Pictured above: American immigrant Salma Hayek

In their ongoing quest to make things better for the American working man, Senate Democrats this week blocked proposals to include tougher workplace enforcement provisions in new immigration legislation working its way through congress.

When asked anonymous Senate staffers (NY Times speak for my imaginary friend) stated, “We know that the presence of large numbers of illegals in the work force mainly hurts minorities and those with no higher education, but frankly we don’t care. Minorities vote for us in huge numbers and President Bush is for it so we are against it.” Further questioning revealed that, “Even though this is contributing to wage deflation, and huge budget burdens, especially in the funding of medical care by the states, we will defend to the death the rights of these people to be in our country illegally, and of course to vote for us.”

Meanwhile Senate Republicans did a credible Jell-O impression while trying to appease employers who fear the loss of cheap, easily exploitable labor and bloggers with the battle cry of “No Amnesty”. Refusing to confront their critics and adopt a straightforward compromise of fines and normalization of status, increased, workplace enforcement, visa reform, and enhanced border enforcement they crafted something so twisted it appeared to have come from the warped mind of a man high on Guatemalan insanity peppers. I tried to get a quote from another source (yes I have many imaginary friends and they all talk to me late at night), but he was curled up in the corner crying.

The thing that is disenchanting to me is this should be a no brainer, select the option that benefits the most people with the minimum disruption. Unemployment in California among teens and young adults is way above the national average. That situation would begin to normalize. I also believe jobs in other minority communities would begin to open up again as it became less attractive for employers to hire illegals. State budget growth should slow as fewer illegals are seeking emergent care at state expense. The list goes on.

Both parties have to realize that sometimes the hardcore base is wrong, and that they are elected to benefit the voters of their state not specific interest groups.

tags: immigration

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 8th, 2006 at 6:50 pm by Chad and is filed under Big Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.