June 24, 2007

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, cheap labor pimp (Pat Buchanan, Meet The Press)

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Democrat from Illinois, debated the Senate illegal immigration amnesty bill and illegal immigration with Pat Buchanan on today's Meet the Press (transcript link). It cast Pitchfork Pat in the role of the defender of the American workingman, with Gutierrez in the role of the Wall Street Journal-style cheap labor pimp. Not only that, he supported foreigners working in unsafe conditions that wouldn't be acceptable if they were performed by Americans:

The fact is that [illegal aliens] do jobs. Every time you go to the grocery store and you get grapes, any agricultural... product, we know who is in those pesticide-ridden fields across this country... ...and, many times, inhumane conditions... ..picking the fruits and the crops that are necessary and vital to our economy, doing the kinds of work that, that truly other Americans won't do... [later] ...But I suggest to you that I want to keep the vast majority of them that do the kinds of labor that sweat and toil and that make America a better place for all of us to live in.

Rather than trying to end working in "pesticide-ridden fields" as liberals of the past would have done, Gutierrez takes steps that will allow such abuses to continue. And, rather than supporting offshoring or automating inefficient, 19th century "industries" such as strawberry production, he wants to help those "industries" out.

In addition to cribbing the "jobs Americans won't do" line from Bush and Chertoff, he swiped another trick: playing the "why aren't you offering a civil discourse" game:

You know, the tone and the texture of the debate that Pat has brought here to MEET THE PRESS is really what is wrong with this debate. We need to have a debate that doesn't chastise people, that doesn't criminalize people, that doesn't cast a shadow over everyone. The fact is, the vast majority - the vast, the overwhelming majority of immigrants who come here to this country come here to work hard...

That followed this not necessarily controversial Buchanan statement:

But if she walks across the border, as many of them do. I think something like two thirds of the babies in Los Angeles born, women come into the country, cross the border, they have a baby, the baby's an anchor baby, entitled to a lifetime of social welfare benefits and citizenship. That's not what citizenship should mean in our country.

I haven't been able to determine whether his statistic is correct, but Gutierrez wasn't raising that as an issue. Then, Gutierrez plays the demographic hegemony card, conflating illegal immigration with all Hispanics and even borrowing a line about the Vietnam Memorial from John McCain during the last GOP debate:

But Republicans are going to become a party of the past and irrelevant in national elections... ...and in the Congress of the United States... ...if we don't change the texture and the tone of this debate and stop blaming immigrants... ...and specifically Latinos for every ill that exists in this society... They are good contributors. They are faithful Americans... They die in Iraq. Their names are etched in the Vietnam Memorial, and to make us all be criminals, I just think is wrong, unfair, and it is what is going to cost the Republican Party dearly in the future.

Democrats might want to look inward and decide whether what Gutierrez in effect supports is consistent with their past goals.

Posted to Immigration2007a at June 24, 2007 10:53 AM