Donald A. Collins | 25 September 2015
Church and State
In all the hype of the Pope’s visit, this impossible immigration situation never gets brought up by the media because the elites in both parties don’t want real immigration reform.
My latest OP ED at Progressives for Immigration Reform echoes my comments above.
The Externalities Parties and How They Have Sold Us Out On Immigration
Donald A. Collins | 13 September 2015
Progressives for Immigration ReformThe horse is already out of the barn, Mr. President, and now you do the typical political pap instead of recognizing what years of failure to reform our tattered immigration law have led us to. Yes, adding over 100 million people since 1965 has changed everything in the U.S., and not for the better.
Of course, immigration has been and may continue to be a bipartisan failure unless the Paul Revere of true immigration reform, Donald Trump, triggers enough concern to get something done about our failed immigration system once and for all.
The long standing and steadfast support for patriotic immigration reform from so many true reformers such as FAIR, NumbersUSA, and the Center for Immigration Studies, now so effectively joined by Progressives has gone a glimmering for decades, but now that Trump has reminded Americans that they have been shafted, the folks with their greedy paws in the cookie jar of externalized benefits and heavy impingement on our personal lives, are busy at work trying to kill the messenger. Is he the perfect messenger? No one could be, but he has brought the issue forward and makes every other candidate look like an apologist for the special interests.
So now in his Labor Day speech, President Obama says he wants to offer more welfare to workers, which may indeed be proper in some cases, but he and his predecessors were guilty of creating much of the problem of unemployment by letting the special interests hold sway. It was and continues to be a bipartisan betrayal fostered by a government that operates under legalized bribery.
Yes, folks, we are governed by the Externalities Parties, Republican and Democrat. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that corporations are people with the unlimited right to fund political campaigns, the stage was legally set to continue the governance of our former republic by an oligarchy of elites which now own or control most of our wealth. Ironically, a chance to break this financial power may come from billionaire Donald Trump who has made clear that all the candidates are paid for by the externality crowd.
Ok, so what is an externality? A rogue coal company (read John Gresham’s Grey Mountain) dumps its sludge into pure waterways and then can’t be forced to clear up the mess. So we taxpayers get the bill. With immigration, the externality proponents get cheap labor, more ethnics, or more religious members and taxpayers get to pay for the increased education, crime, health and other social service costs. Trump is rich, but consider the amount of money that the externality crowd puts up to bolster candidates from both the Republican and Democrat Parties! I hope he continues to be able to afford to tell the truth about how ordinary citizens are being exploited by the financial elite.
Change must come and Americans know it. Hopefully a majority will not be swayed by the huge money and other pressures not to reform immigration. If we just got E-verify working effectively and universally required by all employers that would be a massive step in the right direction.
One long standing true reform advocate who lives in California wrote me to thank me for one of my op-ed pieces about externalities. She said, “I vote Democrat locally and they are gathering signatures to put Citizens on the ballot here in the other Washington (e.g. Washington State). Even if Huckabee were on our side on immigration, I would never vote for him because of his stance on social issues. I may have to take a deep breath and let it out slowly to calm myself, but I will vote for Donald if it’s Hillary for pres.” – She noted further that her husband had a top secret compartmented security clearance which leads him to believe Clinton should face criminal charges. And that California is horrible on the issue of sanctuary cities, especially in places such as San Francisco where a young woman was murdered by an illegal alien (let’s start using word again, main stream media!)
Wikipedia says, “Sanctuary city is a term that is applied by some to cities in the United States or Canada that have policies designed to not prosecute illegal aliens. These practices can be by law (de jure) or they can be by habit (de facto). The term generally applies to cities that do not allow municipal funds or resources to be used to enforce federal immigration laws, usually by not allowing police or municipal employees to inquire about an individual’s immigration status.”
Sanctuary cities include locations like Washington, DC, New York City, Jersey City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, Miami, Denver, Baltimore, Seattle and Portland.
Those of us who favor true reform need to keep the pressure on as the presidential race heats up so that the candidate elected President is not someone who has been bought and paid for by the Externality Parties.
But don’t miss the wonderful gum ball presentation which Roy Beck has created. Paste and watch, as it is both frightening and motivating. As Roy says, “only our votes can make the two parties act as we need them to”.
Yes it’s a USA clip, but what this seems to show is how far off the mark we are.
Make sure you pass this one along!!! This is probably the most powerful and calmly put argument that I have ever seen. (Runs 6 min)
Remember the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words?”. Well, here is a perfect example!
Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013.Be sure to ‘like’ us on Facebook
