Is the immigration debate really all about providing cheap low skill workers for big business? The uber cynics have always maintained that it was a toxic nexus of that and the politically motivated ideological chauvinism of liberals - but I tended to believe it was more about GOP thinking it could pretty itself up for the Hispanic voter by looking all moderate viz border security and paths to citizenship for illegals, which I judged to be grievously misguided. But it is starting to look like maybe the uber cynics were right, with the CBO chiming in to say amnesty will mean greater profits for the investor class and lower wages for the working class - and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Sounds asinine - let me understand this, we exported all our good paying low skill jobs to China et al and are now replacing that dynamic and forever changing the culture and politics of the country by importing a bunch of desperate, low skill Mexicans who will work all day for nothing even as the economy is creating a permanently under employed sub culture of poorly educated youth that apparently will til the end of time be dependent on big daddy gov't for survival? Hell, unemployment among African-American youth is at a dangerously high level - and yet Paul Ryan declares yesterday that we need the gang of eight bill because there's a labor shortage in the country? I mean, what the christ is goin' on here? Isn't this how Europe got itself into trouble, opening the floodgates to poor and poorly educated Muslims to fill low skill, low paying jobs their own welfare getting citizens weren't interested in while conveniently turning a blind eye to the cultural and political problems it was creating for itself and that are now starting to bubble to the surface?
I dunno - having a real hard time seeing how this all works out for the good.
[but then there's this WSJ op-ed by Henninger about how securing the border is impossible, a fantasy - and I've read other stories like this that say republicans going on about securing the border either don't know what they're talking about or are flat out lying in order to appease the base - I don't know how true this is, seems to me technology must afford some way out of this problem, but who knows - I will say that if it is true then republicans really need to own up to that fact because it will be absolutely impossible to forge an intelligent solution to illegal immigration from the south until everyone understands that securing the border is not one of the answers - if the current gang of eight bill is built on a lie then it should be tossed out the window and we should start all over again with a common understanding that border security is not gonna save us - right now it looks like we're just trying to solve a problem by creating other problems that we're hoping as if by magic never materialize - good luck with that]
