Immigration, The Election And The MSM Spin Machine

The ever vigilant Michelle Malkin has written a post on immigration policy and the election, segments of which deserve wide distribution throughout the blogosphere.  One of the memes that followed the defeat of Republican candidates on Tuesday was that support for tough crack-downs on illegal aliens hurt them with the voters.  Michelle takes the novel approach of using actual facts to counter MSM spin:

Open-borders pundits on the right are falsely characterizing the midterm election results as a repudiation of the immigration enforcement movement. Leading the charge, as always, is the Wall Street Journal, which gloated over losses by border-control Republicans Reps. John Hostettler, Randy Graf, and J.D. Hayworth as electoral rejection of strict enforcement of immigration laws.

Here's what the WSJ wrote about Hostettler today:

Indiana incumbent John Hostettler, who chairs a House subcommittee on immigration and is one of his party's most outspoken restrictionists, managed to win just 39% of the vote in his losing bid for a seventh term. Mr. Hostettler's district is so Republican that John Kerry won only 38% of the vote there in 2004.

Here's what the WSJ didn't tell you. Hostettler's Democrat opponent, Sheriff Brad Ellsworth, won by campaigning to the right on every major issue--and making illegal immigration a felony a top priority.

As for Graf: The GOP spent $250,000 in his primary trying to prevent him from winning. After he won, the GOP elites canceled $1 million in advertising support for the general election. GOP knives in his back. Plus Dem frontal assaults from smear-job supporters of Dem candidate Gabrielle Giffords. Plus dissatisfaction with the national GOP. That was the recipe for the Graf loss--not his full-throated support for immigration enforcement.

Rush Limbaugh's assessment of the J.D. Hayworth race (which, by the way, hasn't officially been called yet) gets it right:

J.D. Hayworth led the fight in Congress on the Republican side against illegal immigration. He lost. Now, the details of his loss are being totally misrepresented by the Drive-By Media. He ran against a Democrat who was parroting and echoing everything J.D. was saying. He was making himself out to be an even bigger anti-illegal immigrant guy when he wasn't.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: But the message. Who's going to know that?

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: The Drive-By Media is portraying this as anybody who was really pro-anti-illegal immigration got swept away. They're trying to kill this issue, the Drive-By Media, as they always do. They're trying to massage and write that J.D. Hayworth lost because he came across as nativist, racist, too strident, and anti-Mexican. Now, what message does that send Republicans? If they're the usual weak-kneed Republicans, "Gosh, that's a losing issue. I can't do what J.D. did. I'll lose, too. The media will write that I'm a racist and that I'm a nativist and that I hate Mexicans." So you can't assume that Republicans are going to be voting against this, either.

CALLER: Well, then there's no way we're going to get any majority back if they're going to hide their principles.

It's not just the Drive-By Media that's spinning the results. Out-of-touch GOP elites in Manhattan and Washington are deluding themselves. While they crow about Graf and Hayworth's losses in Arizona, voters in that state approved four immigration-related ballot measures by resoundingly wide margins banning state subsidies to illegal aliens for education and child care; denying bail to illegal aliens; banning punitive damage awards to illegals; and declaring English the state’s official language. In Colorado, pro-enforcement measures passed requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government for failing to enforce immigration laws and deny tax credits to employers who knowingly hire illegal workers. Top Dem winners Claire McCaskill and Jim Webb and other Blue Dog Dems adopted tough-on-borders postures. Open-borders pundits swallowed ridiculously biased exit poll questions, notes Mark Krikorian, to bolster their unreality-based conclusions.

The center-right cannot afford to let media and congressional open border supporters get away with distorting public opinion on an important national security and cultural issue.  

Comments

[Phil]

The only purpose of strick immigration controls is to deny a particular class of human being opportunities, in order to retain those opportunties in greater number for another class of human being.

You need laws *denying other people opportunity* in order to preserve your own opportunity? How are strict immigration controls different from Jim Crow laws, segrigation, and communism? They're all about preventing people from reaching their full individual potential, in order to make it easier for a privileged few.

It boggles my mind that so many "conservatives" have bought into strict immigration controls -- usually while in the same breath championing the right of corporations to hire whoever they want, wherever they want IN OTHER COUNTRIES.

In other words, this hypocritical policy goes, Americans can go *there* to hire the poor and impoverished, if said Americans are rich enough to move their entire manufacturing operations there. But the poor impoverished foreigners can't come *here* to be hired by us (all of us, including those not rich enough to come to them), because that would be, um . . . well, that would mean equal opportunity, free trade, etc. And we can't have that . . .

[Joe]

I would respectfully argue that immigrants seek to come to the United States because they are being denied opportunity within their countries of origin. The long-term solution isn't for the United States economy to provide the opportunity, but for their own national economies to do so. Furthermore, it is detrimental to the future economic sustainability of those nations from which people emigrate in large numbers if their most ambitious citizens -- those most motivated to improve their economic situation -- leave. Losing these citizens can only lead to perennial national impoverishment. If the counter-argument is that these immigrants aren't contributors to their native economies, we must then ask ourselves why we would want them here anyway.

As to the argument regarding the use of laws to deter opportunity, I don't think that Jim Crow laws are at all analogous to immigration laws. Jim Crow laws were designed to unfairly oppress a group of people who were already American citizens. Immigration laws don't pertain to American citizens, but address the sovereign right of a nation to regulate it's borders. Regarding segregation, it is important to acknowledge that all nations "segregate" if "segregation" is defined as seperating citizens from non-citizens. The very act of having something knows as "citizenship" confirms that segregation by country of origin is universally accepted.

As a United States citizen, I believe in both free and fair trade along with the ideal that it is the purpose of the United States government to see that free-market policies first and foremost benefit American citizens. It is equally the primary purpose of another nation's government to protect the interests of it's own citizens.

To that end, the Mexican government imposes very strict immigration requirements that consider the economic value of potential immigrants while limiting their rights for political participation and property ownership and denying them equal opportunity in seeking employment. Immigrants are also prohibited from joining the clergy. In a stunning show of moxy, the Mexican leadership then demands that the United States liberalize it's border policy.

The center-right in the United States isn't trying to put a halt on immigration or even impose laws as strict as those governing immigration in Mexico. There should, however, be an enforced policy where prospective citizens can make application and await consideration for citizenship as part of an orderly, fair process. Those indivduals who do follow these rules should be most aggrieved by those who don't.

In an age of terror, the government should also know who is here and for what purpose. This becomes impossible with people streaming willy-nilly over the border. Once we regain control over the border, a guest-worker plan can be considered with some credibility.