The Amesty Fraud

by Thomas Sowell - May 22, 2007 - Townhall.com

Amnesty.

The word is from the same root as "amnesia." It means you forget or overlook some crime, as if it never happened. All this elaborate talk about the steps illegal immigrants must go through to become citizens is a distraction from the crime they committed when they crossed the border illegally.

Instead, all attention is focused on what to do to accommodate those who committed this crime. It is a question that would be recognized as an insult to our intelligence on any other issue.

Thomas Sowell (as usual) has the most intelligent comments to make on this subject of immigration. We are at a crisis in this country because of an active agenda on the part of democrat party leadership to act on what is the interest of the party's leaders, not its voters.

In the process they are advocating actions that are against the interest of one of their core constituencies. The black community is still disproportionately poor. Getting on to that first rung on the ladder to the American dream is something that remains important if participation in American society is to become an equal place for all. Bringing in competition for that first rung serves the leadership by keeping blacks dependent on government services. That serves the interest of the leaders but does not serve the interests of the black community.

It also signals to all the most important agenda of today's democrat party. Socialism. Bringing in people who disproportionately ignore our laws, work off the books, take welfare they have not paid for and demand that we recognize 200 year old claims to sovereign power of the corrupt culture of Mexico, obviously has some powerful motivation. If you work through all their actions, it is clear the only real reason for the current agenda of the democrat party is to end free enterprise in America.

Thomas Sowell had other thoughts on this question that is consistent with this reality. He said this the following day under the title The Amnesty Fraud - Part II.

Analogies with immigrants who came to this country in the 19th century and early 20th century are hollow, and those who make such analogies must know how different the situation is today.

People who crossed an ocean to get here, many generations ago, usually came here to become Americans. There were organized efforts within their communities, as well as in the larger society around them, to help them assimilate.

Today, there are activists working in just the opposite direction, to keep foreigners foreign, to demand that society adjust to them by making everything accessible to them in their own language, minimizing their need to learn English.

As activists are working hard to keep alive a foreign subculture in so-called "bilingual" and other programs, they are also feeding the young especially with a steady diet of historic grievances about things that happened before the immigrants got here -- and before they were born.

These Balkanization efforts are joined by other Americans as part of the "multicultural" ideology that pervades the education system, the media, and politics.

This multicultural ideology has as its core, a rejection of our current American culture. All investigations of some rational reason for this rejection keep coming back to socialism as the only driving factor that explains all the actions taking place.

There is at least one indirect question I also find curious.

Thomas Sowell has long been acknowledged as one of the smartest, if not the smartest, intellecutual leaders in America. However because, as an economist, few of the issues he addressed in the past have directly benefitted the black community, he is unknown by most blacks. Thomas is taking the lead on this issue of immigration, and it is of direct benefit to the black community more than any other group of Americans.

Will this end the black community's lack of awareness of what a great success story he represents for them? Or will his continued opposition to socialism mean he is still ignored in the black community?

When will black voters recognize that two issues being advocated by democrat leadership are hostile to their futures? The democrat position on Immigration and School Choice harms blacks more than all others. Does black leadership care more about their party's interests than the interest of the people they claim to represent?

I think the answer is clear.