The Immigration Con Men At Work

A few weeks back, I wrote a column [1] about the immigration con men - the group of lawmakers who are very clearly trying to manipulate the immigration issue, rather than solve it. Now today, Matt Stoller at OpenLeft [2] gives us a perfect example of how they work, pointing out two lawmakers who voted to expand NAFTA while championing enforcement-only immigration legislation.

When you look at this, you wonder what their rationale could possibly be, other than brazen scapegoating? As Stoller says, they are "voting for corporate trade agreements throwing foreigners into poverty and forcing them to America, and then supporting militarization of the border to guard against people coming into this country." That's not a way to solve the immigration problem - that's a way to preserve the illegal immigration problem so that craven politicians can keep a voiceless target around to bash.

In my upcoming column this week, I'm going to be taking a closer look at these self-described Blue Dog Democrats, and how their supposed "conservatism" is being used a veneer for corrupt behavior like this.

These people run around and proudly tell everyone they are such principled conservatives from the heartland, and then use their offices to stomp on the very working-class constituencies they purport to speak for. And when you look at Ross Perot's 1992 numbers [3], you see these people are acting on behalf of districts that clearly support a very different kind of politics.

We see it on immigration, and we see it on a whole host of other issues. And the more we expose it, the more we expose them for what they really are: con men.