Two Sides of Immigration
By Mitch Berg
[James Lileks and Hugh Hewitt] also discussed the immigration bill. I tire of the preludes one has to make in these situations, all the protestations of anti-nativism. It’s not enough to say you’re in favor of immigration, and lots of it; anything short of dropping thousands of blank American birth certificates on the other side of the Rio Grande is construed as Nativist Hysteria. All I want is a fence, but even that desire makes people jump up and shout at the house HEY! what gives you the right / to put a fence to keep people out and keep your antiquated concept of privileged-status Northern European culture in? If God was here to tell it to your face, man, you’re some kind of sinner! (I swear I’ve done that riff before. Gah: well, I think you’re allowed to quote the Five Man Electrical Band twice in your life before you’re slapped with a wet copy of “Ramparts” magazine.) What really irks me more than the Administration’s mulishness is their tone-deaf replies to the bill’s opponents, and it really is Le Straw Finale. Add to the list of lesser mistakes to which any administration composed of human-type people is prone, add the ham-fistery evident in their handling of those events, add the attenuated death of the Bush doctrine, interred quietly in the first bilateral talks with Iran since the war began almost three decades ago, and add the nagging, itchy suspicion that Iranian involvement in the Iraq conflict might have been turned away at an earlier opportunity with a judicious, gravity-assisted MOAB in a crucial industrial facility, and you have a general Throwing Up of The Hands on the right. Self-inflicted wounds, every one of them.
I’ve no doubt that the xenophobic right is upset about Bush’s immigration proposal…
Take your pick.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:42 am
Mitch quoted: “first bilateral talks with Iran since the war began almost three decades ago”
Guess you’re not counting that really smart idea of selling arms to Iranian “moderates” and using the money to fund Nicaraguan conterrevolutionaries.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:49 pm
When you are a leftist, the word “xenophobic” means “anyone who believes that national borders are more than just lines drawn arbitrarily on a map.”
We’re all citizens of the world!
June 1st, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Nah, to you hard-right wingnuts, the immigration issue is just a front for simple, straightforward racism. Here’s one of your top wingnut heroes, Bill O’Reilly, talking to Sen. John McCain:
“But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you’ve got to cap with a number.”
June 1st, 2007 at 1:55 pm
angryclown said:
“the immigration issue is just a front for simple, straightforward racism”
and:
“one of your top wingnut heroes, Bill O’Reilly”
Is it “affirm your assumptions day” and I missed the announcement?
I wonder who else’s opinion you plan to put in the mouths of all “hard-right wingnuts”, angryclown? Did Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, or someone else say something crazy that all “hard-right wingnuts” should be forced to apologize for?
June 1st, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Please, Trojan Man, you insult Angryclown’s intelligence. Coulter, Buchanan and O’Reilly aren’t exactly minor figures in the wingnut universe. You watch them on TV and push the crap they write onto the bestseller list. They speak for American wingnuttery, regardless of whether you like to pretend otherwise.
June 1st, 2007 at 2:27 pm
A fence is a stupid waste of time, talent, and money. The solution is more simplicity, not more Rube Goldberg. All that is needed is to give the prez the authority to raise immegration quotas untill the immegrant smugglers go out of business.
Puting the smugglers out of business should be the first priority. A fence just lets them charge more.
June 1st, 2007 at 2:44 pm
So I can attribute all opinions from any prominent “left of center” crazy talker to angryclown, correct? I’m sorry, but that sounds quite unreasonable to me, and I expect better from “the most reasonable person ever”, angryclown.
But, if you insist, I’m sure Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann have said something stupid recently. Please, don’t you go pretending you disbelieve anything they say. And who else kicks out the liberal craziness on a regular basis? I just want to know what I can “correctly” assume makes you tick.
You may end up with a lot to apologize for, angryclown. 🙂
June 1st, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Mitch-UP
Clown-DOWN
Mitch-BLACK
Clown-WHITE
Mitch-DAY
Clown-NIGHT
This is all you really have to know to get Clown’s point of view.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Not true. Mitch is very sensible when he gets off the topic of politics.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Almost every single topic posted starts and ends with AC’s asinine remarks and people responding to them…and that’s about all that happens….it’s the same old thing thread after thread after thread….
June 1st, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Mitch is very sensible…
And we all know that it’s approval that I most crave.
June 1st, 2007 at 5:34 pm
“it’s the same old thing thread after thread after thread….”
False!. Sometimes we get Doug chiming in to tell conservatives who they are & are not allowed to support. He says they should have spent their youth killing their fellow men while being chaste. I think.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Well, yeah…that’s true, Terry. There IS always Doug to break up the monotony….not that this blog is monotonous in its intent…the subjects are almost always current and interesting…I don’t mind one bit people who dissent from a conservative viewpoint either…I just wish they would make their points using adult, pertinent and compelling arguments for their side rather than the smart-ass constant dumb crap AC puts out and whatever it is that Doug foists on us…
June 1st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Don’t forget RickDFL who brings the blinkered Minnesota Liberal perspective to the party and then spills it all over your new shoes.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Hmmmm… I don’t know why I bother but here goes anyway. First, we don’t have an illegal immigration problem. We have an illegal hiring problem. Nothing happens in Washington – legislatively speaking WITHOUT intensive lobbying. Intensive lobbying doesn’t happen without lots of money and lots of influence.
It’s pretty simple. What organizations and lobbying groups have enough money, influence and reason to get this legislation passed?
I work with people who are physically or developmentally disabled and a significant part of what I do is help them with Medical Assistance applications and 6 month renewals. If they’re not already on Medicare, I have to prove they are a citizen by providing extensive birth records including place of birth, birth name, social security numbers – you name it. Keep in mind that they are disabled and often unable to communicate and for a lot of my seniors, there are no birth records readily available. All of this so the least among us get some assistance. In other words, I have to
On the other hand, when I was an employer, an applicant had to produce either a passport or drivers license and Social Security card. I had no way to verify the authenticity of any of these and if I understand the reporting laws correctly, I would have essentially been forbidden from reporting it if I suspected they were frauds.
If you’re a burden on the system, you go through hell to prove you’re a citizen. If you’re cheap labor that adds to the tax base, no problem.
You make it easy for employers to report suspected illegal applicants while severely punishing them financially for knowingly hiring illegals, you’ll see instant change all without the need to build a silly fence that was never anything more that a political stunt anyway.
If you do though, just be prepared to pay a lot more for food, clothes and construction labor.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Oops. missed part. Should have said, “In other words, I have to move heaven and hell just so these people can live the last years of their lives with some relative comfort and dignity.”
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:31 am
Doug, I almost agree with you, so there is a reason for you to comment.
Some part of the blame must lie with the illegals. They are feeding off the wages of low skilled workers in this country to meet their own needs.
The big bad guy is W. He’s supposed to represent this country. Instead he seems to be representing the WSJ open borders crowd.
You & I would probably find common ground in many areas. I’m Christian, not an Adam Smith Libertarian. Virtue lies in easing the burden of the less fortunate through personal sacrifice, not in growing your stock options. Virtue also does not lie in making others sacrifice to help the poor.
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:05 am
Doug observed “First, we don’t have an illegal immigration problem. We have an illegal hiring problem.”
3000 dead on 9/11 might take issue with that statement if they hadn’t been pulverized into dust or burned to a crisp by illegal aliens who had overstayed their visas and were, in fact, working for foreign employers.
Doing work Americans don’t want to do.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:04 am
Kermit, you have a bright future in Right-wing politics. You’ve really got that demagoguery thing down pat.
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:08 am
If Clown and Doug had a knife fight, who would win?
The answer, I think, is “everybody.”
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:33 am
LearnedFoot-
So, if you happened to be walking down a street, and saw Doug and he whom I will not mention scrappin’ like a couple of starvin dawgs you would stop them, stand them up, give them each a knife, and then continue on your way . . .
Democracy in action. Everybody wins.
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:56 am
Actually, a “knife” fight between Clown and Doug would only consist of endless dialogue: Clown would make a snarky comment about how his knife is so much better than Doug’s, and Doug would counter with a filibuster-esque treatise about the history of cutlery and how, because of a schism that occurred in 1498, the two major schools of thought regarding hand held blades bifurcated and lead to the “Great Knife Disagreement of 1500,” which of course would have absolutely nothing to do with the “knife” fight at the moment, but would make Doug feel momentarily superior, in a Google-search sort of way. Clown would then parry with a snarky play off Doug’s name, perhaps calling him “Dawg,” and then making yet another snarky reference to Nixon’s use of knives during his term in office, or perhaps the role of knives during Reagan’s two terms.
Honestly, it would be about the most boring, nonsensical knife fight in the history of the world.
June 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 am
Ryan,
You have a gift for running with throwaway lines.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Thanks Doug, but I prefer to make an honest living.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Yossarian, my name is Doug, not Eracus or Paul and somehow I find the idea of AC and I getting in a knife fight about as conceivable as Swiftee taking a bath.
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:55 am
Simple answer.
Big biz (from the holding companies that own the employers – as well as most of our elected “representatives” and both Dem’s and Neocon’s, to the banks who handle all the money being wired back home) doesn’t want illegal immigration stopped — so it won’t be.
Hello, NAU. Goodbye Constitution.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:41 am
It’s embarrassing how obsessed you wingnuts are with Angryclown!
June 4th, 2007 at 9:08 am
It’s embarrassing how obsessed you wingnuts are with Angryclown!
Where is that “Count comments by author” button…
June 4th, 2007 at 9:09 am
my name is Doug, not Eracus or Paul…
…but beyond that, he pretty much pegged ya.
June 4th, 2007 at 9:22 am
You’re just that kinda guy, ac. Call it animal magnetism.
June 4th, 2007 at 10:02 am
I just like angryclown for who he is! 🙂
June 4th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Mitch said,
“…but beyond that, he pretty much pegged ya.”
See Mitch? That’s why it’s just a lot more fun to post sarcasm, snark and insult.