Continental Divide: The Language of the Immigration Debate

I swear, one of the reasons for the seemingly intractable divisions in contemporary politics isn't due to the familiar Left v Right, Liberal v Conservative , or Democrat v Republican. It's between the smug ass****s v the rest of us. Case in point: this Will Wilkinson piece, which ran in The Week, wherein Will lets loose with the typical insults that the political-intellectual-media elite level against anyone who is insufficiently transnational on the subject of immigration: Arizona's Latest Immigration Idea Makes Sense

Even as Arizona continues to distinguish itself as America's undisputed leader in hare-brained xenophobia, the state has stumbled upon a very good idea. Hot on the heels of SB 1070, the controversial Arizona law that hands cops expansive powers to detain anybody who gives off an insufficiently American vibe, Republican lawmakers in the state have set their sights on a new state law to deny citizenship to babies born on American soil whose parents lack proper papers.

(snip)

The Draconian Arizona model of immigration reform seeks to complete the colonizing work of Manifest Destiny by instituting a more perfect apartheid. It seeks to address the perception of a breakdown in the rule of law by ignoring causes in favor of aggressively treating symptoms. Higher walls. More guards, more guns, more jails. Your papers, please.

"Hare-brained," "Xenophobic" "insufficiently American," "Your papers, please." Let no hip cliche be left behind! I'd like to see Wilkinson go to Arizona and walk into a bar spouting that sort of talk, instead of sitting hunched over a keyboard in DC, chortling over the drollery of his wit.

The funny thing is, all of this comes in a brief column where Wilkinson writes in favor of restricting immigration by ending birthright citizenship. In other words, he and the people he is insulting are on the same page, only Wilkinson would obviously rather die than admit it. No, he has to go through this sort of ritualistic flagellation of his fellow Americans so that his buddies in the intelligencia will know that he's still kool.

Wilkinson even has a good rationale for his proposed restrictions: immigration would likely be better accepted by the Great Unwashed because they would no longer be able to focus on blatantly unfair phenomenon like anchor babies who are granted citizenship by virtue of their parents' law breaking. Wilkinson seems to think that (1) this has never occurred to anyone else and (2) this would be a good way to fool dumm Americans into accepting increased immigration. Newsflash poindexter: the average American is well aware of the difference between illegal and legal immigration, and holds the former in contempt while accepting the latter as part of our national character.

Elsewhere in his piece, Wilkinson describes the demographic concerns of Americans as "ugly." Why? Immigration inevitably raises questions of national sovereignty and character. Isn't that something we should be concerned about? Famously, much of the present immigration is coming from a single country - Mexico - for no better reason than it shares our southern border. If the US is going to absorb millions of Mexicans who can't make it in Mexico (due to Mexico's economic and social shortcomings), isn't that something we should discuss, rather than sweep under the rug because the guys in America's faculty lounge think it's "ugly?"

Could America's immigration debate become less heated? Absolutely. After all, we have a Democratic Congress who stood and applauded a president of Mexico who denounced a law passed by one of our states, even as his nation enforces a much stricter immigration law at its borders. That kind of thing, it tends to raise hackles. But it's not necessarily our destiny to have idiot liberals piss on American sovereignty. Here's what Australia's new PM had to say about her nation's immigration debate: Australian PM Turns Focus to Refugees

“For people to say they are anxious about border security doesn’t make them intolerant. It certainly doesn’t make them a racist,” she said Sunday. “By the same token, people who express concern about children being in detention, that doesn’t mean they’re soft on border protection, that just means that they’re expressing a real human concern.”

Keep in mind that this is a woman who is a leftist, a trade unionist, an attorney and an atheist. In other words, someone Wilkinson might readily relate to. But, she's also a politician who has eyes and a brain and saw what happened when Gordon Brown encountered a woman with legitimate concerns about immigration. Turned out, his smug brush off - why, the old bird was just a bigot! - was not a winning campaign theme, even if it would have won applause at the Harvard Club. Certainly, Australia's version of the Open Borders movement found the new "tone" of Australia's government to be worrisome:

The tone has many refugee advocates worried.

“I think a lot of Australians think the number of people arriving by boat is far, far larger than it really is,” said John Gibson, the president of the Refugee Council of Australia. “We would like to see the government prosecute the moral case for taking asylum seekers.” But, he added, “if the pundits are correct, what we may see is some form of harder line on offshore boat arrivals.”

Wilkinson no doubt sees himself as an eminently rational man. Certainly, his rational side helped persuade him that at least some immigration restrictions make sense, both legally and morally. But, his tribal side - his tribe being smug ass****s - got the better of him, making him that much easier for most of us to ignore.