http://brownstate.typepad.com/ken_burns_hates_mexicans/2007/08/the-undocumente.html

Actually there was a similar debate here in San Francisco when a local Latino gallery, Galeria de la Raza, put up a mural that simply read “Immigrant is the new Black”. It upset and offended myself and a lot of other politically active Latinos to no end. It got hit so many times with graffiti that the gallery just decided to leave it as is. This has all taken place within the last 3 weeks.

On a lighter note, I dig the guy in the cowboy shirt. Now THAT’S how you rock a panza and a jheri curl mullet. Ajua!

Of course I, being on the economic right, sympathizes with both views but the average joe certainly does not. Is immigration such an overwhelming right that, for example, its affect on the environment is irrelevant? Or how about how it undermines unions? What about its affect on low income blacks, is that not a ‘national interest’? Or what about national security concerns? What about concerns about what more immigration would do to the size of government (see here)? I would argue in favor of immigration in each of these cases but that’s because, again, my biases fall on the economic right.

I fear that the average joe, seeing the immigration debate argued from that of rights now, and more recently being compared to the civil rights cause, is going to get turned off. Such moral bombastic language that belittles the arguments against immigration is deeply offensive to many and makes a lot of people who were initially sympathetic to immigration or even in favor of it look at the issue very differently.

In other words, my quibble with your post is not with the ends but with the means – a means that may, I fear, turn more people against immigration than for it. Look at what the immigration marches did to the immigration cause – they turned an initially sympathetic president and citizenry enough against immigration that you can’t even get the previous or the current (under a new political party) congress to pass any meaningful pro-immigration bills. The only immigration legislation that will pass are those against immigration, not in favor. And this despite the fact that Bush campaigned on a pro-immigration platform and as recently as the 1980′s you got the same political make up – also with a Republican President (Reagan) and a Democrat congress – to pass one of the most sweeping pro-immigration bill’s in the 20th century (giving, btw, most of my family its citizenship).

Comparing todays immigration struggles with the struggles of civil rights activists in the 60′s may be a good rhetorical argument but it does harm, IMHO, to the immigration cause as a whole.

What does it say about LA with a Chicano Mayor, and large Latino population, when that the Feds could still gain the information and cooperation to have her detained and deported?

Yes, immigration needs more voices, more education, more courage to take on the anti immigrant sentiments that make less and less sense.

I don’t know your stand on immigration, but I hope you are in favor. Although I would just prefer open borders or amnesty.

In San Francisco the Mayor will not cooperate with the Feds: It is known as a Sanctuary City. Why not push for your mayor to do the same?