Rep Bob Inglis's universe - as evidenced by
his pronouncements at a Town Meeting at Greenville, SC's Hughes Main Library
tonight - is apparently a very different one from the one the rest of us
Americans (at least the folks Prez Dubya accuses of standing in the way of
what's good for the joint) inhabit. And it wasn't just in the sense that he
didn't seem to hear a word the roughly 47 (out of roughly 50 altogether) who
spoke in no uncertain terms against the pending immigration legislation
uttered.
The essence of this evening was far less nebulous than
Inglis's general unwillingness to adjust what appears to be a
vote-for-anything-Teddy-Kennedy-wants-us-to attitude (a far cry from his
advertised fence-sitter status) to the overwhelming opposition to this among
those present here tonight. On the contrary, it
materialized in some very tangible manifestations. For instance, in Inglis's
world:
- It's un-American to want to close our borders,
expel those who entered illegally, or maintain a populace in tune with the
values that made America what it is,
- The Hispanic element of the immigrant population
(in spite of polls that indicate they vote overwhelmingly Democratic) is more
conservative than the general American demographic,
- France (which the last we heard was so overrun
with Muslim immigrants that they're on the verge of constituting a majority) is
an example of the closed-to-immigration type of society that America - if it is
to remain America - must never become,
- Illegal immigrants, far from being on the brink
of sending the social security system into greaty hastened bankruptcy, are
actually bolstering it to the tune of trillions,
- Far from the $20,000 per year per family figure
the Heritage Foundation - after intensive research - tells us illegals are
costing us, supposedly they're a great boon to our economy,
- The Border Patrol (whose union just voted a
unanimous no confidence declaration as to its appointed leadership - based on
the consistent recent persecution of agents who dare to take ther jobs
seriously) is jumping for joy over the prospect of the Kennedy-Kyl immgration
surrender bill becoming law,
- The immigration laws on the books that are being
ignored are totally unenforceable, yet the impending one - which places enormous
burdens on the same inept, corrupt bureaucracy that never tried to enforce the
old ones - will be a cakewalk.
Inglis made it clear that his definition of
"amnesty" jibes completely with that of President Bush - if there is anything
whatsoever in legislation that can be deemed a "consequence" of illegal entry,
then the bill is not amnesty (although, on reflection, it is not clear -
especially with the sanctuary city concept approved now even for future
invaders - that there even are the most miniscule consequences in the current
bill). Inglis also wants increased legal immigration quotas and guest worker
programs.
He put up a chart that showed that current
immigration is lower as a percentage of overall population than it was
a hundred or so years ago when the great waves of Europeans populated a then
wide-open-spaces America. He then declared that this percentage - and not
overall numbers of immigrants - was what mattered. Apparently the fact that we
have limited resources and space at such a premium that housing prices have far
outpaced general inflation do not count with Inglis.
Inglis did say that he thought government benefits
should go only to citizens (which means, I suppose, he would expel all aliens -
legal or otherwise - from our government schools, where they comprise, in the
upstate, at least, a seeming near majority - obviously he didn't mean this, as
this appeared a purely political statement). His endorsement of English as our
official national language had a similar ring of incredulity. We shall see
whether he votes for a bill that surely will be absent this provision. (We
really don't have to guess, as it was his vote in committee last summer that
defeated just such a provision in an earlier measure; this was the Congressman
at his most deceitful, and I was not given the chance to call him on
it.)
I was allowed to offer brief comments (prior to the
Congressman's English-only whopper), and I focused on Larry Pratt's (of Gun
Owners of America) discovery of provisions slipped into the Senate bill that
mimicked the infamous McCarthy anti-Second Amendment bill, which would make a
"gun gang" out of any gun store that made as few as two clerical errors or a
family of 5 that drove anywhere near a school with a legal firearm in the glove
box. Inglis rolled his eyes.
I added that the defeat of the Coleman
Amendment (which would have outlawed "sanctuary cities" for future invaders -
the ones already here won't need them, as they'll be as legal as we are) means
that the bill contains zero enforcement. He showed no reaction, as the
spelling-impaired "smart board" operator typed something that bore no
resemblance to what I had said.
I concluded with the salient point - already
highlighted by Rush Limbaugh - that we were hereby importing tens upon tens of
millions of almost exclusively left-wing Democratic voters, precipitating the
end of the two-party system (at the expense of Inglis's GOP), and likely
fomenting the eventual election of a Hugo Chavez here (or, heaven forbid, even a
Hillary). [The smart board girl scribbled the non-sequitir, "path to
citizenship?" - she consistently downplayed or ignored any effective point made
by anyone from our side all night.]
I averred that as a member of the
conservative upstate majority I dreaded this infusion of left-wing voters,
and concluded that, in light of all this, we won't have to guess anymore as to
whose side he is on once he casts his vote on this. His only response was a
request for us to keep our comments shorter.
The very last audience participant echoed my final
point when he brought up the notion that the mass of legalized invaders will
promptly be snatched up by the trade unions (which are the biggest contributor -
and monolithically, at that - to the Democrats), and told Inglis that he
(Inglis) himself would one day lose his job to a liberal candidate as a result.
Inglis responded that Hispanics constitute scarcely 1% of upstate registered
voters (conveniently ignoring the fact that this percentage stands to increase
logarithmically in the presence of that "path to citizenship"). Under those
circumstances, reasoned Inglis, it could hardly be argued that he was trolling
for votes via his clearly expressed penchant for Kennedy-Kyl.
This was remarkable, in my view. I cannot believed
that Mr. Inglis so completely missed the point. Nobody was arguing that he was
seeking to increase the Republican voter base. Au contraire,
he was being accused of the high treason of helping to astronomically increase
the leftwing, anti-American Democrat voting base - to the point of the
extermination of his own party and any other resembling the conservative bastion
it once was, and his only defense was to change the subject 180
degrees.
Needless to say, I didn't have the opportunity to
bring up others among the litany of concerns I have with K-K: the 600,000+ who
have ignored deportation orders who will be instantly pardoned, the MS-13 and
other terrorist-style gangs who similarly will be bestowed the legitimacy of
legal status, the dual citizenship (not banned by the bill) that will guarantee
that our future elections turn on the votes of criminal aliens not even forced
to give up their citizenship in their countries of origin, the EIC, which will
mean most legalized invaders will receive tax monies rather than pay
them, the patent disingenuousness of the supposed fine system, the in-state
tuition, the legal services at the expense of the taxpayers, the mere 24 hours
allowed for background checks, the innumerable high altitude observation posts
in the US manned by heavily armed drug cartel members, the unsellably
invader-devastated border ranches these cartels are allegedly purchasing at tax
auctions...
Many of the others who spoke did have plenty of
substance to say, and said it articulately. There were legal immigrants who
came down as hard as any of us on this travesty of a bill. One gentleman asked,
rhetorically, what other crimes within the American penal code were about to be
removed from consideration for punishment. Another blurted out the reality that
this was a matter of national survival.
Yet another eloquently took
Inglis to task for not owning up to fact that the bill entailed amnesty. And
still another wanted to know why the book was being thrown at American border
guardians whom the Mexican government accused of using excessive force, while
local police and such were not even allowed to concern themselves with any of
the millions of illegals who were going about their lives openly flaunting their
illegality.
Inglis's most outrageous comments were, in
fact, reserved for his ringing endorsement of the railroading and example making
of agents Ramos and Compean. According to the good Congressman, all the
alarmist articles about these two on the Internet (the ones that, in
Inglis's words, spoke of "what a bad country America is" for having prosecuted
these border guardians - funny, I had the impression all these pieces were very
pro-American, and that it was the actions of the prosecutors who took
the word of a multiple-offense Mexican drug smuggler over the agents' at every
turn that were anti-American) were far off base. He proceeded to
parrot the Johnny Sutton line about the supposed technical violations of the
agents - points that were all duly included, by the way, in all the
pro-agent pieces I read on the web - as though they were previously
unheard revelations.
Contrary, in Inglis's bizarre view, to this
"anti-Americanism," what a wonderful country this is where the "rule of law"
means that these evil agents, faced with a drug cartelist apparently armed and
strong enough to leave one on the ground in his wake can be prosecuted and
jailed for huge lengths of time (and subject to vicious, almost fatal attacks,
with medical care withheld for several days, I might add)! The only problem,
according to Inglis (and it's too late to do anything about it in this case),
was that the stretches were a little long since minimum sentences for crimes
committed with firearms were too stiff (he blithely ignored the fact that such
laws clearly were never intended to be applied to law enforcement officers in
the first place). Thankfully, Inglis's audacious posturing on this issue was
met with general jeers.
This cagy casting of the betrayal of America in a
surreal "patriotic" light was a common thread in Inglis's peculiar presentation,
and it mirrored the president's recent spinmeistership. To paraphrase
(liberally) the words of perennial Communist Party USA presidential candidate
Gus Hall (which he applied to congressmen and preachers), the last vestige of
American culture is about to be strangled to death on the guts of a cynically
faux Americanism. Do you find that as ironic as I
do?