Radicals for Immigration.

And the Republicans have long since forfeited the policy debate and changed over to a policy of recycled racism, where segregationism was repackaged and recycled for modern consumption. Instead of Blacks, the modern Republican Party channels their hatred towards immigrants, Muslims, and anyone else whom it is acceptable to hate. They can't defeat those of us on the left in the policy arena, so they are reduced to fear, hysteria, and hatred.

So, Daily Kos diaries like Ashley Taylor's are the equivalent of a dog returning to its own vomit. One of the main problems with the Democratic party is that too many Democrats act like Republicans instead of Democrats. And this is the case here. I speak as a Kossack myself -- we wring our hands all the time at the spineless Democratic Congress, who just caved into Michael Mukasey, and yet we fail to look in the mirror and try to root out ways of acting like Republicans ourselves. By caving into the Republican nativist anti-immigrant rhetoric, we are acting like Republicans ourselves. The cave-in to the Mukasey nomination was universal -- not one person stood in the gap to filibuster his nomination. That suggests that the problem is a party-wide problem, and not with the Congress. Maybe those of us who are still Democrats have to stop blaming the Democratic Congress so much and start focusing on ourselves and how we are acting like the very people that we pretend to despise.

The concept is the same one that Gandhi used to help break the cycle of British rule. When the British were still occupying India, one of the main things that Gandhi had to do to achieve independence was to get the people of India to stop acting like the British and stop identifying with their oppressors. They made their own clothing and they took themselves out of the system to such an extent that it became no longer economically viable for the British to continue the occupation of India. And this is what we on the left have to do -- stop identifying with the Republican oppressors and start acting like progressives.

Very early on, Ms. Taylor wraps herself in the mantle of Franklin Roosevelt. However, she conveniently ignores one aspect of FDR that is very important -- the fact that he got rid of prohibition. The lesson from that sorry era of our history is clear -- there are simply some laws that we cannot enforce, and trying to make laws against them will simply create more crimes than the law was designed to prevent. The prohibition era, the laws against pot, and our laws against immigration all have one thing in common -- they are unenforceable, and they simply create a black market that would not have been created otherwise. FDR recognized this in relation to prohibition, and got rid of those laws.

And she can pine in her diary and comments all she wants about FDR, but there is a key aspect of the Democratic party that is not true for today -- the fact that the segregationists were still part of the party back then. FDR pandered to those members of the coalition with his xenophobic laws against immigration, his laws against pot, and his interment of Japanese-Americans during the war. But ever since the Civil Rights Act, we have thrown these people under the bus. They are not coming back. So, why should we pander to them and act like fake Republicans, when they can vote for the real thing? In Mississipi, they tried to run a Jesus Freak against the Republican incumbent governor Haley Barbour, and he lost overwhelmingly. And just ask Carnahan, Daschle, Clelland, and Ford how acting like Republicans and making the DLC happy served them in the last election.

Next, she talks about how she is not against immigration; she is against illegal immigration. But that is a matter of begging the question. This assumes that the laws against immigration are somehow justified. But the fact of the matter is that they aren't, because in order to enforce these laws, we have to create a bigger police state than the Bush administration ever dreamed of creating. And not only that, it would create a new era of racism in this country, where there would be a climate of fear against Latinos. People would look on them with the same kind of suspicion that police frequently do with Blacks. I do not want to grow up in an era where people look at a Latino and think, "Illegal immigrant."

Then, she caves into the Malkinesque hysteria where she screams about billions of brown people coming into this country:

I hope that all sane Americans who care about our country understand that America is unable to allow all the billions of people of the world into our borders.

Well, we had open borders for the first 100 years of our history, and we got by just fine. Xenophobic immigration policies were first passed by the same people who brought us Plessy vs. Ferguson as well as corporate personhood. This is the same sort of scaremongering that Hal Lindsey of Late Great Planet Earth fame engaged in when he claimed that the apocalypse would involved hordes of Chinese pouring out of the East and overrunning the Middle East. This is a classic example of Democrats acting like Republicans and the Left Behind Crowd.

Next:

I'm not advocating punishment of illegal immigrants.  Just a free trip back to their home country, with reasonable time to wrap up their affairs in America. I would even be in favor giving destitute illegal immigrants a few hundred dollars to help them get their lives in order when the return to their home countries. But nevertheless, we need a plan to return the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to their home countries.

But that presupposes that we can somehow locate all of them. Where are the police? The courts? The judges? The detention facilities? And the jails? What sorts of proceedures will be in place so that people can defend themselves?

There is something else to consider. The danger of engaging in an automatic deporation policy is that if that were to be implemented, then crime would skyrocket. Criminals would be able to operate with impunity because immigrant communities would be afraid to call the police for fear of having their immigration status checked on. This is a key reason why local law enforcement agencies are reluctant to cooperate with immigration officials because they want to maintain good relations with these people so that they can prevent crimes from happening. Thus, Ms. Taylor would defeat her own goal of enforcing all the laws in this country.

Next, she falls for another Republican ploy of playing one class of people off against another when she talks about the oversupply of labor compared to jobs:

Who is behind this massive and unprecedented increase in immigration? The rich people who own the capital. As has always been the case with the rich, the quest for profits comes before what's right for America. The upper-class elites want cheap labor to work for American businesses so rich shareholders can maximize their profits. Rich corporate interests spend hundreds of millions of dollars on political donations and lobbying so they can buy the votes of our politicians. Thus we see that both political parties are fully behind the massive wave of immigration. Some will have you believe that the Republican party is the anti-immigration party. That's very funny. There has never been a more pro-immigration president than George W. Bush. The only difference between the parties is that they try to sell the idea of immigration to the voters using different rhetoric. The Republicans say "immigrants help the economy." Yes, they help the economy for the wealthy elite, but not for regular Americans. The Democrats say "you must support immigration or you're racist." But it's all the same thing, about spinning things so the average American is fooled into voting against his or her interests.

She rightly talks about how large corporations want cheap labor so that they can maximize their profits. But she misses the fact that other people want cheap labor as well. Middle class people like you and me want people who can mow our lawns or look after our children so that we can work longer hours and thus pay the bills. With more and more people getting into huge debts and falling into danger of foreclosures, they want to be able to hire people who can perform such tasks so that they can make the kind of money necessary to pay their bills. We all agree that this is not an ideal situation. However, the solution is the creation of jobs and bankruptcy relief and universal healthcare. The elephant in the closet that she ignores is that a single medical emergency in this country can wipe out even a $65,000 a year income in this country. Thus, people hire these immigrants not so that they can become aristocrats, but simply to make ends meet.

But she misses the fact that large corporations would be totally happy with Tom Tancredo as President. If I were the CEO of a large corporation and Tancredo were president, I would look for as many illegal immigrants as possible. I would hire them, and I would tell them that you work when I tell you to and I will give you just enough so that you can pay the rent and the bills, and if you complain about it or try to form a union, I will call in the immigration authorities and I will send your ass clear back to Mexico where you belong.

But if we have open borders, then I could not do that. Immigrants would be able to organize unions with impunity, knowing that they could not be sent back to Mexico. There are already laws on the books against firing people for trying to organize unions.

The way to solve this problem is the creation of more jobs, rather than trying to create a police state. Immigrants are much more likely to start their own businesses and create their own jobs; as an example, Silicon Valley has had billions of dollars worth of jobs and tax revenues created by immigrants. You have an immigrant to thank for the computer that you are typing on. And we should focus on creating more jobs -- we should convert to an alternative-fuel based economy; we should legalize pot so that people can start their own businesses and create job; we could legalize hemp and create jobs for the sale and export of that. And there is a simple step that we could take that would entice employers back to this country -- we should remove tax incentives for people to export jobs and create them for those who create jobs in this country.

But none of that matters to Taylor, who continues to play off one class of people against another:

It's not racist to care about Americans, of all skin colors, who have to work for a living. It's very unracist. The pro-immigration people are the racists. They apparently dream of an America where rich white people live in McMansions, attended to by a staff of "brown people" who do the gardening and the cooking and the cleaning, and who work in their factories. They're trying to bring back the racist South, and using the same arguments of plantation owners who enslaved other humans do their labor. "We need more African slaves to pick our cotton and do other jobs that white Americans won't do." The only difference is that back then the "brown" immigrants really were slaves. Today they just get paid slave-labor-like wages.

That is one of the most laughable arguments of the whole piece, seeing that the South is the most xenophobic, anti-immigrant part of the country. But the goal here is not the creation of slavery all over again; the goal here is twofold -- the creation of new jobs to bring up wages, the supply of labor to fill those jobs, and the equality of all people. The Declaration of Independence did not say that all Americans were equal, or that some people were more equal than others. It said that all people were equal. Thus, our founders made this a nation of immigrants who could come here and start over without having to worry every night over whether the king or the pope would see fit to imprison them for believing the wrong faith. And the problem is that we have lost sight of that dream. We have to make this a nation of immigrants again who can start over.

I agree that America is rich and that we should do more to help those in the world who are less fortunate. But there are billions of people in the world living in poverty. We are not helping the bulk of the less fortunate of the world by letting a few million into America. If we let too many immigrants into out country without increasing our capital base, we'll wind up being another poor country. The world is better off if America remains wealthy so we can help other nations become wealthy. When we help another nation become wealthy, we help all people of that nation. When we allow immigration from another nation, we just help the lucky few who win the green card lottery, while harming those who remain behind by draining away their most ambitious citizens.

But that is simply not going to happen. What Taylor is offering here is a false choice between wealth and immigration. When we let in more immigrants, we help their home countries because they will send money home so that their friends and relatives back home can raise their standard of living. Mexico, for instace, is raising their standard of living because millions of immigrants are sending money home to their families. By contrast, we have poured in billions of aid programs to corrupt third-world governments who have pissed away the money and have had it line the pockets of the rich. By allowing more immigrants into this country, we can bypass this corruption because these corrupt governments would never get to touch the money in the first place. We are helping other nations become wealthy by allowing more immigrants into this country.

This is an aspect of immigration that few people talk about. But look around, there's traffic all over the place, forests are being bulldozed to make way for new developments, no one can afford to buy a house near where they work, the country is too crowded.

Why are houses so expensive today? It's because of supply and demand. The population increases because of unchecked immigration, but houses aren't built fast enough (because of zoning regulations), so today regular working Americans can't afford to buy their own their own home or even afford to rent a tiny apartment.

Throughout America, communities are passing anti-growth initiatives. This is proof that there are too many people around. It's the ultimate in hypocrisy and NIMBYism when upper-middle-class elite pro-immigrant people clamor for anti-growth legislation. "Let the 'brown people' into the country, but don't let them live near me!"

Taylor makes a factual error here, because we are one of the least crowded countries in the world. We could double our population and be able to sustain it. Speaking for myself, if immigrants move in, great -- they would be good for the economy. If houses are not being built fast enough, then maybe we should look at ways of reducing our zoning regulations instead of creating a police state. If we create supply, then the prices of housing and the prices of renting apartments will go down, and people will be able to afford housing again.