Legal or illegal, does immigration cost us jobs?

The Tea Party, and other xenophobes, would have us believe that immigration - legal or otherwise - is bad in every way. Like so many of the issues the right attempts to address, the issues are far more complex than their rank and file take the time and effort to understand. Unfortunately, their jingoistic sloganeering is what ends up in the media sound chamber, and is picked up as ‘fact’ by too many people.

Again, I have provided you the links to the immigration reform organizations mentioned in this analysis. Go to their sites, and peruse the About Us sections, and their Boards. It can often be quite revealing. The 23 member group of Supporters for NumbersUSA includes eight who are ‘deceased’. I find that puzzling. You have to wonder why they can’t come up with a group of completely living Supporters; individuals who can speak on their on behalf regarding their support, unlike people like the late Edward Abbey. The Daily Kos had an interesting article about NumbersUSA, by Alfredo Martin Bravo de Ruedo Espejo, “The Charming Racism of Numbers USA”.

FAIR ( Federation for American Immigration Reform) may not be exactly what it seems either, looking at some analysis on RightWeb (“Tracking militarists efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy”):

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True, false and the in-between of health reform: Illegal immigrants

A large part of the noise provided by opponents of health care reform has been in reference to claims that illegal immigrants would be getting open access to health care.

One of the best ways to prevent this, is to have provided for a robust form of photo I.D. that anybody applying for health care benefits must show in order to prove citizenship. You’d think that the Republicans would have been all in favor of this, but instead opposed it at every turn. They believe that a national identity card will be the next step to ‘big brother’.

May I also assume that these same folks have burned their drivers licenses, passports, military ID,  Medicare and social security cards? Uh, probably not. Logic rarely enters into these sorts of discussions.

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