Navarrete writes about The Immigration Question I Didn’t Get To Ask (emphasis added)
As for the questions that were asked and the way they were answered by the candidates, the forum seemed to inadvertently reinforce the notion of minorities as victims — besieged by everything from poverty to outsourcing to higher rates of HIV infection. A lot of the candidates then took the cue and played the role Democrats have carved out for themselves — savior of the downtrodden and dispossessed.
To be fair, I think that most African-Americans would probably dismiss out of hand this “illegal-immigration-is-the-greatest-threat-since-slavery” nonsense.
African-American writer Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who is doing a book about the relationship between blacks and Latinos, blasted the remark as an “eye-catching, over-the-top, outrageous bit of hyperbole.” Although conceding that high unemployment rates disproportionately harm “young, marginal-skilled and educated black males,” Hutchinson noted that illegal immigrants are but the latest targets of those looking for scapegoats – a strategy he called “wrongheaded, misguided and fraught with peril.”
So true. So well said. And I suspect so unlike anything you’ll hear from any of the Democratic presidential candidates.
Navarrete is too kind. I believe that the Democrat party is completely married to the idea that minorities are victims.
As I pointed out in my PJM article,
low skilled workers now legally employed in the US would be most directly affected by the annual influx of 200,000 temporary workers.
That is, all workers of all races that are now legally employed. Additionally,
The influx of cheap labor would have had a depressing effect on wages across the board, not just on unskilled labor. The costs and barriers entrepreneurs face in sponsoring labor from other countries would not have decreased since the bill would have imposed even more regulations. Many Hispanics entrepreneurs, like myself, were worried that such a large influx of unskilled labor might mean that domestic training in some skilled trades, such as construction, might decrease substantially. It would affect America’s competitiveness.
I am sure that the question I submitted was not answered.
technorati: Immigration
