Is This Our America Anymore?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Buried in the Oct. 30 Washington Post was a bland headline: "Report Points to Faster Recovery in Jobs for Immigrants." The story, however, contained social dynamite that explains the rage of Americans who are smeared as nativists and xenophobes for demanding a timeout on immigration.

In the April-May-June quarter, foreign-born workers in the U.S. gained 656,000 jobs. And native-born Americans lost 1.2 million.

From July 1, 2009, to June 30, 2010, foreign-born Hispanics gained 98,000 construction jobs. Native-born Hispanics lost 133,000. Black and white U.S. construction workers lost 511,000 jobs.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, from Jan. 1, 2000, to Jan. 1, 2010, 13.1 million immigrants, legal and illegal, entered the United States, a decade in which America lost 1 million jobs.

From 2008 and 2009, the figures are startling. In 24 months, 2.4 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrived, as U.S. citizens were losing 8.6 million jobs.

Query: Why are we importing a million-plus workers a year when 17 million Americans can't find work? Whose country is this?

Why do we not declare a moratorium on all immigration, until our unemployment rate falls to 6 or 5 percent? Charity begins at home. Ought we not take care of our own jobless first before we invite in strangers to take their jobs?

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, each year between 300,000 and 400,000 "anchor babies" are born to illegal aliens. These newborns are entitled to citizenship, free health care and education, welfare and food stamps

Their parents -- almost all are poor or working class -- rarely pay any state or federal income tax.

How long can we keep granting citizenship and full social welfare benefits to the children of people who break our laws and break into our country or overstay their visas? 

How long can we keep bringing in workers to take jobs when our unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent?

Again, according to the Pew Center, the number of anchor babies here now is about 4 million. Add to that 3 million to 4 million born each decade, and it will not be long before Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Texas resemble California, which is on the brink of default.

If no action is taken, the Republican Party will soon be unable, even in wave elections, to win the presidency, as it won nothing and indeed lost state legislative seats in California in 2010.

The border will disappear, and America will be a geographical expression, not a country anymore.

Legal scholar William Quirk describes a new phenomenon in the invasion of America: "maternity tourism." Pregnant Asian women pay $15,000 to agents to ensure they are in the United States when their child is born so that they can return home secure in the knowledge he or she will be a U.S. citizen with the right to a U.S.-taxpayer subsidized education in college.

Though the nation has awakened to the threat to social cohesion and national solvency, Harry Reid is still attempting to ram through a lame-duck Senate an amnesty for illegal aliens up to age 30 who claim they were brought here before they were 16, have a high school diploma or GED and state that they intend to go to college within six years.

An estimated 2.1 million illegal aliens would be amnestied, put on a path to citizenship, and be eligible for student loans and more.

According to Alabama's Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee: "Aliens granted amnesty by the DREAM Act will have the legal right to petition for entry of their family members, including their adult brothers and sisters and the parents who illegally brought or sent them to the United States, once they become naturalized U.S. citizens. In less than a decade, this reality could easily double or triple the 2.1 million green cards that will be immediately distributed as a result of the DREAM Act."

Lawbreaking would be rewarded. Chain migration would continue. A permanent powerful magnet would be provided to all foreigners to sneak into the United States and be sure to bring the kids.

As Rep. Dana Rohrabacher argues, one effect of the DREAM Act will be to move illegals applying to college ahead of many Americans, as 80 percent of illegals are Hispanics and eligible for affirmative action.

U.S. soldiers coming home from Afghanistan will "sit in back," as Obama puts it, when competing against amnestied illegals.

Several days ago, UCLA's Kent Wong addressed a pro-amnesty rally in Los Angeles' MacArthur Park. Wong turned the race card face up.

When Reid's bill passes, said Wong, "the young people of the DREAM Act movement will go on to accomplish and do great things. ... You will go on to become lawyers, teachers, doctors and members of the U.S. Congress to replace those old white men ... ."

If the DREAM Act passes, Wong is right about whose time has come and gone. May the tea party take names at the call of the roll.