blacks “African-Americans.” I can assure you that the blacks in the UK or South Africa do not consider themselves to be “African-Americans.”
Back to the rift, drift, and schism between Leftist parties and their natural constituents… The thing is that this isn’t just happening in the UK. It is occurring across the Continent. You see, even Marx and Engels understood and recognised that socialism would never work in heterogeneous populations. Leftists here point to Scandinavia and say, “Look, Socialism works and everyone gets along.” Apart from the fact that Scandinavian countries began moving away from Socialism in the 1990s, this argument overlooks a very serious phenomenon that is occurring, which was wholly predictable. As the population of Sweden, etc., has become less homogenous, the support for welfare programmes has fallen dramatically and the racial strife has increased measurably.
Sir Peter Mandleson, one of New Labour nucleus that sent out 'search parties' to bring immigrants to Britain has admitted this, finally, and some Labour leaders like Ed Miliband have acknowledged the catastrophic effect that their immigration policies have had on British society and government programmes.
Labour leader, Ed Miliband:
‘There has been a collision of a large amount of immigration from Eastern Europe and a UK labour market that is frankly too often nasty, brutish and short-term.
It became clear that the estimates that we had relied on were vastly wrong. We expected 15,000 migrants and 15,000 came to Southampton. The country was put under strain as a result. There was an impact on wages and public services that people were concerned about.
There are issues around the pace of change in communities, pressures on public resources and making sure entitlements work fairly.
There are clearly issues that people have been raising over a number of years. We have to look at where the rules are right and, if they are wrong, what we can do about it. You have to have the right entitlements in place.
We have got to talk about this issue because the public are talking about it. I am for politics that is relevant to people's lives. We cannot have a debate going on in every kitchen, street and every neighbourhood and the Labour party not talk about it.
Labour has to change its approach to immigration, but you cannot answer people's concerns on immigration unless you change the way your economy works.
Overall, immigration has benefits, but the thing we did not talk about was its relevance to class, and the issue of where the benefits and burdens lie. If you need a builder, it is good that there are more coming into the country and lowering the price of construction, but if you are a British builder it is less beneficial.
In government, we were not sufficiently alive to the burdens, so when people said they were concerned that their wages were being driven down by people from eastern Europe our response too often was to argue that these people are saying 'stop the world, I want to get off', or at worst 'this is prejudice'. I think we were too starry-eyed about globalisation's benefits.
We need to make sure there is a level playing field … there has to be a fair chance for everybody.’
David Miliband, 8 March 2011:
‘My view is that after we have considered all the contingent factors, all the cultural differences, and after we have forsworn the option of accepting that we are wrong and there is nothing better in politics than the right can offer, there is a fundamental question to be answered.
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