"Truth, Justice and all that Jazz"

By Raoul Lowery Contreras

If immigration critics among us were honest and factual in presenting their views, one would have to pay serious attention to them, but they aren’t. Moreover, they seem to be plain stupid, felony stupid, felony untruthful and felony guilty of betraying the best of American traditions, honesty, truth, justice and all that Jazz.

Note the current hysteria among them that President Bush has sold out the country because of an alleged deal to build a highway from Mexico through the Midwest to Canada, a road linking the world’s three largest trading partners of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Proof of their stupidity is one who claims this is the NASSCO highway. For those who do not live in San Diego, NASSCO is the National Steel Shipbuilding Company, a company that builds oil tankers and Navy supply ships on San Diego harbor.

More proof is the economically illiterate woman from Arizona who founded Arizona’s Mothers Against Illegal Immigration. On Neil Cavuto’s normally good Fox News business program, there she was not knowing what NAFTA is and claiming that the "proposed" superhighway of an alleged ten lanes is a complete sellout of American sovereignty because it starts in Mexico. Not being economically literate or logical she was unable to explain how America’s sovereignty was affected by a highway, so Neil Cavuto kindly and with all the mercy he could muster ended the interview before she made a total ass of herself

Then there are two congressmen who go out of their way to embarrass the other 533 congress people in Washington (something very hard to do). There is, of course, the most notorious liar in Congress, Tom Tancredo from Colorado who claims that his Sicilian grandparents prohibited the use of Italian after they stepped foot in America.

Italians invented the illegal alien (as we know him today) in the 1920s, not Mexicans, a fact that eludes Tancredo the grandson of Italian immigrants who stepped ashore in New York without papers or English speaking ability or an education of any sort.

In fact, until recently those very same Italians and their progeny ruled the American underworld, hooked many on illicit drugs, ran prostitution and gambling throughout the country, corrupted every level of government and created and ran the notorious pornography industries that bring in more money than society can count. Nonetheless, Tancredo claims that Mexican farm workers place the USA in "mortal danger."

He reports "phantom" conversations with Mexican officials who allegedly tell him that Mexico is out to re-conquer California and the Southwest. Does Tancredo have witnesses to these phantom conversations? No. We have to take his word for it.

Historians should note that when his student deferments ran out at Northern Colorado University during the Vietnam War, Tancredo informed his Selective Service Board (the Draft) that he was mentally ill and suffered anxiety attacks. Either that was a lie or he is a dangerous mentally ill congressman. Take your pick.

As to proof of his current mental illness note his calling for the nuclear bombing of Mecca and Medina, the two sacred cities of Islam, if Muslim fanatics attack us again. A normal intellectually acute commentator would call for the bombing of the countries involved or of the individuals involved, not sacred religious cities of 1.3 billion people. That would be like bombing the Vatican in 1942 because Adolf Hitler was raised Roman Catholic.

The other mentally challenged congressman is F. James Sensenbrenner, JUNIOR, of Wisconsin. He is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and author of the tough-on-the-border bill passed by the House last year. His stringent position that he will not negotiate with the more liberal and common-sense Senate leaves one to wonder what about democracy and compromise doesn’t he understand. He is adamant. He is blind.

There is suspicion in these precincts that the rich brat from Wisconsin who doesn’t know what honest labor is being the scion of the Kotex fortune and the self-acknowledged mentally ill congressman from Colorado will lose in the long run. They will lose because a huge coalition of church, business and politically astute Republicans know better than these two and their mobs what to do about illegal immigration.

This huge coalition also knows more than the hysterical little people running around crying about a highway, about free trade, about President Bush selling out "sovereignty and about the huge economic progress and advancement of almost every single geographical area that hosts illegal alien workers.

With less than 4 percent unemployment in San Diego and Orange Counties, for example, there still exist over 100,000 unfilled jobs in this 6-million person region. Moreover while these jobs go unfilled there are people in Ohio and the Rust Belt who join the hysterics in complaining there are no jobs. One hysteric claims that Hispanic immigrants themselves cause Black teenaged unemployment. Really…?

Black teenaged unemployment under President Lyndon Johnson was 50 percent; today even the hysterics claim that Black teenaged unemployment is 25 percent, half of what it was. There are many reasons for this situation: One, no fathers in the home, (two) living in cities with no future or solid economics like New Orleans, (three) throwing money after the problem in the past 40 years has not solved the problem, it has only exacerbated it. No single group should have 25 percent unemployment when hundreds of thousands of jobs go begging in Southern California and Las Vegas.

As famed University of California economist David Card proves in study after study, areas that illegals and legal immigrants move into have better economics, more jobs, less unemployment and more money, growth and per capita income than areas such as Mississippi that has few immigrants.

If the hysterics weren’t blinded by hate they would recognize the huge benefits of all immigration. Unfortunately, their basic hate of anything Mexican accompanied by basic stupidity and lack of intelligence blinds them to the very fact that almost every morsel of hugely inexpensive food they eat is put on their tables by immigrants, legal and illegal.

One has to wonder how do the contributions of the unemployed match up to the contributions of the estimated 12-15 million illegals. Who is more valuable, those who manage to find jobs and work, or those who claim the country has failed its own uneducated, unskilled minimum wage working class.

Contreras’ newest book – THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA?? is reviewed and available at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com and from the publisher, www.floricantopress.com