Hispandering???

Nah and this isn't about race...

Nice, degsme!

This form of indignation might actually be convincing if it weren't consistently mouthed by hypocrites who count on the Latino swing to be the ticket to political power in the next 5-8 election cycles.

Nice, neutral, euphemistic code words such as "comprehensive" and "normalization" and "undocumented", et ux. absolve no one of the sin.

What Hillary, Obama, and the Democrats are doing is about race. The term "Hispandering" is actually quite apt.

....and in the interests of being post-partisan (as if that's good for us....) McCain deserves damnation with the 2 losers he's running against when it comes to this.

Fighting racists necessarily is going to be about race. Folks like Kaus normally closet their racism on this issue much better, and rarely are as open as they are in this case. But the racist component of this came from the xenophobes, not the Pols.

What I can't understand is that Obama has a much more liberal/open policy when it comes to illegal immigration and yet Hispanics will not vote for him. Conversely, white male and female voters are supporting Obama?

Please explain who the racists are now???

First off, latinos that have the voting franchise are not the same latinos that you are targettging. In fact that is part of the problem, your focus on meztiso physiognomy encompasses both, as does your above logic - so yeah that still leaves the position you are advocating largely based in racism.

And you are right, there are racial tensions between the hispanic and african-american communities. How does that justify your racism?

that latinos will not vote for a person who is black, even though his position for them is better than a white woman???

You call it racial tension....I call it racism!!!

OK, I guess that's what I can call how I feel about the millions of illegals here that I don't want to pay for.

It's not racism, it's TENSION!!!

And I guess anyone that agrees with Kaus is a racist too....Fine!

I'm not going there.

I call baloney -- pols and and quasi-pols started calling people bigots to deflect any and all criticism of their pandering to Latinos when they ran out of good public policy reasons for ignoring everyone else's border control and enforcement quality concerns.

Let me just posit what I'm trying to argue here a little differently and hope I have read you incorrect.......

Let's see....

It's not racist to woo the Latino vote by trumping your support of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" and promising it in short order after you're elected.

But it is racist (or xenophobic, to use a less charged yet equally demeaning word that means pretty much the same thing) to woo numerous and varied other voting blocs by trumping your opposition to it????

Now, I'm only here pretending to be intelligent, but this seems a double standard to me. Tell me why I'm wrong.

How can anyone label words such as "Border Security", "interior & workplace enforcement", while getting a pass on the ones mentioned in my prior post?

Exploiting a segment of people for current and future political power = OK.

Wanting revision and actual enforcement of an 'Anything Goes' immigration system = Racist

Except for the typical can kick that "we can't deport 12-20 million people", there just is no pressing public policy need vital to the national interest that we amnesty 12-20 million people that outweighs the need to carefully and rigorously enforce the laws as they are before and after we "reform" them

I'm not making the argument that we should endeavor to deport 12-20 million people. It's unneccessary.

Still, Kaus and I are waiting for a better reason for legalizing everyone than the notion that we just "can't deport them".

Can you (or anyone for that matter) give us a reason that conforms to our overarching need to control who is allowed to enter and who is allowed to stay?

......there isn't one!

This is especially so, when no one can foretell what will happen in the aftermath, except for the explosion of even more illegal immigrants expecting a future amnesty.

But that calculus works for Democrats who don't believe in consequences, don't preach any to their voters and think they can ride the Latino swing for every forseeable election.

So, none of this is racism on their part-- just xenophobia on everyone else's.

Another thing: Kaus is not a racist -- he has advocated the nice PC position of tough border and interior enforcement while slowly working everyone here illegally into society at-large and citizenry....on several occassions.

His opposition is to the execution of this reform, not the concept.....

I actually have a laundry list of reasons why his position is too soft, none of which have anything to do with race....

sorry for the novel....; >

Nice try. Whether latinos do or do not harbor racial prejudies against african-americans has nothing to do with the racism that underlies YOUR claims about undocumented workers and your predeliction for assuming all those of meztiso physiognomy are "illegal".

The issue is YOUR discriminatory behaviour and the racism that is inherent in the anti-immigrant movement currently in vogue.

But clever attempt at misdirection

Racism is all about where the discrimination decision comes from - does it come from reality or mythology.

In appealing to voters who have been identified by the broader culture as "latino" or who - and this is critical SELF IDENTIFY as "latino", you are not being racist. You are not engaging in any sort of selection based on mythology projected onto physiognomy.

You cannot say the same about the anti-immigration position. Its all about mythology and selective data.

The so called "overarching need to control who is allowed to enter and who is allowed to stay" is itself based heavily in mythos rather than fact.

Since if we do nothing, then it doesn't cost us anything (don't even go there with the nonsense about benefits and ERs and such - the data doesn't support you) and we continue to expand how many people benefit from some level of freedom.

So the the question becomes twofold

1. WHY do we have to do ANYTHING? Kaus and other anti-latino advocates have not even made the case for having to do SOMETHING in a way that isn't based in racial bias.
2. If we are going to do something, WHAT IS THE GOAL? Again, here Kaus et.al. do not have a consistent answer that isn't based in racism.

a fashion trend of sorts!!!

Democrats are willing to say anything to hold onto thier power, even to the detrement of the country's welfare. You spout off about the constitution and the rights of you and I, but, you fail to mention the fact that this is simply a way for them to solidify a new voting block for future elections.

You just don't have the guts to admit it!

That's not even a logical conclusion.

1. you haven't demonstrated that undocumented residents are a detriment to the nation's welfare.
2. You have yet to demonstrate how the US Constitution applies only to citizens

In fact I doubt that you can even demonstrate a CONSTITUTIONAL basis for why simple residency isn't a sufficient basis for voting. Go ahead, try.

But again. the core issue is that your reaction to meztisos

• IS Racist
• IS based in fear not fact
• IS irrational

Typical Kool-Aid powered ACLU / Open Border nonsense.

As if you knew what was in the hearts and minds of everyone connected to the issue in all its facets. Get a grip!

For someone lecturing against mythology, you sure feel comfortable spouting off a
faith-based immigration principle

Yes, Degsme:

Every last person coming here has both the continuance of our socio-political institutions and best interests of our society at heart. I guess 9/11 was a simple failure of foreign policy (or the Bush Administration coordinated it) NOT of visa enforcement ...

wow! <conks head> silly me -- were the 19 bombers Latino? This wave of enlightenment has cost me some memory of the incident. Being the bigot that I was, I couldn't tell them from any other brown people anyway......

We benefit from keeping wages down and shrinking the middle-class from the bottom-end. This was just

We benefit from keeping our native poor uneducated and in competition with cheap labor for the jobs that can't be off-shored, since lazy-assed Americans would rather collect welfare This is not mythology on to physiognomy? but since you're the expert....please tell.

We benefit from the decay of our social services, our safety net and the dilution of our vote. The POV is different from comparing the inner-city to the gated community but I think we can assume it isn't happening just because we might not see it.

We benefit from the proliferation of various socio-ethnic interest groups that further fracture society by pushing a political agenda based on the race Latinos alone. We have just tons of evidence to show that none of these will NEVER EVER follow in the KKK's footsteps -- please give me the next century to find it

We benefit from the extra demand unfettered emigration puts on what are ultimately finite resources. Iff we open our borders to everyone with a heartbeat water somehow won't run out of the aquifers and God will create more arable land.

I'm glad this is all true because - gosh darn it - you say so!!!!

Man, do I wanna live in the world you live in. Things might suck in the real one!!!!

BTW: before you lecture anyone else, the term is spelled "Mestizo"

What your denying is the concept of a Nation State sovereign and seperate from others, free to manage it's own affairs, to develop culturally and otherwise as it wish's.

ZPG, zero population growth, was made a unofficial official general policy around 1970, and powerfull efforts made to reduce the fertility of American women, by social changes and other means, the desire being to stabilise our population at 200 million. So we did as asked and had small families or no children period, all to stop us from growing to a monsterous 300 million...... And now look. Were at 300 million because of immigrants, despite everything. So frustrating....

<link>

Should we emulate the Mexican racists, shooting down illegals, raping and torture of others captured on their southern border? Should we turn on our upper classes for doing this to us? Should we annex and americanise Mexico? Should we just give up and live only for today? The effect of this is to further divide us up into warring ethnic and racial factions, with gangs and mobsters back again like the bad old days before Roosevelt.

My wife suggests It would probably be simpler if we had simply annexed Mexico in The War to Free the West, back in 1848, then everybody would be Americans today. But Mexico is south of the USA, and we had just wanted our territory that Mexico had occupied anyway.

9/11 would have occurred with or without the visa enforcement. Note BTW, that the focus on the "build a border" and "send them back" would have done nothing at all to prevent 9/11. So the focus on this source of undocumented residency has nothing to do with what Kaus, EvenSteven and others are arguing about. Invoking 9/11 thus is a distraction.

Ok so if the issue is the impact on unskilled wages - lets look at what the most effective means of raising unskilled wages has historically been:

1. Raising the federal minimum wage
2. unionization

The thing that makes both of those ineffective if you have undocumented residents here is that if someone is undocumented, then a shady empolyer can rip them off and they have no legal recourse. And of course they cannot afford the visibility of belonging to a union. So that leaves us with a dilemma:

• Satisfy those who are xenophobic and refuse to allow any sort of legal status for undocumented residents and as long as there are undocumented workers, they will be exploited and wages will remain low
• Provide a mechanism for legal residencey, upset the xenophobes and raise the wages of everyone.

That's a no brainer if you apply Occam's razor

As for social services. Social services are funded by local taxes. Those are property, sales and state income taxes. The GAO (not exactly a liberal or partisan organization) estimates that 75% of Undocumented Residents pay income tax compared to between 72%-80% compliance by all americans.

IOW Undocumenteds pay income tax at the same rate of compliance as the average american. So states with an income tax component of local funding have their share of taxes paid for by undocumenteds.

Sales taxes are paid by everyone buying anything, so undocumenteds also pay sales tax. Property tax is paid by homeowners and renters. Renters pay it through their rent. If the property tax goes up, the landlord increases the rent and it is the renters that pay. So that means undocumenteds also pay property tax.

OK so undocumented residents pay their share of the tax burden, but are they responsible for the decline in social services? Well we know that undocumenteds and even documented immigrants cannot receive any sort of welfare. The law requires proof of citizenship to receive welfare. So that's not an issue.

Education - well undocumenteds are primarily young males, so the percentage of the unducumented population that receives education benefits is a smaller fraction than the general population. Since everyone is paying taxes, that means that undocumenteds are SUBSIDIZING our public education system just like they subsidize Social Security

So that leaves Healthcare. Again we know that they pay the same taxes as everyone else. But do they overutilize or underutilize healthcare services. Turns out that studies done by NON-PARTISAN groups like the American Pediatrics Association show that undocumented residents underutilize healthcare services. IOW the combination of paying taxes and underutilizing services means they are SUBSIDIZING healthcare social services.

So exactly which social services are being harmed by undocumented residents? The "decay" in social services is a POLICY decision and nothing more.

Now as to resources. The places that are in resource trouble - like aquifer depletion, are places like Phoenix, Lost Wages, and other cities that are unsustainable on their natural resources. Since undocumented residnets make up roughly 15% of the population, and the growth of these cities is far in excess of that, its clear that the resource impacts also are not driven by immigration.

In fact the USA WITH ALL its undocumented migration, has an population growth rate of....WAIT FOR IT......0.89% . So your great fear of using up all of our Finite Resources is pretty remote.

BTW, it can be spelled Mestizo, or Meztiso or even Mestiso - don't correct folks on things that don't need correction.

"our territory that Mexico had occupied anyway"???

Now that is a very interesting revision of history . Truly a creative re-envisioning of who was where and when

And given that total Fertility Rate of the USA at this point is below 1% IF ALL IMMIGRATION is included, I don't see how the Rockefeller Commission has any bearing on the issue at hand