Immigration Reformers, Wake the F’ Up!

I get that it’s difficult for immigration reformers to see and accept the writing on the wall — that reform is likely dead in this Congress. It’s incredibly important for the country as well as for millions of undocumented immigrants whose lives will be directly affected. The bill is in effect being filibustered in the House inasmuch as the bill would almost certainly pass if only John Boehner would only allow it to come for a vote. But pretending this isn’t the case is actually damaging the prospects of reform.

It makes all the tactical and strategic sense in the world to take this out of the confusing arcana of Washington’s intentionally obfuscating procedural maze and put it back into the political realm where it belongs. In other words, stop pretending that the GOP House’s hardening resolve to kill the Senate bill is going to change and take this whole question back to the people looking forward to the 2014 election. There’s a curious elite belief that going into ‘campaign mode’ is somehow dirty or tawdry or that it makes it harder to come up with the compromises necessary for legislation. But that is nonsense.

First of all, thanks for the link to your article. You articulate the situation with illegal immigration wonderfully. As to the statement I quoted above, I agree. Corporate America will do quite well without the Republican Party doing their bidding.

Legal immigration is actually more of a problem than illegal immigration. The Dems will become the permanent majority party with the status quo on legal immigration. Amnesty just hastens the process.

One is concerning the depth of feeling middle and lower-middle class people have against the invasion of the US. We're the people who put up with its negative impact, every day, in our job opportunities and in the threat to neighborhoods, schools, and safety. The issue's about survival, and it's one where the dems are very vulnerable. It's the elite libs who think they know what's best for everyone else propelling the argument in the Democratic Party. The Dem ptb are not in the real world and the 'pubs are too enamored with cheap labor to win those democratic working class votes.

I have no doubt that is true. Our own polling verifies it. And as a group, blacks are the most adamant about decreasing legal immigration and cracking down on illegals. Their leaders do not reflect that point of view. The problem is that most people are not one issue voters. They will vote what they perceive is in their best interests.

Big government has a big appeal to blacks and Hispanics. They want more free stuff, not less. Lower taxes and limited government do not resonate with them. And when you have Reps like Priebus, Rove, McCain, and Graham calling their fellow Reps racists, it feeds into the branding of the Reps as the party of old, white men.

The other issue is that of "immigration reform". We don't need reform. There are plenty of laws on the books, including the ones Obama has ignored or over-ridden. If the laws on the books were enforced, it would stop the invasion of the US.

There is no doubt that enforcement is key to dealing with illegal immigration, but we need to reform our legal immigration policies so they best serve the interests of the country. We don't need 1.2 million legal immigrants a year, most of whom are poor and uneducated. We need about 300,000 a year as recommended by the Jordan Commission and it should be on a merit based system unlike the kinship system we have today. A policy of pro-immigrant low immigration will be better in terms of assimilation and providing us with the skills we need to be competitive in the global economy.

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