The Opening Round on Immigration

Sultan Knish

When Arizona passed a law enforcing a Federal statute, Liberals across America reacted with their usual calm and rational approach of invoking the Nazis, boycotting anything with Arizona in its name including products that are not actually made in Arizona, and threatening a barrage of civil suits and protests to counter a law that the majority of Arizonians and Americans support. The irony is that only a few weeks after the media was busy warning us ominously about all the hate and extremist anti-government rhetoric in the Tea Party movement, it has done a Full 180 and is now itself indulging in hateful anti-government rhetoric. Soon enough the very same reporters who spoke out on the dangers of people protesting on behalf of their Constitutional rights, will be speaking out on how wonderful it is to have illegal aliens protesting for their rights in major cities.

The objections to the bill aren't about fairness toward individuals. After all this Congress and this Administration just passed a law compelling everyone to buy health insurance on the suspicion that one of them might get into an accident and cost the government money. At least that was the rationalization that Obama himself used in an interview. But the liberal hypocrisy on preventative policing allows them to call for preventative policing of factories because they might possibly pollute, opposition protests because they might possibly get out of hand and individuals because they might possibly not pay for their own health care-- while vocally opposing preventative policing in Arizona. Because it's fair to fine law abiding citizens hundreds of dollars for just breathing, but it's unfair for police to enforce an existing law.

This isn't about Federalism either. Liberals have cheered on states and sanctuary cities that refused to cooperate with immigration authorities. Because just like anti-government rhetoric, state governments defying the Federal authorities is one of those things that's right when it's progressive and wrong when it's conservative. But while that sort of ideological moral compass whose needle always points left may be fine for those already on the left, most Americans aren't buying it. And that is because they don't see illegal immigration as a political issue, but as a problem that needs solving.

Where Democrats and some Republicans see a potential voting base, most Americans just see an unregulated workforce in a time of high unemployment and a drain on social services. And they see most politicians being more eager to cover their asses than to do something about. Which is why they support the Governor of Arizona, and not the little man with the big ears in the White House. While the latter has leveraged his power to create a nanny state, the former actually took steps to solve what most residents consider to be a problem.

The current immigration mess is a volatile situation that liberals created for their own benefit, and are outraged at the thought that their agenda might be thwarted. The Democratic party's "gut liberal" reaction was as usual a mistake. And no amount of MSNBC goosestepping rhetoric will change that. The "gut liberal" reaction plays really well in 1 percent of the country and falls flat everywhere else. And Obama's aggressive push against Arizona will just serve to remind voters again that his centrism was an election day glaze covering up a hard left center.

Arizona's action not only cuts off the Obama Administration at the pass for its Amnesty plans, but takes the populist position at a time when Democratic politicians are already terrified of the upcoming midterm elections. Obama and Congress thought that they could decide when to launch their amnesty campaign at their own leisure. But now their hand has been forced, and the polls are stacked against them. Naturally they will retaliate in the usual community organizer way, through the press, through political intimidation, and through their own rights organizations which will "monitor the situation" searching for an incident they can exploit. But it is now an uphill battle.

And Arizona's actions have wider implications beyond immigration. Under Barack Hussein Obama, the government has badly neglected its core functions of protecting Americans from external threats, in favor of its round of socialist charades. Now Washington D.C. has been put on notice that the states will act, even if Washington D.C. does not. And in the Federal government will not enforce the law, there are state governments that will. Immigration is not the end of it. The War on Terror remains an obvious area where the government has neglected its responsibilities in order to curry favor with Islam. And the next time an Islamic terrorist kills civilians in a more independent minded state, its residents may also decide that serious enforcement is needed.

The fundamental gap between the worldview of the left, in which government manages the lives of the people under its authority, and that of ordinary Americans, in which government protects the people against overriding external threats, has opened up in Arizona. But not just in Arizona. Because with the left in the driver's seat in D.C., there is no one to look out for American interests either globally or locally. To the left, a Mexican illegal alien is no different than a US citizen, because they don't recognize nations as valid entities. And for all that Obama wraps himself in the flag when convenient, over the last year his actions have begun to speak louder than words.

Obama not only does not believe in American Exceptionalism, though he summons that too in his speeches when convenient, but he does not see himself as an American leader, only as the head of an authority that governs the people in his jurisdiction, regardless of legal status. America to him is just Chicago writ large. And that's the way he governs. His national politics are no different than his local politics. Just louder and with a bigger impact, and more money to take in and spread around. Washington D.C. is nothing but the new base of his political machine. And like his colleagues on the left, he sees what is going on in Arizona in terms of class and racial warfare, a mindset that leaves him unable to sympathize with the valid concerns of the people of Arizona.

To the current regime, there are no Americans... only people who happen to live in America. Warm bodies who are capable of providing resources for the government, and consuming resources to be repaid with loyalty. The populations of countries are to them like game pieces on a Risk board, objects on a map to be moved around in order to claim voting districts. And so the Democrats have been moving Third World immigrants into America, for the same reasons that Labor moved Muslim immigrants into Europe. Power. Political power. That is what it comes down to in the end.

The Democrats' tone deafness on immigration originates from the extent to which they have tied their own political fortunes to the demographic transformation of America. And to their disconnection from the idea of America as anything but a logo and a flag, more akin to a sports team than anything of substance. They don't see why anyone would object to pieces being moved around the board, after all it's just pieces, which means in their minds the only objection has to be to their color. Because when you engage in class and racial warfare, you assume that everyone else is too, and that you are only acting in self-defense. And thus follow the accusations of Nazism, Fascism and Racism. When in fact the majority of Latinos in Arizona support the law, precisely because they have the most to lose from the collapse of social services and the export of Mexico's Cartel Culture into the United States.

Not that the Republicans don't own their fair share of the blame. The Republican party has taken too much money from the US Chamber of Commerce (which is rather liberal on immigration) and numerous corporations that directly or indirectly profit from illegal aliens to ever do more than talk tough about it. Add on a few Republican politicians afraid of losing their limited portion of the Latino vote by opening themselves up to liberal accusations of racism, and other Republicans politicians who shamelessly "farm" the illegal immigration issue, but have absolutely no interest in seeing anything done about it-- and there's plenty of reasons for the GOP's general inaction.

And so all too we often we have Republican Presidents and Senators who push a softer line. We have Republican congressmen who say the right things, but know that too many of their donors are running plants filled with illegals, and that either enforcement or amnesty would hurt them badly. (And what's more the Democrats know it too, which is what gives them their boldness on an issue that in theory should be an easy populist home run for the GOP.) Finally of course there are the firebrand Republican politicians who seem all fired up about illegal immigration, and are willing to campaign on the issue, but run the other way when an actual measure is passed that might make a dent in the situation. And that's because they want to exploit the problem, not solve it.

But the current economic crisis and its accompanying unemployment have mobilized public hostility to any idea of legalization, and strengthened a push for enforcement. Arizona is moving with the public sentiment, the Democrats are swimming against it, because they've once again forgotten about the same economic crisis that they exploited to leverage themselves into power. The Republican party right now is being powered by populism, because its leading figures have no ideas, just conferences, those of them that aren't jockeying for a 2012 run. And the smart populist money says enforcement.

This is still only the opening round on immigration. Arizona has forced Obama's hand. The Democrats hope to find a silver lining by exploiting the issue in order to bring out Latino and minority voters out of a generally moribund midterm election turnout. But they might not be counting on how many other voters they will bring out as well. It's doubtful that even the Democrats think they have a winning hand on the issue, but they're also depending on changing the demographics of the electorate in order to play the long game. And just as with health care, they might be prepared to accept short term defeat in 2010 and even in 2012, in order to achieve long term political gains. Because they're counting on a Republican party too timid to reverse their policies once it's in power. And nationally they may be right. Which is why it be up to the states to do the right thing, after all.