Decoding Politicians’ Immigration Newspeak The devious manipulation of language employed by the political class. Michael Cutler
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260701/decoding-politicians-immigration-newspeak-michael-cutler
George Orwell, the author of the prescient novel, “1984” was an extremely sage and insightful writer and thinker. Many of Orwell’s quotes are thought-provoking and worth remembering. One of my favorites is, “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Now that the campaign for the presidential election of 2016 is ramping up and debates are being conducted by various supposed “news organizations” I decided that it would be worthwhile to take a hard look at what is arguably the greatest challenge and threat confronting our nation and our citizens: immigration.
Immigration is, as I have frequently noted, not a single issue but rather a singular issue that profoundly impacts such major issues as national security, public safety, the economy, unemployment, education, healthcare and public health, the environment and the critical infrastructure of our towns and cities across our great nation.
President Jimmy Carter mandated that INS employees use the ridiculous term “undocumented immigrant” to describe illegal aliens. This was done to blur the distinction between aliens who are legally present in the United States and those aliens whose presence represents a violation of our borders and our immigration laws. The term alien, as defined as by the Immigration and Nationality Act, is simply, “Any person not a citizen or national of the United States.” There is no insult in that term or its definition, only clarity. Con artists fear clarity because it impedes or flat-out prevents them from being able to swindle their intended victims.
Many folks claim that use of the term “alien” is being castigated because of the demand that we be “politically correct.” This is not an accurate statement. Terms of bigotry should be shunned to comply with the concept of being politically correct. Since, as we have seen, there is no insult in the term “alien,” the real reason that the open borders anarchists are demanding that the term “alien” stop being used to describe foreign nationals is to comply with their version of Newspeak to obfuscate the issue.
By insisting that illegal aliens be referred to as “immigrants” we wind up with the outrageous claim that anyone who wants our borders secured against illegal entry and our immigration laws enforced to protect innocent lives and American jobs is being “anti-immigrant.”
In point of fact, the demand that our laws be enforced is not anti-immigrant but “Pro-Enforcement.”
Hillary Clinton has gone so far as to wail about Republicans not wanting to provide immigrants with citizenship. Of course this was a disgusting bald-faced lie. She knows damned well that no one has ever even suggested that lawful immigrants not be permitted to naturalize, provided, of course they meet the requirements as established by our immigration laws. She was actually referring to bestowing United States citizenship upon illegal aliens.
Journalists, politicians, pundits and pollsters often link immigration to the mythical “Latino vote.” Our immigration laws are utterly and completely blind as to race, religion and ethnicity. The concept of ethnic voting blocks constitutes racial profiling and is diametrically opposed to our motto of E Pluribus Unum.
I addressed this lunacy in my July 2, 2015 FrontPage Magazine article, “Immigration and Political Racial ‘Profiling: The stereotyping of ‘Latino voters’ and what it distracts us from.”
The term “spin” has come to be routinely substituted for the term “propaganda.” The Oxford Dictionary defines propaganda as:
chiefly derogatory information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
The point to the use of propaganda is to to not only deceive the masses but to vilify anyone who would dare provide an opposing perspective.
To provide you with a few more such terms used by the open-borders anarchists- they refer to anyone who believes our immigration laws should be effectively enforced and our borders secured against smuggling of people or contraband as being “anti-immigrant.” The truth is that securing our borders against the smuggling of people or contraband is the mission of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) a component agency of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security). In my October 20, 2015 article for FrontPage Magazine, “Immigration Law Enforcement: Why Bother?– The crucial issues at stake for American citizens” I included the mission statement of CBP as it appears in the Performance and Accountability Report / Fiscal Year 2014:
CBP’s Mission
We are the guardians of our Nation’s borders. We are America’s frontline. We safeguard the American homeland at and between our borders.
We protect the American public against terrorists and the instruments of terror.
We steadfastly enforce the laws of the United States while fostering our Nation’s economic security through lawful international trade and travel.
We serve the American public with vigilance, integrity, and professionalism.
CBP’s approximate 60,000 employees manage, control, and protect the Nation’s borders at and between 328 ports of entry. CBP is responsible for protecting more than 5,000 miles of border with Canada, 1,900 miles of border with Mexico, and 95,000 miles of shoreline.
While CBP’s missions are complex and diverse, the principal operational requirements can be summarized in three distinct and mutually supporting themes:
Protect the American people;
Protect the national economy; and
Safeguard and manage the U.S. air, land, and maritime borders.
The men and women of CBP pursue these mission themes every day as they safeguard America at its borders with vigilance, selfless service, and unyielding integrity.
For FY 2014 CBP was provided with a budget of 13.9 billion dollars. How on earth could the President of the United States, high ranking members of his administration and members of Congress, from both political parties minimize the importance of a law enforcement effort that provides America’s first line of defense and last line of defense against international terrorists, enemy combatants and members of transnational criminal organizations?
Significantly, the CBP mission statement notes that the in addition to the 1,900 miles of border that is supposed to separate the United States from Mexico, the United States has 328 ports of entry, that the U.S./Canadian border runs more than 5,000 miles and that our nation has approximately 95,000 miles of coastline.
Why then are all of the politicians who seek to reform the immigration system insisting that first we must secure the U.S./Mexican border? Why do they never discuss the other ways that aliens enter the United States and that none of the 9/11 terrorists ran the U.S./Mexican border but entered our country through ports of entry?
The Summer 2015 edition of the quarterly journal, The Social Contract, published my in-depth analysis of the nexus between immigration and national security and the threat of terrorism, “The 9/11 Commission Report and Immigration: An Assessment, Fourteen Years after the Attacks.”
On May 11, 2006 I testified at a Congressional hearing conducted by the House Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on the topic, “Visa Overstays: Can We Bar The Terrorist Door?”
On February 5, 2015 FrontPage Magazine published my article: “The ‘Secure Our Border First Act’ Deception » Why it’s no solution to the immigration crisis.”
Let us consider how many politicians have thumped the podium as they stood before reporters and cameras promising that they would never agree with providing amnesty for millions of illegal aliens but then claimed, that since we cannot deport 11 million illegal aliens, we must provide them with the opportunity to come come out of the “shadows” and contribute to our economy.
You may wonder how these politicians could say they oppose amnesty yet are willing to provide millions of illegal aliens whose simple presence in the United States represents a violation of our critically important immigration laws and their true identities cannot be determined. The answer, for them, is simple- they will demand that these aliens pay back taxes, pay a fine and learn to speak English. These requirements, they claim, means that these aliens are not being provided with amnesty.
Violations of our immigration laws have nothing to do with taxes or with English language proficiency.
It is also important to note that since so many of these illegal aliens have used multiple false identities, one of the primary reasons that identify theft has become the fastest growing white-collar crime in the United States, it is unlikely that these aliens will ever truly pay back taxes.
While many politicians and journalists claim that getting these millions of foreign workers into the legal side of our economy would help the U.S. economy are also misleading everyone. Once provided with lawful status these millions of aliens will have an equal standing in the labor pool that is already overflowing with lawful immigrant and United States citizens who cannot find decent jobs.
Dumping so many heretofore illegal aliens into the labor pool will displace more Americans and serve to further suppress wages. This would also impede the U.S. economy and increase remittances wired home by foreign workers, increasing our national debt.
Furthermore, since there is no way to interview all of these millions of illegal aliens, national security will be undermined and more money than ever before will be wired home by foreign workers.
Incredibly this outrageous justification to provide millions of illegal aliens with lawful status and official identity documents has been repeated so often that many Americans have actually come to accept this explanation.
In part, the online Oxford Dictionary defines the term “Amnesty” this way:
An undertaking by the authorities to take no action against specified offenses or offenders during a fixed period
The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary provides this definition for Amnesty:
the act of an authority (as a government) by which pardon is granted to a large group of individuals
It is clear that providing millions of illegal aliens, en masse, with lawful status is unequivocally an amnesty. The technical term for the ploy being used by these politicians is that they are lying.
The argument that we cannot deport millions of illegal aliens is an utterly false and contrived argument. (Incidentally, it is likely that while we are often told that there are between 11 million and 12 million illegal aliens present in the United States, it is far more likely that the actual number would approach 40 million. When the Reagan administration enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 the official estimate was that slightly more than one million illegal aliens would emerge from the “shadows” to take advantage of this “one time” opportunity to finally get our immigration system under control. By the time the dust settled, between 3.5 and 4 million aliens acquired lawful status including several who were subsequently determined to be terrorists.)
Most laws are only enforced a fraction of one percent of the time. Think about how often we drive above the speed limit and never get stopped. Think of how many people blow stop signs and do so with impunity and don’t get caught. As bad as the immigration crisis is, there are many more motorists who own smart phones than there are illegal aliens present in the United States. Yet politicians and chiefs of police never say that because there are so many motorists who drive and text we cannot do anything about it. Quite to the contrary, state and local governments have launched massive public relations campaigns to convince motorists that if they dare reach for their phones while they are driving that there is a very high likelihood that they will be caught and prosecuted.
Consider the problems posed by drunk drivers. When I was a young man growing up in Brooklyn, it was especially dangerous to drive on Friday and Saturday nights. Drunk drivers were to be found everywhere, driving erratically. Many years ago, I was rear-ended by a speeding drunk driver as I waited at a red traffic light. Ironically, earlier that day I did my first solo flight in a single-engine airplane. My friends thought that flying was dangerous. Yet here I was, minding my own business when a drunk flew into the back of my car. His speedometer froze at 60 miles per hour (the speed limit on that road was 40 mph.) Both cars were demolished. The driver staggered over to me after he propelled my car completely through a huge intersection and asked me if he had hit me!
Because we were on the border between Nassau County and New York City, incredibly, police officers who drove by, from both jurisdictions, tried to convince me that the accident did not happen in their jurisdiction. Ultimately the other driver was not even issued a summons. Back then drunk driving was not considered a big deal. Movie stars such as John Wayne routinely appeared on talk shows and bragged about driving home drunk after a party believing that God had been their co-pilot. These outlandish statements were almost always greeted by the laughter and applause of the audience.
When groups such as MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) got involved, perspectives about the perils of drunk driving changed dramatically. Politicians came to understand that they needed to act to prevent the massive carnage created by drunk drivers. Unlike the way that politicians have addressed the immigration crisis, politicians confronting the dangers posed by drunk drivers, politicians did not try to change the language of the debate and insist, perhaps, that drunk drivers should henceforth be referred to as “Sobriety challenged motorists.”
Had politicians decided to deal with drunk driving the way that they are now purportedly addressing the immigration crisis by concocting “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” legislation, they would have raised the permissible blood-alcohol level from 0.10% to 0.30% This would have meant that any driver who had an accident but whose blood alcohol level was beneath 0.30% would not be legally impaired.
Needless to say, it would be unlikely that anyone with that much alcohol in his/her blood could even stand up, let alone manage to get behind the steering wheel of a car. Politicians could then issue press releases and hold a news conferences boasting that there were no fatalities caused by legally drunk drivers since they changed the laws establishing new alcohol limits.
However, we all know that this is not what happened. (My suggestion about raising the acceptable blood-alcohol level was made with my tongue firmly embedded in my cheek.)
What actually happened is that just about every jurisdiction has established ,08% as the maximum acceptable blood-alcohol limit is. Penalties for being caught driving drunk have gone up tremendously and public service announcements are routinely broadcast to warn motorists that if they are caught driving drunk they will be arrested, have their vehicles seized, be heavily fined and likely be sentenced to serve time in jail.
The number of drunk driving accidents were reduced through a program I describe as “deterrence through enforcement.”
No one has ever said that since there are more Americans with drivers’ licenses than there are illegal aliens in the United States, we cannot do anything about drunk drivers.
Another issue is the way that virtually every politician seeking the Presidency now insists that we need to create a modern legal immigration system that helps America to lead. In point of fact, if you believe in “American Exceptionalism” then the world’s best and brightest do not need to be imported into the United States. Americans are the best and brightest!
Many of the candidates, with the exceptions of Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have called for greatly expanding the number of H-1B visas for high-tech foreign STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) professionals
The August 21, 2015 Breitbart article “EXCLUSIVE: Rick Santorum Calls For ‘Orderly Process of Removal’ For Illegals” focused on Santorum’s position on immigration. It is worth reading.
Here is an excerpt in which he addressed the H-1B visa program:
On the topic of H1B worker visas, Santorum has criticized fellow GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for saying he would increase H1B visas “five-fold” – arguing that H1B visas are what caused at a minimum 250 layoffs at Disney and roughly 600 layoffs at Southern California Edison.
“It’s all about doing things that tech companies like – and I’m sure he’s going to make a lot of money for tech companies and they love that – but it’s not good for workers.”
Santorum was disheartened that companies would have American workers train foreign workers as replacements so the companies could pay the foreign workers roughly 30 percent less.
The October 29, 2015 Breitbart headline made Trump’s position on H-1B visas clear, “EXCLUSIVE — Donald Trump Rights Ship on Immigration: Demands Disney Rehire Workers Replaced by Cheap Foreign Labor, Calls Rubio ‘Silicon Valley’s Puppet’
Over the past several years hundreds of American companies have fired tens of thousands of American workers who had worked for them successfully for years. These workers not only had the requisite education to do those jobs but had demonstrated their talent and proficiency for years as loyal of employees of companies that did not reciprocate their loyalty to these hard-working American workers.
These workers were replaced by workers from other countries, with workers from India leading the charge. While the United States has suffered from an economic slump, India’s economy has soared. India also received the greatest amount of remittances sent home by their workers who found jobs in the United States and other countries. Last year, in fact, India received the highest amount of remittances- more than $70 billion.
I wrote about this issue in my June 17, 2015 FrontPage Magazine article, “On June 18, 2015 FrontPage Magazine published my article, “Theft By Deception: The Immigration Con Game » How politicians are robbing citizens of access to the American Dream.”
On October 30, 2015 Fox & Friends interviewed a displaced American IT employee of the Disney Company and his attorney. This employee claims that he was forced to train his foreign and much less experienced and qualified worker who was replacing him. The video of the interview was posted under the title, “Disney lays off tech employees in favor of foreign workers.”
Finally, we must stop educating foreign workers who are citizens of countries that are our adversaries. Currently there are approximately 400,000 foreign students enrolled in STEM curricula in the United States with China sending the greatest number of those students to the United States.
On September 10, 2015 FrontPage Magazine published my article, “Educating Our Adversaries– Why educating foreign STEM students is bad for American workers and national security.”
Those students will all be entitled to work in the United States for a temporary period of time and now The Obama administration is seeking to permit them to work for 36 months- creating still more competition for beleaguered American high-tech workers and American students who are graduating with degrees in these fields.
Many politicians, including presidential candidates lament that when foreign students graduate with their STEM degrees we send them back to their home countries, half-way around the world, suggesting we should “staple green cards onto their diplomas.”
I have a better suggestion- fill our college classrooms, labs and lecture halls with American students who will likely go no further than cross-town upon graduation.
I began this article by quoting George Orwell and, to provide a bit of symmetry, I will end my article with another of his quotes:
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