Dan Stein Quotations

Every politician, and certainly every president, worries about how history will remember them. This administration and this Congress will either be remembered as the people who sent the nation hurtling down the path to catastrophic overpopulation, or the leaders who looked beyond the next election cycle and set the nation on a course of sustainable growth, with a vibrant and productive middle class.

America's humanitarian concern for foreign victims of natural disasters or civil strife is being abused by President Bush when he extends legal status to foreigners in the US when there is no reason that they could not go home safely.

You know how you feel when you're sitting in traffic on the freeway hours on end, and some guy just zips along on the shoulder and butts in front of everybody?

In recent weeks we have seen frequent demonstrations under foreign flags and the emergence of a counter-national anthem. We see people demanding to be treated differently under the law. Monday should be an opportunity for the rest of us to show that we are one nation, with one flag, one national anthem, and one set of laws that apply to everyone.

In reality, the choices we have before us are amnesty and guest workers on the one hand -- which would amount to a massive sell-out of the American middle class -- and, on the other hand, a comprehensive enforcement effort that eliminates the reasons why people come and remain in the U.S. illegally. There is a whole smorgasbord of options available to enforce our immigration laws, yet the president is still claiming that there is only one item on the menu.

In other words, the illegal aliens will get about 95 percent of what they want immediately and simply have to wait several years for the rest, but President Bush, Senators McCain and Kennedy, and others want us to believe that this is not amnesty.

I predict the fence will be a hugely popular concept, and there will be an enormous groundswell of support,

If we don't educate these kids, what happens to them? ... That's a question we have to answer.

Rather than creating conditions that allow American workers to fill jobs at higher wages, what the president is proposing merely converts low wage illegal aliens into low wage workers with visas. Our economy would have to adapt if the influx of cheap foreign labor is ended, but that is an adjustment strongly desired by a majority of Americans, whether native-born or foreign-born. The concept that our economy must be served by a permanent under-class of foreign guest workers is reprehensible and unacceptable.

But there is not much hope for Americans in blue-collar work being able to hold their jobs if the guest worker proposal is adopted. Concerned citizens will not have much hope that today's illegal workers will leave the country after being given six-year work permits, and they will simply have to hope that there is still a middle class in a few years. President Bush also talked about 'stronger immigration enforcement and border protection,' and we might hope that after decades of broken promises that this time he really means it, but the record does not justify much hope.