Inky Immigration Idiocy

I’d like to try and get us away for a few minutes from reading and talking about a racist idiot radio personality who should no longer have a job and instead look at something else, OK?

The Philadelphia Inquirer published this editorial yesterday in which they decried the lack of activity on immigration reform; in the process, they mentioned the ordinances passed in towns such as Hazleton, Pa. which, in effect, penalize all immigrants by tainting them as illegals (Smerky sounded off on this a few weeks ago, but life is short, so I decided not to comment on it).

I’m really going to try and not devote time to Dubya, Tancredo and the other flaming wingers on this issue since (oh, but Dubya is going to “triangulate” on this, according to Bill Schneider of CNN…so laughably preposterous the way our corporate media continues to prop up President Stupid Head), but instead, I want to focus on this passage from the Inquirer editorial…

The Dems also bear some of the blame. They haven't acted forcefully because they don't want to offend Big Labor, which fears a tide of immigrant workers will stunt wages.

See, there’s no way the Inky or any other journo house organ can criticize the Repugs these days even though they’ve ruined everything they’ve touched without overamplifying an actual Democratic shortcoming or manufacturing one for the sake of argument.

Yes, labor is a traditional Democratic constituency. But if the Inky would bother to do its homework (and they can start by reading this article from the AFL-CIO blog), they would begin to find a clue about the wealth transfer that has been taking place in this country already for years, to say nothing of offshoring, which has done more to stunt wages than anything “Big Labor” could ever do (and let’s not forget, of course, that “Big Labor” is repugnant code language anyway).

And speaking of wealth transfer, the definitive column on that written by Paul Krugman can be accessed here.

I have a couple of ideas on this that I’d like to share.

First, let’s establish a national registry of employers who have broken the law by hiring illegal workers. If we’re going to get serious about “reform,” then we should name all the culpable parties, right?

Second, I know of a way to affect the “demand” side of this equation, which I think we should focus on because there will always be plenty looking for jobs on the supply side; let’s invest in technological development and job training to the point where we start producing more white-collar jobs that illegal immigrants could never perform (you don’t hear of Mexicans risking life and limb to migrate to Silicon Valley, do you?). To paraphrase that baseball movie, if you build it, you know they won’t come.

I prefer constructive activity on this issue as opposed to victimizing “straw men” for no good reason, don’t you?

Update 1: Posts like this are the reason why David Sirota is The Man!

Update 2: Don't let him "sucker you" on this like he did with NCLB, Ted.