Immigration: Don't Agonize, Strategize

Right. Some readers had a really bad day in Washington yesterday...immigration in Congress, same-sex marriage in the Supreme Court. In this post, this web site reacts to Congress's vote on immigration:

The thinking is that all the new immigrants are going to represent the extreme left-wing point of view. Since they've left countries whose governments were further toward the Old Left than ours is, I don't see a path of abstract logic for this thinking to follow, so presumably the people who think this way are thinking of illegal residents of the United States whom they know personally. The only illegal resident of the U.S. I ever knew personally (and I've not seen him in the last twenty years, so don't ask) was a Cuban who thought President Reagan could have been more conservative; he quit talking to me because I was on speaking terms with a few left-wingers.

What I've said on this web site, during the debate, was that I liked what Marco Rubio said in American Son. For those who didn't bother to look it up, what he said there was that this diverse group of people came to the U.S. for different reasons, from different places, under different circumstances, and should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

What I'm saying here, now that we have different laws and they are being considered on bases that are at least different from last year, is that it'll be hard to guarantee that all these immigrants are left-wingers. A lot of them loathe the oppressive regimes they left behind, for good and sufficient reasons, and are likely to support whichever parties and policies are most different from those. The more you hate Fidel Castro, the better most Cuban-Americans of my generation will like you.

Reportedly some other immigrants have no political opinions to speak of and are predisposed, as they form opinions, to adopt those of the people who give them decent jobs. Or they have opinions, but they're young and they're still pulling their worldviews together.

And then there are the ones who don't really want to be U.S. citizens, who defy immigration laws because they think all laws are for prey and they are the predators...theoretically changing the existing law is supposed to make it easier to find and deport that kind, although this web site will wait to see that happen, thanks.

This web site recommends that our conservative readers think long and hard about the middle group--the very young, the uneducated, the inexperienced, the confused, the just plain desperate. Ignorance is a dangerous thing and anyone who pays El Coyote to dump him or her in the desert obviously suffers from ignorance, so people in this category are dangerous all right. How do we neutralize the danger? By educating them. How do we educate people who are too old for prep school and inadequately prepared for college? By getting to know them, working with them, sharing life experiences with them.

Conservative Americans, this is your chance to reach out to a whole new cohort of young people. Become their friends. Let them practice English conversation with you. Invite them to your church or go to theirs. Find out what they're really up against. Share what you've learned about life in these United States with them.

I'd like to share this web site with them. For starters, what about a Spanish page? Would anybody out there care to edit a Spanish page for this web site? I'd like to have one.