Who Would Jesus Vote For?

I just read a story on CNN where Giuliani is claiming the ability to completely end Illegal Immigration within three years. This is the kind of claim you get used to hearing during an election cycle and never really take seriously. However, after yesterdays vow from Fred Thompson to crack down on sanctuary cities it seems that the next target of pandering for GOP hopefuls is the bigotry and intolerance crowd. This seems redundant to me after spending the past few weeks going for the radical right Christian vote but maybe there is less overlap there than I thought.

Any sane person would realize that completely ending illegal immigration is impossible. The US Mexican border is just shy of 2,000 miles long. Our northern Canada border is just shy of 4,000 miles long. Don’t forget the border between Canada and Alaska which is over 1,500 miles long. So without including any of our coastlines we would have to fence and/or patrol 7,500 miles of border without allowing even one person to slip through for Giuliani to back up this claim. So absolutely 100% impossible no matter what grand plan Giuliani has.

But that is thinking like a liberal, see when a conservative says illegal immigrant they mean only one thing, Mexicans. No other types of illegal immigrants carry the weight of conservatives’ bigotry as much as Mexicans do. Now any self respecting conservative will say that they hate all criminals equally, and there just happens to be more illegal Mexicans than anyone else. This sounds nice and all and I’m sure they can find someplace in their bible to justify this position. I can’t but I lack the creative Bible reading skills that Christians have developed.

There are many recent examples of cases where the conservative community has protested the punishment of real criminals. Scooter Libby is one recent and well published example. He was convicted of multiple felonies and the conservatives supported his commutation. Never mind that his felonies prevented an investigation into the leaking of a secret agent in charge of preventing Iran from getting nukes. That’s a big fucking deal and a major national security breach and the conservatives could care less.

Another example currently in the news is the ongoing debate over retroactive telecom immunity in the FISA bill which I have recently praised Chris Dodd for opposing. Again, we have a case where conservatives are protecting criminals from being prosecuted. In this instance big companies not only broke the law but they violated the constitutional rights of American citizens when doing so. So where is the outrage from these supposedly criminal hating conservatives? No where to be seen because they are supporting the immunity. It seems obvious in the match up between big business and the Constitution which is more important to conservatives.

I could go on but these examples clearly show that even in cases of treason or the violation of constitutional rights the conservatives have no problem with criminals. So we are just supposed to believe them when they say that the reason they hate illegal aliens Mexicans is because they committed a misdemeanor crime by being in the country illegally. Excuse me while I call BULLSHIT.

The reason these conservatives hate illegal alien Mexicans so much is because they look, speak, dress, and act differently than they do. Since they can’t hate the African-Americans openly anymore, fewer and fewer women are willing to put up with their abuse, and even homosexuals are getting the rights and protections they deserve the conservatives are simply moving on to whatever group they can get away with hating openly.

Aside from being bullies who like to pick on those weaker than them, conservatives have another reason to want to keep illegal immigrants ostracized from society and in near slavery conditions. Money. You won’t see this make the news very often but there is a lot of money being made by large businesses by maintaining the status quo. There are many large companies making huge profits by paying sub-standard wages to illegal immigrants. They know that Americans simply refuse to work in those conditions for the pay that illegal immigrants will accept. They also know that illegal immigrants wont complain about unpaid overtime, unsafe work conditions, or abuse because they will be deported.

This is one of the main reasons that the Presidents immigration reform push was defeated. The big businesses knew that if it went through they would loose millions a year in profits. As we all know anything that lowers the profits of big businesses and rich people is going to be strongly opposed by conservatives. If you add to that the opportunity to openly show their hatred for a minority group you will have a winning combination for conservatives every time.

This is the reason that I get riled up whenever I hear some right wing fanatic like Tancredo or Thompson and now Giuliani start talking about ending illegal immigration. They have no intention of ending it even if they could. Their big business buddies would lose too much money, which in turn means less donations to their pet politicians. They just like to sound tough on any Mexicans who would dare come to America to make a better life for their families because that is what their conservative constituents get off on.

~ William ~