It's Not A Very Pretty Picture, Is It?

Hey, Look Over There!

Joe Klein doesn't always get everything right, but he hits one out of the park in this week's Time. Klein writes of how immigration has become the most contentious issue of the 2008 presidential race. Some of the presidential candidates--Huckabee and Clinton--are surprised at the ferocity with which they are assailed by members of the public about "open borders as the issue that will destroy this country." Others, notably Mitt Romney, are demagoguing immigration for all it's worth.

Klein rightly points out that immigrants are not a real problem, but that the fury against them seems to be a symptom of the faltering economy (at least, it's faltering if you happen not to be rich). People like Romney and Tom Tancredo are fanning the flames of immigrant hatred, apparently forgetting the lessons of the last century, and the one before that. It's easy to blame immigrants for the loss of jobs, and loss of security, and everything else that's wrong with this country. Immigration serves to distract the public eye from a war that continues to destroy the economy, and from the administration and their masters in the giant corporations that use the war to drain the country of every last dollar that they can. "Hey, look over there!" they cry. "That Mexican hotel maid is stealing your wallet!" Meanwhile, they're literally loading pallet-loads of cash into airplanes and flying it off into oblivion.