Keeping the ship of fools afloat
His fellow Democrats are reportedly upset with famed left-of-the-left Sen. (and children's book author) Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., for daring to attempt a compromise with Senate Republicans on an immigration bill because they fear the end product will not have provisions as strong as they would like supporting guest worker programs and paths to legal citizenship.
Now, I know I experienced quite the shock to my cognitive order a couple weeks ago when I realized President Bush was the one making the most sense on the immigration issue. He was the one calling for a plan that would provide illegal immigrants already in the United States with conditions they can meet to remain as guest workers and eventually attain legal citizenship, while upping border security and enforcement to keep more immigrants from entering illegally.
Partisans on both sides have serious problems with their most polarized favored approaches. Deporting 11 million people or building a Great Wall(/Electric Fence) of Mexico are both asinine ideas, as is granting illegal immigrants automatic citizenship out of some namby-pamby sense of essential equality and based on blatantly flawed analogies.
I do not understand why so many on the left are getting so upset over treating illegal (oh, I'm sorry, "undocumented") immigration as a crime–it is ILLEGAL immigration. Illegal immigrants do not have political or legal rights in this country, no matter how vocally or in how great a number they rally as if they do. There are legal routes to immigration and citizenship, and those who choose to sneak over the border instead, grand theories of global economic determinism aside, have only themselves to blame for feeling like they have to live "in hiding."
A sovereign nation is well within its rights to deport foreign citizens living illegally within its borders-it's not racism or xenophobia, it's basic nationalistic politics (which one could argue aren't any more morally praiseworthy, but at least they're democratically institutionalized and legitimate). But no one is seriously arguing for something so heavy-handed, and lawmakers (when they're not on vacation, of course) are instead attempting a productive and mutually beneficial compromise. And isn't that precisely what we always complain they chronically fail to do?
Let the Republicans "weaken" the Democratic provisions all they want: Anything they do will only alienate eligible Hispanic voters–who cast 6 percent of all votes in the 2004 presidential election, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, with 40 percent of that going to Bush–and a nice slice of business interests, which can only help the Democrats come November.
And at least something decent might get accomplished in the meantime. Seriously, you know the partisan Congressional sniping has rendered itself wholly unproductive when Dubya is the voice of reason in a domestic policy debate.
Hell, indulging him this one might even distract him from launching more foreign policy disasters to salvage his waterlogged approval numbers.
Now, I know I experienced quite the shock to my cognitive order a couple weeks ago when I realized President Bush was the one making the most sense on the immigration issue. He was the one calling for a plan that would provide illegal immigrants already in the United States with conditions they can meet to remain as guest workers and eventually attain legal citizenship, while upping border security and enforcement to keep more immigrants from entering illegally.
Partisans on both sides have serious problems with their most polarized favored approaches. Deporting 11 million people or building a Great Wall(/Electric Fence) of Mexico are both asinine ideas, as is granting illegal immigrants automatic citizenship out of some namby-pamby sense of essential equality and based on blatantly flawed analogies.
I do not understand why so many on the left are getting so upset over treating illegal (oh, I'm sorry, "undocumented") immigration as a crime–it is ILLEGAL immigration. Illegal immigrants do not have political or legal rights in this country, no matter how vocally or in how great a number they rally as if they do. There are legal routes to immigration and citizenship, and those who choose to sneak over the border instead, grand theories of global economic determinism aside, have only themselves to blame for feeling like they have to live "in hiding."
A sovereign nation is well within its rights to deport foreign citizens living illegally within its borders-it's not racism or xenophobia, it's basic nationalistic politics (which one could argue aren't any more morally praiseworthy, but at least they're democratically institutionalized and legitimate). But no one is seriously arguing for something so heavy-handed, and lawmakers (when they're not on vacation, of course) are instead attempting a productive and mutually beneficial compromise. And isn't that precisely what we always complain they chronically fail to do?
Let the Republicans "weaken" the Democratic provisions all they want: Anything they do will only alienate eligible Hispanic voters–who cast 6 percent of all votes in the 2004 presidential election, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, with 40 percent of that going to Bush–and a nice slice of business interests, which can only help the Democrats come November.
And at least something decent might get accomplished in the meantime. Seriously, you know the partisan Congressional sniping has rendered itself wholly unproductive when Dubya is the voice of reason in a domestic policy debate.
Hell, indulging him this one might even distract him from launching more foreign policy disasters to salvage his waterlogged approval numbers.
posted by Holly at 5:57 PM
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