BORDER POLICE / David Podvin

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MakeThemAccountable.com

BORDER POLICE

By David Podvin

Republicans govern to defraud the majority, so they must constantly create sideshows with which to manipulate the voting public. During recent elections these diversionary issues have included flag burning and gay marriage. In 2006, the GOP will be waving the bloody banner of illegal immigration.
Apparently at the behest of Karl Rove, Republicans are preparing to place on next year’s ballot the California Border Police Initiative, which would establish a state militia dedicated to patrolling the Mexican border in search of illegal aliens. The last time the California GOP waged an all-out electoral assault against undocumented workers the campaign quickly became a hate fest. Governor Pete Wilson’s bid for re-election was faltering, so he crafted televisions ads featuring a brown-skinned man running over a hill accompanied by the announcer’s voice ominously intoning, “They just keep coming…”

Long term, this blatant appeal to xenophobia damaged the Grand Old Party with the burgeoning Hispanic community. Short term, it worked like a charm, stampeding panicked white voters to the polls for the purpose of re-electing Wilson.

Few issues are more incendiary than illegal immigration. Opinion surveys show that even Americans who live far from border regions are passionate about the matter, some because of a devotion to sovereignty, others because of an aversion to diversity. Illegal immigration is a topic where reason is swamped by emotion, and that makes it an effective vehicle with which to herd sheeple into the GOP ranks…

The American public is suffering due to the policies of George W. Bush, and it is during such times of hardship that Republicans most skillfully exploit bigotry.  The “brown-skinned invasion”, as one Minuteman has termed it, provides the scapegoats Rove needs to con the angry electorate into voting against its economic interests.

The complicating factor for the GOP is that the national Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America, which prizes undocumented workers for their depressing effect upon wages. The Bush administration cannot overtly oppose illegal immigration lest the currently uncritical corporate media coverage of the incumbent suddenly turn hostile. Therefore, the issue is being put front and center by California Republicans and promoted by those segments of the media whose parent conglomerates do not greatly benefit from coolie labor…

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