Immigration: the battle over the US soul

Well, the bullshysters are spewing the usual: a torrent of spurious double talk and red-herrings. And here’s a particularly cute little serving of the usual:

Washington diary: Bring it on Mr Bush!

It was fussy, cosy and reassuring. The radio alarm sprang to life at 0710 and the last embers of my last dream cycle were suddenly invaded by words like "dangerous liberals", "left-wing traitors", "overrun our country", "terrorist invasion".

I was in the clutches of talk radio. Immigration reform is the big issue in Washington and, in the heartland, right-wing radio stations are talking up a storm of fear and loathing about an alien invasion.

I have no idea who today's rasping bigot is, why the previous occupant of the Lilac Room would want to be woken up by such a rant or who else is listening.
Terrific, isn’t he? And dontcha love his style? Yes, that’s right, they’re all screaming bigots, aren’t they. And he makes that clear with this incisive breakdown of what it’s really all about:

Not only has it divided the Republican Party and the administration, it is also morphing into a heated debate about what kind of country the US wants to be: mean or generous, closed or open, engaged or disengaged from the rest of the world.
Mean or generous? Balls. Generosity has absolutely nothing to do with it. None of his little red-herrings has.

No-one is arguing with the country's right to police its borders. . .
But that’s precisely what you are doing, and you know it. Because that is all immigration reformers ask for. Not an end to immigration. Just an end to the unchecked and unpoliced southern free-for-all. The writer then cements his bullshysterishness with this:

. . .but 12 million or so undocumented immigrants come here not because they want to loiter in the murky shadow of Lady Liberty but because there are jobs waiting for them.
Jobs waiting for them? So bloody what? Let them apply, then. Let them legally immigrate. And certainly, were you not specifically arguing with your country’s right to protect its borders, you should have absolutely no problem with that concept (and no article to write).

But you do.

And there we have the blatant hypocrisy of this writer’s position (and virtually every other of its ilk): ‘I don’t argue with our country’s right to control its borders’, and yet almost literally in the same breath, and by definition, ‘I do argue with our country’s right to control its borders’.

Some want to work, make money and leave. Others want to work and stay for ever. The country is big enough to accommodate both. Despite the trauma of 9/11, the self laceration of Iraq and the shame of Abu Ghraib, the US can still be stirred by the creed of its founding fathers.

I rest my case. . .
So do I.

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