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May 04, 2006 Immigration and the Identity Argument It’s rather extraordinary to watch the anti-immigration folks squirm around looking for the best language to obfuscate their deepest anxieties about undocumented workers. On the day of the march, Lou Dobbs and Dana Rohrabacher were falling all over themselves remind Larry King and the rest of us that even illegal immigrants were truly wojnderful people, Salt-o-the-Earth.

It’s just economics, stupid. World Air Transport Statistics 56th Editions Atlas. Dana and Lou (who apparently once picked beans with folks too poor to buy blond hair dye) are just sticking up for poor real Americans who can’t find work in the fields.

On this score, Brad Carson in a little inconsistency. Today, Carson argues that “the vast majority of those who oppose illegal immigration do so on sound public policy grounds. Illegal immigration is seen rightly as a threat to their economic livelihood. Foison C24 Driver Xp more. ” In 2004, however, Carson acknowledged that, for the vast majority of Oklahomans “transcendent cultural concerns are more important than universal health care or raising the minimum wage.” Drum goes on to conclude: That's exactly right.

There's probably some genuine job-based animus toward illegal immigrants in the construction industry, but elsewhere you barely need to scratch the surface to figure out that anti-immigrant anxiety mostly seems to revolve around crime, gangs, culture, language, social services, and bizarrely trumped up fears of reconquista. Can we stop kidding ourselves about this? If we don’t take at face value the economic/services argument advanced with increasing frequency by immigration opponents, then there are two alternative explanations for this shift. One, of course, is fear that they might be tarred as racist xenophobes—itself an indication that the cultural/identity argument is being morally discredited.

Another possibility, however, is more intriguing. It may be that the sea of American flags visible during the May Day marches has neutralized some of those cultural fears—an indication, that is, that those arguments are being logically discredited.