That GOP Debate In New Hampshire: A Pleasant Surprise On Immigration

Rob Sanchez has a powerful       post this morning about Gov. Tim Pawlenty's       Chamber of Commerce-compliant immigration policy, but I am astonished to say I don't really agree with Rob's dismissal of the immigration component in last night's GOP presidential debate as "superficial".

The transcript is       here (I'm excerpting the relevant portion       here); a YouTube excerpt is       here.

Of course, it's scandalous and stupid that none of the candidates called for 1) an       anti-unemployment immigration moratorium; 2) a comprehensive anti-illegal immigration policy comprising a) a sealed border to stop the illegal flow b) elimination of the illegal stock by increased deportation, attrition through enforcement, overthrow of       Plyler v. Doe, abolition of       birthright citizenship etc.

But short of that, and setting aside all the       claptrap about "compassion" and       immigrant forebears that American pols seem to feel necessary, the candidates were surprisingly firm—certainly firmer than the moderator, CNN's John King, seemed to want or expect.

This can only be a tribute to the terror inspired in the candidates by       New Hampshire's patriotic peasantry—and, we like to think, to the       pitchforks that       VDARE.com and others in the movement have been stockpiling for them all these years.

Highlights:

• Herman Cain endorsed abolition of Birthright Citizenship—he said "I don't believe so" when asked if the "Anchor Baby" loophole should exist.
  
• Cain also endorsed Arizona-style state action to eliminate the illegal stock, as did Pawlenty (!) and Santorum. (I think: he said:        "the federal government should               not require states to provide government services".)
  

• Santorum also said "We should not be offering to people—particularly those who               broke the law to come here or               overstayed their visa—we should not be offering government benefits". I presume this was a mis-statement, but on its face it seems to show an awareness that government transfer payments are a        problem for legal immigration policy too—in        Milton Friedman's famous formulation:
  
• Both Paul and Gingrich contrasted deficient border security with the effort made in Iraq and Iran. As Paul put it: "We should think about protecting our borders, rather than the                      borders between Iraq and Afghanistan". That may not seem much—but both were interrupted with applause. Politicians notice applause. Out on the campaign trail, it can end up making policy.
  
• Gingrich and Pawlenty endorsed using the                      National Guard on the               Mexican border; in fact, Pawlenty congratulated himself on sending the               Minnesota National Guard.
  
• Ron Paul heroically responded to King's tendentious question on Emergency Rooms ("A 5-year-old child of an illegal immigrant walks into an emergency room. Does the child get care?") by essentially saying no ("Well, first off,                      we shouldn't have the mandates. We bankrupted the                      hospitals and the                      schools in Texas and other states. We shouldn't give them easy citizenship"). Without prompting, Paul even went on to imply that, despite               recent ominous signs, he's cool on amnesty ("We shouldn't give them easy citizenship")
  
• Gingrich similarly refused to be trapped on amnesty: "No serious citizen who's concerned about solving this problem should get                      trapped into a yes/no answer in which you're either for totally selling out protecting America or you're                             for totally kicking out 20 million people in a heartless way. There are—there are humane, practical steps to solve this problem, if we can get the politicians and the news media to just deal with it honestly." This implies awareness of the policy option                      always omitted in immigration enthusiast               pollaganda: attrition through enforcement.
  
• Pawlenty even showed awareness that anchor-baby Birthright Citizenship is a               judicial interpretation, not a constitutional provision: "That result is because a U.S. Supreme Court determined that that right exists, notwithstanding language in the Constitution." In contrast, four years ago               John McCain tried (unsuccessfully) to fool voters into thinking               Birthright Citizenship was somehow blessed by the Founding Fathers.

(Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann were not called upon in this exchange, and did not feel impelled to refer to immigration at all. But Romney at least made enough pro-patriot noises to get             Tom Tancredo's endorsement when                   Tancredo  bowed out of the last presidential race. And Beltway immigration patriots have             real hopes for Bachmann, although they've been disappointed before).

Needless to say, all this and a marked ballot paper could get us amnesty, or at least a continuation of America's                         post-1965 immigration disaster. But hypocrisy is famously the homage that vice pays to virtue. And this pandering is the obeisance that GOP professionals now feel obliged to pay to patriotism.

Put this in perspective. Note that, in dramatic contrast to the                   nightmare reign of the disastrous Dubya, nobody even mentioned amnesty.

It's not perfect, but it's good.

Click       here for relevant portion of debate—key points highlighted.

Peter Brimelow (email him) is editor of                                                  VDARE.COM and author of the much-denounced Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster,                                                 (Random House - 1995) and                                                  The Worm in the Apple (HarperCollins - 2003)