Sleazy Robert Novak on "immigrant-bashing" and "anti-immigration"

Robert Novak offers "Immigration trap for GOP candidates/Immigrant-bashing divides rather than unites Republicans":

Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia were booed at their respective state party conventions Sunday for supporting a compromise immigration bill. Their specific sin was collaborating with the liberal lion Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. But behind the catcalls was GOP rage over undocumented foreigners, a sentiment GOP lawmakers must appease or risk dire consequences.

Why are the party faithful so incensed by immigration? When I asked Graham, he quoted from a federal government report on the new arrivals to this country, "largely unskilled laborers" and heavily illiterate: "The new immigration has provoked a widespread feeling of apprehension as to its effect on the economic and social welfare of the country." The report, by the U.S. Immigration Commission, was dated 1911.

Of course, Novak and Graham are too much sleazy lightweights to realize the huge differences between then and now.

...This nation of immigrants has greeted successive waves of newcomers with apprehension stoked by demagogues. It has overcome such past xenophobic impulses. But that will be more difficult in an era of Internet bloggers and radio talkers, with the Republican Party in trouble and seeking a unifying issue at the grass roots and with the Democratic Party sensing their adversary's weakness and moving in for the kill.

...Graham was not happy with his junior South Carolina colleague, Sen. Jim DeMint, for playing to the convention crowd with anti-immigration oratory... Many Republicans reach for an anti-immigration lifeline because of the party's plight... But immigrant-bashing divides rather than unites Republicans. In a recent closed-door meeting of the House's conservative Republican Study Committee, Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina raised the danger of resembling South Africa's National Party advocating apartheid.

The only ones advocating that are Novak and the corrupt Senators who support illegal immigration and "guest" workers.

I'm outsourcing the rest of this to The Derb:

Novak comes out with every creaky old tune in the songbook of the open-borders nutsos, and garnishes it all with a big greasy dollop of huddled-masses sentimentality... ...He ignores **everything** that immigration wonks have been thrashing out for years...

Immigration2007a · Thu, 05/24/2007 - 09:58 · · Importance: 1