Mr. Michael S. Medved

May 1, 2006

Dear Michael,

I am compelled to write to you out of deep frustration with what I have been hearing on your show regarding the illegal immigration issue. You are an extremely intelligent and thoughtful man, but for some reason, you lose all logic when it comes to illegal immigration. Frankly, I am stunned by your naiveté and lack of knowledge on this subject. Unfortunately, I believe your affection for President Bush has undermined your ability to think critically about this issue, to the point where you are actually perpetuating myths and outright falsehoods that cannot go unchallenged. I start by listing some of the most egregious examples, followed by my comments:

Myth #1: Bringing people out of the “shadows” will make us safer.

This is pure nonsense. Do you really think the dangerous people like Mohammed Atta and MS-13 gang members are going to come forward? Not gonna happen. Only the people who have lived relatively clean lives will ever come out of the illegal immigration closet. Furthermore, unless these people are required to return to their countries of origin, we may never know if any of them are fugitives from justice in their home countries, living under an alias in the U.S.

Myth #2: President Bush will end “catch and release”.

Michael, you stated this on the air, but you also failed to qualify your statement, or else you weren’t aware of the fine print of the Bush administration’s wacko policy. The promise to end “catch and release” of illegal aliens doesn’t apply to Mexicans or Cubans, just people from other countries. Mexicans who reach the interior or Cubans who reach dry land will still be allowed to go on their merry way!

Myth #3: Illegal aliens do jobs Americans won’t do.

What you really mean is illegal aliens accept wages that Americans won’t. How do you account for the fact that these jobs get done in states with few illegal aliens, like Vermont and Hawaii? Employers who insist on finding workers at a fixed wage are much more likely to have trouble locating legal workers, and the reason they often (wrongly) jump to conclude that a labor shortage exists is the same simple reason that consumers in the old Soviet Union couldn’t find popular goods – fixed prices (or in this case, fixed wages) create artificial shortages. If wages were allowed to rise to an equilibrium point to meet demand, employers could find American workers. It’s called Economics 101. Employers that hire illegal workers are cheating what used to be a fair labor market.

Myth #4: The McCain-Kennedy Bill is not an amnesty.

While this particular bill may not be passed by the Senate, the main components are in the Senate bill. Still you insist that this bill wasn’t amnesty, when in fact, it is amnesty. When the government waives the usual punishment and allows someone to keep what it is he cheated for and broke the law to obtain – in this case a life and job in U.S., that is most certainly an amnesty! Under the McCain-Kennedy bill, illegal aliens do not lose their American lifestyle even for one second!

To further prove my point, let’s apply the McCain-Kennedy formula to three hypothetical situations:

•A student cheats his way into a coveted slot at Harvard University by forging transcripts and concocting a phony record, but after he enters school, the administration finds out he has committed fraud. Under the McCain-Kennedy formula, Harvard allows him to stay in school provided he pays an additional $1000 in tuition his first year. He must also pass a freshman English class, and during his last semester, he must also pay an additional $1000 in tuition.

•An enlisted soldier who is seeking a better life than the difficult one he has in the Army fails to report for duty. In other words, he deserts his unit and becomes an “illegal civilian”, or in politically correct terms, an “undocumented civilian”. To avoid further military service and to obtain earned-civilianhood using the McCain-Kennedy formula, he must pay a fine, hold a civilian job, and improve his public speaking skills. After six years of good behavior, he is free of any further obligations.

•A driver fraudulently obtains and uses a handicap parking permit. After discovery by the law, a judge rules that the McCain-Kennedy formula is the best way to set this cheater straight. He orders that the driver may continue to use a handicap parking permit under the conditions that he pays a fine, avoids any driving infractions, passes a driver’s education class, and then pays another fine after a period of time.

“Tough medicine!” As John McCain says. Yeah, right. Be honest Michael - the McCain-Kennedy bill isn’t justice, and it isn’t even a slap on the wrist; it’s more like a gentle hand massage. Anyone with common sense should be outraged by it!

Practically no one would be excluded by this plan either, except perhaps some hardcore criminals. The so-called “background check” would almost certainly forgive many other transgressions as well: presenting false documents, failing to file tax returns or report income, failing to appear for an immigration hearing, illegal reentry into the U.S., driving without a license or insurance, illegal voting, failure to pay child support, and applying for federal housing assistance or bank loans using false documents (which is perjury, by the way), just to name a few.

Even if an attempt is made to classify the illegals into short-time or long-time residents, you can be sure there will be massive, massive, massive fraud. (Remember 1986, when we thought one million would be amnestied, but it turned out to be over three million?) Michael, it’s amazing to me how you’ve suddenly acquired so much confidence that the government can effectively implement a legalization process, especially given the fact that they aren’t even able to process LEGAL IMMIGRATION APPLICATIONS efficiently and without very dangerous errors. Furthermore, what you propose would produce the biggest bonanza ever for the immigration lawyers, a huge headache for the immigration courts, and an extremely expensive bureaucratic nightmare for the government.

Myth #5: “It’s unrealistic to enforce existing immigration law.” (-Michael Medved, April 6, 2006)

How can you say this when it’s never really been tried? According to your fractured logic, there are only two choices: mass legalization or mass deportation. That is pure nonsense! Mass legalization will create a terrible precedent and spur torrents of new illegal immigration. Mass deportation of the kind you conjure up with Nazi-like door-to-door searches and agents screaming “Show me your papers!” is as comical as it is insulting to people like me who disagree with your opinion.

All these illegals didn’t get here overnight, and they aren’t going away overnight. By systematically cracking down on shady employers across the nation and by instituting a mandatory, secure method for verifying legal status, we can begin to solve the problem by attrition, whereby illegal aliens return to their home countries voluntarily because life in the U.S. becomes too difficult. Contrary to popular opinion, this is the strategy that all serious proponents of immigration enforcement endorse, including Rep. Tom Tancredo, whom you are always unfairly bashing as a demagogue.

Through worksite enforcement raids that actually FRIGHTEN AND PUNISH crooked employers and illegal workers alike, we may actually start to see some compliance. Sometimes fear is a good thing, as strange as that seems to sound. The American tax collection system works because people have a real fear of being audited by the IRS, and paying the consequences if they cheat. Immigration law enforcement in the interior should exactly parallel our system of enforcing tax laws, and striking fear in unscrupulous employers and illegal aliens should be a key weapon because it works.

Myth #6: If all illegal aliens were deported, it would have a devastating impact on the American economy.

This is another enormous pile of baloney, Michael. Most people estimate that illegal aliens comprise about 5% of the workforce, and if we assume they earn in the lower 20% of wage earners, then you are talking about a population that earns approximately 1% of U.S. income. Their removal from the economy would be comparable to an average down-day in the stock market, and it might create short-term problems for a few industries. On the other hand, it would produce an increase in wages for working people and more government revenue, and new entry job opportunities for teenagers, unskilled American workers, and some of the 500,000 annually-paroled felons, who are now routinely rejected by employers in favor of illegal workers.

Secondly, no critical jobs are filled by illegal aliens, and in no industry are illegal workers a majority. No business has ever gone out of business after an immigration raid because they couldn’t find legal replacement workers, including the farmers. While the most concentrated illegal labor population is in agriculture, they are still only 30-40% of workers, and contrary to what many people think, most agricultural products are machine harvested or capable of being machine harvested. Furthermore, the cost of farm labor in the overall price of food products is tiny, and even if farm labor wages were increased to the point sufficient to insure a legal workforce, it would barely be noticed by consumers. (Certainly less so than gas price increases!) As with any business, if a farmer can’t make money using a legal workforce, he should find another line of  work.

Finally, it goes without saying that if all illegal aliens were deported, a huge burden would be lifted off of the American taxpayers. Illegal aliens do not come close to paying for the social services they use. As an added bonus, most of the $55 billion in wages they send out of the country each year in the form of remittances would instead be paid to Americans. This is money that would remain inside the U.S. economy, generating more wealth for Americans instead of propping up foreign economies run by corrupt governments.

Now aside from the myths I’ve listed above, there are other things you’ve said on your show that deeply trouble me. For example, you’ve indicated that requiring illegals to return to their home countries is unrealistic. Why? Because we might inconvenience them? Boo-hoo-hoo! We practically yank some of the most patriotic Americans - National Guardsmen - from their beds in the dead of night to serve interminable tours of duty away from their families in Iraq or Afghanistan, and you suggest that the illegals shouldn’t be required to go to the back of the line (outside the country) until they are legally processed?

Some of the things you haven’t raised also trouble me deeply. For example, are you aware that virtually no expert testimony was received in the Senate hearings on the long term demographic and political changes resulting from a mass legalization? You can bet that the 12 million we’ve heard is a low-ball estimate, and when the real number is learned, it will be vastly higher. (Mark my words, Michael. Bear-Stearns calculated 20 million based on remittance data. When all the friends and relatives start coming to America claiming to be wives and children, we will see the numbers skyrocket. And when they all eventually get to vote, Democrats will be licking their chops.) Do you really believe the Senate bill is the type of legislation we should pass before asking the hard questions? I certainly do not.

Also, did you hear one iota of information about what the costs will be to the taxpayers to implement this program, or what the impact will be to the taxpayers who will be forced to absorb social welfare costs (healthcare, schools, etc.) for the newly legalized millions of mostly poor people? I didn’t. And can you assure me that we will never become another Canada, a nation divided by two languages? I surely can’t, especially when I hear illegal alien supporters referring to “my people” (or “La Raza” when they speak in Spanish). Any nation that contains large numbers of people whose loyalties lay primarily with their own ethnic group is no nation at all, or it’s certainly not the kind of place I want to live in.

I’m also very upset that you’ve failed to criticize President Bush for deliberately trying to confuse the American people when he says is against “automatic citizenship” for illegal immigrants. He has said this so many times, surely he knows that even legal immigrants do not receive automatic citizenship, so his definition of amnesty is nonsense - a red herring calculated to fool the public from realizing that it is the act of allowing residency and waiving the prescribed punishment of deportation that constitutes the amnesty. I am utterly flabbergasted by the fact that you have essentially adopted Ted Kennedy’s view on this issue, and you denigrate the views of most conservative talk show hosts and millions of conservative voters who sharply disagree with you.

Finally, I would like to issue two serious challenges to you. First, I am challenging you to post this letter to your website, with your response if you choose, and a poll for the listeners to decide which of us they agree with more. Second, instead of criticizing people like Rep. Tom Tancredo and CNN Anchor Lou Dobbs, I am challenging you to invite them or one of the several people who are able to eloquently speak for our position onto your show. Among that group I would include Mark Krikorian from the Center for Immigration Studies, Roy Beck from NumbersUSA, or Dan Stein from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). I eagerly await your response.

Sincerely yours,

Mark A. Mendlovitz, Ph.D.

Beverly Hills, CA