Business Insider: It's Time To Close The Borders And End The American Experiment

LET'S BE HONEST: What The Anti-Immigration Folks Are Really Saying Is It's Time To Close The Borders And End The American Experiment

Henry Blodget | Dec. 20, 2010

Throughout American history, especially in tough economic times, some Americans have railed against immigration, especially illegal immigration.

These arguments have often struck other Americans as absurd, given that everyone in this country either came here from somewhere else or is descended from someone who did.

In the latest incarnation of the anti-immigration sentiment, the Senate this weekend struck down the "Dream Act," which would have given the children of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

Specifically, the Dream Act would have given people who arrived in the U.S. illegally as minors, graduated from US high schools, and had been in the country for at least five years the opportunity to earn conditional residency if they completed two years in the military or two years at a four-year college.

When pressed on this issue, most people stress that they are against ILLEGAL immigration, not immigration in general. For many of them, however, the "illegal" qualifier often seems to be a smoke screen.

* Copyright © 2011 Business Insider, Inc.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lets-be-honest-what-the-anti-immigration-folks-are-really-saying-is-its-time-to-close-the-borders-and-end-the-american-experiment-2010-12#ixzz1Gh5JLOPG

Anti-Immigrant bill stalls in Kansas

Kansas House committee bottles up anti-immigration bill

By BRAD COOPER

The Kansas City Star

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/14/2726156/kansas-committee-bottles-up-immigration.html#ixzz1GgfebXYE

TOPEKA | Kansas lawmakers dealt a setback Monday to a plan that would clamp down on illegal immigration in a way that’s similar to a controversial Arizona law.

The House Judiciary Committee voted against advancing the hotly debated proposal pushed by Olathe Republican Rep. Lance Kinzer and Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Described by critics as “grossly broad,” the measure would require police to check the legal status of those they suspect might be in the United States illegally.

It also would require state and local governments and their contractors to run citizenship checks on new hires and require proof of citizenship for anyone seeking public aid.

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/14/2726156/kansas-committee-bottles-up-immigration.html#ixzz1GgfiLt00

Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Is Fear of Legal—Not ‘Illegal’—Immigration

Posted by Catherine Traywick

October 22nd, 2010

The last few weeks have seen plenty of debate about the potential influence of the Latino vote, as well as the purported disaffection of numerous “voting blocs”— women, youth, and especially Latinos. (Evidently minority inclusion positively correlates with electoral apathy.)

Now a new report by the Immigration Policy Center has some interesting (albeit obvious) data to contribute: New Americans account for a rapidly growing proportion of the electorate. The report proposes that New Americans, newly naturalized citizens and the U.S.-born children of recent immigrants, made up 15 million (10 percent) of registered voters in 2008. The vast majority of these—11.6 million—were Latino voters. Asians, the second largest group, accounted for 4 million of all registered voters.
It’s not news that Latinos make up a sizable proportion of voters and have the potential to shift the outcome of elections. They were, after all, a pivotal demographic in last two elections, when they helped usher in a number of Democrats into public office.

This year, some running for office want to continue the trend and are both banking on Latino votes and taking them as a given. Others, meanwhile, feel threatened by the power of the Latino electorate that they are covertly funding Spanish-language television ads urging Latinos not to vote. Latinos definitely boast some electoral brawn and, with regard to that, the report only confirms the obvious.

But less apparent, the report posits, is the staggering rate at which the so-called New American “voting bloc” has grown in recent years—an increase of 101 percent between 1996 and 2008. The Immigration Policy Center argues that this exponential growth is notable in that it is “consistently overlooked” and “politically underestimated.”

It’s an interesting proposition. I’ll concede that mainstream media—and even some candidates—tend to overlook the growing saliency of immigrant communities of color, I have to contend that the anti-immigrant movement in the United States does not.

Nativists—anti-immigrant extremists who dominate media discourse on immigration—don’t, after all, simply fear mass unauthorized immigration. Rather, they acutely fear mass legalimmigration: Large influxes of non-white immigrants with strong ties to their countries of origin who at the same time wield the political and economic power bequeathed to American citizens. Unauthorized immigration isn’t misperceived as a threat merely because unauthorized immigrants are misperceived as criminals, but because the more economically and culturally embedded undocumented immigrants become, the greater the social incentive to “legalize” them.
Undoubtedly, the mainstream tends to overlook the rate of growth among new citizens—in part, because it seems irrelevant to most of us —but Nativists have never overlooked nor underestimated it. Most of the time, in fact, they’re blowing it totally out of proportion.

Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) founder John Stanton, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “the racist architect of the anti-immigrant movement” epitomizes this, having once said:

To govern is to populate…Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? [H/T Rachel Maddow]

In Arizona, for example, anti-immigrant sentiment is driven not merely by fear of criminal “aliens” but rather by a fear of the growing power of immigrants—both authorized and not. To many members of the conservative, white elite that fear is palpable.

For all of the talk of beheadings in the Arizona desert, the truth as Arizona state legislators know it is that, both in number and economic power, Arizona's immigrant communities have been growing steadily larger—and therefore more politically threatening—over the years.

Thirty-eight percent of the state’s medical scientists are immigrants, as are 36 percent of its scientists and physicists and 15 percent of economists, according to the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy [PDF]. The number of children born to immigrants in Arizona has increased 205 percent since the 1990s, resulting in a growing number of first generation U.S. citizens whose American privilege is accented by strong ties to immigrant and foreign communities. It’s worthwhile to note that many of the loudest voices still protesting SB 1070 belong to young Latinos who were either born in the U.S. or immigrated at a young age. The nine youth who were arrested last spring after chaining themselves to the Capitol building were all college students—educated and coming of age in a state largely ignorant of their educational and economic aspirations and progress.

All of this speaks to a single community’s potential long-term impact on a state that has, for the last 100 years, been steered and shaped by a much more affluent class of whites. It’s not the first time that a ruling class felt destabilized by the slow-but-surely growing power of an increasingly agitated population, and it won’t be the last. This is what the anti-immigrant movement is organizing against—a growing minority threatening to become an encroaching majority.

The power of immigrants has never been underestimated by Nativists—politically or otherwise—and the rest of us should seriously take note of that.

Catherine Traywick is a former staff writer for Campus Progress and a blogger for The Media Consortium. You can e-mail her at: catherine.traywick@gmail.com. 

http://www.campusprogress.org/articles/anti-immigrant_sentiment_is_fear_of_legalnot_illegal_immigration/

Cambridge University Study: National rhetoric influences anti-immigration sentiment

National rhetoric influences anti-immigration sentiment

New Mexico Independent
May 28, 2010
By Gwyneth Doland

Why are some in Arizona so angry about immigration? It may be a combination of things they’re seeing around them—and what they’re hearing on TV. A recent study published in American Political Science Review, a publication of  Cambridge University Press, hypothesizes that ”Hostile political reactions to neighboring immigrants are most likely when communities undergo sudden influxes of immigrants and when salient national rhetoric reinforces the threat.”
http://newmexicoindependent.com/55729/national-rhetoric-influences-anti-immigration-sentiment
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=7449412

MIT political scientist shows Americans’ views on immigration may be less based on economic self-interest and more on deep-seated cultural factors

Understanding anti-immigrant sentiment

In new research experiment, MIT political scientist shows Americans’ views on immigration may be less based on economic self-interest than is commonly believed.

Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/anti-immigrant-sentiment-0219.html

Immigration is a long-simmering issue in the politics of many countries, including the United States. A 2007 Pew poll found that three-quarters of all U.S. citizens want to further restrict immigration. But what’s behind such strongly held views?

Conventional wisdom holds that American attitudes toward immigrants are shaped by both economic and cultural considerations. In trying to explain the economic concerns of U.S. citizens, social scientists have pointed to two forms of self-interest: Fear over increased competition for jobs, and resentment over having to pay for the social services used by immigrants and their families.

A new public-opinion research experiment by MIT political scientist Jens Hainmueller and his Harvard colleague Michael Hiscox paints a very different picture. American citizens, they find, are not necessarily afraid of job competition or supporting public services. Instead, the striking thing about Americans’ attitude toward immigration is that they collectively tend to prefer immigrant workers with refined job skills instead of those lacking good training: Citizens will welcome, say, a computer programmer more readily than a manual laborer.

“People seem to be much more in favor of high-skill immigrants because they think they contribute more to society,” says Hainmueller. As a practical matter, that insight could help public officials find some new ways of gaining popular support for new immigration programs. In less predictable ways, the findings could alter public discussion of immigration by suggesting that Americans see immigration even more markedly as a cultural matter than previous thought.

“Policy-makers need to better understand what causes anti-immigrant sentiments because resistant public opinion is the key roadblock for immigration reform in the U.S. and many other countries,” explains Hainmueller. “From this perspective our results are both bad news and good news. They suggest that public opinion should be less of a problem for immigration policies that specifically target high-skilled immigrants. But the results also suggest that a fair amount of the anti-immigration sentiment is driven by deep-seated cultural factors that are difficult to change with policy tools.”

And while in much public opinion research it is normally very difficult to assess issues of cultural perception directly, the results Hainmueller and Hiscox found — that economic concerns over immigration are either less significant or different in nature than previously assumed — thus indirectly reinforce the idea that culture powerfully shapes public perception of the immigration issue.

Survey says

The finding that Americans tend to favor high-skill immigrants regardless of their own economic status upends conventional wisdom. Consider the idea that immigrants take jobs away — the “labor market competition model,” in social-science argot. If true, Americans should be more resistant to immigrants with the same job skills as themselves. But as Hainmueller and Hiscox show, about half of Americans with college degrees “disagree” or “strongly disagree” that the country should allow more low-skilled immigrants into the country — yet only about a quarter say the same thing about highly-skilled immigrants.

Overall, in a study of 2,285 American citizens, conducted in late 2007 and early 2008, Hainmueller and Hiscox found that about 35 percent of all people strongly disagree with the statement that the U.S. should have more low-skilled immigrants, while about 20 percent “agree” or “strongly agree.” The numbers reverse when Americans are asked if more highly skilled immigrants should enter the country: about 20 percent strongly disagree, while about 35 percent agree or strongly agree.

The results appear in a new paper, “Attitudes Toward Highly Skilled and Low Skilled Immigration: Evidence from a Survey Experiment,” which is being published in the February issue of the American Political Science Review. The data comes from a survey conducted on behalf of the researchers by the survey firm Knowledge Networks. Hainmueller and Hiscox used what social scientists call a “cross-over” design for the research, randomly asking half the respondents first about either high-skilled or low-skilled immigrants, then reversing the questions two weeks later. This allowed them to see if individuals were providing consistent answers over time (they were).

Hainmueller and Hiscox also found reason to doubt the idea that the affluent resist immigration because they resent footing the bill for the welfare state — the “fiscal burden model,” as social scientists call it. When the researchers analyzed the survey participants by education level — dividing them into high school dropouts, high school graduates, people with some college, and those with at least one higher-education degree — they found that at all education levels, the number of Americans who “strongly disagree” with allowing low-skilled immigrants into the country was twice the number who share the same degree of opposition to high-skilled immigrants.

If the fiscal burden model were the sole driver of anti-immigrant sentiment among the well-off, then in theory, wealthier, better-educated Americans would oppose immigration more than poorer Americans, and there would be a declining relative tolerance for low-skilled immigrants as education levels rise. In short, neither of the two traditional ideas about economic self-interest is, by itself, a full explanation of people’s views.

“Overall the results suggest that economic self-interest, at least currently theorized, does not explain voter attitudes toward immigration,” write Hainmueller and Hiscox in the article.

An alternate idea Hainmueller would consider exploring in the future is how much attitudes depend on particular types of work. “It could be very industry specific,” he says. “In an industry where there is a lot of competition with immigrants, like the food service industry, there may be a great deal of variation in the support for immigrants.”

‘We don’t know stuff we thought we knew’

But colleagues say the findings of Hainmueller and Hiscox should re-open still larger debates about the core reasons why many Americans want to tighten immigration policy: Do attitudes depend primarily on cultural or economic concerns?

“The wider implication of their work is that we don’t know stuff we thought we knew about how material interests affect public attitudes toward immigrants,” says Ron Rogowski, a professor of political science at UCLA (and an editor at the APSR.)

If traditional notions of economic self-interest do not shape attitudes as much as previously assumed, Hainmueller acknowledges, we may want to examine more closely how cultural appeals to traditional notions of American values and identity shape public opinion.

“I think there really is something to this idea of culture, in that some people have a deep-seated skepticism of immigration,” says Hainmueller.
As a way of studying the culture-or-economy issue as it shapes attitudes to immigration, Hainmueller is currently engaged in a fine-grained study of immigration in Switzerland, where the admission of individual immigrants can be determined after debates and votes among local citizens. By studying that process, he says, “We may be more able to get at the relative strength of these cultural and economic factors.” In the long run, Hainmueller thinks, the Swiss study may give him substantive or methodological insights he can apply back to the United States.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/anti-immigrant-sentiment-0219.html

Nativist Tancredo says certain people might be "pulled over because they look like they should be pulled over."

Nativist Tancredo Expresses Concern Over Racial Profiling in SB1070

by Prerna Lal · April 27, 2010

Some rabid right-wingers are actually saying reasonable things about Arizona's new "papers please" law. Tom Tancredo is worried that it might encourage racial profiling. No, hell has not frozen over yet.
The anti-immigrant former Congressperson from Colorado does support the bill, but in an interview with Denver's KDVR TV, he expressed concern about racial profiling because certain people might be "pulled over because they look like they should be pulled over."

Look at that! Tancredo is far from a friend to immigrants. He wants to deport President Obama back to Kenya, proposed a civic literacy test for voting, and once suggested that the United States should bomb holy Muslim sites. But if he can see why SB 1070 allows law enforcement officials to pull people over based on their skin color, then so should everyone who rabidly supports the new Arizona law.

Even Jon Stewart slammed the absurdity of SB 1070 on his show, pointing out that "the man Mexican parents tell their kids about to get them to eat their vegetables, thought it was going too far. Arizona, that's gotta tell you something." There is something seriously wrong with Arizona if anti-immigrant zealot Tom Tancredo is worrying about racial profiling.

For More:
http://news.change.org/stories/nativist-tancredo-expresses-concern-over-racial-profiling-in-sb1070

Anti-Immigration legislation state by state

Source: Latina Magazine
http://www.latina.com/immigration-by-state

1. Florida

Bill similar to SB 1070 in AZ will take effect July 29, 2010. FL Representative William Snyder of Stuart says, “it is something that has a great need in this state with such a large illegal immigration population."

2. Nebraska

Nebraska passes immigration law to ban hiring or renting undocumented immigrants during a special election June 21, 2010.

3. New Jersey

In September, 2006, the Township Committee in Riverside, NJ became the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone who employed or rented to an illegal immigrant.

4. Pennsylvania

July 26, 2007, in the first decision of its kind, the federal court struck down a local anti-immigration ordinance in law in Hazelton, PA that sought to punish landlords and business owners who did business with undocumented immigrants, declaring it unconstitutional.

5. Missouri

March 12, 2007, after MALDEF filed a suit (Gray v. City of Valley Park, Missouri) the city repealed an anti-immigration ordinance that attempted to impose penalties on landlords and businesses for hiring or renting to undocumented workers.

6. Texas

Although known as a supporter of Gov. Jan Brewer and AZ before a national audience, Gov. rick Perry told 2000 Latinos at a National Council of La Raza gathering that he would oppose adopting a similar law in Texas. “It "may be right for Arizona, but it ain't exactly right for Texas," the governor said."

7. Oklahoma

Rep. Randy Terrill (chairman of the Public Safety and Judiciary Committee in the Oklahoma House) says he hopes his state’s immigration laws will one day mirror AZ. Oklahoma also proposed laws making it a felony for an undocumented immigrant to own a toy gun. In 2007, the state adopted legislation proposed by Rep. Terrill that made it a felony to knowingly provide transport or shelter to an illegal immigrant, and blocked illegal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses and tuition.

8. South Carolina

Gov. Mark Sanford touted new measures that forced businesses to check the immigration status of their workers and made harboring and transporting illegal immigrants a state crime. State lawmakers also drew up an Arizona-style bill this year that they expect to be introduced again in January 2011.

9. Utah

A list containing the personal information and supposed immigration status of 1300 Utah residents was released to the media and the public by an anonymous group in July 2010. The group demanded that the individuals be deported immediately. Earlier in the month several Utah lawmakers also group visited Arizona last week on a fact-finding expedition. Utah's Republican governor, Gary Herbert, said he expects to sign some form of immigration legislation next year.

10. Georgia

July 2010, Congressman Graves co-sponsored the Charlie Norwood CLEAR Act and former Congressman Nathan Deal’s Birthright Citizenship Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. The CLEAR Act would allow law enforcement to identify and remove violent criminal illegal immigrants and would allow local law enforcement to identify and detain undocumented immigrants with criminal records.  The Birthright Citizenship Act would prohibit a child born in the United States from automatic citizenship if both of the parents are illegal immigrants.

11. Maryland

Prince William County, Loudoun County and Frederick County in Maryland participate in 287(g), which deputizes local law enforcement officials to enforce certain federal immigration laws. But Maryland state Del. Pat McDonough, R-Baltimore, said the federal government’s lawsuit against Arizona will not affect his plans to introduce a similar bill during next year's General Assembly session.

12. Arizona

Friday, April 23, 2010, AZ Governor Jan Brewer signs SB 1070 into law. The law, which goes into effect July 29, 2010, empowers law enforcement to detain or demand papers from anyone who they think may be “illegal” based on “reasonable suspicion.” Opposers of the law say it essentially legalizes racial profiling and targets Latinos.

13. Virginia

Virginia state Del. Dave Albo, R-Fairfax, proposed a law in the 2007 Virginia General Assembly similar to Arizona's law. It passed the House of Delegates but was killed in the state Senate.

14. Colorado

"Under Colorado's law, local law enforcement must only report people whom they have arrested — but not necessarily detained — for another crime to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they have "probable cause" to think the person is in the country illegally.

15. Mississippi

Mississippi is considering implementing immigration laws similar to SB 1070 in Arizona The law basically demands that registration documents must be carried by individuals and is  aimed at those involved in casual labor such as day laborers.

16. Minnesota

Lawmakers in Minnesota expect laws styled after Arizona’s controversial immigration law to be introduced in the state’s legislative sessions next year.

17. North Carolina

A Republican-controlled county commission in North Carolina is endorsing Arizona's new immigration law. The Star-News of Wilmington reported Tuesday the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution supporting the law. A resolution is simply the board's opinion and carries no legal authority. New Hanover may be the first North Carolina county to adopt such a measure.

18. North Dakota

"Lawmakers in North Dakota expect laws styled after Arizona’s controversial immigration law to be introduced during legislative sessions next year... “It’s probably a good discussion to have,” said Rep. Al Carlson, the Republican from Fargo who is majority leader in the North Dakota House of Representatives, on July 11, 2010. “States are going to look at it, and obviously we will, too.”

19. Arkansas

In May 2010 Republican Representative John Burris of Harrison said, "I think we need to watch Arizona, see how their law that they passed effects illegal immigration in their state and then when we go into session in January we need to do what we can to effect illegal immigration in our state."

20. Idaho

Sen. Mike Jorgenson, a Hayden Lake Republican who has tried unsuccessfully to enact a law to punish Idaho employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants, vowed to push “an exact duplicate of the Arizona law” in the 2011 Legislature."

21. Indiana

May 2010, Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, told The Associated Press that he'll introduce some type of immigration legislation in Indiana if Congress and the Obama administration do not act soon on illegal immigration. Delph said he wants to see how the Arizona law plays out before determining the details of his proposal for Indiana.  Delph has proposed bills aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration before, but they've never won the approval from the General Assembly, where Republicans control the Senate and Democrats control the House.

22. Michigan

Rep. Kim Meltzer, R-Clinton Township, is drafting a bill that would give police officers the authority to arrest undocumented immigrants who are stopped and questioned on another offense, while Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard is making immigration a key topic in his race for the Republican nomination for Michigan state governor.

23. Rhode Island

On May 19, 2010 legislation that closely resembles Arizona’s SB 1070 was introduced in Rhode Island by Rep. Peter Palumbo, a conservative Democrat, and four co-sponsors. Much of the Rhode Island bill, H 8142, is taken verbatim from the Arizona’s SB 1070.