The US Immigration Reform Bill Brings Civil War Between Right Wing Radio, Bloggers

Another insightful and comprehnsive article on a subject that has recieved entirely too little attention in the "liberal" press. I had to laugh about the comment that building the Berlin wall on the border will require the services of illegal immigrants.
I would suggest that if the wall ever gets off the ground, every right-thinking person, immigrant or not, should join the work crews. That way we can make sure that the project is as full of holes as a Haliburton contract.
Come to think of it, however, that won't even be necessary, since for every 50-foot wall there is a 51-foot ladder.

It doesn't get any better than this very fun and informative essay, folks, on the blogosphere.

The definition of "white progressive blogger" had me rolling on the floor.

Yeah, The Unapologetic Mexican blog is visually a bit much (kind of like the first issue of Narco News!), and it has heart and fighting spirit that embodies "the best of la blogosfera."

Al asks why liberal bloggers aren't supporting immigration reform.  I have a couple of thoughts, one simple, the other more complicated.

The simple:  I'm real sure that a substantial majority of the U.S.'s liberal bloggers are white.  A lot of white liberals are sort of racist.  Or at least anti-immigrant.  I'm close to some work regarding this issue among local white liberals; it's painful, like running full tilt into a wall.  Al alluded to this problem; The Unapologetic Mexican sharpened it up.  People say Massachusetts is the U.S.'s most liberal state; a town there is moving to pay the federal government to put a Migra ("ICE") detachment there.

The complicated:  Guest worker.  A lot of good people, sometimes including me, have so much  trouble with this one they can't see beyond it to the arguments for the 12 million, so powerfully marshaled by Al and Rush.  Importing cheap labor for temporary use to then be shipped back is not consistent with my idea of democratic values.  It hasn't worked out terribly well in the European countries that have done it.

Al's numbers, 12 million undocumented as opposed to only 200,000 guest workers, don't really tell the number part of the story.  The most common iterations of the bill put the bracero number at 400,000, more or less.  That's not much relative difference.  More importantly, whatever the number is, it's an annual number of entrants who will stay in this status for two to six years.  So in terms of human beings, the number pretty soon gets into the millions.  Less than 12 million, but still a lot.

For reasons that Al and Rush enumerate, the status of the 12 million is bad, for them, for the U.S.'s body politic, and as a loss to the countries they came from.  But for the guest workers, it's really really bad for them and the body politic.  An article in a recent issue of "The Nation," [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070625/mello] details this and says "Congressman Charles Rangel has called guest-worker programs 'the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery'."

Al says "the core" and "central purpose" of the bill is the path to legalization and citizenship.  It probably is the core; as to purpose I know not.  But to many, the core and purpose appear to be that execrable guest worker business.  It gives great problems to our friends in the immigrant advocacy and labor communities.  Far be it from me to hold out for the perfect at risk of losing the good (but then I haven't turned down any imperfect awards lately, or perfect ones either).  Al's commentaries are a big help in thinking this through.

A Latino disc jockey duo dedicated their program to the wall and the workers who'll build it. They reveled in the prospect of watching Americans climb over it heading south when the U.S.'s economy really tanks.

There's a web site that will search about 100 dictionaries and encyclopedias simultaneously, maybe half of them in English.  Only one of them helps with "celebutard."

I guess the good news is that Al  now has a high speed internet connection.  When we first met, I did and he didn't.  Later, neither one of us did.  Now he does and I don't.  Neat.

Reber writes:

There's a web site that will search about 100 dictionaries and encyclopedias simultaneously, maybe half of them in English.  Only one of them helps with "celebutard."

Well, for anyone that hasn't figured it out already, it's the fusing of "celebrity" and "retard." The term is often used for Paris Hilton and others whose apparent celebrity isn't due to any particular accomplishment: it's the act of "being famous" that makes them famous. (Paris, of course, eventually did do something, i.e. went to jail, and so now she has graduated to "celebucon" status.)

Michelle Malkin is known on the Internets for, well, being on Fox News, and, um, having a blog. In other words, like Paris, she doesn't really have to work for a living (her hubbie is a RAND corporation analyst) or share in the heavy lifting like the rest of us. She is famous for being famous on the Internet with a constituency mainly made up of white boy haters that flock around her because she doesn't look like them and makes them feel so, well, Politically Correct in their bigotry, sort of like Ann Coulter was, before she graduated to "New York Times bestseller list celebutard," which is the career path Malkin apparently seeks. Except that her book didn't sell that well.

The early predecessor of this genre of career move was Father Coughlin, who because he seemed to be some kind of priest could get all kinds of attention on the radio mouthing racist epithets. He was the prototype celebutard.

In the opening scene of this video, Michelle Malkin demonstrates the perfect definition of the word "celebutard."

Click the link and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByLqJD36F7E

Hi everybody,

I'm new here so I'll try not to alienate everyone with my first comment :-)

First of all, I'll just quickly say what a great website this is -- I've been a fan for many years.

I guess I'm finally moved to make a comment as the immigration issue has come up, and it's an issue which has concerned me for some years as someone mingling in far-left circles.

First off, I am no racist, despite my white skin -- but you'd just have to know me to know that.

However, I'm not convinced the open-borders policy seemingly in favour here (as is general on the political far left) is sound; furthermore, by condemning all opposition to it as essentially bigoted -- although the visible face of it may well be -- I think the far left alienates large segments of the 'native' working class (of whatever country -- I've lived most of my life in New Zealand, as it happens).

I say that not because I think the working classes are generally bigoted -- I don't think that at all; in any event, they're hardly exclusively white -- but because I think, like most people not on the far left, they see (correctly, in my opinion) that an open-borders policy is simply not a sensible one, for various reasons.

There's a lot more I can say on this topic, but I think I'm near or over the 250 word limit, so will leave it there for now. :-) I'll try and expand on what I'm saying, though, when I get time.

Hi everyone, just to let you all know I have now posted some more material on this subject in my Notebook, if anyone is interested. Cheers :-)