Immigration Reform, Part The Third

OK.  So in the last two posts I developed the notion that there is a fraction of the population that wants social stasis, out of fear of backsliding from their own current position.  Prior to desegregation, these people liked the idea of blacks occupying the bottom rung of the social ladder, because it made a backstop for them and gave them a level of comfort about how fall they might fall.  While there was and continues to be plenty of overt racism due to nothing more than pigmentation, a fair amount of institutional racism is more about preventing social mobility, than specifically discriminating against a class of people.

Anyway, one of the results of the Civil Rights struggle was that these people have spent 40 years or more trying to reconstitute their caste-based social safety net via economics.  It's not anywhere near as efficient as the Jim Crow laws were in keeping people in their place, however.  They've been looking for a new bottom class to focus on, where laws already exist to help keep them at the bottom of the barrel.

These people are the illegal immigrants. They have become the new bottom social class, semi-slaves due to their status. They are exactly what the neo-feudalists need.

Looking at the illegal immigration problem from their standpoint changes the whole debate.  These people aren't interested in "solving" the problem.  They want it perpetuated forever.  Their solution is to relegate the illegals to a permanent lower class, and keep them from ever having a chance to become legal or move upward in society.

They propose "send them back where they came from" as a solution.  Why?  Because it will never happen.  Demanding that the illegals voluntarily return to their home country and reapply for legal status is deliberate obfuscation.  12 million people are not going to voluntarily go anywhere.  Somehow I don't think the notion of police moving in and rounding up people by the millions, sorting out the illegals, and shipping them off somewhere isn't going to happen, either.  When pressed about the impracticality of their solution, their response is inevitably, "Well, it's what they ought to do!" and refuse to engage on the reality.

Their attempts to fortify the border in Texas and elsewhere have nothing to do with actually controlling the border.  It's again simply not practical to attempt to close a border that long through that much wild territory.  It may make it harder to cross, but it will not stop it and they know it.  Fortifying the border is instead more akin to a "spite fence" - a fence a homeowner builds to show a neighbor how much he is disliked.  The border-sealing schemes are all about showing the illegals how much they are hated, so that they will "stay in their place" and not get uppity.

Consequently, the neo-feudalists will fight tooth and nail to prevent any sort of real solution to illegal immigration.  Their goal is the subjugation and humiliation of illegals, to keep them in the bottom social caste.  They do not want the status quo to change.  This is fundamental to understanding the fight to come over illegal immigration.  It is a fight between those who want to treat illegal immigrants as human beings, and those who want to keep them as indentured servants.

The coming fight over immigration reform is going to look suspiciously similar to the civil rights battles of half a century ago.  The motives of each side are quite similar to the protagonists of that battle, and the arguments both sides will use will end up being quite similar as well.  In other words, it's going to get very ugly - and doing the right thing is going to be outrageously difficult. 

I hope Obama and the Congressional Democrats have the stomach for a primal fight, one that's going to go down to the gutter in a hurry.  It will be a defining moment for the country if they can pull it off.