This is how the Left uses polls to manipulate public opinion, rather than quantify it. They provide the ingredients for today’s political discussion, and you’re not allowed to choose any items off the menu.
But can’t I be against amnesty without voting for rounding up illegals at gunpoint?
No! Look at the menu—no substitutions!
BROOKINGS POLL: WOULD YOU PREFER A UNICORN OR A LOCH NESS MONSTER?
Typical is a Brookings Institution poll, asking respondents to choose one of two imaginary options:
“The best way to solve the country’s illegal immigration problem is to secure our borders and arrest and deport all those who are here illegally.”
Or:
“The best way to solve the country’s illegal immigration problem is to both secure our borders and provide an earned path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the U.S.”
Absolutely no one has proposed that we deport all those who are here illegally—much less “arrest” them. No one. Mitt Romney had the toughest stance against illegal immigration of any major presidential candidate since Dwight Eisenhower, and he only suggested encouraging illegal immigrants to “self-deport,” i.e., go back the same way they came. We didn’t “round them up” to get them here, and we don’t have to “round them up” to get them home. As for the Brookings poll’s second option—“both secure our borders and provide an earned path to citizenship”—there’s no “both.” There’s no border security, ever. And there’s no “earned” path, either. It’s no-strings-attached legalization now and vague promises of border security later.
Poll: What ice cream flavor do you prefer: Delicious chocolate or three-day-old raw squid?
Headline: CHOCOLATE AMERICA’S FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR!
Marco Rubio went on a worldwide tour swearing that his “comprehensive immigration reform” absolutely insisted on “enforcement first.” Then the bill was unveiled and it said:
Step One: Everyone who came here illegally is legal.
Step Two: After they’re amnestied, they can bring in all their relatives.
So Rubio’s plan—approved by a majority of the Senate, including fourteen Republicans*—was: Dessert first, then, we all agree, no more dessert! We’ll start the diet tomorrow!
When would the enforcement part of Rubio’s “Enforcement First!” plan have kicked in? Answer: Never. As Rubio said on Fox News Sunday: “Basically, Homeland Security will have five years to meet that goal. If after five years Homeland Security has not met that number, it will trigger the Border Commission, who will then take over this issue for them.”19 So if the Department of Homeland Security failed to secure the border, ANOTHER GOVERNMENT COMMISSION WOULD BE CREATED! (That always works, said the Department of Education.) And if the second commission failed, Rubio would personally write a strongly worded letter. Would the 11 million illegals already legalized lose that status if the border remained wide open? Of course not. Refer to Step One. But the bill sure would have spent a lot of taxpayer money!
WALL STREET JOURNAL POLL: OR HOW ABOUT A SASQUATCH?
In November 2014, a Wall Street Journal–NBC News poll asked respondents if they would support “a proposed pathway to citizenship” that: “allowed foreigners who have jobs but are staying illegally in the United States the opportunity to eventually become legal American citizens if they pay a fine, any back taxes, pass a security background check, and take other required steps.”20
After the word “foreigners,” everything in that poll question is pure fantasy.
Let’s start with: “staying illegally in the United States.” We’re talking about people who sneaked into the country by hiring smugglers, wading through the Rio Grande, and hiding in truck beds. They traveled through remote desert locations in the dead of night, fled from U.S. agents, and stole American IDs. They broke the law and—look me in the eye, illegal aliens—they know they broke the law. But at the Wall Street Journal, how they got here is a complete mystery—maybe we dragged them across the border. All we know is, right now, they are “staying” illegally in the United States. Perhaps if what illegals did to get here were not hidden from poll respondents, it would seem less draconian to propose that they go home the same way. The return trip would be a lot easier.
Moreover, all that stuff about jobs, fines, and taxes is utter nonsense. I know it, the Wall Street Journal knows it, and the Mexicans hurtling toward our border with the speed of cannonballs know it. But it convinces Americans who aren’t paying attention that we’re only going to get the most diligent illegals. Not only that, but we’re going to make all kinds of money off of amnesty! The last amnesty was loaded up with fines, fees, back taxes, and English lessons for illegal aliens. Let’s review how that panned out: English-language requirement—dropped by the INS; fines—dropped by the INS; fees—waived by the INS; back taxes—dropped by the IRS.21
Rubio’s amnesty didn’t even contain the promises of the Reagan amnesty. The only “fee” in Rubio’s bill was defined as the actual cost to the government to process an illegal immigrant’s application. Who else is supposed to pay that? In fact, however—you will, taxpayer. The bill allowed the INS commissioner to waive the fee for any reason. The INS already waives fees for illegal immigrants who are on government assistance, which is 71 percent of them. We want no delay in legalizing the neediest immigrants!
The alleged fine has enough exceptions to ensure that no one ever pays it. The law provides that any illegal alien currently under the age of twenty-one is exempted, but so are illegal immigrants of any age who merely have a GED and assert that they came to the United States before age sixteen.22
As we know from Reagan’s amnesty, when nearly 1 million illegal immigrants falsely claimed to have been farmworkers to get amnesty, foreigners who have already broken U.S. laws are not always punctilious about telling the truth to government officials. Under the special agricultural amnesty of the 1986 bill, the INS received nearly one hundred thousand applications from “farmworker” illegal aliens living in the lush, fertile farmland of New York City. Another hundred thousand applications were mailed in directly from Mexico.23 Some “farmworkers” told agents that cotton was purple or described pulling cherries from the ground. Within the first three years of the agricultural worker amnesty, the government identified 888,637 fraudulent applications, of which it approved more than 800,000.24 And consider that the age at which someone who is living in the shadows first began living in the shadows is a lot easier to fake than prior farmwork.
True, any wealthy illegal immigrants would be required to pay back taxes. Unfortunately, there are no wealthy illegal immigrants. Half of Americans don’t pay income taxes! No illegal immigrant will. That leaves only Social Security taxes. We’re always told that we need to amnesty illegals to shore up Social Security. How, exactly, are people who make so little money that they don’t pay income taxes going to save Social Security? If we had an adversarial press—or even a curious press—it would ask:
Will immigrants be paying in as much as they take out?
No, they won’t.
So that makes it worse, right?
Why yes, it does. I only hoped you would not ask that question.
Under Rubio’s bill, illegal immigrants weren’t even required to pay their back Social Security taxes. Instead, the IRS was directed to collect only those taxes already “assessed.” Guess how Social Security taxes are assessed against people without valid Social Security cards? They aren’t. Even before the INS commissioner starts waiving payments, illegal aliens owe $0.00 in back taxes.25 Rubio’s bill could have required employers to calculate the Social Security taxes illegal aliens owed, but that idea was expressly rejected by Senate negotiators in early 2013. Amnesty supporters complained that it was just too hard to collect back taxes from illegal aliens. As Senator Jeff Flake explained, “Getting back taxes is incredibly difficult, particularly when someone has paid into a fraudulent Social Security number.”26
Okay, fine. Then
how about dropping poll questions claiming that illegal immigrants will be paying “back taxes”? The Journal poll was taken in the fall of 2014—more than a year after the Senate bill had explicitly dropped the possibility of collecting back taxes from illegal aliens. But the question polled not only implied that illegal aliens would pay “back taxes,” but claimed that that particular question gave respondents “more details about the proposal.” Not any proposal on Planet Earth.
30 MILLION NEEDY IMMIGRANTS, SURPRISINGLY, NOT GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY
Somehow, the idea that the mass importation of poor people is good for the economy has caught on like a runaway train. Everyone agrees!
These claims refer to the size of the entire economy, which inevitably expands the more humans we have living here. So does your household budget if I move in to your extra bedroom. The cost of your electricity, cable TV, water, food, newspaper subscriptions, Netflix subscription, and overdue books will go through the roof. But don’t worry, I’ll be writing you a check for $250 a month. Unfortunately, I will be eating $400 worth of food every month. So the size of your household GNP has increased, but you aren’t ahead of the game. I am ahead of the game. The entire benefit is captured by moi.
It’s the exact same math with any immigrant to America who does not pay in taxes more than he gets back in government services. That includes not only assistance programs, but also schools, highways, police, hospitals, and so on. Thus, a more detailed breakdown of the costs and benefits shows that college-educated Americans pay an average of $29,000 more in taxes every year than they get back in government services, according to an analysis by the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector. By contrast, legal immigrants, on average, get back $4,344 more in government services than they pay in taxes. Those with only a high school degree net about $14,642 in government payments, and those without a high school degree collect a whopping $36,993.27 Contrary to the claims of Senator Chuck Schumer’s press secretary, Marco Rubio, making illegal aliens citizens will not result in the U.S. Treasury being deluged with their tax payments. The vast majority of illegal aliens—about 75 percent—have only a high school diploma or less, so legalization means they will immediately begin collecting an average of $14,642–$36,993 per year from the U.S. taxpayer.
Even worse, under Rubio’s bill—and Obama’s executive action—amnestied illegal aliens immediately collect a windfall directly from the U.S. Treasury in missed earned income tax credits.28 So the definition for “paying back taxes” under Rubio’s bill was: “receiving welfare.” Of course, with 71 percent of illegal alien households already on government assistance,29 “paying back taxes” meant “getting even more welfare than you do currently.” Illustrating the principle that, in matters of great importance, the difference between evil and stupidity is irrelevant, Marco Rubio stoutly asserted that, under his bill, amnestied illegal immigrants “don’t qualify for any federal benefits.”30 A huge majority—71 percent!—were already collecting federal benefits when he said that and were on track to collect a lot more welfare had his bill become law.
Can we retake the Wall Street Journal’s poll, but this time inquire about the only pathway to citizenship proposed or passed by either house of Congress? Would you support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who knowingly broke this country’s laws that would allow them to immediately collect past welfare payments they lost out on while working off the books?
CALIFORNIA’S FIELD POLL: ELECTROCUTION OR A WARM PUPPY?
When it comes to immigration polls, the Brookings Institution’s and Wall Street Journal’s are two of the more honest ones. California’s Field Poll asks respondents if they support “having federal immigration agents round up, detain and deport immigrants found to be living here illegally”; or if they would support a (nonexistent) proposal to “[c]reate a program that would allow illegal immigrants who have been living in the U.S. for a number of years an opportunity to stay in this country and apply for citizenship if they have a job, learned English and paid back taxes.”31
There’s no “program” for allowing illegals an “opportunity” to stay and pay “back taxes.” The plan is to legalize illegal aliens immediately, without regard to how long they’ve been here, much less whether they have a job, speak English, or will ever pay one penny in taxes.
Nonetheless, more poll respondents—46 percent—favored “having federal immigration agents round up, detain and deport immigrants found to be living here illegally” than were opposed to that policy—43 percent.
Polls that neglect to stack the deck with lies on both sides of the equation never come out so well for mass-immigration advocates. The pro-amnesty technology website TechCrunch, for example, forgot to ask about the nonexistent hurdles for illegal immigrants, and asked only about the nonexistent proposal to deport 11 million people. The question polled was: “Do you support or oppose deporting the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S.?” Again: No politician has proposed any program to deport 11 million illegal aliens. So the TechCrunch poll was biased, but only by half. Still, a majority of respondents, 53.4 percent, supported mass deportation, compared with 42 percent opposed. Among Republicans, 74.1 percent chose the deport-11-million option, with only 22.3 percent opposed.
And that’s what Americans say after years of relentless media propaganda. Where was the word “amnesty” in the TechCrunch poll? That’s what we’re talking about, not some imaginary plan to round up illegals and deport them.
With immigration polls, there’s never a “no” button. The only question is: Do you want more immigration, or do you want a lot more immigration? There’s no place to write in: “How about none?” The people feverishly hiding the truth from the public are perfectly aware that they are completely transforming this country. They cheer the end of America.
* The GOP senators who voted for Rubio’s legalization-first immigration bill: Lamar Alexander (Tennessee), Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire), Jeffrey Chiesa (New Jersey), Susan Collins (Maine), Bob Corker (Tennessee), Jeff Flake (Arizona), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Dean Heller (Nevada), John Hoeven (North Dakota), Mark Kirk (Illinois), John McCain (Arizona), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Marco Rubio (Florida).
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THE LIE: THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS AMERICA
AMERICANS SEEM TO BE UNDER THE MISIMPRESSION THEY DON’T HAVE A country at all, but rather live in something like the international waiting room at JFK Airport. America is not a “nation of immigrants,” it is not an “idea,” it was never “diverse,” and “diversity” is a catastrophe.
If America were an “idea,” every country on earth could be America. Electricity is an idea. The airplane is an idea. Washing with soap is an idea. That’s why other countries have been able to adopt those innovations. No other country on earth has been able to approximate America—except our fellow Anglo-Saxon nations.1 Why is that? We’ve been dropping enormous hints to the rest of the world for centuries. America is not a mere landmass—otherwise, the Indians would have written the Declaration of Independence and put a man on the moon. Far from discovering America, Indians didn’t even detect America. There was no America until the British and Dutch arrived. They were not “immigrants” because there was no established society for them to move to. Without the white settlers, what is known as “America” would still be an unnamed continent full of migratory tribes chasing the rear end of a buffalo every time their stomachs growled.
AMERICA’S CRIME OF NON-DIVERSITY
At a swearing-in ceremony for new immigrants in the summer of 2014, the Harvard-educated First Lady Michelle Obama said: “It’s amazing that just a few feet from here where I’m standing are the signatures of the fifty-six Founders who put their names on a Declaration that changed the course of history. And like the fifty of you, none of them were born American—they became American.” That’s if you don’t count the forty-eight of fifty-six who were born in America. The other eight—like the rest of them—were either British or Dut
ch. Fifty-five were Protestant. Only one was Catholic. There’s a reason King George called the American Revolution “a Presbyterian war.”2
The single document in Nexis’s news archives to report the First Lady’s jaw-droppingly ignorant remark about the signers of America’s Declaration of Independence did so in order to proclaim her “correct.” Yes, Snopes.com said Mrs. Obama was “correct” in the sense that “the Founding Fathers were not born into a fully formed and established America with its own history, customs, culture, and values, as modern American children are.”3
That’s if you don’t count the 85 percent of the Declaration’s signers who were born into a fully formed and established America, with its own history, customs, culture, and values. The American colonies had been around for about 150 years at that point. Not only the signers of the Declaration, but the first seventeen presidents, were all born in one of the original thirteen colonies. The eighteenth was Ulysses Grant, who was born in Ohio.
The vast majority of U.S. presidents were exclusively of British or Dutch descent. There has not been a single one without at least some British ancestry. Not one. The few recent presidents with exotic ethnicities were: Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, who were part French—in addition to British and Dutch; Herbert Hoover, who was Swiss and German—in addition to British; Dwight Eisenhower, who was German and Swiss—in addition to British; Richard Nixon, who was part German—in addition to British; George H. W. and W. Bush, who are also part German—in addition to British and Dutch; and Barack Obama, who is part Kenyan—in addition to British.
No Swedes, no Finns, no Ukrainians, and certainly no Salvadorans or Chinese. The entire British Isles, plus the Netherlands, covers a geographic area smaller than Japan.4 If 83 percent of American presidents had been exclusively Japanese and 100 percent were at least part Japanese, would we talk about America being a “nation of immigrants”? Every single president, except Kennedy, was a Protestant. (Recent Democratic presidents were, of course, atheists, but all except JFK professed to be Protestants.) Argentina has had a president who was of 100 percent Syrian ethnicity (Carlos Saúl Menem). The prime minister of Belgium was Italian (Elio Di Rupo). Peru has had a Japanese president (Alberto Fujimori). Britain had a Jewish prime minister, all of whose grandparents were born in Italy (Benjamin Disraeli). No one calls these countries “nations of immigrants.” America has never had a president who wasn’t, at least in part, of British ancestry, but people still babble that we’re a nation of immigrants.