QUOTETH HOMER

I saw a Simpsons episode last night with an immigration reference that made me laugh. Homer has become addicted to a certain not-so-immigrant-friendly right wing "news" channel (hint - the Simpsons' writers apparently are not entirely comfortable with some of the folks in their corporate family). He starts to become a bit too "programmed" and starts cursing liberals under his breath. He also offers the funny observation "Did you know every day Mexican gays sneak into our country and unplug our braindead old ladies?" If Homer hadn't used that line, I'm sure we would have heard it by now from the NumbersUSA folks.

Comments

[Greg Siskind]

Honza - I don't think I've ever called Dobbs a rightist, but if I have, I would agree with you that he's anti-business and that's hardly right wing. I would say, however, that when it comes to immigration, a number of right wing politicians sound like they just got down reading old Pravda issues. They're suddenly about protecting workers and fighting greedy corporations. My Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is the perfect example. She loves to tout her 100% rating from the National Federation of Independent Business but has no problem in the next breath opposing a guest worker program.

The left wing can be just as bad, of course, and other posters have mentioned Durbin and Dorgan. And there are many others. Drew noted yesterday as well that this is the case with many on the left.

But Fox deserves special mention, in my opinion, because there are so many people on so many shows at the network who have made the most ridiculous anti-immigrant statements - O'Reilly, Gibson, Hannity, etc. On CNN, you don't see much of this nonsense beyond Dobbs' show (except for the occasional remark by Cafferty) and on MSNBC you don't see much of this at all.

[Honza P]

Fox is actually the least antyi-immigrant news channel.
Don't mindlessly assume that right = anti-Immigrant. Remember where Murdoch is from, after all, and how Fox is part of his world-wide business.
There's a reason he felt comfortable swallowing the Wall Street Journal.
You've made the same mistake in reverse by calling lou Dobbs a rightist. The guy is, and always has been, a Democrat, and rather a lefty one for the tastes fo most business shows too. Dobbs is, howver, culturally populist, and as votes on free trade show nicely, that cuts across party lines and ideologies still.

[Kimberley]

I will second that. Great analysis, USC. You have obliterated all the bogus economic arguments that the anti-immigrants advance. The comparison to the EU was just great! Those who have been to Germany/France/UK know that their infrastructure is better than ours. They are managing great with more people in less than half our area!

Do you anti-immigrant types want to repeat your obnoxious theory that the EU is a "third-world cesspool?"

[Another voice]

That is a great analysis by USC good info keep it coming!!!!

[USC]

"A liberal opposed to immigration would have gone the "they're taking our jobs" route."

A true liberal won't oppose immigration if he/she were true to their beliefs and principles. Only the politicians dependent on union support for their re-election take that route, out of a misplaced sense of protectionism. Competition is good for the economy and the nation, whether that is the job market, farm produce or automobiles.

I would submit in order to compete with China, India or the EU we need a massive influx of immigration to get our population up to the 1 Billion mark by 2017. If we don't we are going to have our lunch eaten by the above economies. Some figures from the CIA world fact book to sipport my claim:

China Area 9.3 Million Sq Km/ Pop 1.3 Billion/ GDP (ppp) $10.17 Trillion/ GDP (OER) $2.5 Trillion

India Area 3 Million Sq Km/ Pop 1.1 Billion/ GDP (ppp) $2.5 Trillion/ GDP (OER) $804 Billion

USA Area 9.1 Million Sq Km/ Pop 301 Million/ GDP (ppp) $13.1 Trillion/ GDP (OER) $13.2 Trillion

EU Area 4.3 Million Sq Km/ Pop 490 Million/ GDP (ppp) 13.1 Trillion/ GDP (OER) $13.7 Trillion

ppp= Purchasing Power Parity
oer= at official excange rate

As you can see the EU has overtaken the US as the world's largest economy on absolute terms and equalled us on a ppp basis. If we don't drastically increase our population we will fall even further behind. Just to catch up with the EU we need 20 million people every year for the next 10 years.

Let's do away with the quotas and legalize the 12 million!!

[Greg Siskind]

Pankaj - I don't think I said anything about parties here and Democrats who espouse the kind of view I noted above would properly be classified in my opinion as right wing, not liberal. A liberal opposed to immigration would have gone the "they're taking our jobs" route. The quote above throws immigrants in with the anti-abortion, anti-gay agenda.

[Pankaj K]

Greg,

I would be careful equating NumbersUSA with conservatives. Although that used to be true, over the last year or so (but mainly around the second coming of CIR) NumbersUSA has seen a lot of influx from traditional democrats. Evidence of this is on sites like dailykos.com, where there are a good many Democrats opposed to so-called amnesty.

Moreover, that idiot Lou Dobbs is on CNN, not FoxNews :). Just saying, xenophobia spans the political spectrum.