It's amazing what you can find when you google with reckless abandon. I was watching CNN today and unwittingly allowed the Lou Dobbs 
show to start without getting to the remote in time. He was even more incoherent than usual today, but sent me over the edge when he purported to "catch" Barack Obama in a "flip-flop" over the life or death issue of wearing a flag pin on his lapel! Lou has long been a pet peeve of mine, primarily for the simple fact that he has a full hour every day on one of the "great" news networks of the world to rant essentially on one issue: illegal immigration.
All of which lead me to do a Google search on "Lou Dobbs idiot". What I found, amongst other gems, was a post on the Daily Kos which sums up my feelings on immigration pretty accurately.
This "issue" was whipped up by Karl Rove and the Republican soothsayers as a way of turning out the Republican base in '06. It is an utter and complete exaggeration of a "problem" which has little practical significance to most Americans. We have been living with illegal immigration for decades, if not centuries. It exists because our economic system fosters it and encourages it. It is not a "crisis," nor is it a "drain" on our economy. Nor is there any proved relationship between illegal immigration and falling wages.
Without illegal immigrants the entire service economies of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and large parts of Southern California would collapse. It has been that way for decades. The labor is cheap and Americans simply do not want the jobs that these immigrants gladly perform.
The root of this issue is, and always has been, racism. The immigration "crisis" is simply an excuse for bored, ignorant middle class Americans looking for someone to hate or blame for their problems.
(Thanks to " Dartagnan" for stating so eloquently what I have been feeling all along!)
Comments