I have to comment again. Mr Naverrette is disingenuous on so many points, that I am bothered that he is considered a serious thinker on the immigration issue. Everything he writes on the topic is not just of a different opinion, it is wrong and deceitful.
Here is a list of the most irksome points:
-The first five paragrpahs call everyone wrong except for the author himself. He assumes that the middle ground is an acceptable place. For many important issues, the middle ground is a failure. Where is the middle ground when defending yourself against deadly attack? Half dead? Compromise does not a lead to a desirable outcome. This tactic is most often deployed most when advancing a failed point of view against a highly-defensible absolutist position.
-Accountability: So because illegal immigrant are everywhere, we cannot criticize the fact that they are everywhere? Does that mean that if you are against high income taxes that you shouldn’t take advantage of government services? Failure to engage in the purest actions does not invalidate a point of view. Yet another fallacy.
-Empathy: The last one in the lifeboat can’t point out that picking up more passengers will cause us to sink? All of us had ancestors who killed invaders. Does that mean we should have empathy for those who want to shoot illegals crossing the Rio Grande? See the fallacy discussed under accountability.
-Honesty: Interesting that this is the most disingenuous of all the points. We should be for illegal immigration because some teenagers are lazy. Or there are greater threats to our exisitence like terrorists with nukes, so we shouldn’t worry about illegals. There are millions of problems less important than immigration, like doing my laundry. Does that mean I should always wear smelly clothing?
-Courage: What wrong with special interests? We all have special interests. The problem Mr Navarrette has with special interests is that they disagree with his own special interests. Each one of the special interests listed has a strong argument for its position, just like the special interests you support.
-Nuance: Strawman – ’nuff said.
-Colorblindness: If anything, culture is the largest part of this issue. If we had 12 million illegal computer science PhDs from Norway illegally developing iPhone apps , we would be having a very different debate. The “color” problem is that our illegal immigrants are overwhelmingly low-skill, low-education non-English speakers whose children are not climbing the economic ladder (See “Achieving Anew: How New Immigrants Do in American School, Jobs, and Neighborhoods” – and not Mr Navarrette’s distorted reporting of its contents) and who are consuming far more in services than they ever will pay in taxes. This was not the case with previous waves of immigration because there were fewer social services and more opportunities for low-skill workers.
Restraint: Nothing important gets done if one is restrained. In this case, restraint is aksing the majority to make concessions it need not make.
Common sense: Self-deportation, positive and negative incentives, and a wall would solve this problem far faster than any government program or solution proposed by Mr Navarrette.
“By adding a dash of each of these ingredients,” Mr Navarrette gets what he wants – amnesty. By avoiding Mr Navarrette’s advice, the majority of Americans get what they want: a reduction in illegal immigration.
