What is the Flavor of Your Kool-Aid?

The immigration debate has polarized our nation which makes it nearly impossible to read an article by advocates for open borders or by advocates for admitting large number of foreign workers at both the lowest levels of the economic scale, as well as those employed in the “High Tech” industries where honest information is provided.

It is amazing how simply repeating a lie many times can convince people that the lie is actually the truth!

Many successful advertising campaigns have been based on this concept.  Think of how, decades ago, the simple slogan “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should” convinced so many people to get hooked on smoking.  Back then I remember one of my high school English teachers being more concerned with a grammatical error in that seven word phrase than she was with the dangers to be associated with smoking cigarettes!  (She was adamant that the sentence should have been, “Winston tastes good as a cigarette should!”)

Then there was the “Marlboro Man” a rugged looking actor dressed up as a cowboy who would light up a cigarette while the sound track from “The Magnificent Seven” played in the background.  Listen to that impressive piece of music and ask yourself what that powerful music had to do with cigarettes?  If that commercial had been honest, the actor smoking that cigarette should have been coughing and wheezing so loudly that it would have drowned out any music playing in the background.

But the point was that the advertising executives, who were paid megabucks to produce those commercials, did not care how many consumers would succumb to emphysema or lung cancer, but how much money they could earn by seducing lots of smokers- many of them young, impressionable teenagers.

Today cigarette companies cannot air commercials on television, and the Marlboro Man is gone, literally and figuratively. Wayne McLaren, one of those who participated in those commercials and a veteran of the rodeo, died of lung cancer at age 51 on July 22, 1992.

Unfortunately, however, the tobacco business does not provide the only example of unscrupulous individuals making lots of money by lying about the dangers of that which they promote.

Open borders present a clear and present danger to our nation and our citizens. Yet think about how many proponents for open borders are “out there” making all sorts of assertions about the need for open borders, pathways to citizenship for illegal aliens and the need to import large numbers of foreign workers.

Non-secure borders and failures to effectively enforce and administer our immigration laws create huge dangers to our nation and our citizens.  Simply stated, you cannot win a “War Against Terrorism” or a “War on Drugs” or a “War on Transnational Gangs” with borders that permit the entry of millions of illegal aliens and whatever contraband they bring with them. During the Gold Rush of 1849 the war cry was, “There's gold in them there hills!” That phrase convinced people from across this vast nation to head for Californians at a time when airplanes and cars did not exist and the trek to Californian was long, arduous and fraught with the risk of loss of life. Desperate people, however, will do desperate things.

Today lots of people look at the influx of illegal aliens and foreign nationals with work visas as the new “Gold Rush!”  Everyone from immigration lawyers, to corporate executives to bankers and leaders of advocacy organizations are literally getting wealthy from the exploitation of aliens and the destruction of America's middle class.

Today corporate executives all sing the same song: “America needs to import many foreign High-Tech workers so that we can create jobs for unemployed Americans.”  The refrain to that song goes something like this, “American companies cannot compete without those foreign-born geniuses!”  Finally, for good measure, add in, “If we provide college educations for illegal alien children, America and Americans will benefit!”

Stop and think about those verses.  At a time when American engineers, computer programmers and other high-tech professionals are unemployed or underemployed, how would importing more competition help unemployed Americans find work?  Some time ago I compared this concept to the game of “Musical Chairs” and said that to import more foreign workers at a time when Americans are out of work, losing their homes to foreclosure and are unable to support themselves and their families, makes as much sense as having lots of additional kids enter a room where the game of Musical Chairs was being played.  Suddenly, instead of finding that there was one child more than the number of chairs they were all competing for; there would be a surplus of dozens of kids without chairs to sit on!

Now I want you to give some thought to what a freshman senator from Colorado, Michael Bennet is proposing. Here is an excerpt from a recent Denver Post article titled “Bennet bill seeks visas for illegal immigrants studying math, science” which discusses Mr. Bennet's dedication to foreign nationals:

WASHINGTON – In hopes of meeting a yawning need for engineers in the United States, Sen. Michael Bennet has introduced legislation that would create a new green card category for math and science graduates to stay in the United States after college if they have work.

Bennet's proposal would also give undocumented kids a student visa if they enroll in a science, math or technology program as undergraduates.

The Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Visa Act of 2011 was drafted after Bennet, a former Denver schools chief, heard a loud cry from CEOs and university chiefs that America was good at delivering a world-class higher education but not so good at keeping those students in the country for jobs after they graduate.

Why isn't Bennet proposing the creation of opportunities and incentives for American kids to acquire those degrees?

Consider what our immigration laws say about the hiring of foreign workers and the impact on American workers:

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the law…"

"…excludes aliens seeking to immigrate "for the purpose of performing skilled or unskilled labor," except that such aliens may be eligible for a visa if:

the Secretary of Labor has determined that (A) there are not sufficient United States workers who are able, willing, qualified and available at the time of application for a visa and admission into the United States and at the place where the alien is to perform the work, and (B) the employment of the alien will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of the United States workers similarly employed."

On December 21^st I was a guest on Neil Cavuto's program on the Fox Business Network.  Towards the end of my segment, Neil asked me about the claims made by CEO's about the need to encourage foreign workers to enter the United States to do the other jobs Americans purportedly won't do: “High Tech Jobs!”  In response I raised a number of issues including Alan Greenspan's Senate testimony in 2009 in which, incredibly, he stated that Americans with skills and education had become the new “privileged elite” a problem, he asserted, that could be solved by making American workers in the United States, compete with foreign workers for their jobs!

Cigarettes killed many Americans who became convinced to take up smoking because of those insidious commercials.  Today, it is America's middle class that is being killed off by this nation's failures to provide opportunities to American High-Tech professionals and American kids of all races, religions and ethnicities while, unbelievably, providing opportunities for aliens who should not be here!

I would remind you that it was America's middle class that became the heart and soul of the American Dream.  The idea was that the key to success was a good education or the acquisition of a skill or trade.  This provided ample motivation for generations of Americans and their kids to achieve successes that were then envy of the world.  Destroy the middle class and you destroy our nation and the futures of our children.