Lou Dobbs wrote an editorial on CNN.com recently that has some serious flaws. Dobbs: Democratic hacks embrace lunacy of amnesty.
First, he spends most of the article calling people names. One has to read through all of the following before he stops insulting people and starts talking about the issue of illegal immigration.
· “Democratic hacks”
· “lunacy of amnesty”
· “partisan hacks”
· “pandering to [] special interests and corporate masters”
· “So-called comprehensive immigration reform legislation”
· “slam amnesty down the throats of the House of Representatives and their 300 million constituents”
· “lunacy of amnesty” (again)
· “shoveling the same nonsense that overwhelmed reason in the Democratic Party and the Bush administration last year” (two insults in one!)
· “march to madness”
· The supporters of the bill are “suspects” – imply they are committing a crime
· Dobbs attacks the bill and the supports of the bill by pointing out that Cardinal Mahoney supports the bill and that he “fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep secret all documents related to pedophilia among priests” Obviously, if you support amnesty for illegal immigrants then you are a pedophile.
· “But the Cardinal and other Catholic leaders are quick to embrace the laws of bankruptcy protection in order to not compensate victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy.” If you support amnesty, then you are a pedophile and a dead beat.
· “corporate lobbyists and dominant special interests . . . and [] enthusiastically helping Senator Kennedy write the new legislation.” Kennedy is too lazy or stupid to do it himself. Our laws are being written by evil corporations and people that interests that are more special than your interests.
· “Senator Kennedy and his staff claim they’re not being secretive about the details of the so-called comprehensive immigration reform, but they’re just not willing to tell the public or other senators how the bill is being constructed.” Where is the evidence of this? Never mind, let’s assume it is true: how does this mean that amnesty is bad? He still has not explained why it is lunacy.
· “Notable Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated by their exclusion from the process, taking some umbrage at the immigrant advocacy groups replacing them in that process.” It is so notable that he fails to note which Republicans.
The entire column has 14 paragraphs, but the first line that could possibly be interpreted to explain why amnesty is lunacy does not appear until the ninth paragraph.
He sort of says that supports of the bill are making two claims: one, businesses want to “keep wages depressed: and two, there is a labor shortage in construction, housing services, leisure and hospitality. He tries to attack these two ideas in the tenth paragraph. So, this is the first time he explains any part of his position.
But there is a non-trivial disconnect here: In each of those industries, a labor shortage leads to higher wages. Unfortunately for the EWIC and the Chamber, and really for American workers, real wages in those industries have been declining, suggesting a very real surplus, not a deficit, of unskilled labor. Yet this President and this Congress continues to push the adoption of a guest-workerprogram. It’s no wonder they have matching approval ratings in the low 30s.
This paragraph has a number of problems. First, where are his numbers. The claim that wages are going down should be very easy for him to quantify. Especially because he is allegedly a journalist. Second, undocumented workers cause wages to fall partly because they are undocumented. Illegal workers have very little bargaining power so employers pay them less. So, if wages are going down in those industries, then it might be because there are too many undocumented workers. It is probably not just because of some alleged surplus of workers. In fact, this might explain why the Chamber of Commerce wants amnesty. Companies that hire illegal immigrants can pay less wages and therefore can charge lower princes for their goods. This gives them an unfair advantage over companies that don’t hire illegal workers. Companies that don’t want to hire illegal immigrants could support this bill because they want their competitors to play fair. Finally, Dobbs thinks that the President and Congress have approval ratings in the low 30s because of illegal immigration. Uh, have you heard of the Iraq war?
“Real wages in the overall construction sector have fallen nearly 2 percent since the start of the decade and nearly 4 percent since the recent wage peak in 2003.” So, this means that wages went up from 2000 to 2003, then down from 2003 to 2006. How does he explain that wages went up while illegal immigration was happening? Plus, how does this compare to other industries? Are wages declining or advancing in the general population?
“Construction workers in 2006 were making the same per-hour salary as they did in 1965 (measured in 1982 dollars).” Can we get a source for this information? Why not? What happened to other wages? If this is because of illegal immigration, can you please connect it to some statistics on undocumented workers? There are a ton of reason why construction wages are like this: minimum wage, the growing income gap, the growing gap in education levels, higher productivity in the industry means companies need to hire less workers (lower demand for workers leads to lower wages), etc. Why should we assume that illegal immigration caused this?
“I’ve said for years that we cannot reform immigration if we cannot control it, and we cannot control it unless we secure our borders and ports.” Not a bad point. He is probably right about this one. But, what does this have to do with amnesty?
In fact, how do any of his arguments support the assertion that amnesty is lunacy? They don’t. He rages against illegal immigration by Latin Americans, but he doesn’t explain why amnesty is lunacy. Yes, he is only complaining about Latin Americans. All of the industries he listed are get their undocumented workers from Latin American countries. Notice that he didn’t get too upset about skilled industries like computers or health care that hire cheap undocumented workers from Europe and Asia.
Dobbs didn’t get enough chances to insult people in the first twelve paragraphs, so he uses the last two to throw out some more insults.
So sad.
