May 31, 2006, - 6:43 am
On Immigration: Diamonds Are Forever, But Postage Stamps . . .?
By
Our immigration policy is like the U.S. Postal Service. Both are broken beyond fixing.
Though few Americans use postage stamps anymore, the USPS is mired in yesterday. To combat the incombatible, the Postal Service recently introduced a “forever stamp.” Amid constantly rising postage prices, the stamp will be immune from those prices. Stock up now for forever.
But does anyone really believe the forever stamp will save the USPS? If you do, we have some land in Lake Erie to sell you. It’s like stocking up on S&H Green Stamps from the ’70s.
Nothing is forever. Except, maybe, a diamond.
While postage stamp sales are still strong, that is largely among gerontolical stamp collectors, who buy some of the new U.S. stamp designs to add to their collections. Few kids today are stamp collectors, rarely receiving or sending snailmail letters. You cannot sell an ancient hobby to an IM/MySpace kid.
First-class mail declined over 20 percent from 1998, and last year.
It is sad that today’s generations send scant few hand-written, personal notes and letters–to the point of extinction. That day and an American tradition are all but gone.
But it is what it is. Technology kills many traditions, whether good or bad. Markets must adapt to changing conditions or die.
A fight against market trends in any industry usually loses, especially when it’s too late. While Canon has finally seen the light and declared it will stop developing dinosaurish film cameras in favor of digital ones, Major League Baseball and its players are spending $7 million to re-energize a dying interest in baseball cards. But trading baseball cards is boring to kids raised on Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton videos, and “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” video games overflowing with prostitutes and drug dealers. Perhaps Baseball owners and players should have been more instrumental in opposing hip-hop, rather than embracing this competing source for entertainment dollars.
While the Postal Service–which projects a 5.7 percent further drop in postal usage by next year–is a government sanctioned monopoly whose dinosaur will only affect deliveries of Christmas cards, packages, and nasty letters from lawyers and collection agencies, immigration policy is another story.
It is not a matter of cameras, sports, or communications delivery. It is a matter of our nation’s survival. And where we will be in 100 years . . . if our country as we know still exists. The debate is far more important than postage stamps versus e-mail. Yet, the emergency gets no urgency.
Our elected officials and bureaucrats in Washington are acting in a vacuum. They are the U.S. Postal Service of national security.
While aliens hemorrhage inward, our President and the U.S. Senate are still acting like it’s yesteryear. Their “Forever Stamp” is the latest promise of the “last, last amnesty.” If we only raise the price of stamps a few cents, everything will be fine.
But it isn’t. It’s not just the estimated 12 to 20 million illegal aliens roaming free in our nation–most of whose whereabouts are either unknown or are of no concern. A new amnesty, dressed as a “Temporary Guest Workers” program in the recently-passed Senate Immigration Bill, will not put the genie back in the bottle.
It will not stem the tide of crime, job-loss, and other dangerous forces brought to the market by the mass tide of illegal aliens already far beyond the shore. The anachronistic solutions the see-no-evil guest worker/amnesty crowd offers are those of an aging postage stamp generation that refuses to face an e-mail world. Yesterday’s aliens wanted to live the American Dream. Some of today’s aliens have more nefarious motives.
And it’s not just those in Congress and the Oval Office who refuse to face the real world and the changing technology of the illegal alien invasion. The mainstream media are particularly guilty.
Desiree Cooper, a left-wing Detroit Free Press columnist, cites a 2002 Kaiser Family Foundation survey of Latinos in the U.S., which claims that by the third generation, 80% no longer speak Spanish.
But that was a third generation of a family that came here in the 1950s or ’60s, when our country was actually a melting pot, not a discordant stew from a bad cook. In those days, bilingual education was non-existent. Separatism was discouraged. Today, both are the norm. A third generation spawned from illegal aliens coming into this country in 2006 will not necessarily speak English in 2050.
And the survey assumes a premise that is fallacious. The language they are still speaking three generations later may not even be Spanish. It may be the Arabic recited on four planes on 9/11 and in hate-filled Madrassahs worldwide. Instead of their third generations speaking English, ours may be forced to speak their tongue.
Far-fetched? Not if the status quo continues. You can easily raise the price of the stamp. But you can’t save a dying industry or a dying country by putting a band-aid on metastasizing cancer.
It’s time for our leaders to read market trends and adjust to them. Or like the U.S. Postal Service, America will die little by little.
Tags: America, anachronistic solutions, baseball, cancer, changing, changing technology, Christmas, columnist, communications delivery, Congress, Debbie Schlussel Our, Desiree Cooper, Detroit Free Press, Kaiser Family Foundation, Lake Erie, Lou Piniella, mainstream media, Major, Major League Baseball, Paris Hilton, President, U.S. Postal Service, United States, United States Senate, USD, Washington
AMEN! And — What the hell??!
Marcubius on May 31, 2006 at 2:13 pm