News-Record.com

"Have you noticed that almost everyone who busts their rear ends to get to this country, either legally or illegally, wants to change it to the exact thing they left -- even to the language of their country?"

No, I didn't notice. In fact, the few legal immigrants I know personally generally seem to embrace American culture. Certainly though, they do bring a little touch of home, like a crazy Belgian accent, silly pronunciations of the basic elements, odd rules of etiquette, or an affinity for cooking sherry.

"We should ask our presidential candidates why, when applying for a job, we are asked to take a drug test and required to stay drug-free but applying for welfare we are not. You won't hear the liberal media ask that question, I bet."

Why should we?

Anyway, welfare seems to be in pretty good shape currently, although it could use a little more tweaking to help single parents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/washington/21welfare.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5090&en=3bd82819db517ec2&ex=1313812800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/welfarereformat10.cfm

Two sources that tend to lay on opposite ends of the political spectrum for you.

Sign me: Not a big welfare fan.

I'm generically OK with some Unemployment Insurance, especially for the larger companies that frankly can afford it - but have see that bankrupt a couple smaller employers, especially construction guys who must pay higher rates AFETER they had to let folks go because there was no work. I personally have no Unemployment Insurance.

... but I'm no welfare fan; believing it to be counter-productive.

"Have you noticed that almost everyone who busts their rear ends to get to this country, either legally or illegally, wants to change it to the exact thing they left -- even to the language of their country?"

And who can blame them? They are filling a cultural void. Beginning some forty years ago ---

" … America lost its grasp of its own historic character, and embraced 'diversity' as a national goal. In the name of equality and nondiscrimination, we invited mass immigration from every part of the globe, and made no demands on the newcomers to become Americans. In fact, we gave up our American core, adopted multiculturalism and declared all cultures equal. We invited the new groups to celebrate themselves, while we cravenly permitted libelous denigration of our own past. Like fools, we prated that diversity is our strength, when common sense and all of history tell us that strength comes from unity." (impolitic words from blogger Fred Gielow of "You Don't Say")

Ken usually writes good letters but this one has me confused. He complains about the habits of immigrants and the fact that many won't learn English, the latter with which I agree.

Then he jumps into drug testing for welfare recipients, that's where I get confused. Although I don't agree with handing out welfare to illegals, most welfare recipients are home grown.

Apparently drug testing of welfare recipients isn't allowed, it violates the 4th amendment of unreasonable search and seizure according to our good friends at the ACLU.

http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/testing/10757res20030415.html

Doesn't seem to make sense. If you take welfare, you are agreeing to abide by the conditions of the contract. Staying off illegal drugs should be one of the conditions.

Because the "old melting pot " created Americans of one mind mostly.
Now with the new found "diversity", politicans can play one group against another when pandering for their votes.

In reference to the unrelated welfare part.

To answer rahrah's question of "Why should we?"

I'll pose another question. Can you explain why it is right for your "guvmint" to: rob a person who works and is required to be drug tested to keep that employment. Then the stolen money is given to welfare recipients who are not required to be drug tested?

Mr. Dan,

"Doesn't seem to make sense. If you take welfare, you are agreeing to abide by the conditions of the contract. Staying off illegal drugs should be one of the conditions"

I agree. While we're at it, we should test for traces of nicotine, alcohol, Diet Coke and all kinds of non-essential junk.

If I'm giving you MY hard-earned tax dollar so that you can live, that's one thing. However, ain't nobody said that I ought to be payin' for all this other crap.

Dan,

The reason why drug testing of welfare recipients violates the fourth amendment is because it is the government that is doing it, not private employers. As you may know, the constitution applies only to the federal government. Under the principles of incorporation found in the 14th amendment, most (but not all!) constitutional amendments had been applied to the states as well. However, when it is not a governmental actor who is involved, the constitutional prohibitions are irrelevant. This is why, Congress, in exercise of its commerce and police powers has promulgated lots and lots of statutes that do apply to private conduct. To give you an example: racial discrimination by governmental actors is constitutionally prohibited. However, racial discrimination by private employees is constitutional, but illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

As for the ranting about the "cultural void" and dangers of diversity, I would like to refer the poster to review the agenda of the "nativist" party. You can find a good primer on the issue in a book called "Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925" by J Higham. After all, the nativists have been decrying the imminent demise of "American" society for over a 150 years. First it was the Irish, the Chinese, the Jews, etc. Now it is the Latinos. Yet, again and again they were proven completely wrong. I harbor few doubts that the history will repeat itself.

"The reason why drug testing of welfare recipients violates the fourth amendment is because it is the government that is doing it, not private employers."

Ok CT, then tell me how the govt. can mandate that private employers perform drug testing for their employees?

Dan,

The fourth amendment does not prohibit all searches only unreasonable ones. As long as the government can demonstrate a purpose for a drug test, and the courts deem that purpose to be rationally related to the drug testing, the law would pass constitutional muster. This is a general law of constitutional interpretation, although the level of scrutiny - i.e. how closely the purpose of the professed law/regulation is related to the potentially constitutionally-infringing act/omission - varies depending on the constitutional provision in question. My guess is that drug testing for both government employees and private contractors of the government is ok as long as those employees are involved in matters concerning public safety and national security. I hope that answers your question. For more information on the fourth amendment, you may want to read up professor LaFave's treatise on Search and Seizure.

Here's an up to date hat-tip to C.T. to say thanks for the post in the illegal alien conversation from last week. I'll respond soon.

Roger

~

I'm with ya, Earnestine. "... we should test for traces of nicotine, alcohol, Diet Coke and all kinds of non-essential junk."

Furthermore ... wait a minute ... did you say 'Diet Coke'? DIET COKE?? Avez vous lost your mind, Earnestine? I gotta have my Diet Coke!

Get a grip, gal! Diet Coke is an ALL AMERICAN NECESSITY! Next , you'll want to test for Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Baseball!

Bet you're from Russia, Earnestine! Am I right, or am I right?

~

Diet Sodas are linked to obesity even more than regular sodas, so be careful Jack.

“Staying off illegal drugs should be one of the conditions”.

Ahhh ... the old drug argument. I wish someone would provide reasoned rationale for the word “illegal”. As my old pal Jack has said .. "DIET COKE" ... yikes.

In a stroke of Genius, Nixon set up the schedules so one can move a given chemical on or off a schedule, pretty much at will, and consequently raise or lower the penalty.

Frankly I consider the WAR ON DRUGS as stupid as both the WAR ON POVERTY and the WAR ON TERRORISM .. all rhetorical junk that has sucked up America's fools.

the WAR ON DRUGS: http://www.csdp.org/

“… our good friends at the ACLU.”

I love the sarcasm. From my little seat, the ACLU seems to be a REALLY conservative organization – consistently wanting the Government OUT of people’s lives – but because [for whatever reason] they tend to take up causes that rub against the de facto Liberals that pose as faux Conservatives, the ACLU continuously takes this kink of hit.

“ … tell me how the govt. can mandate that private employers perform drug testing for their employees”?

I was not aware that was happening, except for g-man jobs (I had to pass one before I went to work for the school system) or for private jobs working specific g-man contracts. Hopefully completing thermo-nuclear calculations for the Savannah River Site would qualify.

Critical Thinker: "As for the ranting about the "cultural void" and dangers of diversity . . . nativists have been decrying the imminent demise of 'American' society for over a 150 years. First it was the Irish, the Chinese, the Jews, etc. Now it is the Latinos. Yet, again and again they were proven completely wrong. I harbor few doubts that the history will repeat itself."

An ignorant statement, I take some pleasure in exposing.

For example, if the U. S. --- California in particular --- was not overwhelmed by Chinese immigration in the late nineteenth century, it is not because those who resisted massive immigration from China in the late 19th century were "proven completely wrong."

Exactly the opposite

It's because the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 slowed Chinese immigration to California to a trickle, allowing Chinese immigrants to assimilate and social tensions caused by rapid demographic change to dissipate.

Similar arguments could be made regarding the Great Wave immigration from eastern Europe --- 1880-1925, which was curtailed by restrictive legislation in the twenties.

Immigration slowed to a trickle for the next 50 years allowing processes of assimilation --- the Melting Pot --- to work.

I will say this, Mr. Critical Thinker: You show exceedingly good judgement in posting anonymously. If I knew as little of what I wrote as you, I would be just as eager to hide behind a pseudonym.

"From my little seat, the ACLU seems to be a REALLY conservative organization.."

You got it totally JDR, most conservatives defend the rights of NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, as did the ACLU.

Most conservatives want the word Christmas and Easter banned from public schools, hence we now have 'Winter' and 'Spring' breaks.

Just a little sarcasm there.

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"I was not aware that was happening, except for g-man jobs (I had to pass one before I went to work for the school system) or for private jobs working specific g-man contracts."

The Feds mandate drug and alcohol testing for truck drivers, pilots, railroad engineers and other transportation workers. They are not necessarily contractors of the govt., in fact your local truck driver working for Billy Bob's Transport must be drug and alcohol tested by Federal law.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing, hell I don't want my next Delta pilot to be strung out on cocaine. My question was how the Feds can mandate this "search and seizure (of urine)" of employees of private companies, not Federal employees. Critical thinker answered the question appropriately. Perhaps he/she is a lawyer.

First off, btw - that particular case was not a sex case - it was murder. Why are you not arguing against the ACLU for defending murderers?

Second - I'm not a Lawyer but my understanding is the ACLU came in to defend the right of folks against two things: The first was the right to look at a web site and not then be automatically associated as agreeing with the site's content.

Look at a naked picture on the web .. a boy who happens to be 15 and you know it, and you are then legally a pedophile? Maybe you're just very immature.

Look at a naked picture on the web .. a boy who happens to be 15 but you don't know it, and you are then legally a pedophile. Maybe you're just a faggot.

Look at a naked picture on the web .. a girl who happens to be 15 and you know it, and you are then legally a pedophile? Maybe you're just a 16 year old horn toad.

Look at a naked picture on the web .. a girl who happens to be 15 but you don't know it, and you are then legally a pedophile? Maybe you're just a healthly 22 year old.

It's the slippery slope argument.

==

The second issue was defending the right of folks to maintain a list without g-man automatically having the right of access to that list. That one's plain as day a conservative issue; ask the KKK or the John Birch Society.

I understand how all the above can be casually interpreted as defending the right of a grown man to have sex with a boy .. but that seems a very shallow examination.

==

As for wanting the word Christmas and Easter banned from public schools .. I thought Jesus told us to pray in private? I argue a conservative might object to the ACLU getting involved in the renaming of those holidays, but a conservative would object to the g-man declaring holidays around his personal space. Maybe since a holiday is declared for Christmas and Easter - since you are in effect getting paid to celebrate .. they should be checking on you to make sure you actually pray .. not just a token 60 minutes either - they are paying you for 8 to16 hours, bud. Same with Memorial Day dude - at 8 am you'd better be in that parade waving a big ass flag; no bar-b-q until after 5pm.

************************************

As for Fed' mandated drug and alcohol testing for truck drivers, pilots, railroad engineers and other transportation workers .. public safety .. but again it may be fair to argue if you smoke pot you will crash the truck / train / plane .. and won't get hired back. That's the conservative "pull yourself up by the bootstraps man" way to do things.

Here's an interesting point though - regularly smoke a good joint on Friday nights and you'll get eventually get busted by a pee test. Regularly blow your paycheck on Friday night crack parties and on Monday you'll PASS that pee test.

As I said, just a little sarcasm there. The kids enjoy 'winter' break.

"Regularly blow your paycheck on Friday night crack parties"

Crack isn't something you use leisurely on a given night of the week, it's highly addictive and you start using it more often. Hence the busted pee test.

I agree with you on pot. Frankly I don't care if someone uses pot while not at work or driving. The problem is when they fail a pee test you don't know this, they could be using at work as well. I tried the stuff once but didn't inhale.

I just remembered a case in Phila about 10 years ago.

There was an old guy who had inherited a bunch of money and was so sexually repressed he'd become weird to the point he liked to get off by wrapping his lips around ... turds.

Really.

He'd hire young men to come into his upscale apartment to sit on a special contraption and take a crap into his mouth.

That may be disgusting to most, but is it pedophilic - or even evil?

Tom,

Generally I ignore personal attacks,but here I will make an exception. By the way, in my post on ravings, I referred to the person you were quoting, not you personally. So, I don't consider it a personal attack.

Turning to the merits of your argument, I think it is flawed. There is absolutely no evidence that Chinese Exclusion Act helped assimilated the Chinese. The act was a blatantly racist law that barred existing ethnic-Chinese legal residents from citizenship, required the Chinese who left the U.S. to seek permission for reentry and required each Chinese person in America to obtain a certificate of residence or face deportation, regardless of their legal status. This is how the Library of Congress characterizes the effect of the Act:

"For all practical purposes, the Exclusion Act, along with the restrictions that followed it, froze the Chinese community in place in 1882, and prevented it from growing and assimilating into U.S. society as European immigrant groups did. Later, the 1924 Immigration Act would tighten the noose even further, excluding all classes of Chinese immigrants and extending restrictions to other Asian immigrant groups. Until these restrictions were relaxed in the middle of the twentieth century, Chinese immigrants were forced to live a life apart, and to build a society in which they could survive on their own."

This is exactly the opposite of assimilation and acculturation that you are talking about. The act has been repealed and has been universally condemned as an example of race-based immigration politics. In fact, there is a strong possibility that if passed today, the act would be declared unconstitutional in violation of the 14th amendment.

I am also at a loss about how anti-Irish bloodshed and riots helped to assimilate the immigrants. Furthermore, the remnants of the isolationist policies during the early stages of 1930 kept the US from accepting hundreds of thousands if not millions of German Jews, who, as the result, perished in the Shoah.

You are right on only one point - the anti-immigrant policies did severely restrict immigration into the US. But you draw a wrong conclusion from this point, namely that restrictive immigration allowed "the melting pot to work." No, what allowed the melting pot to work was the combination of the civil rights movement, benefiting not only African Americans but all minorities, increased emphasis on diversity and multi-culturalism and other evils you decry as spelling the end to American civilization. You got it exactly backward!

“Chinese immigrants were forced to live a life apart, and to build a society in which they could survive on their own.”

Look on the BRIGHT side, C.T. Think of the great dishes we could buy in China Town .. and who could forget the final scene in A Christmas Story (1983)

ALSO .. if we had integrated earlier, where would all that great music have come from - the stuff the 50’s rock-a-billy’s and the Rolling Stones stole from the “wrong side of the tracks”.

Hey … maybe we should do some more segregation to inspire a new wave of jump jive’in wail.

Mr. Critical Thinker,

You have presented some good points in a respectable way. I would love to tackle them in detail, but not at this late hour.

Let me just share his one observation on immigration by a gentlemen who may have known a lot more about building a nation than do you:

Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia, discouraged building the future nation out of immigration: “It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible. ...” Immigration risked rendering our polity “a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”

You remarks are premised on the idea that whereas every other nation has a right to determine who its citizens will be --- think China, Japan, Israel, Mexico and India and their handling of immigration NOT matching their ethnocultural core populations --- but that American citizens past and present did not and do not.

And that's your mistake. The rest is details.

Tom:

I also note that America ... at least until recently .. has always been able to kick the tar - financially, morally, militarily .. out of all those countries you named.

A favorite diversity story - said to be true.

Disney World shareholders meeting - late 1980's .. A speaker says things are going very well except the hotel named "Golf Resort" never seems to be booked anywhere near capacity. A lady in the back says she knows why .. but she is not allowed to speak because she only owns a small count of shares.

Disney World shareholders meeting - a year or two later .. A speaker again says the hotel named "Golf Resort" never seems to be booked anywhere near capacity. The same lady says she knows why .. but she is still not allowed to speak.

Disney World - a year later and the same problem. This time they let the lady speak. turn;s out she is an operator at the "Golf Resort" and typically Mom's call to make the family reservation. When the Mom's hear "Golf Resort" they hang up because the last thing they want is hubby to go golfing on the annual family vacation. The lady suggests the change the name of the resort.

Disney agrees to try it A year later - problem solved.

"I also note that America ... at least until recently .. has always been able to kick the tar - financially, morally, militarily .. out of all those countries you named."

"Until recently" -- the last few decades --- America wasn't particularly diverse.

In fact, JDR, diversity, in fact, is neither good nor bad.

One can "diversify" in an intelligent way (good) or in a thoughtless and wildly risky way (bad). We've chosen the latter path and will pay most dearly for it.

"I also note that America ... at least until recently .. has always been able to kick the tar - financially, morally, militarily .. out of all those countries you named."

"Until recently" -- the last few decades --- America wasn't particularly diverse.

In fact, JDR, diversity is neither good nor bad.

One can "diversify" in an intelligent way (good) or in a thoughtless and wildly risky way (bad). We've chosen the latter path and will pay most dearly for it.