WHY IS ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FAIR?

 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN IMMIGRATION

When liberals make the case for illegal immigration, they never talk about murderous MS-13 gang members, drunken drivers who kill innocent people at the side of the highway, career criminals who have been deported multiple times, and so on. Instead, they focus on the high school valedictorian whose presence may, indeed, be a net benefit to the country. But is that the end of the story?

A frequent correspondent with strong views on illegal immigration comments on Nancy Pelosi’s absurd House “filibuster.”

ABC reports:

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi set a record on the House floor Wednesday – speaking from morning until early evening on immigration and reading letters from Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients for more than seven hours – in the longest continuous speech in the House since at least 1909.

Heh. For anyone who had to be there — and undoubtedly it was a virtually empty chamber — it must have excruciating.

But here’s the part that got me:

Pelosi read another letter from Jirayut New Latthivongskorn who said his parents brought him to the U.S. from Thailand when he was nine years old. Pelosi said he worked 30 hours a week at his family’s restaurant while he was in high school and still graduated with a 4.3 grade point average. He went to the University of California – Berkeley but had to deny [sic] a scholarship that would have covered most of his tuition because of his immigration status.

The DACA program was established in 2012 just a month after Latthivongskorn graduated from college with degrees in molecular and cellular biology, Pelosi said. In 2014 he began medical school at the University of California San Francisco where he volunteers at a homeless clinic and started a network for Dreamers pursuing jobs in health care.

This is exactly the kind of story the left wants to pretend is typical. Our correspondent continues:

Well, great. But why is it…fair? Why isn’t it a gross injustice to actual American citizens, not to mention legal immigrants? American taxpayers are subsidizing the professional education of an illegal alien. And he had to “deny” a nearly full tuition scholarship, a subsidy on top of a subsidy, “because of his immigration status”! Oh, the humanity! But boo-effing-hoo! The very fact that he was there, at arguably the premier public university in the country and a global leader in higher education, subsidized no less, MEANS that he took the place of an American! He had to. UC Berkeley does not have unlimited capacity, nor open admissions. In fact, it is highly selective, admitting only 18% of applicants. No doubt he is well qualified. So what? Berkeley has thousands of well qualified applicants. But by definition he took the place of at least one equally qualified American.

How is that fair?

Then we have medical school. This is a worse travesty. UCSF is the number 2 ranked medical school in the U.S. They admit only 4% of applicants for a class size of 165. Virtually all applicants are well qualified, so, again, by definition, this illegal immigrant must have taken the place of a legal American —- well over 4,000 applicants were rejected!

Again: how is this fair?….leaving aside the especially low tuition — another subsidy — at UCSF Medical School.

And we’re never given the complete picture on these sob stories. Thailand? Is Thailand a hellhole? Not based on its being an extraordinary tourist destination. Medical schools? Thailand leads in high quality medical tourism! Poverty stricken? Hardly. With a per capita GDP of about $16,000 Thailand is solidly middle class in global terms. That’s comparable to much of eastern Europe, far above its neighbors in southeast Asia (except Singapore), above China, above Brazil and 2½ times India!

So why are we allowing illegal immigrants, obvious visa over-stayers, economic migrants, not refugees, to just blithely flout our democratically enacted immigration and labor law? Maybe it’s the need for great ethnic food…

As everyone knows, there is an acute shortage all over California, but especially in the Bay Area, of Thai restaurants; it’s one of the first things you notice. Where are the Thai restaurants?

So Nancy asks: “Will America be a stronger country if we deport him and others like him?” I don’t know, but I do know that we’d be a fairer country if American citizens weren’t displaced by illegal immigrants with absolutely no claim at all on our resources or the generosity, if that’s the word, of our taxpayers and publicly supported institutions. America first!

Several things are going on here. The first is that the Democrats have absolutely no interest in the rule of law. The fact that our laws are being flouted means absolutely nothing to them, as they freely admit. Indeed, Democrats like Nancy Pelosi openly advocate law-breaking–not for some elevated principle, but for personal advancement.

Second, being an American means nothing to Democrats. To normal people, it is blindingly obvious that the purpose of the U.S. government is to serve the interests of the American people, not citizens of some other country. But the Democratic Party, as personified by Nancy Pelosi, refuses to acknowledge this basic principle. No wonder immigration is a winning issue for the GOP!

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/02/why-is-illegal-immigration-fair.php