By Walter E. Williams| Townhall.com
Here are a couple of easy immigration questions --
answerable with a simple "yes" or "no" -- we might ask any
American of any political stripe: Does everyone in the world have a right to
live in the U.S.? Do the American people have a right, through their elected
representatives, to decide who has the right to immigrate to their country and
under what conditions?
I believe that most Americans, even today's open-borders
people, would answer "no" to the first question and "yes"
to the second.
There's nothing new about this vision. Americans have
held this view throughout our history, during times when immigration laws were
very restrictive and when they were more relaxed.
Tucker Carlson, host of Fox News
Channel's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," gives us an interesting history lesson about immigration at Prager University.
It
was prompted by his watching a group of protesters who were denouncing
President Donald Trump's immigration policies. They were waving Mexican flags
and shouting, "¡Sí, se puede!" ("Yes, we can!")
Unbeknownst to the protesters, the expression "Sí,
se puede" was a saying of Cesar Chavez's.
When Chavez, the founder of the
United Farm Workers union, used the expression "Yes, we can," he
meant something entirely different: "Yes, we can" seal the borders.
He hated illegal immigration.
Chavez explained, "As long as we have a poor
country bordering California, it's going to be very difficult to win
strikes." Why? Farmers are willing to hire low-wage immigrants here
illegally.
Chavez had allies in his protest against the hiring of undocumented
workers and lax enforcement of immigration laws. Included in one of his protest
marches were Democratic Sen. Walter Mondale and a longtime Martin Luther King
Jr. aide, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy.
Peaceful protest wasn't Chavez's only tool.
He sent union
members into the desert to assault Mexicans who were trying to sneak in to the
country. They beat the Mexicans with chains and whips made of barbed wire.
Undocumented immigrants who worked during strikes had their houses firebombed
and their cars burned.
By the way, Chavez remains a leftist hero. President
Barack Obama declared his birthday a commemorative federal holiday, an official
day off in several states. A number of buildings and student centers on college
campuses and dozens of public schools bear the name Cesar Chavez.
Democrats have long taken stances against both legal and
illegal immigration.
In 1975, California Gov. Jerry Brown opposed Vietnamese
immigration, saying that the state had enough poor people. He added,
"There is something a little strange about saying 'Let's bring in 500,000
more people' when we can't take care of the 1 million (Californians) out of work."
In his 1995 State of the Union address, President Bill
Clinton said: "All Americans ... are rightly disturbed by the large
numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might
otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use
impose burdens on our taxpayers."
On a 1994 edition of CBS' "Face the
Nation," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., declared: "Border control
is a federal responsibility. We simply don't enforce our borders adequately. In
my state, you have about 2,000 people a day, illegally, who cross the border.
Now, this adds up to about 2 million people who compete for housing, who
compete for classroom space." She added: "In 1988, there were about
3,000 people on Medicaid. There're well over 300,000 (people on Medicaid) today
who are illegal aliens. That presents obvious problems."
Tucker Carlson has a four-part explanation for the
Democratic Party's changing position on illegal immigration.
He says,
"One: According to a recent study from Yale, there are at least 22 million
illegal immigrants living in the United States. Two: Democrats plan to give all
of them citizenship. Read the Democrats' 2016 party platform. Three: Studies
show the overwhelming majority of first-time immigrant voters vote Democrat. Four:
The biggest landslide in American presidential history was only 17 million
votes. Do the math. The payoff for Democrats: permanent electoral majority for
the foreseeable future. In a word: power."