Immigration

Arizona does not stand alone. With a growing number of states seriously considering or planning for measures similar to Arizona’s to combat illegal immigration, it's time Democrats take this seriously. Simply calling Republicans and anyone else who supports such measures "racist" is not going be effective, and in fact is proving quite ineffective.

The main sticking point for so many in terms of having a serious, factual discussion of the issue is the Democrats' persistent refusal to recognize the clear difference between "immigrants" and "illegal immigrants" in the obvious hope that the public will not know the difference.

Immigration alert! The face of immigration is about to change rapidly, and not because President Obama is pushing forward bold policy to protect Americans inhabiting our nation’s back door from Mexican drug cartels. Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, is aggressively moving forward legalized access to drugs on the streets of Mexico.

American farmers are already inundated along the border with the cartels and illegal immigrants. They certainly don't need these unwelcome aliens coming across drug-infested, armed and dangerous as well.

In a very interesting way, the immigration quandary poses a deep question about the nature and viability of American democracy as we know it.

On the one hand, Americans continue to view citizenship within the nation-state as a prerequisite to the full enjoyment of the rights, privileges and responsibilities that have come to characterize the American way of life. On the other, the basis of our economic system seems to require labor input at conditions of less than perfect liberty. Whether in the form of outsourcing jobs abroad or the tacit agreement between government and corporate America to turn a blind eye to undocumented workers, we find ourselves deriving a large part of our livelihoods and consumer goods from cheap labor.

The Hill invites two established bloggers from either side of the political spectrum to sound off in original commentary.

President Obama called for comprehensive immigration reform today — no, not a huge legislative battle that would bring the U.S. Senate to a standstill once again and further divide the Democratic Party just before the congressional elections this fall — just a bill someday.

Even Obama, with his ambitious agenda of sweeping reforms, knows the Congress can't tackle immigration this year. Or possibly ever. But in his speech on the need for reform at American University today in Washington, the president was smart to lay a marker down, to reject "blanket amnesty," to take Republicans to task for reversing earlier support and to call on Republicans to support proposals that former President George W. Bush did.

The Hill's A.B. Stoddard answers viewer questions about the possibility of Congress moving on energy and immigration measures.

Why is the president of the United States apologizing to President Calderon of Mexico about an Arizona law that enforces federal laws curbing illegal Mexican immigrants?

President Obama should be castigating President Calderon over the conditions in Mexico that encourage these illegals to cross the border. The Mexican government should be working with the American government to prevent illegal immigration and enforce immigration laws. This might have the spin-off benefit of contributing to the defeat of the drug lords that informally rule much of Mexico and sell illegal drugs in the U.S.

There are three issues in the Arizona situation. In order of importance they are: a state’s right to act without permission from the federal government, chronic federal incompetence and mismanagement and the third: Is the controversial Arizona plan a good and workable solution for controlling the border? I was struck by the clarity of Morgan Elizabeth Woolard’s — Miss Oklahoma’s — “simple declarative sentence” — Hemingway’s model for emphatic prose — and her grace under pressure (more Hemingway) in answering the question on these issues by Oscar Nunez. “I’m a huge believer in states’ rights,” she said.

OK, incumbents, all you defenders of the status quo: As the angry political earthquake shakes your terra unfirma, you can quake behind the gates of your communities or you can step out and boldly go where some have only dared to, with the challenge to BRING IT ON!!!

*Forget the lack of Protestants on the Supreme Court. Isn't in time the president nominated someone who is an active atheist? BRING IT ON!!

*And speaking of presidential choices, shouldn't he select as Defense secretary an openly gay person ... a lesbian at that? BRING IT ON!!!

Say what you like about Mexicans in Arizona, legal or not, but they are hard working there and everyplace else they go. And if they didn’t go there the work wouldn’t get done. In 1994 I wrote a long article about the migrant workers in the tobacco fields of Yadkin County, North Carolina, where a few dozen Mexicans were cutting tobacco. I asked their Catholic padre how many of them were illegal. “All of them,” he said. I brought it up to the governor and the wealthiest Democrat in the state — both of whom had cut tobacco when they were kids — and they were shocked. Shocked! But not the farmers. They’d been exclusively using Mexican labor for almost 20 years.