Watch Lou Dobbs’ show when it repeats tonight on CNN
 

He had a couple of university professors and a guy from the Heritage Foundation on his show and they were very honest about the fact that you can’t openly discuss the consequences of illegal immigration. Lou Dobbs asked the one professor why the economists and academics hadn’t studied the consequences of illegal immigration more and the professor responded by saying that it was because it “isn’t politically correct.” The second professor, from the University of Chicago, said that there’s a myth in America that all immigrants are equally beneficial to the country and the Heritage Foundation guy had the guts to point out that Hispanics in America commit crime at two and a half times the rate of white Americans. The show's title is "Great American Giveaway" and I already ordered the transcript from CNN.

Saw it. Very good. To have the Heritage Foundation say anything that is in disagreement with the administration gives one hope that reasonable dialogue is still alive.

There have been a couple of studies on the economic impact of immigrants done by California universities, so I think this "PC" excuse is just more BS.

One of my good friends (who is a super hard core lib) from college once worked on a research project in the Criminal Studies Dept. He was crunching numbers to determine the rates of recidivism for convicts serving hard time vs parole/community service etc. And no matter how he ran the numbers, his results showed that inmates who did hard time were no more likely to re-offend than those treated less harshly. But the profs running the study simply could not believe the results. So they had him re-run the numbers every which way from Sunday. But they kept coming out the same.

The result? The research was never published. My friend said the reason was that the profs flat out could not believe the answers they were getting and squashed the whole thing.

I don't think this anectode proves that academics are crazy deceptive liberals. Instead, I think it suggests that it is harder than you think for people (academics or anyone else) to overcome their prejudices. Even people who are trained to think with open minds find it difficult. Every belief carries with it a lot of emotional inertia.

Re: Watch Lou Dobbs’ show when it repeats tonight on CNN
 

Hmmm...I don't know, that seems like a broad brush stroke to me. Which Hispanics? All Hispanics? Illegal Hispanics?

By these stats can I assume L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa is two-and-a-half times more likely to cut my lawn than Yorty, Riordan or Hahn?

Eh, Yorty's dead anyway, so scratch him.

Re: Re: Watch Lou Dobbs’ show when it repeats tonight on CNN
 

Here's some information I've found.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/04/20/national/main186707.shtml

"According to estimates in the report, "11 percent of black males, 4 percent of Hispanic males and 1.5 percent of white males in their twenties and early thirties were in prison or jail."

Also,

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm

So what does the Heritage Foundation think of blacks/African Americans? If they commit crimes at 2.5X of "crime committing" hispanics, should we send them back to Africa while we deport the hispanics?

The Irish and Italians committed the most crimes....100 years ago. Seems to me they're grouped as "white" now. Couldn't have something to do with economics, could it? Oh, yeah, that's right, there are no classes in America, just races.....Some people just can't see the forest for the trees.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DOBBS: This broadcast commissioned a national, comprehensive poll on
illegal immigration, border security and the legislation now being
debated in Washington. We did so because we felt if we're going to talk
about comprehensive immigration reform, well we should have the
definitive comprehensive national poll. And we went about it seriously
and seeking those definitive answers from you and all of our fellow
citizens across the country.

Asked who they believe would do a better job of securing this nation's
borders, an interesting split. Thirty-five percent of those surveyed
said congressional Democrats, 31 percent said Republicans. Unsure doing
just a little better.

But nearly two-thirds are not confident that Congress and the pass
will, this term, pass comprehensive immigration reform. Only one in 10
expressed their feelings as very confident. And we should point out,
this poll had over 1,000 respondents.

Concerning enforcement measures, more than three-quarters of Americans
surveyed in this poll say there should be more border patrol and more
federal law enforcement agents on the border with Mexico to stem the
tide of illegal immigration. And six in 10 Americans want stiff fines
imposed on employers who hire illegal aliens.

More than half want to send national guard troops to the border with
Mexico. And 45 percent agree with building a fence along the border
with Mexico, that's within -- it's about an even split within just about
the margin of error.

Forty percent want employers who hire illegal aliens to go to jail.
And fully two-thirds of Americans surveyed agree with deportation of
illegal aliens -- again, two-thirds. A quarter disagree. Sixty-seven
percent of those surveyed would like to see the number of illegal aliens
in this country decline. And fully 26 percent say the numbers should
remain the same while two percent want to increase the number of illegals.

Robert Rector joins me now from the Heritage Foundation. George
Grayson, professor at William and Mary College and one of the nation's
leading analysts of Mexico's political system. And Barry Chiswick,
economics professor at the University of Chicago. He joins us as well.
Good to have you all here.

Professor Grayson, let me start with you. You say this legislation the
Senate just passed will actually benefit Americans less than the illegal
aliens who would receive amnesty.

GEORGE GRAYSON, PROFESSOR, WILLIAM & MARY COLLEGE: Yes, I think one of
the ironies is, Lou, that it will make some Americans second-class
citizens. And excuse my referring to notes here, but I want to be
concise.

For example, if a guest worker alleges that he has been terminated
without just cause, then he can have an arbitration hearing, which is
paid for by U.S. taxpayers and possibly get his job back. If an
American worker, who happens to lose his job, wants to contest the
firing, he has little grounds to stand on because he's hired at will.

DOBBS: Professor Chiswick, you have said -- one of the things that's
happening in this country is people won't speak directly about numbers.
You, Robert Rector are certainly the exceptions, Professor Grayson.
What is the impact of illegal immigration on this country? Can you tell
us, professor?

BARRY CHISWICK, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: The impact is quite
substantial. And probably the most significant impact on the labor
market is that it reduces the employment opportunities and earnings of
low-skilled workers who are citizens of the United States. And this is
something that I think is unfortunate that there's too little public
attention focused on this.

DOBBS: Now you testified to this before the Senate Judiciary
Committee, along with a number of your colleagues and I didn't hear
anybody sitting on that committee seem even remotely interested in what
you were saying. Is that unfair of me?

CHISWICK: Well, I think you're on the mark in what you said. I think
the people without a voice in this country are the Americans who have
low levels of skill, who are competing in the labor market with others
who are immigrants and native born, and they seem to lack a political voice.

DOBBS: I will tell you categorically I think the middle class and
those who aspire to it in this country, professor, are the least
represented group in all of Washington D.C. by either Democrats or
Republicans, and if you're a Republican and a Democrat and you disagree
with me, tough, because I absolutely believe it. What do you think,
professor?

CHISWICK: Well, I think that's consistent with what's going on
regarding this debate on immigration.

DOBBS: Let me talk to...

CHISWICK: So I think you're right on the mark.

DOBBS: ... Thank you. I'll take that University of Chicago professor
every time. Robert Rector, you singlehandedly with your research got
them to roll back the number of by a lousy 40 million. They were only
concerned about 40 million immigrants who could have come into this
country during a two decade period. They rolled that back to 66 million
thanks to your research. Are these people out of their minds?

ROBERT RECTOR, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: I think that every time we do
immigration, what we do is we do it completely against the will of the
American people. The American people by a ratio of about 4-1 want less
immigration, not more. But here we have a bill that grants amnesty and
citizenship to every illegal, just about and then on top of that, it's
going to double legal immigration. And mainly the people coming in are
going to be people -- high school dropouts, who tend to have children
without being married. We are vastly expanding the welfare state.

DOBBS: We should point out, though, as we understand them to be
American citizens, one out of three children born in this country today
is born out of wedlock.

RECTOR: .

DOBBS: And I believe in seven states, the number is more than 40
percent. So we have plenty of those problems before we import them.

RECTOR: We already have a vast welfare system. We spend close to $600
billion a year. What we're doing now is importing a vast new welfare
clientele from Central America. And we simply can't afford to do that.
That's what this bill does.

DOBBS: It's incredible. Professor Grayson, let me ask each of you the
same question and I'd love for you all to chime in on this, but begin
with you, Professor Grayson. Your research, that of George Borjas at
Harvard, and a few other people, rigorous, intelligent, scholarly work,
which, of course, Congress is ignoring -- but why in the world aren't
our academic economists, sociologists, researchers and scholars, why
aren't they coming into this issue with real research and weighing in on
these issues of such national importance?

GRAYSON: Lou, it's not politically correct. We have to play the
victimization card. And everybody in the third world are victims of the
rabid (ph) dogs of capitalism, of the IMF, of Washington. And so, what
you have in academia is just lots of bleeding hearts.

My view is that if the guest worker program were for college
professors, editorial writers and immigration lawyers, there would be a
lot more opposition to it.

DOBBS: Is that right, professor? Professor Chiswick?

CHISWICK: Oh, yes, thank you. Well, Lou, nations have myths...

DOBBS: Sorry, there's so many professors around here, I wasn't being
very definitive.

CHISWICK: All nations have myths. And one of our myths is that any
and all immigrants are equally desirable and equally beneficial for the
national economy. And we know from substantial research that that
simply is not the case. That high-skilled immigrants have very
different impacts than low-skilled immigrants.

We also know that there's a limited absorptive capacity in terms of
immigration, and that slower paces of immigration are easier to absorb
than large, sudden influxes of immigrants. But these issues seem to not
be on the table.

DOBBS: Robert Rector, let me ask you, because as Professor Grayson
says about victimization, political correctness. I mean, it's not just
academia. We shouldn't lay it just there. But we've become a nation of
orthodoxies and you have got to have a very specific control of language
before you can even discuss these issues.

But the idea that our middle class working men and women in this
country and their families, those who aspire to be in that middle class
are the victims. Why is that not compelling to academic researchers, to
our scholars?

RECTOR: I think there's a lot that you simply can't say here. I'll
say another thing that can't be said here, which is the fact that
Hispanics in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half
times that of white non-Hispanics, and it seems very clear that if you
basically bring in a lot of low-skilled Hispanics with dysfunctional
family structure from the Central America, that both they and, in
particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime
problem in the United States. The data is very clear on that. But it
can't be discussed.

We can't really also discuss the fact that, my goodness, if you're
bringing in high school dropouts who aren't married and have children
out of wedlock, what are they going to do? They're going to be on
welfare. It's why this is the largest expansion of welfare in at least
35 years. It is going to cost at least $70 billion a year. Those costs
are going to smash into the government, exactly at the time Social
Security starts to go into crisis.

DOBBS: At the same time, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
business' biggest lobbyist, Tom Donahue, says to me we've got to have
those illegal aliens, because as baby boomers are retiring, we need
somebody to support us.

Robert Rector, thank you very much. Barry Chiswick, thank you very
much. And George Grayson, thank you. We appreciate you gentlemen being
here. Please come back as we continue to explore what our Congress, our
president is doing to us. We'll be right back. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)