The Immigration Issue

I suppose that the issue of illegal immigration is "important", but I really doubt that it is truly timely and in any case it seems to me that it is more about an ugly xenophobia rather than about real problems. If I were to list the most important issues that we as a nation should be addressing, illegal immigration would not rise to anywhere near the top of the list. Global warming, universal health care, nuclear proliferation, the war in Iraq, homelessness, hunger ... I could go on and on before I would reach the immigration issue. But Bush and his ilk are way down in the polls and they is grasping at straws to pander to "the base" in hopes that the 2006 mid-term elections and I suppose his legacy are not a disaster. Too late for that methinks.

This post by David Corn, Good Fences and Lousy Reading Comprehension, speaks well to the the cheapness of the debate and points out that the frequent mentions of the phrase "good fences make good neighbors" abuse the sense that the line as it is used in Robert Frost's poem, "The Mending Wall":

… I doubt he had the US-Mexico border in mind when he penned these lines. But he was clearly wondering about a fellow who clings so solidly to the idea of a wall. Frost's "good fences make good neighbors" line was no policy prescription. It was an illumination of the human tendency to embrace and then stick with a simple and comforting thought.

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.'