Keith:
The other day you had a post about Fred Barnes and the immigration issue. I think for a conservative you were very soft on Barnes and even softer on the issue.
The only aspect of it that seems to arouse your attention is the illegality question. But although deeply important and although it is shameful and horrifying that for decades the government has ignored its responsibility to enforce the law, the question is WAY beyond that.
To see that simply observe that this government might tomorrow make it legal to bring in in a single year three million Yemenis, three million Egyptians and three million Bangladeshis. Do you think that would not be a problem, to have nine million new, impoverished immigrants, almost none English speakers or with any skills leading to employment here, all of them Muslims?
You should really read a lot of Mark Krikorian . . . he stresses that there is no analogy with past conditions ('we are all immigrants') simply because of the growth of the welfare state. When a century ago there was fairly mass immigration,the country was much emptier, needed lots of manual labor and had no welfare system.
It is also just political correctness to talk about immigration without distinguishing among cultural, religious and racial groups. Do you really think a million immigrants from Yemen would be no different than a million from Northern/Eastern Europe, the latter containing people much closer to our cultural and religious traditions?
Barnes, for whatever reasons, like President Bush, McCain, etc. are open borders types. For Democrats this makes sense, as every poor immigrant who comes here is likely to be another Democratic voter, another voice for a still bigger welfare system.
For a so-called conservative to have such a view is massively mad and has to call into question their understanding of and fealty to conservative views.
End of rant.
Paul
Note from KBJ: For the record, my concern about immigration (legal or illegal) has nothing to do with politics. If there were no illegal immigration, I wouldn't care if every legal immigrant voted Democrat. If you're here legally, you can vote for anyone you want; and we shouldn't make immigration decisions based on how the immigrants are likely to vote.
