Why Bush Needs "Illegal" Immigrants

A week ago, President George W. Bush did his best job at feigning earnestness. Say what you will about the man's intelligence, he knows how to fake sincerity. That, if not much else, explains why Americans (allegedly) made him President twice.

The President did his best to push for some form of amnesty for the 11 million (give or take) illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American states. Bush put a surprisingly pragmatic face on the issue, one many American do not wish to hear.

"Some in this country argue that the solution is to deport every illegal immigrant, and that any proposal short of this amounts to amnesty," said Bush. "I disagree. It is neither wise, nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States, and send them across the border."

Nevertheless, that is exactly what many Republicans, in their wettest of dreams, wish to do because that is what their constituents want.

How nutty have things become?

Maricopa (Ariz.) County Sheriff Joe Arpaio runs what can be charitably called a concentration camp in the deserts outside of Phoenix for the petty criminals of his county. CNN went there last week and Arpaio's convicts, in 19th century striped prisoner garb, milled about.

Arpaio has decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and waylay any motorist breaking the most minute motor vehicle law. If his deputies discover the driver is an illegal, they get charged with a felony, put in Arpaio's tent city and deported. If Maricopa deputies capture them again, they go to prison -- for years.

A CNN crew asked some of Arpaio's inmates if they supported this home-grown fascism. They did.

"They're taking our jobs," said one prisoner.

Let that sink in. Slowly.

So here we are on the morning after Bush's treacly plea for amnesty and MSNBC's Don Imus' is interviewing Tim Russert, another pundit who, like Imus, orbits the stratosphere of American life, serenely isolated from the pain and struggle of real people.

Russert tells Imus that Karl Rove, of all people, was stressing the word "compassion" as a major factor in Bush's proposal to half-step militarize the border on one hand while offering amnesty on the other.

Rove. Compassion. Someone wake me.

Compassion, of course, has nothing to do with it. The pernicious form of American Capitalism married to an unholy alliance of election year racial politics does.

Here's what Bush said last Monday night:

"For decades, the United States has not been in complete control of its borders. As a result, many who want to work in our economy have been able to sneak across our border, and millions have stayed."

Here's what Bush wouldn't admit: that the gang of which he's a charter member, wanted those porous borders. They wanted them because the flow of illegals drove down real wages across the board in the United States in agriculture, the building trades, the domestic trades, the food service and hospitality trades and a whole host of other industries that counted their fortunes on Wall Street while their labourers worked harder for less and the minimum wage remained stagnant since 1997.

Now having outsourced enough American labour to be noticed, the Capitalist gang has a problem and it's not economic -- it's good old fashioned American racism.

Thanks in part to journalists like CNN's Lou Dobbs, guys like Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) and J. D. Heyworth (R-Arizona), have put their finger to the wind and correctly assumed that the pictures of thousands of illegal immigrants swarming through "our broken borders" could be used to whip up traditional American xenophobia and become a great election year wedge issue.

And televised demonstrations by pro-immigrant activists waving Mexican flags in downtown Los Angeles played right into their hands.