The Occasional Observer

With a hattip to the evil Eyeon08, here's what Michael Gerson had to say in today's WaPo about the President's immigration plan:

The Christian faith teaches that our common humanity is more important than our nationality. That all of us, ultimately, are strangers in this world and brothers to the bone; and all in need of amnesty. This belief does not dictate certain policies in a piece of legislation, but it does forbid rage and national chauvinism.

This is a line of argument I generally expect to hear from liberals, not conservatives: impugn the motives of your opponent but ignore a discussion of facts or logic. Notice the implicit assumption, that people who are against amnesty for those who have broken our immigration laws are full of "rage" and "chauvinism."

While I do have some anger, it is not directed at those who want to come to the U.S. (although I disapprove of their not entering through lawful channels). My anger is at lawmakers who are responsible for providing the border patrol with the resources to do its job, but have failed to do so.

As to Gerson's emotional charge that we need to love our brother (unlike us anti-amnesty "haters"), I would say this: while the Christian faith teaches us to love our fellow man, at no point does it advocate anarchy, or strip the state of its legitimate jurisdiction. Rather, St. Peter explicitly reminds us in scripture to be obedient to proper authorities and follow the law.

Virtually every state claims, and has always claimed, the right to restrict the flow of people into and out of its borders. Failure to do so is an invitation to anarchy, as Rome found out the hard way. It would be a dereliction of duty for the government to give up on enforcing the borders, and hardly an injustice.

One might respond to Gerson's "chauvinist" slights by saying that the hard-hearted chauvinists are actually those who would incent people to leave their wives and children, trek across the desert and risk their lives, rather than create a reasonable immigration policy that would force the Mexican government to improve the lives of its own citizens, instead of flushing millions of souls across the border because it doesn't want to deal with improving their lot.

Gerson’s argument also makes three more assumptions which are dubious at best:

1) The GOP stands to gain hispanic votes by supporting amnesty.

In fact, the polling I’ve seen shows that hispanic voters are not in favor of amnesty, albeit by a smaller margin than the population in general. Equating those who believe in law enforcement with “nativists” is a cheap ploy.

2) Anti-amnesty politicians only stand to lose states that Bush carried, such as Florida and the southwest.

In fact, anti-amnesty politicians stand to gain in other swing regions, such as the midwest (MN,IA, WI, MI, OH, PA-ex-Philly). There are more electoral votes in these tightly contested states than those mentioned by Gerson.

3) Breaking 40% of the the hispanic vote is possible for the GOP by pandering to the pro-amnesty crowd. "If a Republican presidential candidate doesn’t get about 40 percent of the Latino vote nationwide, he or she doesn’t stand much of a chance... A nativist party will cease to be a national party." Failure to pander is the same as "conceding Latinos to the Democrats in perpetuity"

In fact, breaking 40% of the hispanic vote is a sure thing for the GOP, if we are controlling our border and allowing educated, bilingual, hard-working, upwardly mobile and skilled hispanics into our country to lay down roots and become citizens, in numbers our society can absorb.

Breaking 40% of the hispanic vote will be impossible if we continue to allow millions of unskilled, non-English speaking day-laborers to stream into this country, form a permanent underclass and subculture. A permanent underclass will ultimately see the path to greater wealth as government programs and liberalism, and that is a political outcome that would break the GOP.