The video below has a 2006 speech from California state Assemblyman Gil Cedillo in support of a resolution supporting the "Great American Boycott" immigration march. The speech was discussed here five years ago, but since it appears to have been deleted from its original location at democrats.sen.ca.gov I uploaded my cached copy.

1. On the video, Cedillo supports comprehensive immigration reform and compares legalizing illegal aliens to ending slavery, giving women the right to vote, and ending Japanese internment in WWII. Obviously, there are huge differences between slavery, women not being allowed to vote, and Japanese internment:

* The daily conditions of slaves are quite a bit different from those of illegal aliens like Jose Vargas. He isn't forced to work in the fields, he isn't treated as property, and on and on. Comparing holding someone in a forced labor situation to the lives of illegal aliens - most of whom are better off here than in their home countries - is absurd and should offend anyone.

* Slavery et al involved those who are U.S. citizens. The people Cedillo is supporting are foreign citizens.

* Almost all illegal aliens came here voluntarily and knowing that they wouldn't be allowed to vote and so on. They can regain the right to vote and so on very simply: return to their home countries. Slaves, women who couldn't vote, and Japanese-Americans interned in most cases had no other country to go to.

2. He also uses a loose borders shibboleth ("orderly"): he says we can only have immigration reform if we have an "orderly system of immigration" (see safe legal orderly for others who've used similar wording).

3. He says that illegal aliens "keep us globally competitive". Other countries manage to be globally competitive without importing millions of serf laborers from a neighboring Third World country. Looked at from the other direction, the only way we could be competitive with China (or worse) using cheap labor is if we used their system of forced prison labor and so on. Maybe we don't want to go in that direction; maybe we should find another way to be competitive that doesn't involve pushing labor costs as low as possible. (And, why is the far-left Cedillo hyping low wages?)

4. After his comparison of amnesty to ending slavery, he says that are laws are constantly changing. Yet, how exactly would he change the laws? Unlike with the other cases, there's a nearly unlimited supply of people who would be potentially affected. That is, we can't just grant amnesty to millions of current illegal aliens and that would be the end of it. That amnesty would attract even more millions of illegal aliens down the line who'd come here for their own eventual amnesty. There was only a limited set of people who were involved in the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the women's suffrage movement, and Japanese internment. There are five billion people throughout the globe who are poorer than Mexicans, and hundreds of millions would no doubt want to come here if they could. Amnesty will send the message that they should come running.

5. He says "the debate is only on the people who are working, not the people who are profiting". Obviously, this site and many others have long discussed profiteers; see for instance immigration banks. In case he means that in the "we all profit" sense, clearly that's false too: the only people who profit from illegal immigration are corrupt politicians like Cedillo, other racial power leaders, and those at the top end of the "Nanny Employing Class" and above.

But, that is ironic: Cedillo is one of the best friends those profiteers could have. The only way to reduce that profiteering is to reduce illegal and massive immigration, something that Cedillo is not going to do.

6. He claims that illegal aliens are given jobs, they don't take jobs from Americans. Obviously, that's false: there are hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens doing jobs that unemployed Americans could and should be doing.

7. Sounding like any other Democratic or Republican politician, he says "we need immigration reform that respects border security" (see secure the border).

Please send him your thoughts: @gilcedillo. He's not that active on Twitter, so send this link and the link to Gil Cedillo to his supporters, others involved in California politics, and reporters who discuss his bills.