Moral Bankruptcy

Mickey Kaus has a bunch of post up on the illegal immigration issue. As he points out, there was a law passed back in 1986 that essentially legalized illegals who were here then in exchange for criminalizing future illegal immigration. I recall being angry then that those who had already broken the law were being let off the hook. I think the problem has quadrupled in the past 20 years.

Republicans better pull together on this issue. As Kaus argues, politicians may be getting lobbied by business interests but lobbies don’t get them votes.

Kaus also points out the glaring flaw in all the Democrats logic on this: The ones hurt most by illegal immigration are the young black males. In other words they are putting the interests of criminals before the interests of their own fellow citizens. The Democrats have traditionally counted African-American voters as one of their strongest constituencies - it looks a bit like familiarity breeds contempt.

Politicians trying to secure Hispanic votes by pandering to illegal immigrants are exactly as morally bankrupt as politicians pandering to business interests demanding cheap labor. This is (yet another) two-edged issue. Republicans must wake up to this.

Is it too much to ask our politicians to put citizens first?