Reply #10: It Is Not Quite So Simple As That, Mr. Barret

[The Magistrate]

The politics of this issue are very dicey.

My personal view is that illegal immigration in particular acts to drive down wages, both by increasing the pool of laborers, making the commodity of work they sell more plentiful and hence cheaper, and further by ensuring that a portion of the labor pool is both innured to living with less than those born and raised here, and reluctant to make much of a fuss about anything because they must necessarily fear any act that draws the attention of the authorities. Thus on purely economic grounds, that matter presents a cut and dried outline it is hard to quarrel with.

But for better or worse, ethnic and racial identity has taken on great importance in out national politics. A great many persons who are immediate descendants of immigtrants, particularly Hispanic immigrants, or who are even legal immigrants themselves, take the view that agitation against illegal immigrants is simply a cover for disfavor to their ethnic community and identity, in the same way most Blacks quite sensibly saw the Nixonian "law and oeder" campaogn as mere cover for appeal to racism against them. There is little room to doubt that the current Democratic ascendancy in California, for example, owes in great part to the hard line against illegal immigration taken by Republicans there in the past decade and more. The Hispanic population of the United States is to some degree up for grabs in the nation's political life today. A strong Republican attack of the nature we see today from the likes of Sennsenbrenner on this subject could well turn that group decisively against the Republicans, and keep them that way for a long time. This could have the effect of gaining states to the Democratic Party column in the southwest, and even put Texas itself into play.

A good line to follow, it would seem to me, would focus on opposition to guest worker programs in any form, using the economic appeal outlined above, and opposition to the excesses of criminalization and fortification proposed by the most extreme of the Republicans, while striving to make that the "real" face of the Republicans on the matter. This would position us to highlight the anti-native worker elements of the enemy's plan, while still being apparent protectors of the Hispanic population against Republican racists.

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"