Personally, whenever I think about the increasing racial diversity of the country at all, it’s usually in the favorable context of better food choices both at grocery stores and in restaurants. The truth is, I don’t really think about racial diversity much at all. Yet, it seems to be an all-consuming preoccupation of a large percentage of the Republican base. The candidates are going across the country trying to talk about jobs, regulations, taxes, and other economic issues. That makes sense since the economy is horrible and people continue to tell pollsters that jobs and the economy are their number one concern. But the candidates keep discovering that Republican voters are obsessed with our southern border (even in New Hampshire).
KEENE, N.H. — Mitt Romney opened his town hall meeting here talking about the economy — his thoughts on growing business, getting government out of the way — just as he does nearly every other campaign event. But when he opened last week’s forum for questions, the first voter he called on didn’t seem concerned about any of that. He wanted to know the Republican presidential candidate’s stance on border security.
A similar scene played out in South Carolina a few days later, when Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) attended a town hall meeting she assumed would center on the economy, jobs and the federal deficit — only to see the assembled voters react most passionately to her comments on illegal immigration.
I understand that illegal immigration is unfair to the people who are trying to immigrate legally. At the same time, I also understand that illegal immigrants are moving here because there is a legitimate demand for their labor. We could improve the situation by providing a lot more legal openings for people to immigrate from Mexico and Central America. The thing is, what’s bothering the base of the Republican Party is not really that these folks are breaking our immigration laws. What’s bothering them is that they’re not white and English isn’t their first language.
The result is that, once again, conservatives come up with positions that can’t be satisfied because they involve magical thinking. Whether it’s Bachmann’s plan to fence “every mile, every yard, every foot, every inch” of the southern border, or it’s Romney’s plan to crack down on employers who hire undocumented workers, no Republicans are willing to address the demand for their labor. Who is going to harvest the fruit in this country if not Mexicans, Guatemalans, etc.? If you won’t let them come here legally, and you’re successful in barring their entry into the country, you’re going to have a problem.
“After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia.
It might be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.
Barely a month ago, you might recall, Gov. Nathan Deal welcomed the TV cameras into his office as he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Two weeks later, with farmers howling, a scrambling Deal ordered a hasty investigation into the impact of the law he had just signed, as if all this had come as quite a surprise to him.
The results of that investigation have now been released. According to survey of 230 Georgia farmers conducted by Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, farmers expect to need more than 11,000 workers at some point over the rest of the season, a number that probably underestimates the real need, since not every farmer in the state responded to the survey.
In response, Deal proposes that farmers try to hire the 2,000 unemployed criminal probationers estimated to live in southwest Georgia. Somehow, I suspect that would not be a partnership made in heaven for either party.
You either need to accept that the country isn’t going to retain the same racial dynamics as in the past or you need to convince a ton of white people to immigrate from Europe to take back-breaking jobs in our fields.
How many undocumented workers do you think would not prefer to be documented? If people didn’t let race get in the way of sane policy, we wouldn’t have any people working here illegally because they would have been invited in. Of course, if you invited them in, you’d have to pay them more. That’s another reason the GOP’s top donors don’t want a sane immigration policy anymore than their racist base.
