February 22, 2009

OBAMA EMBRACES NAFTA

With a filibuster-proof Democrat Congress in place -- President Obama turned his attention to foreign affairs last week by visiting Canada and assuring Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the United States of America stands by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.)

During the presidential campaign last year, Obama suggested that the United States might withdraw from NAFTA if environmental and labor protections were not included.

President Obama now says he hopes there is a way of supporting NAFTA that is not disruptive to trade between Canada and the United States.

Harper responded: “Threats to the United States are threats to Canada.”

NAFTA STRUGGLING

The NAFTA nations are struggling with the global economic down turn – especially Mexico which nears collapse.

Destitute Mexicans cross the border into the United States is such numbers it is impossible to stop or count them.

Many do field work that native Americans will not. As the American economy slows, Mexican immigrants take advantage of welfare services here.

All well and good, but the United States inexorably drifts to a welfare state. This is not a new problem. Consider an article we wrote 22 years ago:

April 5, 1986

Illegal Immigration Now Silent Invasion

Mushy human rights activists, meddling ministers, and shortsighted libertarians have turned immigration into a silent invasion.

The United States government this week moved on three fronts to try and stem the tide which threatens to crimp our economy.

• The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case brought by immigration authorities against two churches in Texas providing "sanctuary" for illegal aliens.
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development directed local housing superintendents to evict 1.3 million illegal aliens receiving federal housing assistance.
• Congress pulled a long dormant immigration bill out of committee for active consideration.

These actions come none too soon.

The southern border of the U.S. has become a giant sieve.  Illegal aliens now pour through it at a rate of one million per year!

Illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers $25 billion a year, according to a study by Don Huddle, an economist at Rice University.

In the mammoth Los Angeles County Hospital, 67 percent of the babies born there are at public expense to undocumented aliens.

Statistics compiled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service reveal that illegals are taking jobs in industry in the same proportion as agriculture jobs.

Worst of all, says William Von Raab, customs commissioner in Texas, drugs are flooding into this country in the knapsacks of Mexican aliens.

Florida's resources have been strained to a critical level by two waves of Cubans and a steady stream of Haitians.

To accommodate these uninvited newcomers we have had to provide bilingual education for their children, shelter for the unskilled and uneducated, free hospital care, Social Security, legal service and union protection of jobs.

Immigration officials predict an increase in the already overwhelming number of aliens should full-scale war break out in Central America, or should Mexico's shaky economy collapse.

Immigration for an underdeveloped country with abundant natural resources is an asset.  It provides cheap labor to mine the minerals, wilderness, farm the land and feed the people.

America grew great with LEGAL immigrants accepted within quota limits for various nationalities.  In addition, they had to have written declarations of support by a U.S. citizen.  At no time did we throw open our doors to unrestricted entry.

Today, the U.S. has filled its borders, depleted its oil, leveled the forests and assumed socialist protection for its citizens from the womb to the tomb.

In short, the U.S. has reached a middle-age plateau.  The nation is still dynamic and growing, but at a much reduced rate.  Cheap labor is discouraged by liberal union laws, minimum wages and easy welfare.

There is less opportunity than there once was for poor, unskilled immigrants to work their way into the economic mainstream.

There has to be some order, some control, over the process of assimilating foreigners.  There is a natural balance between people and available resources.  We are approaching that limit.  We cannot indefinitely absorb the unemployed people of overcrowded countries elsewhere without becoming equally hopeless.

The imbalance of people and resources must be corrected, sooner or later, on a global basis.  A single nation - that is, the United States - can not long serve as a safety valve for the whole world.

America is the last bastion of freedom and opportunity.  Consequently we are the promised land for all disaffected and - or displaced people.  We have reached a crucial stage of immigration because the present surplus of poor and unskilled people is at our doorstep.  They can reach, and penetrate, our border simply by walking or by sailing in rafts and inner tubes.

Liberals and other self-appointed moralists exacerbate the problem by embracing over-quota, unscreened immigrants as a political statement.  They call it "sanctuary" for refugees, "justice" for migrant workers, or "asylum" for alleged defectors.

Seventeen U.S. cities in the southern Hispanic states or the northern liberal belt have declared themselves "sanctuaries" in defiance of federal immigration laws.  Gov. Tony Anaya of New Mexico, has proclaimed his whole state a sanctuary for wet-backs.

Gov. Anaya admitted his political motivation when questioned on the television program "Night Line" a few nights ago.  He was asked why the sanctuary movement catered to Salvadorans and not to Nicaraguans as well.

In a Freudian slip, Anaya blurted that sheltering Salvadorans provided "a way of calling attention to Ronald Reagan's Central American policy."

One can accept a politician's political ploy.  But it is hard to understand how certain churches are duped into participating.  Some religious leaders should not be allowed out into the real world without their mothers' permission.

French novelist Jean Raspail speculates about a spontaneous migration of third-world peoples in his book "Camp Of The Saints." In this story, desperate Asian Indians swarm aboard ships in the harbor of Calcutta, overpower the crews and head for the affluent western nations.  En route the starving passengers are fed by compassionate countries, but no nation will receive them.  Several countries threaten to sink the overloaded ships if they approach.

Finally socialist France agrees to take the horde.  French liberals rush down to the docks to welcome the first arrivals - only to be slaughtered by the Asians as they begin their conquest of Europe.

The world population passed the 5 billion mark last month while famine ravages several populous countries.

There is enough possibility in Raspail's bizarre scenario to give us pause.  Would we kill, or welcome, 12 million starving Mexicans streaming toward our border en masse?

Before you answer, consider that there are already 12 million illegal aliens living here!

The silent invasion has already begun.

By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist