Friday Morning: Writing still sloppy, and still on someone else's computer.

Nathan Newman on Bush and immigration.
rough draft on the fly

I've made my opinions clear on this issue a few times already (as clear as they can be).
Societies are structured on one of two basic paradigms: that of convention, or that of desire. The manic desire for upward mobility manifest in capitalism makes the status quo for all but the idle rich appear as failure. The working class in this country live an empty existence, denied a pleasure in their own social economy, they live to serve as vessels for the desires of the market.
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Immigrants come to this country as both radical escapees from their own history and as conservatives, carriers of a memory that in their children and grandchildren will gradually fall away. Each new wave reimagines its own bourgeois revolution/ is the force behind all that is considered both destructive and yet noble in the modern economy.

I work with illegals. I am able to talk with them about the world in ways I can talk to few Americans, even of my own education and background. [The cheapest and the worst tradesmen in the country are foreign born, but so are the best. ]
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In the interest of the construction of an American populace that sees itself not as it wants to become but what it is, I am opposed to open borders. Immigrants are fresh meat for the economy, and anyone who thinks they don't drive down wages is either lying or deluded (I can give you a list of the rates of various tradesmen and their various nationalities if you like.) I've talked with Nathan about this in the past, and he ended up defending inclusion as the only moral choice, regardless of the consequences. Union moves towards an acceptance of immigration are made out of necessity and are not healthy in the long run: as immigration continues each generation competes with its predecessor. Union organization across national borders is a different matter, and worthwhile.
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The last time I posted on this I ended with a joke: Close the borders, I said, but then I'll have to leave the country; I won't have any friends here anymore. Maybe in 20 years I'll come back.

None of this is to say that Bush is anything more than a cynic. This has nothing to do with his whoring. I'm responding only to the substance this administration abhors.