Posted on 01/16/2020 6:22:46 PM PST by NRx
In 2001, when I was the new Washington correspondent for The Arizona Republic, I attended the annual awards dinner of the National Immigration Forum. The forum is a left-right coalition that lobbies for unauthorized immigrants and expansive immigration policies. Its board has included officials of the National Council of La Raza, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, as well as the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association and the American Nursery and Landscape Association.
After dinner, the group’s executive director, Frank Sharry, made a pitch to business allies who wanted Congress to allow them unfettered access to foreign workers. “You guys in business get all the workers you want, whenever you want them,” he proposed. “No bureaucracy.”
“Sold!” yelled John Gay, a lobbyist for the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Mr. Sharry quickly added that the deal must include advocacy for “three little, tiny pieces of paper: a green card, a union card and a voter registration card” for unauthorized immigrants.
...the exchange was a revelation about the politics of immigration in Washington. Business lobbyists like Mr. Gay — conservatives who seek loose labor markets so employers can keep wages down — align themselves with liberal activists like Frank Sharry to pursue policies that serve their groups.
...This mismatch of political influence, combined with the social and fiscal consequences of a wave of low-skilled immigrants, led me to believe that immigration should be restricted so that its power to invigorate our country is not eclipsed by its potential to harm workers. I think immigration, like capitalism itself, should be regulated in the national interest, not shaped to serve the free-market libertarianism of the right or the post-national humanitarianism of the left.
That’s why I call myself a liberal restrictionist.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
L8r
Once he starts waking up a little ... the rest will start making sense to him... Someone send him a MAGA hat in 6 months. He’s gonna be a deplorable soon.
Amazed they printed this. Good for him. Still bad for the NY Times, a zombie newspaper.
He cares about workers and the environment.
Until the left was bought off by big business in the 1990s, there were plenty of liberals who supported immigration restriction to help the environment and workers
A lot of the left is driven by, and funded by, the teachers’ unions (who are in turn funded by taxpayers); the pro-immigration stance came about to prevent shuttering of public schools due to lack of children. The whole funding mechanism for the Democratic Party itself would be in jeopardy.
Public school teachers are agents in every district, supported by the taxpayers they oppose on many issues.
They are trying to take the immigration issue away from Trump; it was probably the main reason he was elected.
We will never hear from him again
It might prove that Terminal Liberal Sh*t-For-Brains Stupidity (TLSFBS) doesn’t have to be a lifelong disease.
Maybe.
Ain’t gonna hold my breath in the meantime...
Sorry, Jerry, but if you think immigration should be restricted, then you’re not a liberal, your a racist homophobic xenophobic White Nationalist who likes to torture children in cages and kick puppies.
Liberals are masters at doublethink. Overpopulation is bad - but only when westerners have children (in spite of the fact that most westerners are at or near zero population growth). To criticize overpopulation and overconsumption of resources in Third World countries would be "racist."
Similarly, industrial development and resulting pollution are bad when they happen in the US and other developed countries (never mind the fact that our sanitation, resource conservation, and pollution controls are light years ahead of the Third World's), but criticizing pollution and litter among Third World peoples would be "cultural hegemony."
The author is remains a liberal idiot, but he’s still far preferable to so-called “conservatives” who think that importing tens of millions of Mexicans, Central Americans, and other assorted slum riffraff is all wonderful.
Yes, agreed.
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