Good Point on Immigration

By Keith R. Schmitz

Thom Hartman yesterday on Air America had a great point.

We don't have have an illegal immigrant problem. We have an illegal employer problem.

Veiled threats lobbed in the border wars

by bert
It's time once again to open up the get-tough-with-illegals mailbag and, looky here, it's an unsigned letter to a nun. Sister Mary was working through the St. Bridget Roman Catholic Church to help families, most Latino, affected by the May raid on about 400 undocumented workers at a kosher packing house in Postville, Iowa.

Here's what, according to Sunday's New York Times , the anonymous man wrote to Sister Mary: "May you rot in hell."

Neat, huh? A fellow hostile to foreign slaughterhouse workers without proper papers is also in favor of damning to hell any nun who tries to feed the children of such workers. What does that tell you about all of those folks from Jessica McBride to Jim Sensenbrenner who want a hard line on immigration?

Before you answer, let's remember that lifting anecdotes from the news about bad people in order to score points in the border wars is already a favorite weapon of many folks.

Until today, they all fought on the side of our gutless nun-damner from Postville.

This why I hate people

(for lack of a better title)
by folkbum

A certain member of the right-wing Xenophobiasphere that I am not really linking to anymore nonetheless prompts this post. He celebrated a recent decision in Philadelphia that ruled a sign placed in a window of a cheesesteak shop was not overly discriminatory against immigrants or some such. Because, you know, the front line of the immigration battle is cheesesteak stands.

Here's the sign:



Here's the postcard I want to send to the guy:

Dear "Joey":

When making "signs," please use quotation marks "correctly." If you're going to "demand" that people speak only "one" language, then you should learn to use that one language "yourself."

"Sincerely,"
folkbum

We Meant Surge, Not Purge

by krshorewood

Standing in stark contrast to the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein, a little known aspect of life under this dictator was the treatment afforded Iraqi Christians. Not that life was rosy, but according to The Guardian,

Although they (Iraqi Christians) made up only about 3% of the population of prewar Iraq - 700,000 people - under Saddam they were a prosperous minority, symbolized by the high profile of Tariq Aziz, Saddam's Christian foreign minister. Highly educated and overwhelmingly middle class, the Christians were heavily concentrated in Mosul, Basra and especially Baghdad, which before the war had the largest Christian population of any Middle Eastern town or city.

In the George Bush world of untended consequences known as the Iraq occupation, things have taken a bad turn for the Christians who live there -- or in many cases used to live there. According to today's Boston Globe, Iraqi Christians are being expelled from their homes, something that is happening to many Iraqis as religious sects are making their neighborhoods homogenous.

The article goes on to talk about how more troops are being brought in to quell the harassment, but we are too familiar with the on-going game of Whack-a-Mole being played throughout Iraq.

As many fundamentalist Christians in this country cheered on the invasion of Iraq, Bush has done the impossible. Thanks to this president, someone who has had no qualms about advertising his piety, Christians throughout Iraq are dealing with what looks to be a worse situation than under the displaced tyrant prompting half of them to flee to other countries. The exception is here to this country where the Bush administration has put severe limitations on Iraqi refugees coming to the US.

Bush has fixed it so that in Iraq, Christians don't have a prayer.

Bush Offers Scooter Libby "Amnesty"

by folkbum

UPDATE: Via mcjoan, it looks like Bush thinks the rules don't apply to him, either: "No petition for commutation of sentence, including remission of fine, should be filed if other forms of judicial or administrative relief are available, except upon a showing of exceptional circumstances." Libby's appeal is still pending, and there's nothing exceptional about it.

UPDATE II: I suppose Bush could have just said, " 'Please,' " Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, " 'don't [send me to jail].' " Scooter's lucky.

Well it seems that tax-evader Marc Rich's attorney has had his sentence commuted by President Bush:

President Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term that Bush said was excessive. Bush's move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case.

That meant Libby was likely to have to report to prison soon and put new pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby's allies to pardon the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

"I respect the jury's verdict," Bush said in a statement. "But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison."

Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, and Bush said his action still "leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby."

Libby was convicted in March of lying to authorities and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative's identity. He was the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair.

What this means, in other words, is that running interference so your boss doesn't get implicated in a federal investigation is now worth, at most, a hefty fine. I hope that loyal assistants in smoke-filled boardrooms everywhere are taking notice.

The title of this post is, of course, a shot at everyone (cough * conservatives * cough) who has been criticizing the failed immigration bill by calling the fine and probation required of illegal immigrants "amnesty." It's not "amnesty" any more than what Scooter got is a full pardon. Scooter just doesn't have to do the time for his crime. Ironically, this "amnesty" will earn Bush points with his 26-percenters that the immigration bill actually didn't.

Additionally: Bloomberg (the news, not the guy) reminds us that Bush pardons or commutes almost no one who asks for it. digby suspects the lack of a full pardon is so that Scooter can take the fifth if he testifies to Congress. And, kudos to Keith for beating me to it.

Kurt Waldheim was a Nazi; Oscar Ayala-Cornejo is an illegal immigrant

by folkbum

On the other hand, Kurt Waldheim was also a revered statesman, and Oscar Ayala-Cornejo was, by all accounts, a good cop.

In many ways, I feel that the whole immigration debate is ginned up by Republicans to rile the base. There seems little doubt that we don't do a good job at the borders. And something is certainly screwed up in the world that has led an estimated 12 million people to sneak in here for a better life.

But I think the case of Oscar Ayala-Cornejo shows exactly where the immigration debate moves from commonsense discussion of real problems into frothy insanity. If all you knew was the conservative Cheddarsphere, you'd think that Ayala-Cornejo was the anti-Christ and his presence on the Milwaukee Police Department--let alone the country--is a sure sign of the apocalypse.

Michael S. Murphy doesn't have enough exclamation points to express his displeasure. Fred has the same problem, but with capital letters. Michael Caughill compares Ayala-Cornejo to the Jude cops and pedophiles. Jessica McBride thinks she's making a point about something. McBride's protégée is basically demanding a tax refund.

But Kurt Waldheim's death last Thursday brought an inescapable and impressive reminder of something that all of us would do well to keep in mind: Austrians learned that Waldheim had been a Nazi--and had lied about it--and elected him president anyway. The revelations did nothing to diminish the respected work he did for the world as a two-term Secretary-General of the United Nations or his other service to the world community. Was Waldheim's time as a Nazi something to celebrate? Of course not. But it did not--and should not--stop us from forgiving him and allowing him to keep serving.

Similarly, if ever there were a case for "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, I think Oscar Ayala-Cornejo is it. He was a child when he was made to take on the identity of his dead cousin. He finished school, he made a conscious choice to serve the community. He was productive, helpful, valuable. His spending time in jail is a far greater waste of taxpayer dollars than our paying his salary has been.

This is why the dialogue as it's currently happening on immigration is absolutely stupid and unhelpful. Mike Plaisted this morning--in a post that reminded me to finish this one, finally--correctly diagnoses the issue as the GOP's

hail-mary pass to get traction with their deep, back-woods base. [. . .] This led to the declaration of a "crisis" in immigration. Apparently, there were just too many brown-skinned, foreign-languaged people showing up for work all across America. The trumped-up "crisis", not coincidentally, led to the first increase in years for membership in the Klu Klux Klan and other "organizations" who know how to make the most of xenophobic hysteria.

Again, the GOP candidates have heard the siren sound of their nut-base and, instead of volunteering for the next Habitat for Humanity project, will be out there with the suddenly-enriched private contractors (check for Minutemen to make the most of their opportunities here), building giant double-fences to keep Them out.

It's absolutley astounding to me that George W. Bush and Trent Frickin' Lott (of this quote) are the ones making sense on the issue, and are leaving their nut-roots further and further out in a frothy, angry right field.

And paying the price? Good cops like Oscar Ayala-Cornejo.

How far out of the mainstream is Jessica McBride?

by folkbum

I almost feel bad for piling on, but this is too easy not to take the shot. Tuesday, McBride blogged about the proposed immigration bill, the deal struck between Congress and the president:

How far out of the mainstream is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board?

So far out of the mainstream they think the amnesty immigration bill is "ugly" and "un-American."

No, not because they think it's too lenient. They think it's too tough!

The "they think" link takes you to the editorial where, indeed, they write that "ugly is too kind a description" for the bill. They cite, for example, the lack of a provision that would allow families to be together and changing how businesses sponsor employees through the H1-B program. Mostly, though, there's this:

It will entail a historic repudiation of that quintessential American value: that people who come here from other countries to labor to make this country richer and stronger deserve a chance to formally become one of us through legal residency or citizenship.

The guest worker portion of this measure says that only their sweat and toil are worthy. The mostly Latino workers themselves are not. [. . . ] The re-entry part is problematic because immigrants will have to be convinced that there is no risk in leaving. If they discern risk that might separate them from their jobs and their families, they might opt to remain in the shadows.

But the lack of a path to legal residency for the temporary workers makes certain that they will remain in those shadows. Under this measure, they could only be temporary workers for two years, renewing twice but only if they spend one year outside the country between each stint. This only assures that these two-year workers will prefer to remain here--undocumented and exploited.

This is the part that McBride seems to have a problem with, the complaint that the measure is "too tough" to be useful. She and the rest of the conservative noise machine find any path to a legal status to be "amnesty" and, therefore, "too lenient." It will only take you a few seconds with google and a pair of hip-waders to find outrage at GOP lawmakers supporting this plan in the swamp that is conservative blogosphere. (Sean Hackbarth has an example.)

Problem is, McBride and the conservative bloggers are the ones "out of the mainstream" on immigration. This is a pretty common theme, I've noticed. I remember it from last year about this time when Russ Feingold was asking for a censure of President Bush and every conservative blogger in the state insisted he was "out of the mainstream" or selling out to the "drum circle left." Yet when you looked at where the general public was really at, Feingold was dead on with public opinion. Those bloggers just assumed that because Feingold disagreed with them, he must have been on the fringes, while never considering that, perhaps, it was their own attitudes that were on the fringe.

The same thing is true for immigration, if you look at the actual poll numbers. Responses vary based on the wording of the question, but you get a sense that in general, the kind of strict closed-border, deport-them-all policy McBride and Co. would favor is decidedly not what the public would want.

• From a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll done May 4-6: 53% oppose building aborder fence, 50% oppose a guest worker progam without citizenship as a possibility, and a whopping 80% favor some path to citizenship for illegal immigrants here now.
  
• From a USA Today/Gallup Poll in the field April 13-15, 2007: 76% prefer a path to citizenship, either leaving and returning (42%) or staying (36%).
  
• From a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll taken April 5-9, 2007: 55% say guest workers should be a part of an immigration bill, 40% say only border security.
  
• From another USA Today/Gallup Poll done March 2-4, 2007: 59% think illegal immigrants should be able to stay if they "meet certain requirements"; only 24% say "deport them all."

I haven't come down one way or the other on this immigration bill. I think, generally, trying to round up and deport 12 million people will be a much more expensive and time-consuming process than is ultimately worth whatever gain might come from it. I also think it would be better to have people who are here visible and, therefore, not so concerned about who might discover them that they would be willing to kill a Kenosha sheriff's deputy, for example.

But what is certain is that McBride cannot claim that the Journal Sentinel editorial board is out of the mainstream here. She is.

Monday Miscellaney

by folkbum

• Our TiVo
  2003-2007
  Rest in Peace
  
• The Brawler writes about unions so I don't have to. All youse who are afraid of imaginary union goons (like the scary 300 pound men of Paul Noonan's fevered imagination) are apparently unfamiliar with the facts.
  
  
• Speaking of studies that burst conservatives' imaginary-world bubbles, it turns out that immigrants--including illegal ones--boost pay more than prison populations.
  
  
• Who would have guessed that I'm in the top ten for a Google search for hamburger helper turning in my wrench for a fork?
  
  
• The Cheddarsphere's own Sean Hackbarth has been the point man on what I see as a too-little-too-late campaign to distance the genteel right from Ann Coulter. (If you don't know why Coulter is in the news again, just Google it up.) I say too-little-too-late because Ann Coulter is now and has been for a long time a known quantity. Yet I didn't see Sean boycotting the convention; rather, he was quite glad to go despite knowing that Coulter would be there even after her as-offensive remarks from last year.
  
  Blue Texan pointedly asks Sean why it took so long, especially given that her remarks this weekend were tame by comparison to her previous hits. Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog has reports from the same now-aghast bloggers reporting on how much that very convention loved Coulter before the speech.
  
  It is often said that there is basically nothing a prominent right-winger can say that will get them ostracized (although someone should ask David Brock about that). And I predict that there will be little change to Ann Coulter's media status after this past weekend.
  
  Oh, and what Digby said.
  
  
• Anyone who thinks that the crisis at Walter Reed is somehow indicative of government's inability to deliver health care should read this and this.
  
  
• Who knew that Rick Esenberg's done more drugs than I have? And I'm a cymbal-banging leader of the drum-circle left!
  
  
• This is from the same massive conservative conference Ann Coulter befouled. I don't entirely know if the picture is fair, but it's kind of funny. I got it from here, but the site's currently under a denial-of-service attack by those genteel righties.
  
  
• I can't believe people aren't embarrassed to death to do things like this. Saying one night, about Mitt Romney's Mormonism, "We created a new religious litmus test. This is very troublesome to me, and no other candidate is getting that scrutiny." And then saying the very next night about Barack Obama, "Now, a closer look at the church's vision has led many to call them separatist and, in some cases, even drawing comparisons to a cult." How does his brain not explode?
  
  
• And, saved for last because my head might explode: I actually agree with McIlheran. Althouse, however, continues to befuddle me.

Let the retractions roll . . .

From the fine folks who bring you the news:

The man police believe fatally shot two people and wounded three others in South Shore Park last week appears to be a legal resident of the United States, immigration officials said today.

Octaviano Juarez-Corro is a "legal permanent resident of the United States with a green card," said Gail Montenegro, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The right Cheddarsphere was all about Juarez-Corro's illegality lasty week prompted, if memory serves, by Jeff Wagner's initial accusations. I'm sure they'll be racing to be the first to retract all the anti-immigrant bile . . .

Being legal makes what he did no less excusable. But a picture of the man with the caption "This is the face of illegal immigration" is fear-mongering dishonesty at its worst.

Fraley's Daily Forward

UPDATE: WisOpinion has taken the link down. No word from Brian.

Diamond Dave caught this first, but I think it deserves wider play.

WisOpinion--good non-partisans who often link to your humble folkbum--has spotlighted this post from Blogger Republican campaign strategist Brian Fraley. Now, I've met Brian and he is a decent, smart fellow, and this probably would not be an issue at all had WisOpinion not picked it up. The post begins,

An interesting point comes to mind when contemplating the immigration question. It is amazing that people from across the globe are clamoring to come here. After all, if you listen to liberals, we Republicans have screwed up this country, right?

Following that are quotes about how bad America sucks from famous liberals Bill Mahr, Michael Moore, Gwenneth Paltrow, Sean Penn, and more

The post is probably one of those email forwards, likely originating with rightwingsparkle, where the quotes are in almost exactly the same order as in Brian's post (she includes links to sources for all the quotes, making me think she's the origin), with the addition of some items from this page. Snopes doesn't have anything on this to verify the accuracy of the quotes--I checked.

As I said, I'm assuming Brian got this as an email forward--he's not the kind of guy (as far as I can tell) who would just cut and paste someone else's blog post. But, when posting a forward, he should have at least have indicated it was exactly that. WisOpinion may never have picked it up, then, but at least neither they nor Brian would be looking as foolish as they are now knowing what it is.

Mexican Flags

Lately, there's been quite the dust-up over the whole Mexican flag thing. For example, Patrick McIlheran complained about the flags coming out during protests last week. Peter DiGaudio, too, wonders "What's with waving the Mexican flag? You are giving the middle finger to Mexico by leaving and supposedly want to be Americans. Why not wave the American flag?"

I have to say I might be coming around on this issue. I think that anyone who walks around waving the Mexican flag should face consequences. If they work for the federal government, in particular, they should be fired.