Immigration

A reader asked me this question:

Dude: Are things that slow in Bend? No mention of the immigration story--THE big story of the past couple of weeks--on your blog? Come on, man! Are you seeing the shit that Reed is shoveling at the president and at frist for them being such pussies when it comes to immigration reform? You gotta get on that story. There were over 20K people on the streets of white-bread Seattle, declaiming the hypocrisy and bigotry of our country's immigration policies (sure, you can clean my yard, but stay the f&#k out of my schools and hospitals!). Phoenix and Atlanta had crowds to rival the '60s civil rights movement. Dude: This is our generation's civil rights movement happening right before our eyes. Don't get too fixated on that dip-shit in the White House to miss what's going on right here, right now.

I've actually attempted to do a post or two on the whole immigration deal, mostly with regard to how certain elements of the GOP are attempting to use it as this year's big wedge issue and how that whole strategy has kind of backfired on them. But I am never able to finish the post. I know this sounds a bit insensitive, but I just don't care about the issue because it will ultimately go nowhere. I was just telling someone yesterday about how little I care about this whole immigration thing.

I'd be really surprised if any legislation was passed with regard to this issue. I mean, what do we really want, the kind of set-up that Europe has with all the "guest worker" stuff? Look where it has gotten them. I think a guest on the Daily Show asked the other day if there is a car in France that hasn't been set ablaze.

Our economy relies on these people in a big way, and although not perfect, the American system seems to work pretty well. Sure these folks are a bit of a drain on the system, but I think illegals end up paying something like $10 billion in taxes every year on top of doing the crap work that nobody else wants to do, so it's not such a bad trade-off. The last thing we want to do is formalize that system in some way. That would be asking for trouble.

All the protesting has been pretty cool, though.