The Anti-Immigrant Republicans

In a recent column for Townhall.com, Bruce Bialosky took issue with a Wall Street Journal editorial on immigration:

They finish the editorial by stating – and here is where the WSJ editors join hands with the left – “Immigrants bring vitality and skills to the U.S. economy.” This clearly implies what liberals have alleged for years: that Republicans are anti-immigrant. I have never once seen a statement by a Republican presidential candidate against immigrants, and the editorial did not (and could not) cite one.

He makes an interesting point. We all know the default setting for a Republican candidate is extreme and uncompromising intolerance for illegal immigration, but is it really fair to call them anti-immigrant in the more general sense?

Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich have expressed support for establishing English as the official language, a non-solution to a non-issue that would serve primarily to reinforce the misconception that many who come here don't bother to learn English. Promoting the learning of English isn't inherently anti-immigrant, I suppose, but intentionally promulgating a false stereotype probably is, so that one's kind of a wash.

Herman Cain has been making what may or may not be jokes about lining the border with terrible death traps, but, you know, it's not like there'd be any visa-holders among the fatalities. Cain is also in favor of Alabama's new immigration law, which is a disaster in many, many ways. But, again, the law doesn't target legal immigrants—parts of it target undocumented workers, and parts of it target everyone with an accent or brown skin, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.^[1]

And then there are the sins of omission. The current immigration system is woefully ineffective—many who hope to immigrate legally are forced to wait in absurdly long lines, and even more are told there's no line they're eligible to wait in—and with a few exceptions (most notably Gary Johnson), the Republican candidates have shown no signs of giving a crap. For all their talk in other contexts of market forces and supply and demand, they've been inexcusably ignorant (or willfully dismissive) of the connection between economic conditions and immigration patterns.^[2]

Of course, even the candidates who use the harshest rhetoric on "illegals" are careful to avoid saying anything that can be construed as hostile toward legal immigrants—they're running for office, for Pete's sake—but they haven't said much in support of expanding the avenues for legal immigration either. Instead, they play into fears about illegal immigrants streaming across the border and having babies and taking our jobs and wallets and healthcare and whatever else isn't bolted down, offering only the occasional "first we need to get illegal immigration under control, and then we can talk about the dysfunctional visa process", as if there isn't a causal link between the two.

This is all to say that I think the Republican approach to immigration is, at best, severely misguided, and at worst, a shameful case of exploiting and exacerbating a genuine humanitarian problem for political gain.^[3] But hey, that's just my opinion, and it still doesn't answer the doubly-subjective (in terms of both policy and semantics) question of whether it's fair to characterize the hard-liners as anti-immigrant.

I found my answer when I went to the candidates' websites to see what they said on legal immigration. Not a whole lot, as it turns out, other than a few vague reaffirmations of their general support for the concept, but something else caught my attention:

Rick Perry:
As part of a broader tax reform strategy, I will also ask Congress to eliminate direct subsidies and tax credits that distort the energy marketplace. My plan levels the playing field, ending Obama’s anti-growth policies and opening a competitive marketplace to benefit American citizens.

Mitt Romney:
President Obama has neglected the fundamental tasks of creating jobs and growing our economy. Instead, he’s focused his efforts on an anti-jobs, anti-growth agenda that has significantly expanded the role of the federal government.

Michele Bachmann:
Researchers, entrepreneurs and investors across America have been paralyzed by this president’s anti-business policies that have created severe uncertainty. As president, I will signal by way of leadership to innovators, that the time has come to once again unleash the genius of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ working to create the wealth of the nation.

Newt Gingrich:
The fact is, we are not going to close the deficit and move towards a balanced budget unless we follow the policies that foster the economic growth necessary to create jobs.The first and most immediate step would be to employ the policies that encourage investment, create jobs, and reward innovation and entrepreneurship -- exactly the opposite of the Obama anti-jobs policies.

As long as the Republican candidates consider Obama anti-jobs/business/growth for favoring policies likely to be ineffective, or that betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation, or that come off as thinly-veiled attempts to distract and deceive voters, I'm going to go ahead and call them anti-immigrant for exactly the same reasons.

Seems fair to me.

1. The provision requiring law enforcement officers to check a detainee's immigration status applies only "where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States", and officers aren't allowed to consider race, color, or national origin "except to the extent permitted by the United States Constitution or the Constitution of Alabama". This is in no way the same as saying officers aren't allowed to consider race, color, or national origin.

2. And yet, they seem to think there is a connection between the ability of people to move to where economic conditions are better and the height of the physical obstacles we put in the way.

3. Politicians love issues that (a) people are ill-informed about, (b) arouse strong emotions, and (c) allow them to blame problems on groups lacking political power, and immigration is all three. If only there were some way to depict that graphically.

Prosecutorial Discretion

Nobody really knows how many unauthorized aliens are in the United States, but most studies put the number in the 10-12 million range.^[1] What we do know is that the deportation rate is currently at an all-time high—about 400,000 per year. Meanwhile, estimates suggest that, even accounting for deportations and voluntary departures, the unauthorized alien population has been increasing at a rate of about 500,000 a year.

In other words, we're clearly well on our way to resolving the problem. If current trends continue, by my rough calculation, we should have immigration under control right around the time the sun becomes a red giant and destroys all life on Earth.

However, if we want a solution that might take less than five billion years, we can, in broad terms, do one or more of the following:

1. Grant some form of general or limited amnesty.^[2]
2. Commit more resources to deportation efforts and border protection.^[3]
3. Allow the economy to degrade to the point that the problem takes care of itself.

#1 isn't going to happen anytime soon. #2 might be theoretically possible, but lately Congress has been rather stingy about throwing money around. Honestly, #3 is most likely to work, and is probably why the rate of illegal immigration appears to have slowed in recent years, but let's assume nobody wants to go any further down that route. So we're stuck with the deadly-ball-of-hydrogen plan for now.

That being the case, it would make sense for the Obama administration to put some thought into how they allocate their limited resources. If one alien is a convicted rapist, and another is a college student with above-average grades and no criminal record who was brought to the U.S. by his parents at age 10, they may be equally deportable under the law, but I think it's obvious who the taxpayers want the government to deal with first. Two weeks ago, the White House announced just such a policy:

Under the President’s direction, for the first time ever the Department of Homeland Security has prioritized the removal of people who have been convicted of crimes in the United States. And they have succeeded; in 2010 DHS removed 79,000 more people who had been convicted of a crime compared to 2008. Today, they announced that they are strengthening their ability to target criminals even further by making sure they are not focusing our resources on deporting people who are low priorities for deportation. This includes individuals such as young people who were brought to this country as small children, and who know no other home. It also includes individuals such as military veterans and the spouses of active-duty military personnel.

While the long-term effects of the new policy remain unclear, the immediate consequence was undoubtedly a heap of torn menisci and strained ACLs, given the intensity with which knees were jerked:

This step by the White House amounts to a complete abrogation of the President's duty to enforce the laws of the land and a huge breach of the public trust. Never, in the history of federal immigration enforcement, has an administration willfully and so egregiously usurped Congress's and the people's role to decide immigration issues. In essence, the administration has declared that U.S. immigration is now virtually unlimited to anyone willing to try to enter and only those who commit violent felonies after arrival are subject to enforcement.

—————

What if citizens would stop paying taxes, or refuse to participate in Social Security? If the executive branch can countermand a law of Congress, why can’t the voters – those who grant Congress its authority – do the same?^[4]

—————

President Obama is once again over-extending his hand to implement his political agenda previously struck down by Congress. The message to those thinking about coming to the United States illegaly is clear: come here, break the law by entering the United States, a sovereign country, without permission, use public services while burdening American taxpayers while not paying into the system, burden our schools and health care system, all without consequences to the illegal immigrant population.

—————

An increasingly desperate Barack Hussein Obama, in a treasonous attempt to pander to foreigners at the obvious expense of America’s interests and security, has imposed amnesty for illegal aliens by fiat.

Aside from a few basic points of grammatical structure, almost all of that is wrong. It's not amnesty—no one is being legally absolved of their transgressions. It's not a usurpation of Congress—all immigration laws remain in effect, and all aliens who find themselves deportable under those laws are just as deportable today as they were two weeks ago. And it's not unconstitutional—the executive branch is perfectly within its power to decide how to enforce a law, especially when equal enforcement across the board is a practical impossibility. If anything, it's silly that this wasn't already the policy.

What does it say about our collective understanding of immigration that Obama does something not only reasonable on its face, but also likely to address and alleviate one of the more incendiary conservative talking points (i.e. that "illegals" are a bunch of dangerous criminals), and this is the reaction he gets? I wouldn't even call it a backlash, because it's too ill-informed. It's just an excuse. People care enough about immigration to react emotionally, but not quite enough to demand analysis that at least borders on honest and fair, which gives commentators free reign to ignore reality and be as vitriolic as they want.

1. Bear Stearns conducted a study that put the number at over 20 million. This is because the researchers made their "Money Ball" shot, which makes the results count double.

2. Of course, many would argue that "amnesty" would be entirely counter-productive, as it creates a precedent that will lead to increased illegal immigration in the future. I'm not going to get into that now, except to make the point that, as is so often the case, it's probably not that simple.

3. I suppose there's always a case to be made for doing more, but this recent Washington Post editorial makes the case that our border is considerably more secure than Republicans make it out to be. I highly recommend reading it, because it reinforces what I already believe.

4. A little off-topic, but here's the best part of that RedState article, and by best I mean most infuriating:

Secretary of Homeland Insecurity Janet Napolitano proclaimed in a letter to the Senate that she will suspend deportation proceedings and grant amnesty to those who ostensibly fit the criteria of the Dream Act – a bill that was defeated with overwhelming bipartisan support of Congress.

In December 2010 the DREAM Act was passed by the House, 216-198. It was subsequently rejected by the Senate, 41-55. That's 41 voting against passage—or, more precisely, against cloture, because the filibuster has morphed from a rarely-seen act of desperation into a thing that we just have to deal with now.
    There are 535 members of Congress. Fewer than half of them (45%) voted against the DREAM Act. Of the Democrats in Congress at the time, only 14% voted no, compared to 89% of Republicans. And this is "overwhelming bipartisan support" for rejecting the bill. It must be a lot easier to write when you don't care what words mean.

Taking a Break From Having Standards

Everything I post to this blog comes with an implicit guarantee that I've made a sincere effort to base my thoughts, observations, and opinions on reality, rather than the other way around. I like to ridicule politicians and commentators when they say or do ridiculous things, but I want to be fair about it—a well-founded argument isn't worth much if the hundred that preceded it were entirely unfounded. Of course, the fact that so many politicians and commentators take the opposite approach is the reason I have anything to write about in the first place. The world they inhabit is a depressing wasteland of logical fallacies, non sequiturs, and ad hominen attacks, and the more we pay attention to it the dumber we get.

It also looks like a lot of fun.

It's not like I've never been tempted. For every idea that grows into a half-decent article, there's another that was promising at first—interesting, novel, maybe a little controversial—but ultimately had to be abandoned. Upon further investigation it becomes clear that what I thought was something is, in fact, nothing. To make it work I'd have to omit a key detail, take a quote out of context, blow something out of proportion, or simply make things up, and that's not the kind of blog I want this to be. But who says I need to have standards all the time? Would Sean Hannity let a fundamental flaw in his argument stop him from making it? Would Keith Olbermann? Hell no, they wouldn't.

In that spirit I present, in somewhat abbreviated form, three of those discarded articles. And not the dull, respectable versions either, because starting now, and for the rest of this post,^[1] I will make no effort whatsoever to be fair.

—————

Fox News Ignored the Republican Primary Debate
These three screenshots were taken at exactly the same time (give or take 30 seconds) on June 13, 2011, about 20 minutes after the beginning of the Republican debate:

Doesn't it seem like something's missing from that last one? And I'm not selectively cropping, by the way—there was no mention of the debate anywhere on the FoxNews.com main page. I also went to the "Politics" page, and there was hardly anything there either. Just a single video—kind of hidden away off to the side—in which a correspondent spends two and a half minutes previewing the debate and reporting some mathematically impossible poll results:

So why was Fox News ignoring the debate? I don't know, but my two-part guess is, first, they didn't want to promote a rival network (MSNBC, whose ratings coincidentally suck, apparently does not have that concern), and second, they were afraid the Republicans would embarrass themselves. The candidates were in hostile territory, after all—a debate hosted and televised by CNN. What if the questions didn't presuppose that Obama's economic and foreign policies are disastrous? What if they were forced to defend the non-sensical premise that every incremental increase in gay rights destroys America a little bit more? Or that building a wall on the border is a viable solution to anything?^[2]

—————

Sarah Palin Supports the Libyan Government
It makes perfect sense that I follow Sarah Palin on Twitter, because I find them both oddly fascinating for reasons I can't explain without using the phrases "oddly fascinating" and "reasons I can't explain".

In April, Palin posted a series of tweets criticizing Obama's policy in Libya:

Libya deteriorates, Obama vacillates. Campaigner-in-Chief needs to justify why we're there or we shouldn't be there. Need to send world the

message: we'll only intervene in anyone's business if we're dead serious:get in, hit hard, get out. Listen to McCain http://bit.ly/flJzCXUS

At least on this 1, wish POTUS would hear McCain MT "@weeklystandard: Decries Timid Approach in Libya: B York reports: http://bit.ly/flJzCX"

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with her points about Libya, and I was about to not give it a second thought, but then I noticed the links to the article about McCain. (Only the second link works; she broke the first one by adding "US" to the end, presumably in a misguided act of patriotism.)

.LY looks like a country code domain, I thought to myself. But which country? Lyberia? Lychtynsteyn? Lynyrd Skyrgyzstan?

Oh, right, it's Libya. Talk about sending mixed messages. Bit.ly isn't a Libyan company, but their URL means they're indirectly doing business with the Libyan government, and that means every time Palin tweets a bit.ly URL she's putting a few more dirhams in Qaddafi's pockets.^[3]

—————

Michelle Malkin is an Anchor Baby
That's right. The person who wrote this:

Clearly, the custom of granting automatic citizenship at birth to children of tourists and temporary workers such as Hamdi, tourists, 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.

…was born in the United States to Filipino parents who may or may not have had time to unpack between the airport and the delivery room. Really.

She's not a hypocrite, though, because she's not necessarily excluding herself from her own insulting rhetoric. Our jus soli policy "undermines the integrity of citizenship—not to mention national security", Malkin says. And given her long history of absurd fear-mongering and fact- and logic-impaired anti-immigrant screeds, I'd argue that Malkin has indeed done her part to undermine the integrity of citizenship—not to mention national security.^[4]

1. Not including the footnotes.

2. I wasn't watching the debate when I took those screenshots, but I caught parts of it later, and, honestly, if Fox's position was that it wasn't newsworthy enough to make a big deal about, I can't argue. To borrow a phrase from Neal Boortz, the debate was little more than a joint news conference. Perhaps it wasn't entirely unnewsworthy—we learned, for example, that Rick Santorum prefers Jay Leno to Conan (of course he does), and that Michelle Bachmann can't decide between Elvis or Johnny Cash (the correct answer is Johnny Cash, the second-best answer is Elvis, the worst answer is "both")—but if the alternative to ignoring the debate is plastering it all over the main page like there was nothing else happening in the world, I vote for the former.
    And yeah, I'm sure Fox's coverage is a bit more expansive when they televise one of these debates, but they are a TV network, after all. And they hardly make it a secret that they want people to watch Fox News at all times—as you can see in the screenshot, any time you go to the FoxNews.com main page there are little boxes at the top indicating what's currently on the air, what's coming up next, and how you can watch whatever you just missed.
    As for the screwy poll results, there's a perfectly logical explanation for that one, too. I checked out the original data (the relevant stuff is on p.23), and here's what seems to have happened: 13% of respondents said they haven't decided who they'll support, and 21% said they support a candidate outside the Romney/Giuliani/Paul/Palin/Bachmann top five. Fox lumped these two groups together under the label of "Undecided", because all those Cain/Gingrich/Huntsman/Johnson/Pawlenty/Roemer/Santorum/Someone Else supporters are really just kidding themselves. Then, they added 21 and 13 and got 76, because they're incompetent.

3. I'm having trouble even pretending to get worked up about this one. The Bit.ly people say they aren't sure how much of their money has made its way to the Libyan government, but it's somewhere south of $75, which is the registration fee they paid to the non-profit corporation that runs these things.
    Maybe it still makes sense to take your URL-shortening business elsewhere as a matter of principle, but that slope is awfully slippery. We can all agree that Libya sucks, but what about, say, Colombia? What about Montenegro? I don't even know anything about Montenegro. And before too long you'll find yourself making a qualitative comparison of Grenada, Tokelau, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, at which point it's probably time to acknowledge that whatever principled statement you're trying to make is almost certainly not worth the trouble.

4. Yes, Malkin was born to non-citizen parents who had just stepped off the plane, but there's no indication her parents were here illegally, or that they came to the U.S. specifically so their daughter would be a citizen.
    Oh, did I forget to mention above that Malkin's parents may have had permanent visas? Sorry about that. She's said before that her dad obtained a green card due to his medical training, and she was born right in the middle of the brief window in the late '60s and early '70s when the government made it substantially easier for foreign doctors to get visas. A high proportion of these doctors were from the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries. Some came in on temporary work/study visas and later adjusted to permanent status, but most were issued green cards right off the bat.
    People who argue for doing away with birthright citizenship, including Malkin herself, are almost invariably talking about "illegals" and temporary visitors, not legal permanent residents (i.e. non-citizens with green cards)—they just don't always make the distinction with a whole lot of clarity. The premise that an "anchor baby" can help the parents obtain legal status, which is largely bullshit to begin with, isn't even relevant in the case of parents who are legal permanent residents already.

Sympathy for the Undocumented

Michelle Malkin and Jose Antonio Vargas have more than a few things in common. They both come from Filipino families; they're both successful writers; they both have close personal connections to America's immigration system, and strong opinions about why it's fundamentally broken. That's where the similarities end.

Vargas came to the U.S. in 1993. He was 12 years old, sent by his mother to live with his grandparents in California. Two weeks ago he revealed to the world that no one had ever given him permission to do so:

One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my driver’s permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. “This is fake,” she whispered. “Don’t come back here again.”

Confused and scared, I pedaled home and confronted Lolo. I remember him sitting in the garage, cutting coupons. I dropped my bike and ran over to him, showing him the green card. “Peke ba ito?” I asked in Tagalog. (“Is this fake?”) My grandparents were naturalized American citizens — he worked as a security guard, she as a food server — and they had begun supporting my mother and me financially when I was 3, after my father’s wandering eye and inability to properly provide for us led to my parents’ separation. Lolo was a proud man, and I saw the shame on his face as he told me he purchased the card, along with other fake documents, for me. “Don’t show it to other people,” he warned.

I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.

Malkin came to the U.S. in 1970. She came with her parents—she would've had to, as she was a developing fetus at the time—and became an American citizen the instant she was born.^[1] Here's what she thinks about Vargas' sob story:

Vargas believes his sob story is an argument for giving up on immigration enforcement and passing a mass amnesty. It’s a sob story, all right. Homeland security officials across the country should be weeping at the open mockery Vargas and his enablers have made of the law.

Ok, first of all, to my knowledge Vargas hasn't argued for "giving up on immigration enforcement and passing a mass amnesty", and there's really no basis for saying he has.^[2] More importantly, this is a kid who entered the US at age 12, fully under the impression that he had the necessary documents to be here legally. He learned the truth at age 16. He learned the truth while trying to get his driver's license, which, for what it's worth, was the only thing I cared about when I was 16.^[3] And if the one thing I had to do to get a driver's license was to break a federal law—a strictly bureaucratic law, the breaking of which requires no violence or physical taking of something that's not mine, and there's a decent chance I won't get caught—I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where I'd hesitate for even a second. Now, at age 27, I'd be more rational, but 16-year-olds are stupid. That's my point.

And once Vargas started lying and using fake documents—which, again, happened at age 16—he limited his options to (a) continuing to lie, or (b) leaving the United States forever.^[4] What's the most important decision you had to make at age 16?

Vargas' story should be the impetus for a serious conversation about the harshness of our immigration laws, and in more reasonable circles, it has been exactly that. But in the case of the loudest voices for hard-line anti-illegal-immigrant policies, the story reveals the laziness of their rhetoric.

To Michelle Malkin, it's a black-and-white distinction—either he's here legally and can stay, or he's not and he has to go. I don't think that's the right way to look at it, but whatever, it's a position that's not entirely without merit. But the thing with black-and-white distinctions is that from time to time they produce unjust results. That's the trade-off you have to accept when you take the side of rigid adherence to the rule of law—there are going to be sympathetic cases, but if we don't make everyone follow the same rules we'll eventually not have any rules at all.

But Malkin takes it a step further, treating the black-and-white distinction between legal and illegal as if it's also the line between honorable and dishonorable. As if every person who finds themselves on the wrong side of an immigration law is a deceitful scumbag, deserving only of our scorn and a one-way plane ticket.

That's not how laws work. There has never, in human history, been a perfect overlap between legal/illegal and honorable/dishonorable, and there never will be. To suggest otherwise—and to suggest that our immigration system, of all things, is where this perfect overlap exists—is asinine. Either ignorant or willfully disingenuous, if not a little of both.

1. Initially I tried to write the first part of this article in the style of one of Paul Harvey's "Rest of the Story" segments, but it wasn't working—mostly because I'm awful at imitating someone else's style, and it seemed like it would be more confusing and distracting than anything else—so I scrapped it. And now… you know . . . the rest of the story.
    Anyway, more on Malkin in an upcoming post, which will probably be rather different than you might imagine.

2. Except to the extent that the DREAM Act, which Vargas supports, has been unfairly characterized as a "mass amnesty".

3. My birthday is always within a few days of Thanksgiving, and in the year I turned 16 it was the day after. (This was in Georgia, where, officially, the day after Thanksgiving is Robert E. Lee's birthday. Robert E. Lee's actual birthday is January 19. I'm not making that up. I couldn't make that up.) The DMV was closed, and remained closed until Monday. I couldn't get my license until three days after my 16th birthday, which was so upsetting I still remember it 12 years later. My point, once again, is that 16-year-olds are stupid. I didn't even have a car.

4. More or less. If he want back to the Philippines before his 18th birthday or within six months afterward, he could've immediately applied for a visa. Once he missed that window, he faced a ten-year bar—that is, he has to leave, then he has to wait ten years before he can even start the process of "waiting in line" for a visa.
    Except that the ten-year bar might as well be a 100-year bar, because there's no line for Vargas to wait in. He has no qualifying relatives in the U.S., no real prospects for an employment visa, and he's not eligible to enter the diversity visa lottery—the federal government is satisfied with our current level of Filipinos. Oh, and the document fraud he confessed to committing may make him permanently ineligible anyway.

Dissenting Opinions

As I'm sure I've said before, it's not conservatism itself that bothers me as much as the perception that, on a given issue, one side is inherently "conservative" and the other is inherently not. Sometimes that's the case, but there's usually more than a little room for debate, and I can't always figure out how conservatives feel justified in clinging to a particular viewpoint so monolithically.

Turns out I'm not the only one. Here's a short list of prominent conservatives who, on at least one issue, break from the herd. And I'm not talking about people considered moderate, like John McCain and his "maverick" nonsense. These are conservatives who went a different direction because the "liberal" view is more compatible with their understanding of conservatism.

Dick Cheney Supports Same-Sex Marriage

I think that freedom means freedom for everyone. As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish.

"Freedom means freedom for everyone." Assuming the "as long as you're not an enemy combatant" caveat is implied, does it get more fundamentally conservative than that? And note that Cheney unambiguously rejects the "same-sex marriage is an affront to our freedom" argument, which is one of the most baffling things conservatives are somehow able to say with a straight (so to speak) face.

Rupert Murdoch Supports Amnesty ^[1]

Our partnership advocates reform that gives a path to citizenship for responsible, law-abiding immigrants who are in the U.S. today without proper authority. It is nonsense to talk of expelling 12 million people. Not only is it impractical, it is cost prohibitive.
…
As an immigrant, I chose to live in America because it is one of the freest and most vibrant nations in the world. And as an immigrant, I feel an obligation to speak up for immigration policies that will keep America the most economically robust, creative and freedom-loving nation in the world.

So, a successful businessman argues that a government policy is patently flawed because it's impractical and it undermines natural economic forces? Sounds awfully conservative to me. Not to mention reasonable.

William F. Buckley Supported Legalization of Marijuana

Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great… And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend.

Gay marriage might draw the silliest arguments from defenders of the status quo, but the marijuana debate is a close second. Both appear to be cases where the Urgent Need to Resist Change at All Costs has taken on a life of its own, and thus no longer requires a rational underlying foundation to sustain itself. Buckley was one of few conservatives who recognized not only that resistance to change for no good reason is intellectually dishonest, but that it's a fallacy to which defenders of the status quo are especially susceptible.

Richard Viguerie and Brent Bozell Oppose the Death Penalty

We are among a growing number of conservatives who have questions and reservations about the death penalty, believe it is no longer a necessary form of punishment based on either Lockean or biblical principles, or oppose it outright.

Maybe it's just me, but if I ever found myself advocating an ideology that sees mandatory health insurance as a deplorable abuse of government power, but sees nothing wrong with the government executing people, I'd stop and re-examine things too.

And that's the common thread here, isn't it?^[2] If new information or a new perspective makes a viewpoint seem incompatible with one's ideology, the proper course of action is to re-examine the viewpoint, the ideology, or both—not to simply redefine the ideology to make the viewpoint fit.

1. I say "amnesty" because it's pithier, and because it's the term most who disagree with Murdoch would use. Like virtually anyone accused of supporting "amnesty," what he's really talking about is a set of reforms reasonably calculated to (a) avoid the logistical nightmare of deporting 12 million people, and (b) prevent a similar build-up from happening in the future, which is "amnesty" in the same sense that a plane ticket entitles you to bypass fees, lines, security, and any other hassles between you and your destination.

2. Actually, there's another common thread. Cheney has a gay daughter, Murdoch is an immigrant, Buckley smoked pot, and…ok, I doubt Viguerie or Bozell have ever been executed, but still. It's almost as if personal experience makes the idea that a certain thing threatens to destroy society seem a bit irrational.

Opponents of the DREAM Act: Evil or Stupid?

As I've discussed before, I'm a big fan of the DREAM Act, which would provide a path to legal status for certain unauthorized aliens who were brought into the country as minors and intend to go to college or join the military.

I'm also a big fan of the principle of reciprocity:

[I]n the context of opinions and debate, the principle of reciprocity states that we should respect the reasonableness and the goodwill of those with whom we disagree, and to treat them with civility, even if we judge their opinions to be unreasonable and/or their views to be unjust or immoral.
…
If you assume the worst of someone only because of an opinion different than yours, then you’re being an intellectually dishonest asshole.

So, while I disagree with the (mostly conservative) opposition to the DREAM Act, I'd like to believe opponents are motivated by a sincere evaluation of the bill's merits, which isn't entirely implausible. The DREAM Act's benefits are clear, but—in a departure from the impeccable legislation we've come to expect from the legislative branch—it also has its share of problems.^[1] Any member of Congress who votes against it, then, should have little trouble explaining why the bill is flawed, and why he or she feels the negatives outweigh the positives. Let's start with Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX):

I am sympathetic to the young, illegal immigrant children who were brought here by their parents. Because their parents disregarded America's immigration laws, they are in a difficult position. However, this bill actually rewards the very illegal immigrant parents who knowingly violated our laws. Once the DREAM Act's amnesty recipients become citizens and turn 21, if they haven't already they can sponsor their illegal immigrant parents, spouse, or children for legalization, who can then sponsor others, resulting in chain migration that will further hurt American workers and American taxpayers.

I hear this one a lot, and it's nonsense. To say that DREAM Act beneficiaries will be able to "sponsor their illegal immigrant parents" is an inherent contradiction. They will, of course, be able to sponsor their legal immigrant parents, via the legal process of which conservatives are so fond (with its 15- to 18-year waiting lists for most Mexican applicants). But if the parents are already here illegally, nothing can be done for them until they leave. On top of that, if they leave after having been here illegally for a year or more, there's a ten-year prohibition on even applying for a visa. By the time those hurdles have been cleared, I'd say it's a little unfair—that is, even more unfair than usual—to call the parents "illegal."

Lamar Smith's apparent belief that family-sponsored visas are a low-hassle way for unauthorized aliens to obtain legal status is, I think it's safe to say, incompatible with reality. That raises the question, is he trying to be misleading on purpose, or does he simply not know the basics of U.S. immigration policy? I don't have an answer to that, but, in Smith's defense, a lot can be forgotten in 14 years, which is how long it's been since he wrote the damn law.^[2]

Moving on, Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA):

The DREAM Act specifically focuses on promising young foreigners a bright future if their parents choose to break the law. This will unquestionably encourage desperate parents to bring their children, perhaps millions of them, across our borders illegally.

Also a popular criticism, and not quite as non-sensical, but definitely misleading. Presumably, Rohrabacher's point is that in the future aliens will cross the border in the hope that similar legislation will be passed while they're here (because it's going so smoothly this time around!). In other words, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he's being more vague than dumb, because the DREAM Act unambiguously excludes anyone who wasn't already in the country at least five years before its enactment. Desparate as those future parents may be to get their kids across the border, they're going to have a tough time doing it in 2005 or earlier (and if they can pull that off, we should probably just let them stay).

Again, Rohrabacher surely knows about the five-year provision, but I bet a lot of casual observers—especially those inclined to take his side on this—do not, and I'm just cynical enough to wonder if maybe his vagueness is intentional—calculated to make the Act sound much scarier than it really is. Regardless, it's a counter-productive omission. Instead of making me think about the dangerous-precedent argument (which, presented appropriately, could be somewhat compelling—not that there isn't a counter-argument), it makes me wonder why Rohrabacher doesn't appear to know what he's talking about.

Representative Phil Gingrey (R-GA):

According to the Migration Policy Institute, an estimated 2 million immigrants will be eligible for amnesty under this bill. That number is not too difficult to imagine given that H.R. 5281 would allow these individuals, once they are naturalized and become 21 years of age, to exploit our broken system by sponsoring their immediate relatives with no numerical cap. We call that chain migration. In fact, they could each bring in something like 179 other individuals.

Really? A newly-legalized alien could bring in 179 relatives? That's such an oddly-specific number. Do you have 179 parents, spouses, children, and siblings, Phil Gingrey? Because I have four.

Surprisingly, that's not the most ridiculous part of Gingrey's speech (well, it might turn out to be, if I ever figure out where that number came from). Even worse is that he sees sponsorship of immediate relatives as "exploit[ing] our broken system." Because that's what's wrong with the system—all those nefarious foreigners applying for visas with 15- to 18-year back-ups and patiently waiting for the paperwork to go through.

Representative Timothy Johnson (R-IL):

It is an affront and a sobering reality to the American taxpayers and their children and grandchildren who are going to pay this bill to the tune of billions of dollars over the future. It is also a reality to the 10 percent of Americans who are unemployed who realize that the effect on the infrastructure of America in this bill is going to be absolutely negative with respect to Social Security benefits, jobs, loans, health care, education and otherwise.

I don't have the energy to try to sort out the competing financial guesswork coming from both sides; I just want to point out that Republican Representative Timothy Johnson is one of many conservatives arguing that if we allow roughly one million unauthorized aliens to legally work (which leads to paying taxes), and legally get a college education (which theoretically leads to paying even more taxes, and sometimes to creating new jobs), it would cause billions of dollars of damage to the economy. If that's true, then our economy is fundamentally backward (which it very well may be, for all I know), and we might as well just give up.

Still, maybe I'm being unfair. (See? Always trying to avoid assuming the worst!) Maybe this is just a bunch of meaningless grandstanding for the C-SPAN cameras, which is about as meaningless as grandstanding gets. At least these elected officials aren't actively spreading misinformation for the clear purpose of riling up the public, right?

Here's Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), actively spreading misinformation for the clear purpose of riling up the public:

If the alien is unable to complete 2 years of college but can demonstrate that their removal would result in hardship to themselves or their U.S. citizen or LPR spouse, child, or parent (the ones who brought them here illegally), the education requirement can be waived altogether. The bill actually allows illegal aliens to get legal status indefinitely without any college or military service.

When he says "hardship," he's abbreviating a bit. The actual standard is "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship," a phrase—Senator Sessions may be surprised to learn—that was not chosen simply because some legislative aide likes the way it sounds. Under current law, one of very few ways an unauthorized alien can obtain legal status is by showing that deportation would cause "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship" to a spouse, parent, or child—provided that person is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident (among other requirements). As the language implies, this exceptionally high standard is met only in extremely unusual circumstances. Sessions is upset about a provision that's essentially the same—in that it carries the same high standard—but would also allow DREAM Act-eligible aliens to attempt to show that deportation would cause "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship" to themselves. Hardly a sweeping reform.

The shot Sessions takes at the parents "who brought them here illegally" is another one for the Evil-or-Stupid file. Granted, the proposed law is poorly written, so he may just be confused, but the existing hardship waiver is poorly written in almost exactly the same way.^[3] Assuming the two are meant to be similarly interpreted, the status of the parents is irrelevant to the DREAM Act debate. If they aren't U.S. citizens or legal residents, they can't be the basis for a hardship waiver under either law. If they've somehow obtained legal status, they can already be the basis for a hardship waiver, regardless of whether the DREAM Act passes.

That's just a small part of the latest version of Sessions' "Ten Things You Need to Know About the DREAM Act." The memos—packed with false and misleading claims—have been picked up by countless conservative news sites (Michelle Malkin, in particular, has been all over them), and appear to have provided the souce material for the speeches made by Sessions' colleagues in the House. Naturally, those already inclined to oppose the Act haven't bothered to question the memos' content (or, even worse, if they have they've been quiet about it).

I'm sure it's clear that I think it's wrong to oppose the DREAM Act, but I hope I've also made it clear that I don't think it's insane to oppose it. Why, then, are conservatives so unwilling to fight it on its merits? In the name of reciprocity, I want to believe they think they are fighting it on its merits—they just have two or three (dozen) facts wrong.^[4] But everything I've seen and heard points, rather overwhelmingly, toward another explanation:

Conservative ideologues love to get worked up about immigration because it's an issue that (a) people know little about, (b) tends to arouse strong emotions, and (c) can be relatively plausibly blamed for any number of unrelated problems.^[5] They know they'll be called out when they go too far, but only by the likes of Media Matters and the American Immigration Council—nobody their followers would actually listen to—so they can pretty much say whatever they want. They make the DREAM Act sound as sinister as possible and in the process portray themselves as patriotic freedom-fighters, protecting America from the terrible menace of foreign-born high-achievers.

Their obvious lack of respect for potential DREAM Act beneficiaries is nothing short of appalling, and their obvious indifference toward honest debate and accurately informing the people they represent is almost as bad—and this just happens to be an issue I know a few things about. Reciprocity be damned—when I hear the same blowhards talking about something less familiar, why should I trust anything they say?

1. An incomplete list:
— Fraud (also an acceptable argument against…anything, really).
— Dangerous precedent.
— Economic impact (projections are all over the map).
— Insufficient time for debate/amendments.
    I'm not saying I agree or disagree with any of those (or that, even if valid, they outweigh the positives of the bill), just that they aren't total nonsense.

2. From the biography on Lamar Smith's website:

He introduced and successfully advanced the passage of a 1996 immigration reform bill. This legislation was the most far-reaching reform of America’s immigration laws since the 1960s.

Prominently displayed on the main page of the same website, as of this article's writing, is the video of Smith's misinformation-fueled speech on the House floor. His audacity would be impressive if it wasn't so infuriating.

3. Immigration and Nationality Act, §240A(b):

(1) The Attorney General may cancel removal in the case of an alien who is inadmissible or deportable from the United States if the alien—
…
(D) establishes that removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to the alien’s spouse, parent, or child, who is a citizen of the United States or an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence.

Sort of looks like the citizen/LPR requirement only applies to children, and not spouses or parents, doesn't it? It could go either way, I suppose, but the settled interpretation is that, to qualify as the basis for a hardship waiver, a spouse or parent must have legal status too. Any chance Sessions has been politely set straight by the ambiguous clause's author, Representative Lamar Smith? Yeah, I doubt it.

4. Another possibility, as always, is that I have it wrong. After all, immigration is complicated, and I certainly don't claim to be an expert, so I'll concede that I may have made a mistake or two. And while I generally endorse the Media Matters and AIC articles I referred to above, I remain wary of anything coming from such a one-sided source (whatever that side may be).
    But for the anti-DREAM Act arguments quoted here—and many, many others I left out—to make sense, there are a lot of things I'd have to be wrong about.

5. Obviously, that goes both ways. Replace "conservative ideologues" with "liberal ideologues" and "immigration" with "tax cuts for the rich," for example.

Great Moments in Breaking From the Herd

Big Government, along with the rest of Andrew Breitbart's online mini-empire, has an unmistakable conservative slant. That is, you pretty much know ahead of time what kind of commentary you're going to get. For example—to choose a topic entirely at random—the controversial Arizona immigration law:

Unlike the reason based protests by tea partiers, the Arizona protesters are acting solely on emotions stirred by a constant barrage of leftist demagoguery. No civil rights have been violated, no racial profiling has taken place, and the motivation for this law was not racism. The motivation is completely founded in reason which is backed by facts and by a definitive understanding of the word 'illegal'.

—————

SB 1070 goes to great length to avoid racial profiling, the specter of which has engendered nearly all of the well-orchestrated hysteria against the law.

—————

This issue is no longer one which we can sit idly by and hope for a solution. We have solutions. First, we need to secure our borders. Second, we need to remove all financial incentives for illegal immigrants. And third, we need to demonstrate the clear and responsible pathway to legal immigration.

—————

This is not an immigration law. It's also not racist. It's not racial profiling. And it's not usurping the role of the federal government (which has abysmally failed here). Instead, it's an employment law and property law.

—————

I don't begrudge illegal immigrants doing what they have to do to take care of their families but I have a family, too, and immigration laws are supposed to protect us from unrestricted access to the infrastructure that comes out of my family's pocket.

Fun fact: That last one—which, by the way, makes some pretty good points—also answers the question of "hey, I wonder what Joe the Plumber is up to these days?"^[1]

Anyway, you get the idea. Not all of it is wrong, necessarily, but it's staunchly pro-border-sealing and pro-government-mandated-paper-carrying. It's also rather insistent that of S.B. 1070 could be enforced without racial profiling, which, I'm sorry, is asinine.^[2]

Imagine my surprise, then, when I read Ronald L. Trowbridge's article about a similar proposed law in Texas:

There is something downright sick in this prejudicial treatment. Conservatives and libertarians usually champion the supremacy of the individual over the collective. We judge individuals as individuals, not as members of a group. But too many conservatives are now demanding that we prejudicially judge people as members of a group. They have become the collectivists that they supposedly reject.

It doesn't even matter (at least, I like to think it doesn't) that I agree with his viewpoint—I'd appreciate it either way. In an era when it's so easy to isolate yourself from opposing opinions, and thus so easy to fail to notice your core ideology being gradually replaced by an arbitrary list of beliefs, we need more stuff like this. Trowbridge isn't saying conservatism itself is wrong, he's saying the views held by most conservatives on immigration cannot be accurately described as conservative.

The best part is at the end:

John Stuart Mill wisely observed that "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that." Open, honest debate—even on the contentious issue of immigration—is healthy because it takes us closer to truth and resolution. Let refutations—not just anger—begin in earnest.

How was this call for "open, honest debate" and understanding of where the other side is coming from recieved? Have you ever read anything on the Internet before?

What a load doc. I carry a drivers liscense and a SS card. What part of illegal can't you get through you thick head!!! Any citizen schould be more happy to show IDwhen asked. Moron

—————

Yeah. We all know a lot of you libertarians are retarded when it comes to supporting open borders and mass immigration. Nobody cares.

—————

Cry me a river, Trowbridge! It's such an inconvenience to carry your driver's license with you for identification! Oh, ...wait. We do that every day already. You whining wusses with your bleeding hearts make me want to puke.

—————

That is the single most absurd statement I have ever read regarding illegal immigration.

Those comments, by the way, are all among the dozen or so highest-rated on Big Government's thumbs up/thumbs down voting system. I wanted to see what kind of rating a comment in support of the article might have, but I couldn't find one.

1. I give it less than six months before Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher and John "Don't Touch My Junk" Tyner are co-hosting their own show on Fox News.

2. From the amended version of Arizona S.B. 1070:

A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not solely consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.

See, they took out "solely." Now the police can't consider race at all…except to the extent permitted by the Constitution, which, it turns out, is kind of a lot.

The likelihood that any given person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor, but standing alone it does not justify stopping all Mexican-Americans to ask if they are aliens.

Seems to me it'd be a lot easier to argue that racial profiling is acceptable in cases like this than to argue it won't be a problem, and I mean "easier" in the sense of "not quite so transparently naïve and/or disingenuous."

Following the Rules

In virtually every discussion I've ever heard on immigration the conservative argument sounds something like this: "I've got nothing against immigrants—as long as they follow the rules!" Conservatives, of course, are all about following the rules, and immigration provides an excellent chance to climb up on a soapbox and preach about it.

The argument is most compelling when it comes from an actual immigrant, or at least a member of a recently-immigrated family:

Despite their dire situations, their hardships, and their lack of financial means, all of my family members came into this country legally. They all went through painstaking efforts to earn that entry.

…

I summarize this background merely to demonstrate that there is a difference between those who are here illegally, and those who played by the rules and patiently made their way here legally. It is an insult to all of the legal immigrants in this great country to act as though the rules don’t matter and should simply be tossed away.

I couldn't agree more. Well, that's not true—it's almost never true. I'd agree more if there wasn't such a strong implication that the choice faced by aliens is whether to immigrate legally or immigrate illegally. That is, perhaps, the choice faced by aliens with close relatives who are U.S. citizens or legal residents, or aliens with certain desirable job skills, or aliens who happen to be from one of those countries whose people aren't already lined up at the border.

For most, however, the choice is between immigrating illegally or not immigrating at all. As it turns out, those rules that conservatives have so much respect for exclude a huge amount of people from even having the chance to come here legally. That doesn't mean their argument is invalid, it just means it's incomplete. Here, in convenient chart form, is the rest of it:

What they say:	What they should add:
[Illegal immigrants] should go home as a family and try to come back through a legal process.	…or, more realistically, just go home and not come back.
No one has a problem with people migrating LEGALLY to this country. The problem is ILLEGAL immigration…people who break the law by coming to this country without bothering to adhere to the rule of law and get proper paperwork.	…so what if the rule of law to which these people must adhere requires them, more often than not, to abandon their dreams of immigrating to the U.S.? America isn't for everybody!
Jan Brewer has the cojones…to secure our borders and allow legal immigration to help build this country as was the purpose of immigration laws.	…and we need a secure border because, as those laws reflect, most of the people on the other side of it aren't wanted here.
Tens of thousands of impoverished people abroad, from Africa to Asia, wait patiently to enter America legally, while hundreds of thousands from Latin America do not.	…which is sort of an obvious thing to say, really, since most of them couldn't "wait patiently to enter America legally" even if they wanted to.

HTML Tables

Sure, find a way to put it more tactfully,^[1] but this is one of only two positions that can be taken honestly. We can either liberalize the rules, or we can tell millions of potential legal immigrants to forget about it—America's closed.

1. Not my job—my narrow-minded agenda is to portray conservatives as heartless and xenophobic, which has turned out to be pretty easy.

Crazy Person Does Crazy Thing, Craziness Ensues

So a guy walked into the Discovery Channel headquarters, made it clear to its occupants—and soon to the rest of the world—that he suffered from crippling mental illness, stuck around for a few episodes of American Chopper and Dirty Jobs, and was just about to enjoy a two-hour block of Cash Cab re-runs when he was shot and killed. Now that everyone has taken a moment to thank their deity of choice that no one else was hurt, we can move on to the fun part.

James Jay Lee,^[1] it turns out, was fairly opinionated—his belief system appears to have been an angry mess of environmentalism, hatred of human beings, and misunderstanding of the basic function of cable television.^[2] It goes without saying (and yet, I can't resist saying it) that this story offers countless angles just waiting to be exploited in the name of ideological rhetoric.

Here are a few angles I've been able to identify, in ascending order of ridiculousness:^[3]

If he was a conservative lunatic, you just know the liberal media would blame the big-name conservative commentators for inspiring him.

[I]magine, if you will, what would be going on today if this man had listed a book by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity or Mark Levin on his website. You can be absolutely drop-dead certain that the ObamaMedia would be teeming with experts telling all of us that this was the inevitable result of all the hatred spewed by those extreme right-wing talk radio hosts and Obama haters.

Eh…maybe. Then again, given Lee's bizarre talk of “anchor baby filth” as a major contributor to environmental problems, I think the basic pre-requisites for blaming right-wing talk radio hosts have been met, but I don't see anybody doing it. (And considering the sites I looked at to write this article, I can’t imagine that such an implication would’ve escaped my attention.)

The bias of the liberal media knows no bounds—now they're trying to portray this guy as a conservative.

In a blog post titled “Purported Eco-Terrorist Angered Over ‘Immigration Pollution And Anchor Baby Filth’,” Think Progress, apparently without shame, named “anti-immigration” sentiment the culprit.

A website that reveals its ideological slant right there in its name published something consistent with that slant?^[4] I'm shocked!

There go the liberals again, being hypocritical.

One failure of logic is to generalize from the anecdotal to the whole. Conservatives, who know rules of logic…understand this.

…

Lefties generalize from anecdotes unless the crazy person is one of their own (and yes, that was just a generalization). Then, of course, the crazy is an "outlier."

Bonus points for acknowledging the inherent problem with generalized accusations of over-generalization, but still, the insistence that conservatives don’t do exactly the same thing is exceedingly silly.

Someone in the liberal media reported that this guy was inspired by Al Gore! It's a miracle!

Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, without Katie Couric, uniquely amongst the broadcast network evening newscasts tied Discovery Channel hostage-taker/bomber James Lee to Al Gore.

So, it’s wrong to blame public figures for their roles in inspiring the crazy actions of crazy people, but it’s good that at least one of the major networks was able to overcome their liberal bias and mention Al Gore’s tangential connection to this fiasco. Alright.

This is just further evidence that liberalism inevitably leads to an act of insane desperation that puts innocent lives at risk and results in a gruesome, public death.

Stuff enough malignant lies into the brains of unhinged halfwits and it is only a matter of time until you end up with a few cases like James Jay Lee.

…

As Lee illustrates so floridly, liberal environmentalism is not just foolish and irritating: it is an antihuman and therefore evil ideology. Anyone who takes it seriously is a potential maniac.

Ah, Moonbattery, the brick wall that common sense eventually crashes into after it veers off course and stubbornly refuses to turn back.

1. Is anyone else reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer finally discovers that his middle initial, J, stands for Jay? Yeah, I didn't think so.

2. According to ABC News, Lee's manifesto is "interspersed with references to esoteric philosophers, childish language, misspellings, and capital letters." My God! What kind of monster intersperses capital and lowercase letters within the same document?

3. As measured on the ridiculometer, which is logarithmic.

4. In contrast to the objectivity we expect from, say, RedState.com, which has a perfectly neutral name.

Amnesty

I’m fascinated by words—how we use them, how we misuse them, and what they sometimes reveal about our own prejudices. I’m especially fascinated by the way terms with largely positive connotations can devolve into vitriol-inspiring buzzwords. I even use a few of these in my header—tolerance, diversity, and compassion—in a counter-intuitive attempt to make my site more provocative.

Well, guess what? I believe in amnesty too. Not unequivocally, of course, but there are times when it's the appropriate thing to do. And yet, when amnesty is brought up in the context of immigration, certain people (you know who you are) react like the plan is to open the borders and empty the jails, flooding the streets with murderers and terrorists who—as if it isn’t bad enough already—don’t even speak English!

The thing is, not all forms of amnesty are alike. Take the cleverly-titled Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. Under the DREAM Act, an alien who entered the U.S. before age 16, has been in the country for at least five years, has graduated high school, and meets the vaguely-defined “good moral character” requirement, would be able to obtain conditional permanent residency. Six years later, if they’ve spent at least two years in college or the U.S. military, they could apply for a green card.

That’s a slam dunk, right? A path to legal status for aliens who were brought into the country as children, have spent a significant part of their lives in America, and are educated and (otherwise) law-abiding. If we agree on nothing else as a society, can we at least agree that this is the right thing to do?

No, of course not. Here's Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX):

The DREAM Act represents a dual assault on law-abiding, taxpaying American citizens and legal immigrants.

You know, conservatives often become defensive about being seen as heartless. “We don’t hate poor people,” they say, “we believe the best thing for poor people is an economy that rewards hard work and ingenuity—entitlement programs, on the other hand, serve to perpetuate poverty by discouraging those things.”

They could certainly do a better job of selling it, but I think that makes a lot of sense. In fact, most of the seemingly heartless things conservatives do can be supported on similar grounds. Taxes shouldn’t be disproportionately high on the rich because the rich stimulate the economy and provide jobs for the not-so-rich. A market with minimal regulation is good for consumers because it keeps prices low, and good for businesses because it encourages innovation. We shouldn’t overdo it with the foreign aid because it doesn't encourage long-term stability. Et cetera.

Opposition to the DREAM Act, however, is just plain heartless.^[1]

Think about what has to be done to avoid breaking a given law. Murder? Don’t kill anyone without a good reason. Seems manageable enough. Arson? Don’t intentionally set a building on fire. Hard to imagine a problem there, either. How about, say, insider trading? Wikipedia says you'd have to avoid making trades "based on material non-public information in violation of some duty of trust." A little tougher, perhaps, but still totally doable.

Now, what would it take for an alien eligible under the DREAM Act to avoid breaking the law? To begin with, a time machine (and not the kind that only goes forward). Upon arrival in 1975-2005, the alien, who at this point would be somewhere between ages 0 and 15, would have to either convince his or her parents (or whoever) to stay in Mexico (or wherever) instead of relocating to the United States, or stay behind alone.

Of course, I probably could’ve stopped at “time machine.” Realistically, all the alien can do is try to minimize the consequences of the violations that have already occurred.^[2] That means returning to Mexico (or wherever) upon turning 18 and applying to enter the country the right way, like any other law-abiding immigrant. Nevermind that most of the people we're talking about are more familiar with life in the United States than Mexico (or wherever)—they’ll have plenty of time to get assimilated while they wait.^[3] Processing times depend on what type of visa (if any) a particular alien is eligible to file for, but most can expect it to take several years. For some visa categories, the government is just now processing applications that were filed in 1992.

And that’s if they leave the country right away. One year of unlawful presence prohibits an alien from applying for a visa for ten years. The clock starts at age 18, so if they’re still here on their 19th birthday they might as well leave for good.^[4] Would that make everybody happy? To get rid of all those (otherwise) law-abiding, English-speaking college students that are such a drain on the economy? I guess we have to—anything short of that would be amnesty, and conservatives absolutely hate amnesty.^[5]

This article, after taking a few shots at those of us who feel empathy for “law breakers,” at least agrees that they should have an opportunity to obtain citizenship—but only after re-paying all the money the government has spent on them (because they weren't responsible for being brought to America, but somehow are responsible for the fact that our government loves to pay for stuff). Whatever. I’m more interested in some of the comments:

I-L-L-E-G-A-L
No amnesty for law breakers OR THEIR KIDS.
NOT our fault the parents broke our laws for them.

Illegal means "broke the law" and you want to not just ignore and give them amnesty but reward people for coming to the US illegally?

What punishment they suffer for violating the law? We're giving them citizenship and we're going to force the schools and or military to pay forit, yeah that's some punishment, NOT.

My God. What I wouldn’t give to deport these people instead.

1. Or, in the case of some congressional Democrats, part of an infantile strategy to pass comprehensive immigration reform or nothing at all. Actually, I think that qualifies as heartless too.

2. This is not, by any means, an exhaustive review of all the alternatives—and their various requirements—available under the immigration laws, in part because I’m hardly an expert, and in part because, trust me, you wouldn’t want to read it if it was exhaustive. The point is, while some aliens who would be eligible under the DREAM Act may have other feasible paths to legal residency, the vast majority do not.

3. Take language, for example. Contrary to popular belief, non-anglophones who come to the U.S. do learn English, and the more time they spend in America, the less likely they are to retain their proficiency in Spanish (or whatever).

4. Because I’m sure every unauthorized alien child is fully aware of the severe consequences of violating one of these arbitrary rules.

5. To be fair, the DREAM Act does have some bi-partisan support. The House version has five Republican co-sponsors, almost half of whom represent districts that aren't in South Florida. Following Mel Martinez's resignation, the bill's bipartisan support in the Senate starts and ends with Indiana's Richard Lugar, who once met Ashley Judd.

Judicial Activism

I don't get why Wednesday’s federal court ruling is such big news. I mean, it’s certainly going to have a major impact on a lot of people, but it’s not even remotely surprising, and neither are the reactions. Must we go through this charade every time?^[1]

The process goes like this:

1. A Republican legislature passes a constitutionally-dubious law, which is praised by conservatives as a bold re-affirmation of American values.
2. The law is challenged. The lawsuit is immediately deemed frivolous and politically-motivated, and the challengers are decried as overly-litigious leftists who will stop at nothing to undermine everything this country stands for.
3. The law is overturned on grounds that, while often debatable, are hardly ever patently flawed or ideologically-driven.
4. Conservatives are shocked—Shocked!—and appalled—Appalled!—at once again being foiled by an “activist” judge employing flawed and/or ideologically-driven reasoning.

More often than not, conservatives jump straight from Step 2 to Step 4. They have no interest in dwelling on Step 3, because what if the ruling makes sense? Then there could be no Step 4, and we all know that’s the best part. And the reaction to the Arizona decision has been a truly inspired effort—a frenzy of mischaracterizations and misinformation. Here’s Rush Limbaugh, as soon as the news came out:

The PDF of this ruling is 36 pages and there's no way that I'm going to be able to go through all 36 pages prior to the program ending, but I know what went on here.

[…]

I don't know how you look at this with any sort of common sense and come to the ruling this woman came to. But, she didn't. She's a leftist and she made an activist decision, not a judicial decision.

So, based on one court order—the bulk of which Rush hadn't had the chance to read—Susan Bolton is a leftist, activist judge with a severe common sense deficiency.^[2]

Of course, it doesn’t matter if he reads it—it wouldn’t change the rhetoric. The fact is, it’s a rational, well-supported ruling. It doesn’t say Arizona can’t do anything about immigration, it says they’ll have to do something that doesn’t flood the federal government with requests for verification of immigration status. It doesn’t say the police can’t attempt to verify immigration status when there is reasonable suspicion of unlawful presence, it simply says they can’t be required to.

I could go on, but I'll stop there. Let’s get over this judicial activism nonsense and start focusing on the real villains.

1. No, of course not—but let's go through it anyway.

2. A quick search of his site found no references to Judge Bolton before Wednesday, so I think it’s safe to assume Limbaugh hasn’t been closely following her career and crafting well-founded opinions about her ideology.

Hate Speech

Might as well get this started with a story that combines two of Neal Boortz's favorite subjects. First, immigration. Second, the liberal conspiracy to shut down right-wing talk radio "hate speech" and, I don't know, haul the perpetrators off to 1984-esque re-education centers. Here's the latest development:

In a letter to the FCC, over 30 organizations claim that syndicated radio and cable television programs make it hard for the public to separate facts from "bigotry masquerading as news." They also claim that talk radio and these news programs use hate as a profit model.

What makes the conspiracy especially devious is that hate speech, apparently, is now defined as "[a]ny utterance in opposition to progressive or liberal ideals or in support of liberty." That's comically hyperbolic, but I suppose there may be a grain of truth to it—anti-hate (speech, crimes, etc.) legislation tends to be supported almost exclusively by Democrats, and can therefore be expected to reflect liberal values.

Anyway, the letter to the FCC is something of a follow-up to a petition filed last year. Here are some of the specific complaints from that petition:
-Michael Savage claimed "America is being overrun by an invasion force from Mexico."
-Rush Limbaugh described Mexican immigrants as "a renegade, potential criminal element."
-And Boortz himself suggested that the first English phrase Hispanic immigrants should learn is "hands against the car and hood and spread 'em."
Note that all three statements, rather than being aimed directly at unauthorized aliens,^[1] demonize the Latino community as a whole. But that's not how Boortz sees it:

In the case of the [National Hispanic Media Coalition] "hate speech" would be defined as any reminder that "undocumented workers" are, in fact, illegal aliens and have committed a crime coming into this country, and continue to commit crimes by staying and working here.

What? Where did that come from? It looks to me like the NHMC is opposed to generalized, negative depictions of Latino people made under the guise of a discussion on America's immigration problem. In fact, the statements by Savage, Limbaugh, and Boortz come perilously close to racism—a term that, as Boortz astutely observes, should not be thrown around lightly. There are no overt assertions that Latino people are genetically inferior to white people, but when the sentiment is that Latino people are likely to be criminals, isn't a degree of inferiority implied?

Regardless, the point made by the NHMC—with ample evidentiary support—is undeniable. Certain media entities and personalities often depict the Latino community with unfavorable and unfounded generalizations.^[2] It logically follows that these depictions, to some difficult-to-quantify extent, cause negative perceptions of Latino people in society at large. To suggest, as Boortz does, that the NHMC considers any honest discussion ^[3] on immigration to be hate speech is asinine. It is also a dangerous distraction from the real issue (something I suspect will be a recurring theme on this site).

The real issue here—aside from immigration and race relations—is how much authority the FCC should have to enforce governmental notions of fairness or decency or whatever. I'm sure Boortz would agree with my opinion that their authority should be somewhere between minimal and none. The NHMC, we can probably assume, believes FCC authority should be a little broader.^[4]

Alas, the balance between (1) maintaining a peaceful and welcoming society, and (2) respecting the guarantee of Freedom of Expression under the First Amendment is relentlessly tricky and nuanced and requires, you know, thought. Why open that can of worms when you can just redefine the issue instead? The NHMC wants the government to shut down talk radio and/or lock up anyone who thinks unauthorized aliens should be held accountable for whatever laws they've broken! Only a brain-dead liberal could support something that ridiculous!

One final thought (and the first appearance of what will likely be another recurring theme). Any conservative or libertarian would agree that one of the key elements of their belief system is personal responsibility. With that in mind, Boortz, Savage, Limbaugh, and others appear to be partially responsible for (1) the perception within the Latino community that there are negative attitudes about Latinos within the white community, and (2) the perceived need, as expressed by the NHMC, for government intervention to combat one of the perceived sources of those negative attitudes—right-wing media personalities. To the extent that Boortz addresses these points at all, he does so by dismissing them. Instead, he mischaracterizes the NHMC's position and accuses them, essentially, of inventing the problem to mask their true goal of destroying conservative talk radio.

If the government does intervene, it will not be the triumphant culmination of some nefarious liberal plot. It will be because Boortz and other conservatives insist on exercising their right to say irresponsible things and intentionally piss people off. Personal responsibility means taking it upon yourself to behave in a way that shows society you can be a mature, respectful adult without the government telling you how to do so, and holding yourself accountable for the consequences of failing to meet that standard. It does not mean acting like a jackass just because you don't think the government should be able to tell you not to.

1. That's right—I prefer "unauthorized" or "undocumented" over "illegal," but that's a discussion for another time.
2. I'm not going to make any judgment as to whether there is a basis for a claim that Latino people are more likely to commit crimes, and I'm sure there is no shortage of data that can be selectively applied in support of a whole spectrum of conclusions. My point is, people like Boortz don't exactly go out of their way to ensure that every broad generalization they make is backed by a preponderance of scholarly research.
3. To call it honest for Boortz to claim that "'undocumented workers' are, in fact, illegal aliens and have committed a crime coming into this country, and continue to commit crimes by staying and working here" requires a somewhat loose definition of honesty. For one thing, many unauthorized aliens entered the country legally and did not violate any laws until several months or years later. It's also a bit of a stretch to call immigration violations crimes, since hearings tend to more closely resemble administrative proceedings and jail time is rarely a possibility. Still, if we can all agree on anything, it should be that there is a large group of people in this country who are not in compliance with the law concerning the rights and duties of non-citizens, and there is another large group of people who are very upset about this. In his usual, unnecessarily inflammatory way, I think that is what Boortz is getting at.
4. It should be noted, however, that their latest letter calls for "non-regulatory" action, such as a study on whether hate speech in the media leads to hate crimes, with the findings to be made available to the public. On the scale of intrusive, unwanted government actions, that would fall just slightly below those beeping "walk" signs designed to help blind people cross the road.