Learning from the French

I stopped by Michelle Malkin's blog this evening and found an article linked from Allahpundit's entry NIGHT FEVER

Though written four years ago, Theodore Dalrymple's essay "The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris" remains the most harrowing treatment of France's banlieues I've ever read.

The fact that things have only gotten considerably worse in France since this article was written, several points he makes seems to speak volumes to our current immigration problems - if only our politicians would listen.

Now, we have a HUGE illegal immigration problem that is quite different than France's situation. Their immigrants were invited. However, the "guest worker" nonsense and giving citizenship to those who have broken our nation's laws by sneaking across the border illegally does apply. In a different way perhaps, when you boil away the political spin, if these laws pass, they will essentially be invited.

But what is the problem to which these housing projects, known as cités, are the solution, conceived by serene and lucid minds like Le Corbusier’s? It is the problem of providing an Habitation de Loyer Modéré—a House at Moderate Rent, shortened to HLM—for the workers, largely immigrant, whom the factories needed during France’s great industrial expansion from the 1950s to the 1970s, when the unemployment rate was 2 percent and cheap labor was much in demand. By the late eighties, however, the demand had evaporated, but the people whose labor had satisfied it had not; and together with their descendants and a constant influx of new hopefuls, they made the provision of cheap housing more necessary than ever.

Cheap labor that was in much demand...

Sound familiar?

The article is extremely long, but I found it similar to driving by a car accident. Horrified as I was while reading about the impotence of the police, the crimes (and weapons the criminals have) and the attitude of this French underclass, I just couldn't seem to look away and stop reading.

Some four years later and things have only deteriorated further. As France tries to wake up and pass laws that would actually help the very people who are protesting find jobs, they are so ignorant, they don't even realize it.

In 1986, Reagan passed an amnesty to "fix" our immigration problems. Instead, it sent immigration numbers soaring.

Pete Nunez, the former U.S. attorney for San Diego and a lifelong fighter for immigration control, told me in a recent talk: "Why are those numbers today so high? Because of the amnesty of 1986! Those 2.7 million illegals amnestied were then able, in the decade of the '90s, to sponsor their family members. That decade turned out to have the highest number of legal immigrants practically in our history, because of the amnesty."

Here at the busy port of entry, in my long conversations with officials of the Department of Homeland Security, which encompasses immigration, border patrol and customs, there is unanimous agreement with this interpretation.

"The '86 experience definitely led to family reunification," Lauren Mack, customs and border protection public affairs officer, agreed. "We watched that amnesty -- it only created more fraud and more problems."

[....]

The 1986 amnesty was not to be the first of many amnesties, nor a kind of experimental plug in the flow of human beings from a poor country to a rich one. To the contrary, it was to be the "last amnesty." Pushed by liberals in Congress like Teddy Kennedy, it was supposed to settle and legalize the illegals already in the United States, while controlling future immigration. It was to be the solution.

Instead, those 2.7 million settled in America and, under the dominating "family reunification" policy, were able immediately to sponsor almost any number of relatives, some bringing in 80 or 90 persons. And because the enforcement aspects of the law were never put into practice, the 1986 amnesty left the gate open to still more massive numbers. Meanwhile, the proposed new guest worker programs before Congress almost all provide for some kind of amnesty that will lead only to a repeat of 1986.

If we won't learn from France's history, can we at the very least, look back and learn from our own?

What happens in twenty years when, due to how quickly technology is improving and expanding there are too few low-wage jobs for our "guest workers" to fill? Instead of cheap workers, machines (or even robots) with hi-tech computers do many of these jobs. With the spike in unemployment, do we then increase our public housing to house these displaced "guest workers"? Do we pay to educate them so they are qualified for higher paying jobs (jobs that hard working Americans DO want and need)? Do we first have to pay to teach them our language so they can understand when they attend school? Are we also paying to feed these unemployed "guest workers" and their families? Are we offering unemployment benefits to them? Health benefits? And how do we pay for all this (yeah, I know, higher and higher taxes along with increases in the costs of health care et al)? Not to forget - the baby boomers will be well into their Social Security benefits that will be bankrupt by then...

Our economic future sure looks a bit scary...

If we ever learn anything from the French (of all people), if we ever bother to look back and learn anything from our OWN history...NOW is the time!

posted by Shannon at 9:42 PM   |    |  

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