sco on the playing out of immigration in the gubernatorial debates:
If you want to stop illegal immigration you only need to do two things. First, fine the companies that employ them more than they save by hiring them under the table. That will stop, or at least slow down the demand for their labor. Second, make it easier for people to come to the US legally. If it’s really just the illegal part of illegal immigration that we’re worried about, then we should have no problem increasing the number of legal immigrants. Guess what? Neither of those solutions are tools available to a state — they’re both controlled by the Federal Government, at least if you believe the Attorneys General quoted by Lehigh. Until the Feds act, most of the debate here in Massachusetts is just xenophobic demagoguery.
I couldn’t say it better. That won’t keep me from offering a couple of further thoughts, of course. One, Reilly’s tactic of emphasizing that the issue is a federal one seems to me, not merely correct, but also smart politically. Two, there may be no way to avoid the issue, but I don’t think that it cuts well for the state Dems, since it exposes class faultlines in the party; in that sense I think Gabrielli’s making a huge tactical error in addition to a moral and substantive one. Third, the tough this is that while the “it’s not a state matter” is both politically smart and correct, there are a series of liminal issues that do need to be decided on a state-level. The firestorms of in-state tuition at UMass or Deval Patrick’s proposal to give drivers’ licenses to noncitizens suggests the political difficulties of this issue won’t be wished away easily.
No comments have been added to this post yet.