Today.

Only one immigration-related post:

• FINO: Fence funding falls short (again)

Three posts on Rosy-Lipped Piglet:

• Lipstick jungle: Team McCain responds
• “Catnip for the news media”
• Oh, nooooo, they never meant to liken Palin to a pig

Bonus post from A la Pundit, disagreeing with His Madame:

The sadly obligatory “pig with lipstick photo at DNC community blog” post

No, I don’t think it’s a big deal or has anything to do with what Obama said.

I couldn’t tell you if anyone actually cares about this whole pig ‘n’ lipstick thing, but the HotAirians and the McCain camp appear to. I always thought pigs were kinda cute…

Michelle has been a consistent failure as an activist and policy wonk. Even with three best-selling books and a widely syndicated column, she has been unable to even blow on, much less steer, the Republican Party’s immigration and naturalization policies.

Her position is clear:

• Limit immigration to its extreme minimum. This will somehow reduce terrorism.
• Limit access to citizenship. This will ensure the survival of Fatherland.

So, Michelle, prone to displaying her entitlement complex, didn’t get her way with Senator John SIDNEY McCain, and is whining now that the RNC Platform is being written to (surprise) McCain’s specifications.

She hasn’t commented on the failed “anchor baby” amendment, but here’s how it’ll probably go:

Ugh. Don’t blame me, I voted for Tom Tancredo.

Here’s an interesting profile in the NYTimes of the small town of Pearson, Georgia.

If you’re interested in the economic aspects of immigration, legal and illegal alike, don’t miss The Immigration Equation in the NYT Magazine. The article focuses on the work of two prominent economists: David Card, professor at Berkeley, raised by dairy farmers in Ontario; and Harvard professor George Borjas, something of a Cuban Ayn Rand in terms of aversion to all things Soviet.

An excerpt that caught my attention:

“I honestly think the economic arguments are second order,” Card told me when we discussed immigration. “They are almost irrelevant.”

Card’s implication is that darker forces — ethnic prejudice, maybe, or fear of social disruption — is what’s really motivating a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment. Borjas, a Hispanic who has written in blunt terms about the skill deficits of Mexicans, in particular arouses resentment. “Mexicans aren’t as good as Cubans like him,” Douglas S. Massey, a demographer at Princeton, said in a pointed swipe.

Borjas lives an assimilated life. He has a wife who speaks no Spanish, three kids, two of whom study his mother tongue as a foreign language, and a home in Lexington, a tony Boston suburb. Yet his mind-set often struck me as that of an outsider — an immigrant, if you will, to his own profession.

Long article short: Economics and economists will have little to no effect on the outcome of the immigration debate.

I recently came out in support of any government proposal that provides amnesty to the millions of undocumented laborers who would be considered criminals under current statutes — no strings attached. The comments I received ranged from predictable to illuminating.

By “no strings attached”, I mean that such a proposal would be wholly separate from any legislation meant to reform the current immigration system. That is something for politicians to debate and compromise on. As far as I’m concerned, no one who is truly conscious of human rights should be willing to compromise over the amnesty issue. For in its purest essence, bigotry is the denial of human rights based on an individual’s natural condition: be it because he is born black, brown, yellow, or red; born homosexual; or born, as discussed here, into poverty outside of the United States of America.

Forget briefly that the U.S. has for its entire history had quite the record when it comes to the institutionalized exploitation of her minority groups — particularly the black, brown, yellow, and red. If it applies to you as it does to me, this will require looking beyond the privileges bestowed upon you for having either by choice or force assimilated fully into white society. Now it should be safe to continue…

(more…)

In the event that it wasn’t totally obvious, I’d like to state explicitly that as the main contributor to this website I will fully support a sweeping pardon of undocumented workers. Any position that denies amnesty to the millions of immigrants from around the world is borne out of bigotry, xenophobia, and racism.

During one of the lulls on my drive through rural New York today, I tuned into a local talk radio station in time to catch a little of “The Radio Factor”, in which some piece of flesh passing for a racist human being filled in for the usual piece of shit host. He fielded calls that lamented the fact that whites will no longer be the majority race of the United States within a couple generations.

Regardless of how valid these concerns are, I fear that this is how many who are calling for us to enforce our unenforceable immigration laws really feel. They are drawing a recognizable line based on race and nationality, and I refuse to be on the side of the crackers.

It seems that Michelle’s chance to shine during the midterm elections has passed. Over the last year, her pet issue, immigration, has been sidelined by her obsession to uncover a pattern of “unhingedness” emanating from The Left. As a result, her poorly touted Immigration Blog project is something of an utter failure — much like its main author.

NYT:

WASHINGTON, June 20 — House Republican leaders today put the brakes on efforts to overhaul immigration laws, saying they would hold hearings this summer around the nation on the politically volatile subject before trying to compromise with the Senate on a chief domestic priority of President Bush.

…

The unusual decision to set a new round of hearings on legislation already passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate puts the prospects for enacting a final bill this year in jeopardy despite Mr. Bush’s call for Congress to act.

The timing means that formal Congressional negotiations would not begin until September, just as Congressional campaigns are entering their crucial final weeks — a time when lawmakers typically shy away from difficult issues.

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From the AILF’s Five Myths about Immigration by Douglas Massey:

Immigrants are less likely than natives to use public services. While 66 percent of Mexican immigrants report the withholding of Social Security taxes from their paychecks and 62 percent say that employers withhold income taxes, only 10 percent say they have ever sent a child to U.S. public schools, 7 percent indicate they have received Supplemental Security Income, and 5 percent or less report ever using food stamps, welfare, or unemployment compensation.

David Neiwert:

At last weekend’s [Washington] state GOP Convention, the party adopted a platform including a resolution calling for a measure to deny citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants. It also endorsed a guest-worker program that would require all applicants to return to their home countries first.

Nearly three years ago Michelle wrote a nasty column that closed as such:

Clearly, the custom of granting automatic citizenship at birth to children of tourists and temporary workers such as Hamdi and to countless “anchor babies” delivered by illegal aliens on American soil, undermines the integrity of citizenship – not to mention national security. Originally intended to ensure the citizenship rights of newly freed slaves and their families after the Civil War, the citizenship clause has evolved into a magnet for alien lawbreakers and a shield for terrorist infiltrators and enemy combatants.

If the courts refuse to close the birthright citizenship loopholes, Congress must. Citizenship is too precious to squander on accidental Americans in Name Only.

Anchor babies? Accidental Americans?

And to think that I agree with her that this is the greatest country in the world. What we do not agree on is whether it will survive any challenge short of our own species’ demise. Her career, being based on the politics of fear, smacks of her willingness to accept our country’s vulnerability.

Where Michelle believes that racist, isolationist policies will “save us”, I believe we have nothing to fear but our own ignorance and hatred. If Michelle has her way, our country will be transformed into a nation in which no mother would even want to bring forth life.