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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 16, 2005 / 7 Iyar, 5765

A Quick Fix — Do Your Own Dishes

By Victor Davis Hanson


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Open borders are a disaster. They undermine respect for the law, imperil homeland security, allow Mexico to export its apparently unwanted people rather than embrace much-needed economic reform, and preclude unionization by poorer, entry-level American workers.

One proposed solution, a new guest-worker program, ignores why the old bracero program was scraped decades ago, when laborers resented the idea that they were good enough to work for, but not to live among, Americans. The proposed program also lacks enforcement provisions to deal with the millions of aliens who will not participate in the program but still try to cross the border.

There is a reasonable approach to the United States' immigration problem, but it would require concessions all around.

The right would have to quit calling reformers "nativists" and "protectionists" and accept strict employer fines for hiring undocumented aliens. These conservatives should then expect to pay more for unskilled labor and see it organized and unionized. They'd also need to accept a legitimate, foolproof national identity card, and grant a one-time amnesty — not the periodic pardons of the past — for the millions of Mexicans who have lived in the United States for at least five years.

For its part, the left would have to jettison the tired "racist" slurs and accept that a nation has the right to secure and patrol its own borders. Liberals should concede that Mexican illegal immigrants do not have greater rights to entry than legal emigrants from the Punjab, the Philippines or South Korea who queue up for years waiting for proper documentation.

Latino immigrants must also make concessions. We are a melting pot, not a salad bowl — a multiracial not a multicultural nation. So those who come north should expect, as do those from Asia, to learn quickly to speak and read English, forgo the romance of la Raza ("the Race") and welcome their own integration, assimilation and intermarriage into the American body politic.

Finally, we citizens who are in the middle must restore our lost work ethic and accept that our children are better off working in the yard than at the mall, remembering that not long ago our beds were made, our concrete poured and our food cooked without imported cheap labor from Mexico.

Let us also accept that there is something morally wrong in inviting thousands of youths from central Mexico — without legality, English or education — to work cheaply in permanently unskilled jobs until they age and tire, only to be cast by employers onto the near bankrupt entitlement industry, while we invite a new cohort of healthier and younger workers in to replace them.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Comment by clicking here.


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