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Sunday, April 16, 2006

Thinking and Rethinking

Happy Easter. If the Easter Bunny left a little brown treat on your pillow, I hope your brown treat was chocolate!

I am feeling good today. I was happy to see 3rd Avenue Dave rethink his position on immigration. Discourse is the process of thinking and rethinking.

Too often politicians don't look at issues. Instead they look at how they can position themselves in social movements to ride the tide to power. Like many I was extremely upset with the way that "progressive" were selling out the unions and greens to pander to crowds of undocumented immigrations.

I am not upset with the immigrants, but with the political wanks. The politicians are the ones that have created our mess by their uniform failure to address issues. The immigrants are pawns.

I am deeply troubled with the large number of politicians who do not invest the time to learn the complexities of the immigration issue. Instead they take the low road and jump infront before crowds to create the illusion of leadership.

A great example here is the large number of union leaders who turned their backs on the concerns of union members to babble about their support of immigration.

Unions were the prime driving force in current restrictive immigration laws. Our problems exist because the left pushed for tight immigration quotas, but would cave in each time people tried to enforce the tight quotas.

When the issue finally reaches critical mass, the left sells out the traditional unionists then tries to project thier political beliefs onto conservatives. It really is a disgusting way to do politics.

I am not upset about different positions on the issues. I am upset with the extent to which the left has undermined our ability to discuss the issue. I admire those people on both sides of the issue who take the time and learn the positions and concerns of their opponents.

The primary problem we face is with the undocumented status of the immigrants. The reason we have this is because modern politics has effectively destroyed our ability to discuss and face issues. In this case we see that pro-labor groups coxed the US into passing excessively strict immigration laws. Other political groups envisioning Hispanic vote as a unbeatable political base actively worked to subvert the laws.

We are now in a really difficult situation where we cannot simply address the issue by setting up rules, because the whole foundation of rule of law has been subverted.

It is a complex and difficult issue that should not be handled by mass deportations, but cannot be handled by a general amnesty. Above all, any immigration reform really needs to start with people caught in a nightmarish immigration bureaucracy.

Solving this problem will require work and quality discourse. Reid's blocking the amendment process was a disservice in that blocking the process stifled debate. In the long run, I think it was good for the nation. A debate as important as the immigration issue really needs to go through several rounds of thinking and rethinking to create a workable solution.

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