National Review Meets Immigration Politics Reality

Updated with more thoughts below

I will commend National Review of getting out of the echo chamber of Mark Krikorian and entertaining the chilling reality. I so wish we had done this in 2006 instead of hearing that all those that entertain the below notions were some sort of conservative heretics. Be sure to read this posters very good pdf that lays out the entire electoral implications!!! This data was very much available in 2006 but sadly was just ignored in 2007 buy Republicans and conservatives. The situation is dire. In fact the 2006 elections and long term implications is what scared many no to immigration reform folks just the previous year to action and to reverse their stance or be open to alternatives

But the fact he is here arguing this is a good sign. The fight is good and needed in this forum as this is again is talked about among Republicans and conservatives

Here are two posts from today

Re: Train-wreck [Richard Nadler]
John,
As head of Missouri’s largest taxpayer organization, and later as a newspaper editor, I spent many decades of my life gleefully torching business interests for betraying free-market principles in the political arena. I opposed them on public-school taxes, on public-debt issues, and on the whole panoply of subsidized urban redevelopment that created the now-obvious overinvestment in retail malls, casinos, and sports facilities. Ask Ramesh. He was there.

But I have no intention of opposing business when it is right. I have three — no, four — serious objections to kicking 7 million illegals out of the workforce. The first is: It’s not going to happen. The second is, if it did happen, the result would not be more jobs for American workers, but the catastrophic collapse of our rural export industries, and a substantial contraction of many branches of industry that depend on seasonal peak hiring to maintain their year-round staff. The third is, the overwhelming majority of these “illegal” workers were legally hired, under the I-9 verification laws enacted by politicians for whom you and I voted. The fourth, with which I don’t expect you to agree, is that the entire scheme is grossly immoral.

In your posted query to me, you characterize the owners of business in which illegals work as “wishing to hire cheap, illegal labor.” You describe them as “bent on violating federal law.” These are slanders. These entreprenuers wish to hire legally going forward, as they have in the past. They are eager for a new federal law, rather than the patchwork of state laws that deny them the safe harbor they require to run their businesses.

As to “cheap” labor: I eagerly await your plans for the ranchers, general contractors, farmers, meat-packers, seafood processors, hoteliers, computer software designers, restaurateurs, health-care providers, and home builders who disagree with you. Tell me, pray, what the wages should be for different job categories in these industries, since you seem to know.
As to Arizona: Yes, you can pass E-Verify there, no “illegal” benefits there, official English there. But what you cannot do there, or in any other state on the border, is elect politicians who refuse to negotiate a comprehensive immigration reform that mediates these goals with the legitimate interests of business and Hispanics.

Incidentally, I am not hostile to Randy Graff, J.D. Hayworth, Tim Bee, Sidney Hay, or Dave Schweikert – good conservatives all, defeated in Arizona House districts recently held by Republicans. What I resent is this: The death of the business-social conservative alliance in Arizona will deny me their votes on right-to-life, national defense, taxes, and the budget.
Now, John, permit me a question of my own: Do you honestly think that “no amnesty” is a wedge issue that politically benefits Republicans? If so, on what basis?

— Richard Nadler is president of the Americas Majority Foundation, a public-policy think tank in Overland Park, Kan.
03/30 01:59 PMShare


AND

M’or Derbs [Richard Nadler]
John,
You say the GOP is doing well in Arizona?
Well, let’s be complete. In Arizona, a 6-2 GOP congressional majority in 2004 has shifted to a 5-3 Democratic Majority. In 2008, the GOP gained one AZ Senate seat, and two AZ House seats. The statewide offices went to Democrats. For the first time since 1996, the Democrats took control of the powerful Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates securities, railroads, pipelines, rural water, telephones, and utilities.

John Shadegg kept his seat. I doubt whether another Republican could have. Shadegg, of course, favors comprehensive immigration reform (though not the Bush version) — a subject on which he has written at length here. He also endorsed immigration moderate Lisa James over deportation advocate Randy Pullen for State Party Chair.

In neighboring New Mexico, a 2-to-1 Republican majority is now a 3-to-0 Democratic unanimity. The two retiring GOP Congresspersons, Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce, were among the handful of GOP legislators who voted against the Sensenbrenner bill (H. 4437) on final passage, and thereby retained significant Hispanic support.

All nine congressional districts on the U.S. Mexico border are now represented by Democrats. As recently as 2004, George W. Bush carried five of them, with considerable Latino support.

If you want to get a realistic idea of what is happening on the border, I suggest you read my “Border Wars,” here.

The notion that immigration hasn’t damaged the G.O.P. in the Southwest is, at this point, delusional.

E-Verify is NOT the point. Hispanics have, and will, vote for a candidate who supports E-Verify. What they will not vote for is a Republican who wants to deport or starve 9 million Hispanics.
You are welcome to your opinions on deportation and on amnesty, John. In truth, these are the alternatives. But you had better understand their electoral implications.
— Richard Nadler is president of the Americas Majority Foundation, a public-policy think tank in Overland Park, Kan.
03/30 02:19 PMShare

Update- Let me say it is my firm belief that many people calling themselves "conservatives" understand the electoral implications. The key is the organizations that Mark Krikorian represents and advocates for (also advocated by Lou Dobbs) have a much bigger agenda. They are as fringe as AL Gore on the Environmental issues at their core. They also have strong misgivings about trade and free markets and have as their hallmark population control. In many ways their core objectives( and it is not about the illegals) is more in tuned with the left.

After they use conservatives they very much will shift their alliances. This has been one of my major objections to FAIR, CIS, and Numbers USA and their various groups. That conservatives in frustration over the illegal immigration problem have allied themselves with folks that do have their other long term objective in mind.

This does not apply to all hardline "No amnesty groups" or at least did not. But it is troubling how they have subverted many of them iinto this way of thinking.