Posted on 05/12/2015 1:25:53 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's comments last month opposing legal immigration came as a shock. How could a man who until a little over month ago was even willing to consider a path to citizenship for undocumented workers pull such an "Olympic-quality flip-flop"?
But the real story is not Walker's switcheroo, but the conservative punditocracy's switcheroo that paved the way for his.
Walker, who is fast sprinting into the first place for the Republican presidential nomination, told Glenn Beck recently that "The next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that's based, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and wages." And lest there be any doubt that by this he meant a more restrictive immigration policy, he noted that he arrived at his position after talking to Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a powerful restrictionist who has been the single biggest obstacle to any immigration reform that didn't involve drastically scaling back current levels and sealing the border.
Walker's position is odd for someone who has made a career out of breaking the chokehold of labor unions whose whole agenda involves artificially restricting the supply of new workers to protect jobs and wages of existing workers. But what's even odder is that it places Walker — who had also heartily endorsed more legal immigration in high-skill areas and elsewhere — to the restrictionist right even of Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz. Their opposition — which to date has largely defined the outside edge of Republican restrictionism — was limited to illegal immigration. They never went so far as to suggest that the economic impact of legal immigration, especially the high-tech variety, on American wages and jobs was anything but positive. Romney had even floated the idea of "stapl(ing) a green card" to the diplomas of foreign graduates from American universities.
But if Walker thinks he can get away with embracing labor protectionism it's because he knows that respectable conservatives will give him cover, something he could not have counted on before. That's because, until recently, except for National Review, the vast bulk of smart-set conservative opinion was decisively in favor letting market need — not the arbitrary whim of a labor bureaucracy beholden to unions — set immigration levels.
No more.
To be sure, for many conservative pundits — such as The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, The Washington Examiner's Phillip Klein — Walker's comments were still anathema. But an equal — if not bigger — chorus was more sympathetic, not imaginable two presidential election cycles ago. Among them were relatively newer muckraking outfits such as Breitbart and The Daily Caller, which, until recently, had in its employ, Mickey Kaus, a liberal progressive solely because he shared its restrictionist agenda.
But also in this mix were the more established The Weekly Standard, which pulled its own flip-flop. Its founder (and dear friend) Bill Kristol used to be pro-immigration when he was pushing Sen. John McCain's presidency. But he opposed the 2013 Gang of Eight immigration reform bill on the dubious grounds that the "huge increase in immigration in that bill" would be "bad for working class and middle class wages and economic opportunity in this country." But the most prominent Walker defender was Ross Douthat, The New York Times' resident conservative who chastised Walker's conservative detractors for over reacting. Douthat lambasted them all as open border advocates (if only!) and congratulated Walker for doing a "real service" to his party by questioning its dominant "sunshine and roses" view of immigration.
But why has the conservative punditry turned so dramatically against its bedrock commitment to immigration on such short order? Because it regards restrictionism as a smart strategy and it doesn't much care for markets.
Many of these conservatives are convinced that courting Hispanics and other minorities with a pro-immigration stance is not the only road to the White House for Republicans, as some believe. That Romney received only 27% of the Hispanic vote — after inviting undocumented aliens to "self-deport" — might have contributed to his loss in the last presidential election, they admit. But that might not have been fatal if he hadn't also dissed 47% of potential voters as non-tax-paying liberal welfare queens.
Romney's contempt prompted millions of white voters, mostly men — the so-called Reagan Democrats — to sit out the last election. That's because they didn't identify with Democrats' progressive agenda and Republicans didn't offer them anything, these conservatives believe. These voters can be coaxed into the Republican fold, they maintain, by a solidly middle class, populist message. Restrictionism is an integral part of that.
It also helps that these conservatives are sympathetic to the "two cheers" for capitalism school of thought that worries about the effect of unbridled market forces on family and community. They have no principled objection to using the government to temper markets and strengthen families — and immigration restrictions are a perfectly acceptable part of that.
Should Walker continue to drift in their direction and harden his opposition to immigration, the GOP primary will be as much a fight for the Republican soul as it's about picking the best Republican to run for the White House.
Cath 22 is where you say they can get it, but the process makes it impossible.
I can’t see anyone creating an impossible standard for citizenship for the illegals, for one thing, that would have to happen after the system and politics states that they are already entitled to it.
I think the politics are purely citizenship, or no citizenship, just like the moral issues is.
The moral issue being, should illegally entering America and all that means ( a life of crime and forgeries, fraud, criminality, etc.), now be rewarded as having worked, and now merely be called another type of legal immigration and another way to become an American citizen.
So far he's the only major candidate to move away from the silly mantra that "All immigration is good so long as it "Legal"
The Jihad is in our homeland courtesy of "legal" immigration.
California is a one-party state courtesy of "legal immigration"
I’m with you. But I’m not talking REAL solutions. I’m talking politics. :-)
I worked my way through college by waitressing in a number of places. Dishwasher/busboys were low-man on the totem pole. They were either low-skilled legal American teens-young men who usually had a bad work ethic and only lasted a month or two, or they were Mexicans, probably illegal, who worked hard and were as reliable as sunrise. To the American, the minimum wage was a joke. To the Mexican, it was prosperity in the cardboard village he came from, and he sent most of it back there.
Guess which type I liked working with best? Guess which one my employers liked best? Guess which ones the customers liked best in terms of faster, better service?
So am I, conservative politics have to be real, not phony, and the campaigns and the positions are about educating people and winning them over to your positions, not deceiving them and appearing to agree with the left, and then hoping to somehow hoping for fantasy to replace reality.
Who would even try something like that, and who would imagine that it would prevent citizenship for the illegals?
And I’m supposed to dislike this guy?
I’m using my phone so I’m being too brief. I’ll let my tag line do the talking.
It isn’t relevant to our discussion about your wanting republicans to support citizenship in their campaigning.
Obama won’t be running in 2016.
You are missing the point of the tag line. Let me amplify: we are re- arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
To get back to the original point before you get totally out there, I disagree with your support for citizenship for illegals.
To: cuban leaf
No illegal should become a citizen, even if you do support it.
15 posted on 5/12/2015, 2:18:24 PM by ansel12
We agree.
It is great you were able to work your way through college and achieve a better station in life. I am sure some of those dishwasher/busboys who were the low man on the totem pole in the restaurant were able to improve their lot in life also.
My view is that in a free market economy, no job should be arbitrarily compensated based on a position on the totem pole but rather valued based on supply and demand.
Example: If there are many dishes that need to be washed and no one to wash them, the wage is increased to the point where someone will take the job. On the other hand, if there is a surplus of dishwashers and the employer is willing to deal with the turnover then the wage will remain low.
When government, through action or inaction, causes an artificial surplus of workers in any area, the free market is distorted.
While the surplus of workers was confined to the unskilled sector it was easy to cover with government benefit programs. As the flood of immigrants move into the semi-skilled and skilled sectors, the distortion will be more evident and much harder to deal with. The high tech field has already been adversely impacted by the H1B Visa program. Indeed, wages have been flat and in some cases falling for several years.
This is the problem Governor Walker is referencing when he advocates considering the impact immigration, both legal and illegal, has on American workers. He has a valid point and I hope that our country can get a handle on this problem before it gets completely out of hand.
“...Romney received only 27% of the Hispanic vote — after inviting undocumented aliens to self-deport...”
From USA political history:
In 1988, G.H.W. Bush received only 30% of the Hispanic vote - after passionately supporting the Reagan Amnesty in 1986.
Look, I’m just really glad some top tier candidate is willing to go there. I’m pretty pragmatic, and therefore pretty worried about the state of our competitiveness and foreign policy positions in the world. I honestly do not see us joining hands and globally singing kumbaya anytime soon, so finding a candidate willing to at least talk about working in the interest of the nation feels a little like a slow in the pace of the lemmings dragging us over the cliff.
Now that I’m at a real keyboard:
My take is that the way for an illegal to become a citizen is as follows:
Leave the country and come back the legal way.
That is what I consider the “path” to legal citizenship for an illegal.
No illegal should become a citizen, even if you do support it.
Leave the country and come back the legal way.
That is what I consider the “path” to legal citizenship for an illegal.
I'm on board with that.
Amen!
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