Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson started the "Our America Initiative" last year, possibly as a precursor to a presidential run. He's a libertarian and that means two things: a) he might as well save his donors the money because he's never going to get mainstream support, and b) he's wrong.

How he's wrong about immigration will be discussed below. First, here are two snippets showing his thinking, such as it is:

It is time to implement an immigration policy that allows for better documentation and more easily obtainable permits for temporary guest workers to fill jobs that Americans refuse to take. United States authorities do need to know who is crossing our borders and be able to prevent criminals from entering the country. However, we do not believe in closing the borders to those that are legally documented to enter the country. (From ouramericainitiative.com/issues/immigration-policy.html )

First of all, I support immigration. I think immigration is a good thing. I'm opposed to building a wall across the border, which we have built a wall across the border. What we really need to do is we really need to make it easy for immigrants that are here in the United States to work in the United States... Immigration is a good thing. People coming to the United States, seeking the American dream... better lives for themselves and their families. The issue is illegal immigration. I don't think that we should be building fences at the border. I think that illegal immigration is really the issue. We need to make documentation of illegal immigrants as easy as we possibly can. There're all sorts of ways we could do that, starting with the employer. Let's make it easy to document illegal immigrants so that they become [note: his eyes go wide right about here] legal, tax-paying immigrants. (From the video at peekURL.com/vrhh2fc)

1. He talks like a five-year-old or a pothead. "I think immigration is a good thing" isn't a grown-up position. Some immigration is good, some immigration is bad. Some immigration that's good for us (highly-skilled workers) would braindrain sending countries. Some immigration that's bad for us (criminals) is great for the sending countries. All types of immigration have long-term impacts, good and bad. Succeeding generations might commit crimes at a higher rate, some groups might assimilate over time and others will have assimilation problems for generations, and so on. Five-year-olds or potheads shouldn't be setting immigration policy.

2. We don't have a "wall across the border" either literally or figuratively. Millions of people visit, come to work, or are made citizens each year. We do seek to have limits on low-skilled workers because we're right next to a third world country and a region with 500 million, largely low-skilled people. The great majority of Americans appreciate such controls and wish they were enforced. Would the libertarian Gary Johnson use some form of force - such as trickery - to go against their wishes?

3. The idea of allowing employers to document their illegal alien workers is definitely novel. As in, it would lead to something out of Dickens, with sweatshops sprouting across the land as there was a race to the bottom for low-skilled labor. If Guatemalans aren't pliable enough, employers could support illegal immigration by Bangladeshis to take their place.

4. He's using the jobs americans wont do canard, just like George W Bush, Barack Obama, and most other massive/illegal immigration supporters. And, he's doing that despite things like a 5 to 1 job seekers to jobs available ratio, the teen unemployment rate being 25%, and despite the fact that whenever there's an immigration raid, Americans rush in to take the jobs that illegal aliens were taking.

5. He's supporting guest workers, but it's not clear what that would involve. Would it involve something like Germany's system where we'd have a long-term population of second-class "citizens"? In any case, many of those "guests" would have U.S. citizen children, making it difficult to deport them. Others who we could deport would just remain here as illegal aliens.

6. He's completely ignoring the political impact of his proposals. All of this immigration would give even more power to the far-left and the Democrats, making amnesties for "guest" workers much more likely. The Democrats and the far-left would use their increased power to roll back any libertarian-oriented accomplishments of the Gary Johnson administration.

7. He's completely ignoring the fact that his proposals would give even more power inside the U.S. to the Mexican government. That activist government has been meddling in our internal politics for years (and brought legal action against Arizona yesterday; the suit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and others). Gary Johnson would give the Mexican government even more power and allow millions more people loyal to Mexico and other countries to remain in the U.S. The libertarian patriot would in effect take some political power away from U.S. citizens and give it to foreign governments.

I don't know whether Johnson is a puppet or just a libertarian idiot, but in any case he's not qualified for any political office.

12/12/10 UPDATE: From this:

Fmr. New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson told this blogger this past Wednesday eve that if he were a sitting Republican Member of Congress, he would vote in favor of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (popularly known as the "DREAM Act") that the U.S. House passed earlier that day... ...Johnson was quick to reinforce that his support of the DREAM Act is contingent on the fact the bill merely seeks to legalize these children of illegal immigrants. Had the act contained language that would facilitate kick starting the citizenship process for these individuals, Johnson said he would oppose it.

The DREAM Act is an openly anti-American bill that would let foreign citizens who were here illegally take college educations away from U.S. citizens. So, it's not surprising that Johnson would support it. And, depending on the version of the bill, states could decide to give in-state illegal aliens (whether covered by the DREAM Act or not) a better tuition rate than out-of-state citizens. Once you actually think it through, you'll see just how anti-American it is and how much of a danger it is: it erodes what it means to be a citizen. It's not surprising that Johnson either can't figure that out or doesn't care.

And, his proposed fix to the bill would make things even worse in the long-term, creating a population of people who more or less think of themselves as Americans but who can't become citizens. He'd create something like the situation of "guest" workers in Germany: a permanent underclass of second-class "citizens".