Writing at Truthdig, Molly Ivins sees the president’s apparent tilt toward the enforcement-first approach to immigration reform favored by the House as “the early warning sign that we’re about to get an all-out immigrant-bashing campaign for the fall, complete with xenophobia, racism and blaming the weakest, least powerful people in the country for everything that’s wrong with it.”
House Republicans, who know a good socially divisive issue when they see one, are perfectly happy to blame illegal workers for everything. Trade policy, repealing taxes for the rich, corruption in Congress—it’s all done by illegal workers. Everywhere you look in this society, there’s a bunch of people named Gomez and Ramirez, all of them making decisions from the top—in charge of the Pentagon, heading the military-industrial complex, deciding the rich need tax relief, in charge of this stupid war, making decisions on Wall Street.
And, if I understand California Rep. Ed Royce correctly, these Gomez and Ramirez characters are also somehow connected, in unspecified ways, to…well…threats to the homeland. Royce, who is chairman of the International Relations Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation, held a hearing today at the Mexican border to belabor his point that America’s security depends on swift passage into law of the House’s draconian immigration bill. He said:
It’s elementary that to defend ourselves against our determined and resourceful enemies, our border must be secure.”
Better get used to this sort of thing. House committees will hold hearings outside Washington later this month on, among other things, making English the United States’ official language.
