The Tea Party and its junior partner, the Republican Party, is determined to drive itself to irrelevance in National Elections. By dooming the Immigration Reform Bill, Republicans will be seen as immigrant haters. With 2000 Latinos turning 18 every day and an expanding Asian population, a shrewd Democratic candidate can again get almost 80% of the vote of those two groups. The Republican Party is also doing a good job of alienating potential donors in Silicon Valley, where businesses desperately need H-1B reform to fill their job openings. Not only is it wrong on its merits, this is the dumbest strategic political move I have ever seen.
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Jeff Bezos’ birth parents were a 17-year-old high school sophomore and a 19-year-old professional unicycle performer with the occasional circus gig. His father has never met his multi-billionaire son, the founder of Amazon who is now buying The Washington Post personally. Until a few months ago, he did not even know his son’s name. Jeff’s mother remarried in Albuquerque, New Mexico, then moved to Miami with her second husband, Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who became a successful Exxon executive. Jeff graduated valedictorian of his high school class and went on to Princeton. After a few years working on Wall Street he founded Amazon.com in 1994. A variation on the American Dream.
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Yeti Coolers, producer of one of the most mundane products I can think of, has been showing phenomenal growth by making a solid, premium product. Their cooler sales have jumped from zero to $100 million in a just few years. Bass Pro Shops can’t keep enough in stock to meet demand. Yeti has shown that a superior product, priced intelligently and marketed well can skyrocket in a “me too” market.
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Again, in 2013, we see a baseball team with mediocre talent, but players with great character and tenacity, win the World Series. Of course, you also need a hot bullpen, too. The Boston Red Sox, winner of 69 games last season when they had statistically better players, shows talent and money do not always (or even usually) prevail in baseball. The Detroit Tigers had significantly more talent with four superstars and lost. Same for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Kudos also to Tim McCarver and Joe Buck, who did a wonderful job on the TV broadcast. McCarver, who played catcher in four different decades, was particularly good in making prescient comments that stayed ahead of the action. At the age of 72, doing his twentyfourth World Series, McCarver was never better. I’ll miss him in retirement.
Question: Should the United States be more immigrant friendly?
Lloyd Graff is Owner and Chief Space Filler at Today’s Machining World and Graff-Pinkert & Co.
26 Comments
So, should we automatically reward felons and law breakers for coming into our country illegally?
Is that what you are suggesting?
Just so we can get their vote in the Republican party?
Just so we can put them to work here legally and draw Social Security and tax dollars from them?
Reagan gave them Amnesty once. Should we do it again?
If so, what will say to my Great-Grand Father and Grand Father who came to this country legally and did it the proper way and built businesses and made a name for themselves and employed many people?
Will you spit in their face?
I assume yes.
America was founded as a melting pot that offered opportunity. We need immigrants to be more America friendly. They need to come here and melt in and become productive as my Grandparents did, not try to make us into the place they arrived from, if it was so great why did they leave, my guess is so they could sell their vote.
You know Lloyd sometimes your ignorance is overwhelming. “The tea party and it’s junior partner, the republican party, is determind to drive itself to irrelevence in the National elections”….so what? You of all people should be happy about that being a card carrying progressive/socialist lib-turd!
I suppose after reading your asinine statement that you still believe that Obama didn’t lie to get his “signature legislation” passed too…correct?
The tea party stands for our federal elected officials adhereing to their Constitutionally given (mandated) enumerated powers instead of Obama and members of both parties thumbing their collective noses at it!
This nonsense about opening the flood gates and allowing millions of ready made lib-turd voters into the country to insure democrat party rule for another decade is NOT SMART OR NECESSARY…..unless of course you think quadrupling this countries already too high social welfare spending!
We don’t need amnesty either and should make sure people are coming in the “old fashioned way”….LEGALLY!
When will you liberals understand what you and your party are doing and have done to this countries fiscal and financial health with your Keynesian idiocy? How many more “QE’s” do you think our finacial systems can absorb before we end up like Bolivia, Venezula or Germany after the WW2?
Anyway…your opening statement speaks for itself and to the fact that you’re ignorant of the current plight of this country and the fact that we are chaining our next 4 to 5 generations to unending tax slavery!! Explain that to your great grand kids when the time comes and they’re complaining about their terrible lives of poverty because the government is stealing them blind!
By the way…If we did force our elected officials and their appointee’s to obey the document they all took an oath to defend and obey it would SOLVE most of our current fiscal/financial problems! Imagine that….if they would merely obey their enumerated powers that alone would fix most of our current problems!
Obama and his Alinsky-ite/Chicago mob friends are not geniuses but the men who wrote our founding documents WERE…comparing those men to people like Obama is like comparing Einstein (s) to an amoeba!
Jeff, you capable of making an argument without tossing around ridiculous insults? Because you come off as quite rude. I didn’t see Lloyd making any personal attacks or calling someone a turd. Liberal isn’t a dirty word like you think it is, and progressives and liberals are not the same thing. Turn off Hannity for a few minutes and do some actual research into opposing worldviews. You might learn something and expose us all to less vitriolic nonsense that is full of fire and free of substance.
Josh,
Perhaps you can make some counter points instead of simply attacking the character of others. People that love this country are damn mad to see what is happening to it, while people like you do nothing but nit pick manners.
Maybe it’s time for rude because talking with liberals certainly hasn’t done ANY GOOD Josh. I am sick to death of these fools (like you and Lloyd) who switch rational thought based in reality with how THEY FEEL with all their meaningless ribbons hanging on them from head to toe as they spend this country into oblivion with one social welfare giveaway program after another!
Like the comments above, what part of “illegal” do people not understand? I imagine the vast majority of us either came here from another country, or had parents or grandparents from elsewhere. Immigrant friendly? From http://www.ellisisland.org: “Despite the island’s reputation as an “Island of Tears”, the vast majority of immigrants were treated courteously and respectfully, and were free to begin their new lives in America after only a few short hours on Ellis Island. Only two percent of the arriving immigrants were excluded from entry. The two main reasons why an immigrant would be excluded were if a doctor diagnosed that the immigrant had a contagious disease that would endanger the public health or if a legal inspector thought the immigrant was likely to become a public charge or an illegal contract laborer.” What has changed?
Have the borders been closed? Are we no longer accepting legal immigration? This is news to me. Maybe we should just cancel every law.
Lloyd,
I am assuming you wrote this starting line with the intent of being incendiary. What part of ILLEGAL ALIEN do you not understand? My familes came here LEGALLY through Ellis Island before WWI. Took huge pride in becoming AMERICANS. There greatest achievements were learning to speak English and building farms and businesses in Iowa. Amnesty is a joke, an attempt by socialists to permanently eliminate the Constitution and concervative values that built this country and water us down to a welfare state. I realize this is what they want, but at 22 million more who do nothing but breed and won’t become Americans and that is what you will have. The problem will be that there is no longer enough of us to pay for them. Of course you will be more than happy to have 85% of your hard earning stolen to support them. We need immigrants, surely, college educated values to society who speak English and want to become Americans. No more illegal aliens who wave their flags and burn ours on our soil, no more anchor babies, no more watering down of the American culture to make it look like the thrid or fourth world pit you crawled out of. Socialism reduces people to servants and slaves of the state, conservatism empowers people to become more and expects more and better from people. Try being an illegal alien in Mexico, no free food, medical care, housing, signs and text and phones in English there buddy, just a quick trip to hard labor and hard prison, maybe death.
As a legal immigrant to this country and having gone through the process of obtaining legal entrance, filing the endless paperwork and background checks, interviews and paying fees I can tell you that there is nothing that erks me more than people crossing the border without legal permission and demanding that we throw our sovereignty away and making them citizens. There is no other country that tolerates this BS. I am sick and tired of Liberals and some ” conservatives” stating that those who demand people follow the law of the land are zenophobic racists. I will welcome anyone to this country that obeys the Laws including gaining legal entrance to the USA, is properly vetted,including has no criminal record, is self supporting and wants to become an American citizen including taking on our language and culture. I will not welcome those who disregard our sovereignty by crossing illegally, trespassing on American soil, no matter what their excuse. The way the status quo stands at this time, there are 2 classes of residents in this county. Those that are here illegally and are immune to procecution and those that are citizens and legal Residents that are subject to all the laws and punishment that the illegals are protected from. This problem has developed because businessess,large and small are using illegals for their cheap labour and Politicians are using them to buy their votes. If you trully believe that handing out citizenship like food stamps like food stamps and cell phones will be payed back by Rebulican votes, thereby saving the Party, you are dellusional. Only the Liberals will benefit from this. You do not have to look too far to predict how this country is going to function in 50 years from this unchecked illegal invasion.
We need this immigration bill like a fish needs a bicycle!
The changes we need to immigration is enforcement of our current laws, not diluting them to meet the needs of the millions flooding across our borders in an attempt to escape poverty. The push to grant amnesty to the millions here illegally is a political power play, buying votes as fast as they can to further the slide into socialism.
We are spending more money every year on ENTITLEMENTS alone than we take in tax revenues and are currently borrowing every dollar that we spend operating our government and military. Think about that for a minute. Every dollar paid to operate government offices, every dollar spent on National Defense we are borrowing, and we are discussing allowing about 20 million more people to be eligible for welfare, unemployment and subsidized healthcare. In the past two years there have been more people enrolled in Disability programs than there have been new jobs created. Half our population receives some form of Government subsidy.
This Administration needs to recognize & obey the Constitution and stop buying votes.
As an American, don’t we have a duty to stop it?
Lloyd, your irrelevant ignorance and political baiting is legendary. I don’t need to listen to your drivel any longer, if anything, you have just made the dumbest political move possible by alienating some of your customers or potential customers. I will finish by unsubscribing from your rambling, pointless rag.
Right behind you.
Robert, thank you for becoming an American! My neighbors and a large group of their friends are all LEGAL Mexican/American immigrants. They are madder the heck about the illegals. They all state how hard they worked to become Americans and how angry they are at those who sneak in and get a free ride.
Jeff Scott, I have checked my wallet and I am not carrying a Socialist,Progressive,lib-turd card, but would definitely like to have one to hand out. Will have to try Kinko’s.
Lloyd I have a fairly good graphics department and I would love to make you one out of stainless steel. Please get me a mailing address and allow for several weeks processing (our pro bono work has to slip in between making a living). I think it would be great for you to show your potential customers.
This has been a rather fun blogg for a dreary rainy afternoon.
Keep up the lively posting.
Create a new class of Green Card. Call It a White Card but first you have to register with the Probation office and check in monthly as you are on probation and paying for probation. Then mandate they get “Cadalac” health insurance without any substidy the probation officer can check for this monthly. Want a Drivers License fine you must show the probation officer proof of insurance Monthly. If you violate probation you get a 2nd degree Felony for “Economic Sabotoge” and immediatly deported.
Lloyd,
It stuns we that people like youself beleive that it is ok for someone to break the law and then get rewarded by receiving a free pass to citizenship. This would not happen in any other country, in the middle east if you are caught stealing they cut off your hand.
The thing most people fail to look at with amnesty for illegals, is once the illegals have become American citizens employeers are going to have to pay them a competitive wage. The once illegal immigrant will have to be place on the company payroll. The employeer will lay off the new citizen when another illegal comes to him seeking a job. If an employeer has hired illegals once he will hire them again. Now this forces the new citizen to be turst back into the welfare state.
Simply put!
SECURE THE BORDERS FIRST.
Then we can work on the problem of the illegals.
Like enforcing current LAW.
But no way its to much fun for our Government to bloviate this to oblivion.
Unfortunately it will be our oblivion.
So – The numbers of illegal immigrants are down. The Numbers of illegals being arested and deported are up. The new bill going to the House sets 13 years as a waiting period, taxes and fines to be paid and a background check to be passed, and doubles the number of Border Patrol agents. So what, exactly is the Tea Party complaining about? Where is the “free ride?”
Interesting comments all. Having a father who is a first immigrant German and has also taken years to pass the laws to legally to become a citizen of the United States, believes you don’t understand why America is all about and why it is the greatest nation in the world in the eyes of many people in the world. Seems to me you should understand that and because of time tested rules, we should not just throw them away, baby, bathwater and all! We are doing that with health care, how’s that going by the way. Seems the democrates are hell bent on changing everything they can and while the changes are blowing up everything as we know it, they just keep introducing havoc with everything they touch! This being said, the democrats have never produced a budget, the democrats have never thought through health care, the democrats have not offered a solution to immigration, yet alls they do is complain it is either Bush’s fault, or it’s the republicans. They only criticize, they offer no solutions, and the media and radical left just name calls with no solution. CRAZY, isn’t it!
I have a simple solution, stop subsidizing sitting on one’s behind! Why are 45 million people not looking for work and are unemployed Lloyd? On top of this, add about 8% unemployment! So you think we should just keep printing food stamps and bring in labor from Mexico, YOUR JOKING CORRECT?
Please criticize me and if you would, tell me why I am wrong. Thank you!
America needs no more immigrants, legal or illegal. We need to re-train our existing population of unemployed, legal American citizens into a productive, educated and contributive work force. We need to give Americans a chance to be the craftspeople that they are and pay a living wage to them. The immigrant situation that’s been fostered for so long, is a cancerous growth upon this great nation that needs to be eliminated immediately.
The one’s who are here illegally are CRIMINALS and need to be treated as such, along with any illegal offspring they may have conceived while in this country illegally.
When I read Lloyd’s blogs (and I’ve read them all for the past five years) I don’t feel he’s especially biased politically on one side or the other. For just about every liberal opinion he has put out on this site I could dig out a conservative one. So few of his blogs even address politics. Sad that people are willing to throw away his insight because of a difference of opinion. It’s symptomatic of America now though – you can’t have a dialog or put an idea out there without people from the opposite side stooping to name calling and plain old nastiness.
Quite right Emily,
Pejorative name-calling is no substitute for dealing with the issues.
Play the ball not the player!
An illegal alien is illegal. Period. Letting them in with amnesty is a crying shame to those in the lengthy process of coming here legally.
You have to be a liberal Democrat to not understand this. Looking the other way in order to siphon votes is despicable.