Immigration disputes

This is one of the best factual and analytical articles I've seen recently on the undocumented immigration issue: Give and take across the border : 1 in 7 Mexican workers migrates - most send money home by Carolyn Lochhead San Francisco Chronicle 05/21/06. One of the best things about this article is it provides a good overview of the Mexican side of the current immigration.

Columnist Cynthia Tucker calls attention to the obvious racial element in much of the anti-immigrant agitation, an element that pro-immigrant Democrats should be willing to confront head-on, in Secure border by going after employers by Cynthia Tucker Atlanta Journal-Constitution 05/21/06:

Just once, I'd like to see a corporate executive whose company has knowingly hired illegal immigrants doing the perp walk for his offenses - handcuffed, disgraced, chaperoned by law enforcement officials as cameras record his every tentative step. For just a few days, I'd like to see the conservative blogosphere roasting the textile mill managers and onion field owners who routinely make a mockery of immigration law with a wink and a nod at forged documents.

But that's not the way politics works, is it?

Business executives remain a core Republican constituency, so it's unlikely they'll end up facing criminal charges for illegal hiring. Besides, darker-hued Mexicans and Guatemalans seem to make more inviting targets than middle-aged white men.

As I've said before, an effective immigration reform, i.e., one of the kind that the Republican Congress will never enact, would address employer enforcement in a broader context. Tucker is using that issue to highlight the racial demagoguery of many of the anti-immigrant activists.

On the immediate prospects for legislation, see Congress' immigration collision: The Senate kept a "fragile coalition" on immigration reform alive last week. But can it survive the House? by Anita Kumar St. Petersburg Times 05/22/06.

| +Save/Share | |