By Roy Beck
Iwas dining in downtown Boston with a long-time acquaintance of TeddyKennedy at the very time the Senator died a week ago. We had discussedwhat had caused Kennedy to pursue immigration policies that sofundamentally changed America. I got the news when I awoke the nextmorning to the Massachusetts TV stations doing their eulogies. Idecided to wait until after burial to share my thoughts.
SinceNumbersUSA is a truly non-partisan and non-ideological organization, Iwant to choose my words carefully because so many of our membersabsolutely hated Kennedy while many others of our members truly lovedmany of Kennedy’s policies (although fully disagreeing with him onimmigration).
The first group saw his immigration policiesas emblematic of a Kennedy inclination to destroy the America as theyloved it. The second group saw his immigration policies as anaberration that fatally undermined what they saw as many wonderfulKennedy initiatives to improve America.
Whichever itwas—or something in between—Ted Kennedy’s immigration policies havedestroyed the ability of the United States to be an environmentallysustainable nation in any decade soon because of the gigantic U.S.population growth that he has forced.
And Ted Kennedy’s immigration policies have knocked hundreds ofthousands of Americans out of the middle class as their occupationshave collapsed and wages declined because of inundation with Kennedy’sfavored foreign workers, or because they have directly lost their jobsto foreign competitors.
HE WAS AN EXCEPTIONALLY SKILLFUL OPPONENT
Forthose of us desiring the traditional lower numerical immigration that,ironically, Pres. John Kennedy had advocated in his A Nation ofImmigrants book, it was our great misfortune that the person leadingour opponents in pursuing ever-higher numbers these last 45 years wasperhaps the most skillful Senator of the last half-century in gettingthings done his way.
Ted Kennedy surely was one of the most influential Senators in our history.
His influence on immigration alone brought more change to America than the work of any other Senator during my lifetime.
Justas a reminder, let’s make a short list of the immigration policies thatKennedy and his extremely talented staff put into effect:
The1965 revamp of the entire immigration system. It ended 40 years of lowimmigration, got rid of solid numerical caps and opened up chainmigration into every overpopulated country in the world, explodingannual immigration numbers.
Massive expansion of the refugeeprograms in the late 1970s, opening up massive loopholes andencouraging a domestic resettlement industry that became a major lobbyfor more and more overall immigration.
The 1986 blanket amnesty.Kennedy’s skills may have been best seen here where he got legislatorson our side to agree to the amnesty in exchange for enforcement rulesthat he made sure were written in a way that would not work. Within adecade, he would be using the inability to enforce the 1986 rules as anexcuse for why we needed more green cards and more amnesties. Anexample of Kennedy’s great skill was that he persuaded Ronald Reagan toenthusiastically support this bill.
The 1990 immigration act,which increased overall immigration by another 35%. The first Pres.Bush was Kennedy’s co-partner, just as the second Pres. Bush wasKennedy’s eager co-partner in trying to force through another blanketamnesty 2001-2008.
The 1990 act also established the lotterywhereby we randomly give away 50,000 green cards a year to people incountries picked because they have the least ties and culturalassociation with the United States, and which disproportionately areterrorist-sponsoring countries. This was something of a compromise forKennedy who was able to ensure that during the first few years, much ofthe lottery winners would be illegal aliens from Ireland—his own ethnicgroup.
The H-1B visas which have enabled corporations to keephundreds of thousands of American kids from getting a foothold in thehigh tech industry.
The total defeat of liberal civil rightschampion Barbara Jordan’s blue-ribbon commission recommendations toreduce overall immigration and eliminate chain migration and thelottery in 1996.
Six mini-amnesties that passed in the 1990s, primarily aimed at specific nationalities.
BUT YOU BEAT HIM REPEATEDLY SINCE 2000
Asdepressing as his immigration victories are to contemplate, you shouldfeel some comfort in the fact that he was totally a failure after theyear 2000 in expanding his immigration dream still further.
Every year since 2000, Sen. Kennedy pushed an amnesty. Every year, he pushed increases in foreign workers.
But every year, Sen. Kennedy’s efforts were stopped by public pressure.
Ibelieve an important reason for that was that during the late 1990s,NumbersUSA was building a counter-force. Under Jim Robb’s foresight, wecreated an innovative internet grassroots mobilization system andraised an ever-expanding army. And Capitol Hill veteran Rosemary Jenkshad gone to Kennedy’s territory to get her law degree from Harvard. Shearrived back in Washington in August of 2001 and set up our CapitolHill offices and operations.
After 25 years of almostalways getting his way on immigration, Ted Kennedy’s power andinfluence were checked after August 2001.
But his powerhas still been strong enough to prevent us from success in rolling backthe destructive immigration policies he put in place from 1965 through2000.
While he no longer was able to accelerate thechange, his continuing immigration policies every year make the qualityof life in the United States worse. Until we change those policies, TedKennedy’s immigration legacy will continue to deteriorate our Americandreams of economic justice and environmental sustainability andindividual liberty.
KENNEDY UNDERMINED WHAT HE SAID WERE HIS HIGHEST PRINCIPLES
Atthe graveside service in Arlington National Cemetery, we learned whatTed Kennedy wanted the Pope to know about the principles that drovehim. Retired Cardinal McCarrick read from an appeal to the pope for afinal blessing, written we presume by Kennedy in his last weeks:
Iknow that I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of myfaith, I have tried to right my path. I want you to know, YourHoliness, that in my nearly 50 years of elective office, I have done mybest to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economicopportunity. I’ve worked to welcome the immigrant, fight discriminationand expand access to health care and education. . . .
This was a typical comment among the thousands who honored Ted Kennedy this last week:
SenatorKennedy helped change the character of the immigration system, andindeed the country, bringing the United States a step closer to itsfounding ideals of fairness and opportunity for all.
—Former Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner Doris Meisner
Hmmm,what ideals of fairness did Meisner have in mind? Does she think it wasfair to drive all those American drywallers out of their jobs? Howabout all the American meat packer workers who lost their jobs andincomes to Kennedy’s army of immigrant workers? Of course, Meisner wasthe chief of enforcing immigration laws that she thought were unfairand out of step with our nation’s ideals. She and Kennedy fundamentallybelieved that our laws limiting immigration are evil or unjust.
ButNumbersUSA’s website is full of page after page of information showingthat Kennedy’s immigration policies have in fact undermined the abilityof the poor to find good-paying jobs and to get on the ladder ofopportunity.
The policies have undermined the fightagainst discrimination by making it easy for businesses to ignore poorAmerican Black job applicants in favor of high-motivated immigrantworkers. The plight of the Black underclass seems as intractable todayas during the 1960s.
Kennedy’s policies have driven scoresof urban school districts backwards through over-crowding and throughoverwhelming already precarious schools with masses ofnon-English-speaking students from impoverished homes.
TedKennedy’s immigration policies aren’t even good for the immigrants whoalready are here. There is little opportunity in this nation today formillions of immigrants who must constantly compete with the nextdecade’s millions upon millions of new foreign workers.
WHY DID KENNEDY UNDERMINE HIS OWN DREAMS OF OPPORTUNITY, EQUALITY, EDUCATION
Amongless-immigration advocates, a debate has long waged over whether thegigantic changes from immigration were what Kennedy sought, or if theywere mostly an unintended consequence that he chose to ignore.
Why was he willing to allow his immigration policies to diminish—and in some cases—negate his efforts in other areas?
Amongthose who disliked Kennedy the most, there has been a sense that TedKennedy fundamentally distrusted and disliked the citizens of thiscountry. The line of thinking is something like this: Even though themajority of these citizens had elected his brother President, andappeared likely to elect another brother to the office, Ted Kennedywanted a different citizenry. Perhaps there was a sub-conscious hatredfor the overall American people because of the assassinations (althoughone assassin was a foreigner and the other had tried to emigrate to theSoviet Union). Perhaps he had some Irish immigrant chips on hisshoulder about WASPS disrespecting hisfamily. If he disliked the balance of power among the citizens of thiscountry, wildly increasing immigration levels could largely shift thebalance of political power and ideology in the country.
Towhatever extent any of that was true, Kennedy’s immigration policiescertainly “elected a new citizenry.” This country now has more than 50million natives of other countries and their children. In a country of300 million, that is an incredible influence on every aspect of ourpolitical and social and economic lives, don’t you think.
Most of those 50 million are here as a result of the policies Kennedy put in place.
Amongpeople with a softer and perhaps more human view, Kennedy simply paidno attention to the consequences of his immigration policies. This lineof thinking is something like this: Even if he had paid attention tothe consequences, his commitment to high immigration was so great,there was no way he could have pulled back.
Back in Bostonlast week, I gave my dinner companion those two big choices. Eventhough he is 100% against Kennedy’s immigration policies and largely inopposition to other Kennedy positions, this acquaintance sincechildhood of Ted Kennedy and his family told me he cannot believe theSenator had a grand plan to radically change America.
“He’snot smart enough for that,” the acquaintance said. “But he has such abig heart.” Kennedy’s romanticism, sentimentalism and idealism weresuch that once he began to receive accolades from certain communitiesfor his work on immigration, there was just no way he was ever going tostop, the acquaintance said.
He also said that he believesthat, despite all the liberal veneer, Kennedy was deeply beholden tothe country’s banking titans and other globalist business entities whohave so much interest in the free flow of international labor and inkeeping the wages of Americans stagnant. (This was given credibilitylater when Kennedy was lauded for the great work he did to help thehigh-tech industry of Massachusetts to hire foreign computerprogrammers.)
I really don’t know why Ted Kennedy did whathe did on immigration. If his acquaintance is correct, it perhapsserves as a major warning to us about how to deal with all the nationalreligious leaders, as well as our opponents in Congress, who probablyreally want to believe that pushing higher and higher immigration istruly God’s will—and who will never look at the practical consequencesand the millions of American victims strewn across the Americanlandscape like little memorials to idealism disconnected from concernabout practical consequences.