Keller @ Large: Don't Expect Any Immigration Solutions
BOSTON (CBS) - The president will go on the air Thursday night to explain his executive actions on immigration, and the air will then explode with the livid rhetoric of the left and right on the topic.
You know the drill.
To the louder voices on the right, any sort of legalization of those here illegally is abject surrender to invasion by welfare-craving foreigners, all tabs picked up by the citizenry.
To their counterparts on the left, almost any limits on immigration are the racist fantasies of mouth-breathing nativists.
It's especially unfortunate that extreme positions have dominated this debate, because the complexities of it really don't lend themselves to hard-core dogma. This isn't abortion or capital punishment, where you stake out your moral turf and that's it.
There have been two major immigration reform bills in the past fifty years.
In 1965, it was a civil rights issue. U.S. policy was flagrantly discriminatory against certain races, regions and ethnic groups, like something out of a KKK handbook.
So the old quotas were dropped. But they didn't anticipate the flood that would follow, an immigration surge that our system has struggled to handle ever since.
In 1986, they tried and failed to fix the mess. The business of America is business, as President Coolidge put it, and plenty of businesses thrive on cheap labor. Not to mention the underground economy that services underground America.
So there's plenty of blame to go around for where we are now, and no reason to expect this wretched Congress to find an answer.
Maybe the president will offer a middle way Thursday night – if he can be heard over the din.
Listen to Jon's commentary:
You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.
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