November 07, 2007

Is Kos right? Can the Democrats continue to support massive illegal activity and not pay for it at the ballot box?

Leader Kos offers "Yup, immigration not the GOP's savior", saying "the demonization of scary brown people -- has been a flop" and linking to this WaPo article. While I didn't read the latter, the Washington Post explicity supports illegal immigration, so there's a very good chance they put their own special spin on things.

However, it's obvious that Kos is wrong because there's no good argument for massive illegal activity. In fact, about the only "argument" those who support illegality can muster is that which Kos uses in his post: playing the race card. If the Dems were unable to play that card, their corrupt schemes would be evident and they wouldn't be able to push them. And, some in the GOP play that card as well.

Obviously, it's a very strong card and many people are cowed by it. And, some make things worse by giving legitimacy to childish "arguments" like Kos' by reflexively claiming they aren't racists (see the bit about LBJ here). The way to deal with it is to acknowledge that some opposition to illegal immigration may be racist, but to claim that opposition is per se racist is a logical fallacy. Kos is being illogical.

And, we can point out that by hiding behind the race card, Kos is in effect supporting everything that illegal immigration involves and entails, ranging from being an indicator of massive government corruption to giving foreign governments more political power inside to the U.S. all the way to border deaths. By enabling illegal immigration, Kos is helping - in his own small way - encourage more people to try to cross the desert, with some of them dying along the way.

And, what Kos fails to note (and probably doesn't realize) is that those who support illegal activity have been able to succeed in large part because they've been able to fix the debate. If the mainstream media were doing their jobs, they would have asked the presidential candidates about the huge glaring gaps in their immigration policies and would have revealed that almost all of the front-runners just can't think things through or are corrupt. That carries over to the presidential "debates"; some of those haven't featured any questions about immigration at all, and at the ones that did the questions were extremely lightweight.

And, what Kos doesn't mention is that the leadership of the GOP supports illegal immigration just as much as the leadership of the Democratic Party. In the past, that's caused them to work against members of their own party who oppose illegal immigration, even if it means losing a seat.

In summary, it's fairly easy for someone who's familiar with these issues and who's familiar with scoring points against an opponent and who isn't afraid to do that to discredit those who support illegal immigration and force them to lose support. However, the GOP leadership isn't about to push for that, and the corrupt mainstream media isn't going to do it either. That means that we need to do it by going to campaign appearances, asking tough questions about this issue, and then uploading the response.

The Democrats - and many Republicans - are extremely vulnerable on this issue. We just need to point it out to enough people.

Posted to Immigration2007b at November 7, 2007 12:34 PM