Cheap Labor Lobby Attacks Kansans (Or Treason Lobby Attacks Kris Kobach?)
01/26/2013
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Target: Kris Kobach (and his People)?

Target: Kris Kobach (and his People)?

Kansans are enjoying the fruits of a relatively strong economy, it appears. So the Slave Power/Cheap Labor Lobby is conniving to take them away. Predictably, the Wall Street Journal is doing PR.

Immigration Splits GOP, Business Groups in Kansas by Neil King Jr. January 22, 2013 is quite open about this:

Kansas is showing the strains arising within the GOP over competing visions of how to handle undocumented workers.

A coalition of powerful business groups, including the Farm Bureau and the conservative Kansas Chamber of Commerce, is proposing a guest-worker program that would turn the state into one of the most welcoming in the country for undocumented immigrants. Backing the effort are national conservatives, local faith groups and a number of law-enforcement officials.

(VDARE.com emphasis—note the use of the Politically Correct term for illegal aliens: “undocumented.”)

By “national conservatives,” the WSJ means Conservatism Inc, personified by Open Borders Uberhack Grover Norquist

To soothe conservative jitters, the coalition drafted anti-tax activist Grover Norquist to address a Topeka breakfast last week packed with state lawmakers. Trying to punish everyone who broke the law getting into the country, he said, would be like fining everyone who ever broke the national 55-mile-an-hour speed limit, before that was lifted. "We have a 55-mile-an-hour immigration law," he said.
Significantly, the local GOP Establishment has qualms
Caught in the middle, and wishing it would all go away, is Gov. Sam Brownback, who earned a reputation while in the U.S. Senate as one of the GOP's leading advocates for immigrant rights…. "This is a federal issue and should remain a federal issue," he said in an interview, acknowledging that he feared an immigration fight could split the state GOP.

…Republican state House Speaker Ray Merrick shares the Brownback belief that no action is the best action. "I'm not real enthused about having an immigration debate this year," he said.

Brownback as Senator auditioned for the role of MSM’s favorite Immigration RINO—and, it is pleasant to relate, attributed the failure of his Presidential run to his wrong stand on Immigration.

There is, however, the possibility that a blindly selfish attack on the living standards of fellow Kansans is not the primary motive for this effort. The Wall Street Journal disapprovingly notes

But lined up against them is Kansas' ambitious Republican secretary of state, Kris Kobach, who is promoting a series of measures in the legislature to crack down on illegal workers and their employers.

...Mr. Kobach became a national lightning-rod after he helped draft tough immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama, the first of which sparked a Supreme Court brawl for the Obama administration.

Mr. Kobach calls the business coalition's plan "dead on arrival" and has the support of a large faction within the GOP-dominated Kansas legislature, which is expected to wade into the immigration fight this spring.

Kris Kobach is almost unique—an elected official of whom Peter Brimelow, Editor of VDARE.com, approves.

The Treason Lobby really hates Kobach.

A nationwide Amnesty push is underway. Bribery (enjoy that first big paycheck, Mr. De Mint?) and repression, as always, are the Treason Lobby’s first weapons. Could it be that challenging Kobach in his home state is a maneuver to impede his emergence onto the national stage?

As usual with Wall Street Journal immigration articles, the comment thread consists of very well-informed Patriots wiping the floor with Open Borders loonies.

I particularly liked the contribution by “Alfred Doyle”

Though the Kansas unemployment rate is lower than the U.S. average, there are still 140,000 in the state unemployed, working part time, or not looking for work, who would take jobs held by illegals if wages were increased and worksite conditions improved…

By estimate, Kansas has 85,000 illegal immigrants, many in meatpacking jobs. PayScale says these jobs pay $11 - $15 per hour. The availability of foreign labor prevents us from knowing the free market wage for these jobs—perhaps it is $25 per hour. Perhaps in a free market some of these jobs would be mechanized. Doubling the wage would increase the price to the consumer generally by only 10-15%

….There would be no issue of illegal immigration now had not the American people been betrayed since the 1986 amnesty by a succession of Congresses and Presidents who, under pressure by the growers and Chamber of Commerce have refused to allow a national system of employment eligibility (E-Verify) to function at its full potential. Millions of illegals came in, knowing that they could easily obtain forged Social Security cards and use them to get and hold American jobs. Failure to enforce immigration law ("speed limits"), was never a moral issue for Grover Norquist.

 

H/T One Old Vet

 

 


 

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