Immigration Fist Fight

I have been trying to "be rational" i.e. see the other side of the immigration issue, but the more I read their propaganda, the crazier they seem. They … the right wing nut machine that has stirred up this Arizona mess… blame immigrants for every evil to befall the USA from drug abuse to traffic accidents, rape, mayhem and disease. There is an unhealthy dose of racism at the heart of immigration debate which makes it more like a fist fight. It is hard to put any rational spin on Arizona's recent assault on the Fourth Amendment. Chris Matthews said it was a good thing because it might cause some action in Washington. I am skeptical. Certainly it is not the first time in our Nation's history that the Constitution has been thrown out the window by zealots and whack jobs. Teddy Roosevelt encouraged the lynching of people who opposed World War I. (And a couple of people died as a result.) Agreed there may be real facts not apparent in Washington and lost in the vortex of nonsense. For example, when people from Arizona say they want to secure the borders, that is exactly what they mean. Some are not concerned about illegal immigrants looking for work. They are concerned about drug gangsters. The new Arizona law is a response to the murder of a rancher in his back yard by a drug gang. That does not make it right. Immigration reform looks a lot like the slavery debates before the Civil War. The last serious reform was the Immigration Reform Act of 1986, which granted amnesty to a million or so Latinos in the country illegally, and put the onus for immigration control on employers by making it illegal to hire an undocumented alien. (The worst aspect of the law was that it practically closed the borders to new immigrants.) The Reform Act, like the Fugitive Slave Act, did not work. The Fugitive Slave Act failed because it had no support in the North, where it was supposed to be enforced. The Reform Act failed because it did not address the real demand for labor in the business community, and no effort was made by the Raygun, Busch, Clinton or Busch administrations to enforce it. The result was a continuing influx of illegal immigrants seeking widely available jobs that few Americans wanted. They did the chicken plucking, cow killing, table busing, gutter cleaning and other crappy jobs. Admittedly they got some of the good jobs too. The construction industry in Omaha began to collapse after the Moron G.W. Busch started actually enforcing the law. Skilled immigrants work for less, and as long as you have non union shops, you will have employers who will hire the cheapest labor. Moreover, because immigrants had no rights, and the government did not enforce restrictions on hiring them, they could be exploited at will. More devastating, was that immigration became a perfect wedge issue for the GOOP. The great thing about wedge issues is you don't have to solve them. You just get to use them to stir up the worst of the electorate into a venomous frenzy. With the help of a mediocre television personality who needed a way to boost his failed career, immigration became center stage. (I can never remember the name of that fat assed CNN guy.) The only decent policy position The Moron Busch ever took on was immigration reform. He had entered into agreements with the Mexican government on border control and introduced serious reform legislation. Then September 11 happened and the last best chance for immigration reform died. (How is it that the illegal immigration status of the killer hijackers is confused with the immigration status of seven million Latinos whose primary interest is in feeding their children?) (Latinos make up about 60 percent of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the USA. No one is talking about the illegal Irish or Russian or other white people. ) No one is going to accept the easy solution, which is to make drugs legal and allow all immigrants in. Better yet, make Mexico a state. One helpful solution on the border would be bring back the national guard troops belonging to the border states from Afganistan and Iraq and train them in drug interdiction and put them to work. No one is going to do that either. But Congress needs to do something. It is not getting any better.