Starving Artist, the corporate right is not monolithic, & attitudes toward immigration within it are not terribly simple.
Some employers take advantage of undocumented workers by hiring them illegally at very low wages; this is not normal, it’s not legal, it’s not something everyone wants to do (rational actor theory aside), it’s not typically large or wealthy employers, & it’s not something one can always get away with.
A lot of old-fashioned pro-business types want a larger legal labor pool, & see opposition to immigration as the sort of thing unionized workers & the left would want–nothing to do with them.
The anti-immigration alliance, on the other hand, is even far more complex & varied.
I’m not sure why you’re telling me all this as it pretty much agrees with what I’ve already said. It sounds like you’re agreeing with me but with an adversarial tone. Wouldn’t you agree that your comments serve to refute BrainGlutton’s assertion that Bush permitted illegal immigration to flourish so as to benefit corporate America? (Not that benefitting corporate America is a bad thing, you understand. Without corporate America, we wouldn’t be enjoying most of what makes our lives so pleasant and plentiful. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather drive automobiles and watch television and have electricity and heat and computers and books and stores full of groceries and…well, you get the idea. Corporations, contrary to the attitudes of many around here, are a good thing.)
Now, perhaps what BrainGlutton meant to say was that Bush was lax on illegal immigration so as to benefit America’s small businesses. If so, that would be a more difficult thing to argue against, and without knowing what was going through GWB’s mind I would be hard pressed to comment, apart from pointing out to BG that he has no knowledge of what was going through Bush’s mind either.
SA, you’re still trying to oversimplify. Look at yourself:
“Corporations good.” Well, does that mean that no corporations do bad things?
And just because BrainGlutton & I are both socialists (or whatever he’s calling himself now) doesn’t mean I wish to defend his simplistic interpretation of Bush’s immigration stance either. I was raised a Reagan Republican, I still believe in open borders, & my stance on immigration is closer to W Bush & Karl Rove than to the mainstream of either party.
Do you really infer that by my saying that corporations are a good thing that I’m also saying none of them ever do bad things?
My whole point in regard to this issue is simply that there was no reason for Bush to have been lax on illegal immigration so as to benefit American “corporations that want cheap labor”. That’s all. You’re extrapolating a great deal more from my comments than what I’ve actually said.
You may believe in open borders but I don’t know of one single country out of the 194 or so that exist today that agree with you.