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The only result will be draconian walls, humongous MINDLESS expenditures on hiring Border Patrol, dune buggies, horses, "bio-metric" documents of all sorts INCLUDING for U.S. Citizens, laser thingamagigs, SUVs, river boats. AND the undermining of our economy. Plus a culture of snitchery that will make fascism look bland.
Our one chance to USE Shrub as a tool for OUR ends is dead. A Democratic president will not be able to overcome the bigots and xenophobes.
Here's my rationale from a few weeks ago (re-post):
1- It's a first step. 2- It's better than the alternative. 3- It's a NIXON-in-China opportunity.
A liberal on the discussion board was sincerely worried that the various proposals for immigration (the compromises with KENNEDY and Shrub) would create a sub-class exploited for labor and deprived of voting rights. I said: 1. It's a first step. 2. It's better than the alternatives. 3- It's a NIXON-in-China opportunity. The most urgent of the opportunities is #3, NIXON-goes-to-China. People in border states KNOW Mexican-Americans, many of them on an individual basis, and even though racism also exists in the border states, there is still personal knowledge involved---unlike Tweety, O'LOOFAH, and on into the extremes of TANCREDO, SENSENBRENNER, MALKIN, and the Minutemen.
This is the closest I've come to saying something positive about Shrub, that he has a fondness for Hispanics. He had SOME contact with them, whether as servants (I don't know this), his partying at the border, his sister-in-law, the laborers in in various failed businesses, his AWOL flights into Central and South America for drugs or CIA-Poppy. Jeb Crow Shrub has had various business parterships with Latinos for whatever nefarious ends.
In the paranoid '50s and '60s, paranoid of "Red" China, NO Democratic president would have been able to recognize China without being crucified, probably literally, by the John Birch Society. Only a weird straddler like NIXON--with his delusions of historicity--with his credentials as a Red-hunter, could have assured the brainwashed country that "Red" hordes would not be patrolling American streets if China were recognized.
So this is one of those moments. Shrub might not be so strong as Tricky Dick against his own flying monkeys. He collapsed on Aunt Harriet MIERS in the face of Laura INGRAHAM, fer gudness sakes. But if he doesn't do it, the next prez ain't going to do it, whether it's a wingnut president (without Shrub's border background) or a Dem, who will be crucified.
===========Now, that said, the liberal poster raises some profound issuess: The creation of a sub-class exploited for labor and deprived of voting and other rights.
I say, this Shrub law is a first step. It is likely that this sub-class argument will lead to the Supreme Court, and even a reactionary wingnut SCOTUS cannot ignore the inequality. If this isn't taxation-without-representation, what is?
What is the alternative? Despite the vehemence of the wingnuts' opposition, I have never heard WHAT it is that TANCREDO, SENSENBRENNER, DOBBS, MALKIN, and the Minutemen WANT. I hear the part about "securing the border" (a financial boondoggle), but what about the 12 million? Do they seriously want DEPORTATION?
It's a first step. It's better than the alternative. It's a NIXON-in-China opportunity.
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