Please write GW Bush to support his immigration policy
I don't mean to speak for all three authors on this site, but I want to take a stand on the issue of immigration. Univision, the top Latino tv network, is supporting a letter writing campaign (Spanish) to let Bush know that people support the current immigration bill. I think this bill represents a rare chance to push our broken immigration law in the right direction.
If you agree, you can download the PDF version of the letter, and mail it out. Thanks.
Unfortunately Seeker, I cannot and will not lend my support to an immigration bill that fundamentally makes it impossible if not more difficult for Hi-Tech businesses to bring in highly skilled workers under the H1B Visa program.
That will have a major negative impact in American scientific and industrial research period. Unless of course you also favor a massive federal education program to promote science and math curriculum in America (not gonna' happen).
If you read the bill closely, it does precisely that as it attempts to address the illegal immigration problem with Mexico.
For that reason and the extreme measures it takes to give illegals a path to citizenship (more extreme than most American's favor), I cannot and will not write my representatives to support this bill in its current form.
Posted by: Silver Hallide | 31 May 2007 at 08:19 AM
If you wait for the perfect bill, you may wait forever. A step in the right direction is fine with me. America won't suffer that much if we have problems with the h1b program. We need to improve and depend on our own educational resources anyway.
Posted by: seeker | 31 May 2007 at 11:04 AM
America won't suffer that much if we have problems with the h1b program.
Tell that to Intel,Microsoft, and IBM. They have stated quit eloqunetly that if this bill is passed they will be hard pressed to keep innovation going within the United States and will be forced to consider moving most of their techinical r&d out of the United States.
Last time I looked, agriculture (while important) was not the major growth engine of the US economy.
There is no such thing as a perfect bill, but my objections are 2 major sticking points. I am not alone in my objections. You can rest assured the lobby's of the firms I have mentioned will be pushing hard to make these changes or kill the bill. Money talks in Washington.
I believe you are being very naive about this whole immigration bill and the problems with it. I am going on record by saying it here.
Posted by: Silver Hallide | 31 May 2007 at 11:12 AM
I believe you are being very naive about this whole immigration bill and the problems with it.
Perhaps so. If these are real problems, perhaps the failure of this bill, or the vetting process, can bring amendments to fix these "major" flaws.
You are right that money talks, but I question the integrity of the complaints from those software giants. What they may really be saying is that they will have to pay more for ground-level programmers because they will be forced to hire Americans. Cry me a freaking river!
But you may be right that I have not analyzed this legislation as much as I should. We'll see what happens to it.
Posted by: seeker | 31 May 2007 at 11:30 AM
This is something interesting that I never knew before. Hitler was inspired by American immigration policy toward Mexico in the early 1900's.
"Mexican visitors were forced to strip naked and subjected to 'screening' (for homosexuality, low IQ, physical deformities like 'clubbed fingers') and to 'disinfection' with various toxic fumigants, including gasoline, kerosene, sulfuric acid, DDT and, after 1929, Zyklon-B (hydrocyanic acid) - the same gas used in the Holocaust's death camps."
Source: How America inspired the Third Reich
Posted by: Cineaste | 05 June 2007 at 07:26 AM
Sounds awful that we did such things, perhaps partly in ignorance, but perhaps willful ignorance. America's history is not all nicey nicey, despite our lofty goals and principles.
So it looks like our immigration policy towards Mexicans has improved a bit, if you look at it historically. Perhaps we should congratulate ourselves on how well we are doing by comparison. NOT.
Posted by: seeker | 05 June 2007 at 09:12 AM
Hi seeker:
Sbout our nations "lofty goals": I would modify that phrase a bit, I would refer to our nation's declared lofty goals. It's a fiction to imagine that our nation--our government, our elected leaders, our citizens--is so noble. We are sinners like everyone else and like everyone else we often use our "principles' as self-congratulation instead of as a guide to our national behavior. But paying lip service to high ideals is a good thing. When we say we believe something, this provides at least one force that is pushing us in the right direction.
your friend
keith
Posted by: keith johnson | 05 June 2007 at 10:02 AM
I think that we should be able to both laud ourselves and our great men and women and be able to be self-critical. They are not mutually exclusive.
Not only were our goals lofty, the men (and women) who forged our union were in many ways extraordinary, in intellect, in virtue, and in courage. They were imperfect, for sure. And our nation has not always lived up to its goals.
But it has also become the beacon for freedom and human rights, despite our imperfect record.
No one can perfectly live up to high standards, but it is not hypocrisy to fail in striving for them. It is hypocrisy to claim such goals without putting forth the sincere effort at attaining them. But many great heroes from our history have sincerely striven, and have in many ways succeeded.
BTW, a good modern day example of imperfect but sincere striving towards principle vs. hypocrisy is seen in the book Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy. While conservatives often fail in their efforts to fulfill their goals, liberal elites have no such compulsion. They oppose school vouchers, and tell us we should all send our kids to public schools, yet send their kids to private schools. They promote taxes, but at the same time take advantage of every tax shelter they can. They promote teen sexuality and exploration but don't teach the same to their own kids. This is not failure, but hypocrisy.
Conservatives support school choice, and would want to send their kids to better schools. They support lower taxes, and so can't be faulted for avoiding taxes through tax shelters. They want virtue taught in the schools because that's what they teach to their kids. And when THEY are found lacking virtue? It's failure, but not necessarily hypocrisy.
This is how I view many of the heroes of our history. Fallible men striving towards ideals that they themselves subscribe to. You can't ask for more, esp. when many of them succeeded without fault.
Posted by: seeker | 05 June 2007 at 10:38 AM
Hi Seeker:
I guess my comments were a little unnuanced:-) I am not trying to trash our nation's heritage. But I have a couple of comments on your comments. You wrote:
No one can perfectly live up to high standards, but it is not hypocrisy to fail in striving for them.
Pardon me here, but I wonder if your point here is too "liberal"?:-). You speak of "trying" to live up to your ideals but "failing". Trying? The bad things we do are the results of choices we make so talking about trying to choose the right thing but failing seems logically incoherent. Strictly speaking "hypocritical" means being insufficiently critical of our own behavior. No doubt I too frequently do X even though I claim to believe in Y; I am hypocritical whenever I don't acknowledge such things when they happen.
Were our founders hypocrites when they claimed that "all men are created equal" and yet supported slavery and the disenfranchisement of non-property holding white men? Well, inasmuch as they believed those "others" didn't count in the phrase "all men", there ideals we not so lofty. If their ideals were lofty then they failed to meet those ideas, and by definition it was for lack of trying.
Yuo go on to criticize liberal hypocrisy when you write:
While conservatives often fail in their efforts to fulfill their goals, liberal elites have no such compulsion. They oppose school vouchers, and tell us we should all send our kids to public schools, yet send their kids to private schools. They promote taxes, but at the same time take advantage of every tax shelter they can. They promote teen sexuality and exploration but don't teach the same to their own kids. This is not failure, but hypocrisy.
That's quite a broad brush you have there. I know a whole lot of the liberal elite who send their kids to public schools--Jimmy Carter did for example, as do several of the more prominent liberal attorneys in my town. But even those liberals who send there kids to private schools aren't failing to practice what they preach because they don't preach what you say they do. They don't say "we should all send our kids to public schools"--they say we shouldn't expect the public to pay our private school tuition. They pay their own tuition and vote against their own interest by opposing the voucher effort.
You say they are hypocritical to take the legally available tax breaks because they support higher taxes. Where is the hypocrisy? They don't criticize people for taking whatever tax breaks are legally available,, what they advocate is changing the law that decides what breaks are available. Because of Bill Clinton's huge popularity he can command pretty hefty speaker fees, so his income is rather high. He would personally benefit from the Republican tax cut philosophy. And yet--contrary to his own financial interest--he votes against those candidates who would benefit his wallet. There is nothing at all hypocritical about that, it;s really a silly charge.
And it is a grossly inaccurate claim that the liberal elite "promote teen sexuality and exploration". Who do you count as the liberal elite anyway? Barach Obama? Jesse Jackson? Dennis Kucinich? Bernie Sanders? Robert Redford? Michael Moore? Not one of those people promote teen secuality! They might support broad-based sex education, as opposed to the "head in the sand" abstinence only education, but teaching people factual information isn't the same thing as promoting sex.
Jeepers Seeker, this time you've gone too far:-) Seriously though, a little less hyperbole is called for here.
your friend
Keith
Posted by: keith johnson | 05 June 2007 at 12:06 PM
Though I was broadbrushing, the book I mentioned gives specifics. I was, however, trying to give an example of the difference between imperfect idealists and hypocritical ones.
I just go the feeling that you were basically saying that the noble goals, effort, and in many cases, lives of our American forefathers were hypocritical. I wanted to note that while excuses should not be made for gross imperfections, mild ones do not mean that all such were hypocrites. And I was using the more common idea of hypocrisy, which is to make one moral statement, while at the same time having no intention of following it, or breaking it in secret while touting one's own virtue.
I'm sorry, but liberal and secularized "broad based" sex ed is, in my mind, a cruel joke. Did you hear the whole think in the news this week about the Boulder, CO high school that brought in psychologists to tell the kids that it was ok to "experiment responsibly" with sex, homosexuality, and drugs? And the parents didn't complain! This is what we conservatives think of when we think of liberalized sex ed.
Posted by: seeker | 05 June 2007 at 01:44 PM
Coincidentally today, on townhall.com, I found this broadcast by Peter Schweizer Liberal Hypocrites: Or, what you don't know about Al Franken, Michael Moore, and others. I think he's the author of the book I mentioned.
Posted by: seeker | 05 June 2007 at 02:32 PM
Hi Seeker:
The problem IMO with the "the more common idea of hypocrisy" is that what it usually means is that other people are being hypocritical--that's part of our hypocritical, sinful nature. Did the founders proclaim one thing without having any intention of following it? well, they suggested that proper government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed and yet they had no intention of giving the vast majority the right to express their consent via the vote. How does that not satisfy the definition for hypocrisy you cited?
About the Boulder Colorado thing. From what I read, Dr. Becker didn't quite say "it was ok to 'experiment responsibly' with sex, homosexuality, and drugs?". What he said was that people who are going to experiment with those things--and it is naive to think that won't happen BTW--should take responsible measures to reduce the risks. I think this is a very important message--hardly a cruel joke. A school near my town had a senior trip the other day to some place. A few kids from the school chose to drive themselves to the event--school rules prohibit this but the kinds did what they wanted--and got pretty drunk on the drive there. They crashed their car and everyone in the car died. Now, none of the kids should have been drinking, but had they taken the more responsible strategy of having a designated driver they might not have crashed and died. I see nothing cruel about encouraging kids to show that kind of responsibility.
your friend
Keith
Posted by: keith johnson | 05 June 2007 at 02:58 PM
what it usually means is that other people are being hypocritical--that's part of our hypocritical, sinful nature.
LOL, agreed.
and yet they had no intention of giving the vast majority the right to express their consent via the vote.
I am not sure how many had qualms about slavery, even if they had them. Do you know of any info on that?
Dr. Becker didn't quite say "it was ok to 'experiment responsibly' with sex, homosexuality, and drugs?". What he said was that people who are going to experiment with those things--and it is naive to think that won't happen BTW--should take responsible measures to reduce the risks.
While that is an important message, but here's what becker actually said full transcript:
So he said more than just "be responsible if you're going to have sex," he said "go ahead and have sex, you should, and be safe about it." but this an entirely different thread.
Posted by: seeker | 05 June 2007 at 04:24 PM
Hi Seeker:
...and yet they had no intention of giving the vast majority the right to express their consent via the vote.
I am not sure how many had qualms about slavery, even if they had them. Do you know of any info on that?
Slaves were not the only people denied the right to vote; non-property holders and women we also denied the right to vote--they were governed without their consent. IF the founders didn't mean ALL people when they claimed that the just powers of government derived from the governed, then their ideals were not all that lofty. But if their ideals were lofty then they satisfy your definition of hypocrites, it seems to me.
BTW, I think Jefferson had expressed some qualms about owning slaves. I'm not sure though.
Thanks for the transcript; I was working from a letter to the editor about the case. Your quote includes the first sentence of backer's statement and the includes some stuff from farther in to his remarks. I took the liberty of copying his entire first paragraph.
Hi. My name is Joel Becker, and I’m a clinical psychologist. I’m going to ducktail off a little bit of what Andee said, but I think I’m going to go in a little bit of a different direction, because I’m going to encourage you to have sex, and I’m going to encourage you to use drugs appropriately. (applause and cheering from audience) And why I’m going to take that position is because you’re going to do it anyway. So, my, my approach to this is to be realistic, and I think as a psychologist and a health educator, it’s more important to educate you in a direction that you might actually stick to. So I want to, I’m going to stay mostly today talking about the sex side, because that’s the area I know more about.
He does go on to say more than I suggested, but he did offer as his reason for encouraging students to have responsible sex his belief that for most students the choice will be between responsible sex and irresponsible sex. Given those two choices, I think he picked the right side, but I am not as pessimistic about teenage sex as he is. I am surprised nobody complained--except you I guess:-)--but I do know that comprehensive sex ed doesn't mean "Beckeristic" sex ed.
your friend
Keith
Posted by: keith johnson | 05 June 2007 at 05:55 PM