Stop Me Before I Vote Again

But of course the higher donkery can't take any advantage of the debacle -- they're canned shit on this issue. Admittedly, the issue itself couldn't be more radioactive -- but temporizing and pandering only allow the repubs to stay in the driver's seat. The repubs have a corporate cheap-labor agenda that flies right at the red neckery on this one, and eventually the Rahm-Hill project will maybe say let's flank 'em -- let's cry "whack the employer here, he's the villain!"

I say nope nope nope, this one calls for principle, just like the Iraq war does. The donks can't be allowed any wiggle room on this one either. Let 'em stay, make 'em legal -- period. This issue -- generous and humane immigration -- is worth going into a indefinite minority party status to defend. It's ultimately an issue that can only be fought out on a class or race basis. Straddle this one and you'll split your groin. It's like the popular front in the 30's -- if the donks fail to do the right thing here -- if they continue the savvy percentage game -- they'll lose anyway, while just playing the corporations' dummy hand for 'em.

Hey, nothing new there, eh?

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By the way -- there's plenty of ways to control the flow honestly and humanely. For starters, raise the peso's dollar exchange rate by 100%. But that's wonk talk, I'm afraid.

One major step in the right direction in terms of solving the “immigration crisis” would be to renegotiate NAFTA and CAFTA so they place people and the environment over profits (pardon the cliché), if not cancel them completely. It should be obvious to anyone with a brain that our comrades south of the border are coming here in droves as economic refugees – victims of neo-liberal snake oil forced on them at virtual gunpoint by the United States and its ruling class. As Jeff Faux, founder of the invaluable Economic Policy Institute pointed out in an article on CounterPunch, "[NAFTA] flooded Mexico with highly subsidized U.S. and Canadian grain, driving between 1 and 2 million Mexican farmers off the land and adding to the supply of desperate Mexicans looking for work." On top of that, the Mexican government under Zedillo did everything it could to dismantle Mexican infrastructure in the early years of NAFTA, which has predictably enough left the country absolutely devastated.

At any rate, I have no qualms about granting full rights to undocumented workers from Latin America (as well as aggressively unionizing them), but I think our priority should be to improve their situation at home, so they need not abandon their families and homelands in search of work in foreign lands.

Well, he just made me wish to seek him out for a pranging, after reading his Of Immigrants and "Real" Amurkans: Reflections on the Rage of the Ridiculous. Perhaps a sampler will suffice to establish why:

While roughly one in five Americans could name the Simpsons characters, only one in a thousand could name all five freedoms protected by the First Amendment. Are these the persons to whom undocumented migrants are being compared unfavorably? Are these the persons to whom we would rather entrust our nation's future just because they were born here? Are you kidding me? .... After all, in a society that values its people more as consumers of products than as civic-minded citizens, the fact that the masses have been kept in a state of suspended intellectual animation is hardly surprising....

It's not that they dislike Mexicans. Goodness no! It's just that so many of them are coming illegally, and we are a law-abiding people who believe in playing by the rules...Somewhere, the spirit of an Arapaho mother is laughing its ghostly ass off at that one.

http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/10/09/daily37.html?t=printable

"Making English the state's official language has taken center stage in the contentious race between Scottsdale Congressman J.D. Hayworth and former Tempe mayor Harry Mitchell.

"Mitchell, a Democrat, contends he supports making English's Arizona's official language. That has the Hayworth camp crying foul. The Republican's campaign points out that Mitchell voted against measures making English the state's official language while serving in the state Senate.

"'Harry Mitchell has long opposed English as our official language for, as he put it, a number of reasons,' said Brian Hummell, a spokesman for the Hayworth for Congress organization.

"Mitchell spokesman Seth Scott said the Democratic challenger opposed the state measures because they did not provide any protections for Native American languages but that Mitchell supports the concept of making English the state's official language."

Even the most heartless authoritarian knows inducements and assistance are more effective tools than enacting laws that can't be obeyed. These guys, Dems and Reps alike, place exclusive value on the opportunity to punish. As usual, the Dem thinks offering a better managed bigotry, a kinder and gentler bigotry with a sentimental nod to past genocides, is the winning ticket.