Border Cynicism in Congress

Fire of Liberty

I highly recommend this great piece by Victor Davis Hanson's over at RealClearPolitics that notes how members of Congress are becoming very cynical towards the American citizens who are phoning in to their Senate offices and offering their opposition towards the comprehensive immigration reform bill. Here's a look at VDH's great piece:

Congressional supporters of the present legislation are themselves often engaging in politics of the most cynical kind. Rare "bipartisan" cooperation on the bill, which brought Sen. Trent Lott from Mississippi to the side of Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, is hardly statesmanship or a sudden outbreak of civic virtue. Rather, it is a new public face to the old alliance between profit-minded employers (and those who represent their interests) and demographically obsessed liberal and ethnic activists.

The former want assurances that there will be millions of aliens available to work at wages that Americans will not - with the ensuing medical, housing, schooling and legal costs subsidized by the taxpayer. The latter can't wait for more constituents in need of group representation who, it is hoped, will someday support them at the polls.

Most cynical of all, however, are the moralistic pundits, academics and journalists who deplore the "nativism" of Americans they consider to be less-educated yokels. Yet their own jobs of writing, commenting, reporting and teaching are rarely threatened by cheaper illegal workers.

Few of these well-paid and highly educated people live in communities altered by huge influxes of illegal aliens. Their professed liberality about illegal immigration usually derives from seeing hardworking waiters, maids, nannies and gardeners commute to their upscale cities and suburbs to serve them well - and cheaply.

In general, such elites don't use emergency rooms in the inner cities and rural counties overcrowded by illegal aliens. They don't drive on country roads frequented by those without licenses, registration and insurance. And their children don't struggle with school curricula altered to the needs of students who speak only Spanish.

For many professors, politicians and columnists, the gangs, increased crime and crowded jails that often result from massive illegal immigration and open borders are not daily concerns, but rather stereotypes hysterically evoked by paranoid and unenlightened others in places like Bakersfield and Laredo.

These politicians might think that they can keep on turning up their noses to the "loud people" and push through this horrible bill and still be re-elected but from what I see and here from the various blogs and radio talk shows they should think twice about such moves.