Comments

1. Mustafa

   Tuesday 6 May 2008 at 21:24

   John McCain’s 2006 Amnesty bill for illegal immigrants generated huge opposition from the right of the Republican party, so vitriolic that the resentment almost scuppered his campaign earlier this year. By far the highest proportion of illegal immigrants to the US come from Catholic Mexico - the official figure is about 60%. I remember wondering at the time whether opposition to amnesty was generated a) in part by new citizens who resented those who had not gone through the tortuous naturalisation process and b) in part generated by fear of increasingly powerful Catholicism. Certainly the Catholic church is one of the biggest pressure groups lobbying for immigration reform.

   The Hitch commented on these issues in an interview at about the same time:

   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612244/posts

   …I just can’t imagine what it’s like for someone from the Philippines or from Hungary or someone who is trying to do the right thing and just can’t get any response. There used to be…there was a famous saying, I think it’s by Roman poet Terence. Nihil humanem alienurm puto - Nothing human is alien to me. The slogan of the Department of Homeland Security is nothing alien is human to them.

   Well again, perhaps to phrase it personally, for those of us who have stood in line and done all the right things, and obeyed the rules and so on, it is actually a bit galling to see people leapfrogging. And what interests me, I spent quite a lot of my time in California, it was very often the people most opposed to this, are people who are themselves fairly recent immigrants, and they don’t particularly want to have the same treatment accorded to those who didn’t, as it were, make it legit.

2. John in Cincinnati

   Wednesday 7 May 2008 at 2:40

   Aww come on — it’s well printed and the colors are nice — only one letter missing, which is pretty good for us.

3. Larkers

   Wednesday 7 May 2008 at 10:10

   What a good idea. When will this enterprise begin?