Taking It To The Streets

The weeks starts off again with tens of thousands more immigrants (and supporters of immigrant rights, families and friends of immigrants, etc) taking to the streets in mass protests.

This comes after the the planned compromise immigration bill in the Senate fall apart due to partisan bickering. The moderates and the left wanted to help immigrants on a path to citizenship... the right decried anything that would do that as 'amnesty'. Forget all the hurdles the illegals would have to go through to get on that path (fines, back taxes, years of waiting, learn English, put on the back of the line), the right was insistent: No citizenship, only criminalization. There can be no compromise with those people and thus the whole thing is on hold. It is expected that this setback is a major one and that no reform bill will be passed before the end of the year.

Who knows if the GOP operatives ever expected anything to pass anyway.

AP: Immigration Advocates Rally Around U.S.

The protestors say that they will continue to organize marches all the way until the elections. This is both good and bad for the GOP. Good that it will allow them to use the immigrants as a boogeyman to scare their base to the polls (having realized that, for the right, fear is the best motivating tool); Bad because it will push away the hispanic faction of said base (the hispanics now realizing the conservatives view them as votes and cheap labor, not as human beings).

The Republicans picked the wrong wedge issue... perhaps they should settle for picking on gays again.



[PS- And, again, why can't get we get this kind of protest going over the war or other big issues like the Patriot Act? Ohhh, that's right, because Americans are lazy and complacent. Say all you want about legal/illegal immigration- these people appreciate this country, they will stand up for themselves, and they don't take anything for granted. We could do well to learn from them on this.]