Last Words on Immigration

Recently, I was upset by a Tom Tobin post in the Democrat & Chronicle Editorial Blog about immigration. Tobin basically reiterated the oft heard claim that opposition to the immigration bill resulted from racism. My response, along with others, argued that his claim was baseless ranting, unsupported by fact. You can read the exchange here.

The following is an excerpt from Victor Davis Hanson's Works and Days column. Hanson is a scholarly writer who manages to argue passionately without abandoning reason in his arguments:

Immigration Implosion
The President never understood why so many Americans were furious about the bill—witness the administration’s condescension toward, and abuse of, its critics.
There is an elemental anger over the issue, even if poorly articulated and sometimes contradictory. But the furor arises from a weariness with 5-pound bilingual phone books or having to select English over the phone as the preferred language.
People were tired of being told by courts that we are a racist society unless we supply interpreters at great cost to those who do not enroll in English classes. There is rampant fraud in areas that Americans were warned since infancy were the third-wires of our legal system such as authentic Social Security numbers and legitimate names. And the most grating was the complete neglect of immigration laws by city- and local officials due to the sanctimoniousness of the race industry on the left and the profit-above-all of the corporate right.
The average, maligned as a racist, middle-class voter (note the bipartisan rejection of the bill) was tired of having to buy insurance, get a driver’s license, ensure his car registration—and then get on highways where thousands simply chose not to. That they did so, because many or perhaps even most were ill-paid and without apparent resources was ironically an argument against more illegal immigration.
In short—the days of ethnic pressures (remember a trembling Gray Davis in California) to issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, or the Orwellian effort itself to ban the use of “illegal alien” for “undocumented worker” are for now over. They may return under a President Hillary, but for now the open borders movement has overplayed its hand.
Someone should interview the public relations genius who thought up the May-Day Mexican-flag waving demonstrations the past two years by illegals that came across as more Hugo Chavez than Martin Luther King. He was probably the same one who made the old Cruz Bustamante commercials here in California, replete with the red flags waving among a shouting audience as the candidate whipped them up in Spanish. (I knew that was a disaster when a liberal friend in the Bay Area, who saw one during the recall campaign, called me and asked, “What the Hell are those red flags and screams about?”)
Where do we go from here? First, close the border and all good things arise—more assimilation and integration, less identity politics, higher wages for low-paid American citizens, renewed respect for the law, and a warning to Mexico we will not subsidize its own failure to reform. When the number of illegals is static, the forces of the maligned melting pot will resume. And we will have time to sort out “earned citizenship”, guest workers, and all the other contentious issues that were to be snuck into law under the current legislation—but only when the forces of apartheid are stopped through border security.

I wish Mr. Tobin would take the time to consider whether his views are reasoned or just emotional.