Posted on 10/24/2007 8:20:06 PM PDT by lonewacko_dot_com
It's long been my belief that the GOP hole card in 2008 is going to be a rancid furriner-bashing anti-illegal-immigrant smear campaign. Make no mistake, whatever lipstick they put on this pig, the bottom line is the same old know-nothing nativism that has been a minor American stain since the Protestants began to get worried about the Irish Catholic surge in the 1840s (among some of our earliest settlers, the only acceptable immigrants were slaves).
I tend to be an extremist on this issue. I am wildly in favor of immigration, legal and illegal. I realize that national security--i.e. terrorism--requires that we secure the borders, and that's a good thing, if almost impossible. But as a New Yorker, I'm deeply grateful to the immigrants, many of them illegal, who saved the city by bringing commerce (and sales tax revenues) to some of the toughest neighborhoods in the 1970s and 1980s. I've found that any Haitian willing to get in a rickety boat and risk all to get here is going to be an aggressive, entrepreneurial hard-working American when he or she arrives. In an unscientific sample, I"ve also found that 98.9% of all Latinos who cross our southern border looking for work are just fabulous, hardworking people.
I find the tendency of some of the Republicans running for President to play to our very worst instincts--and I mean racism, in this case--is just nauseating. A few months ago, I asked Mitt Romney if he thought illegal immigration was a net economic plus or minus. He said...he wasn't sure (but, of course, he knows that it's a net plus).
In any case, I was reminded of all this by Fred Thompson's maiden venture in the realm of policy, as recounted by Ed Kilgore. In the end, this sort of nativism has been a persistent loser in American political history; I hope it will be again in 2008.
There is something you can do about it: occasionally visit time-blog.com/swampland and leave comments on his entries pointing out how he's wrong. (The same goes for Karen Tumulty, Jay Carney, and Wonkette).
Leaving comments here isn't going to have much of an impact; Klein isn't going to visit this site.
However, if enough people leave comments *at Time Magazine* pointing out how he's wrong, his credibility will be lowered and he'll be forced to either change his tune or lose the impact he has currently.
If we can force him to lose credibility over this issue, it will also serve as a cautionary tale to other pundits and politicians.
But, people have to leave comments *at Time Magazine* in order to have an impact.
“Nativist”
The snarky liberal epithet spoken loudly so they don’t have to look at the poverty they are importing, and causing at home.
His candidate is Joe Biden. ‘Nuff said.
I don’t think he’s going to sway many undecided minds with his angry little rant.
Just like Geraldo: anyone who disagrees with him on this issue is a mean, rotten, racist, doo-doo head.
And Nyah-nyah besides.
Then this a$$hole can buy my house and live next to my illegal neighbors that audiologically rape us 7 days a week at all hours of the day and night.
Gee wizz then, Joe .... how come that other mere 1.1% are the ones causing all the problems then? Answer that, Joe.
/SHEESH mode off
Tell me where you live,Joe and I'll *personally* see to it that 2,500 illegals are living within 1/10th of a mile of your house by the end of the year.And I guarantee that not one of their 250 cars will have been manufactured after 1982.
And by next June I guarantee that the market value of your house will have fallen by 50%.
it’s not racism. it’s just that you can’t have a country if it is socially unstable. All these different cliques, nobody understands each other or cooperates...that’s wrong for America. America is not all about the money...it is a home and we don’t want uninvited strangers entering our home even if they can argue they are adding economic value.
Joe Klein is stealing Bush’s material.
that’s why he doesn’t get it. he sees the economic numbers but he doesn’t get to live with them.
Joe Klein is a long-time, well known idiot, with the analytical skills of a gerbil. Oh, and no one reads Time magazine any more except for the people who write for it. Check out how many “writers” they have had to lay off just this year. They are shrinking their own readership.
Hey, Joe: Every illegal who crosses the border cheapens the efforts of legal immigrants to become American citizens.
Every illegal who successfully flaunts the immigration laws cheapens every other law.
Basic stuff the libs just don’t get.
This candid (if somewhat unintelligent) admission--that the author is entirely oblivious to the moral question bound up in the matter of illegal behavior--is sufficient to disqualify him as a serious analyst.
I detest what these liberal baby-boomers have done to this country.
Their sun is setting soon, I hope.
Many moon rise upon hill ... paleface invader ravage land, ravish hill ... him name Joe Klein ... him bring destitute to honorable tribe ... force tribe to Casino and Peace Pipe leaf trade ... immigrant Klein want part of trade, forked tongue say "taxes" .... no truste paleface Klein for honor.
The 35.2 million immigrants (legal and illegal) living in the country in March 2005 is the highest number ever recorded -- two and a half times the 13.5 million during the peak of the last great immigration wave in 1910.
Between January 2000 and March 2005, 7.9 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) settled in the country, making it the highest five-year period of immigration in American history.
Nearly half of post-2000 arrivals (3.7 million) are estimated to be illegal aliens.
One-third of immigrants lack health insurance -- two-and-one‑half times the rate for natives. Immigrants and their U.S.‑born children account for almost three-fourths (nine million) of the increase in the uninsured population since 1989.
Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, three-and-a-half times the rate for natives. Since 1990, immigration has increased the number of such workers by 25 percent, while increasing the supply of all other workers by 6 percent.
The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 29 percent, compared to 18 percent for native households
Ooh, let’s put one of those places where illegal immigrants gather to wait for work right next door to Mr. Klein, or move about 26 of them into the house beside his. Think he would change his opinion?
Say what you will about Biden; he is one “articulate and bright and clean” Democratic candidate!
“Does any man care about what this effeminate weasel says?”
How dare you impugn the innate dignity of effeminate weasels with your careless miscaricaturization and comparison of them to Joe Klein!
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