Immigrant Song

No less an establishment ungulate than Bullwinkle predicted this immigration nonsense we are currently enduring, a good six months ago, and yet I still didn't quite believe it was possible. But this apparently is an issue ripe for ample pushback on both sides. Bottom line, though -- the answer to the usual "why here, why now" question is obvious. Bush's feeble attempt to play Solomon and split the baby sealed the deal, and will please no one. He should get out of his bubble a bit more often; he no longer has nearly the political capital he once had, if he ever really had all that much in the first place. He gave the majority who despise him no reason to change their minds; he gave the few who reluctantly still support him no reason to admit it, nor the red meat they require for sustenance.

The immigration "crisis" has much in common with the gas "crisis". Both are problems which are mostly in Americans' heads. If Americans didn't feel the need to measure their dicks with their vehicles and drive useless gas guzzlers everywhere, aggregate demand would drop, as would prices. Similarly, if Americans were more willing to pay a higher price for produce and meat, the jobs of procuring such items would command a higher premium, and thus be attractive to Americans. Right now, picking strawberries and working in chicken slaughterhouses is pretty much the province of folks whose other main option is staying home and making two bucks a day. You want a 79¢ head of lettuce, there are ancillary costs, just as your $3.00 gallon of gasoline comes with a half-trillion dollar annual defense package tacked to it.

And yes, illegal immigration has an impact on the infrastructure and job market of certain states. Being at the north end of California's great central valley, I know this all too well. I imagine many of these infrastructural costs are absorbed at least in part by the cheaper items produced by the immigrants' labor. Is it a wash? Hell, I don't know. Perhaps someone should do a study. I hear we have a government that does that kind of shit; funny how we never hear any comparative numbers in this here "debate".

What all this is is a contrivance for electoral purposes, pure and simple. Americans who are worried about their jobs in the context of illegal immigrants should perhaps read a book or look at a globe. American jobs that are being outsourced are, by definition, being sent overseas. Duh. That Meskin down the road didn't take your job, pally, he took a job you didn't want. Your job got sent over to Shanghai or Bangalore, so's your former CEO's stock could go up a quarter-point or so.

The real tell in all this is that this was the best Bush and his minions could muster up for the midterms -- misplaced nativist resentment, which is already their deal to begin with. This will not win them back those that left during the great Finally Fucking Came To Their Senses poll shift of the last nine months. Nor will this assuage the evangelicals who live and die on abortion, contraception, and the incipient threat of them thar hommasexshuls bumpin' uglies in fronta The Children.

And all of those issues point to a radically misguided set of priorities, which is really what should undo the Republicans this time around. Think of it; what policy initiatives have they pursued with their legislative and executive (and now judicial) majority? Bogus Social Security reform that they couldn't even get fellow Republicans to back. Bogus Medicare reform that will have to be overhauled yet again. Sabre-rattling toward an Iranian regime that, as intractable as it seems, has actually gone out of its way to be conciliatory on several occasions, while we publicly bluster and fume, even as the whole world watches us bog down in the neocons' Iraqi folly. (Obvious issues of morality aside, the practical fact of the matter is that taking on Iran would require air strikes and bombardment; i.e., lots of civilian casualties. Ready to be an international pariah?)

Now, I'm not saying that there aren't some aspects of immigration policy that need to be addressed, there certainly are. And protesters do themselves no favors with their symbolic antics and La Raza/Aztlan histrionics. But the wannabe Minutemen have no sense of proportion; would that they dedicated half this level of energy to something constructive. Again, this issue is a meringue of a contrivance, whipped up out of nothing, almost entirely air.

There are two sensible ways to handle this situation -- either help immigrants assimilate and become Americans, or make it worth their while to not want to risk their lives to come here. The latter is where the outsourcing comes in; if you want them to stay home, then don't act so surprised when your job is outsourced to a maquiladora. That's how it works. Alternatively, we can help and encourage immigrants to assimilate into American society by enabling their path to the middle class (you know, the rising tide and boats thingy), but since we can't seem to even do that for native-born Americans anymore, I suspect there'll be a lot more sound and fury over this as the summer commences. Wait till the first burned-out National Guardsman dragooned into this nonsense accidentally shoots a pregnant woman, and watch all hell break loose. Then the Codpiece's little prime-time stunt won't look quite so measured and reasoned.