The Wall Street Journal tries new Packaging
03/19/2007
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For some time now it has been apparent that the managers of the Wall Street Journal's relentless amnesty/immigration campaign have been aware of a mounting problem: a lack of fresh, unrefuted arguments. To some extent they can deal with this by simply never allowing opposing views to appear (although embarrassing things have happened on the comment threads convention obliges them to sometimes offer). They make heavy use of the technique much favored towards the end of his life by the late immigration apologist Julian Simon, as Peter Brimelow noted in his obituary — simply ignoring inconvenient arguments. But in the age of the internet, when everyone has an instant archive, that can look embarrassing too. On Saturday they tried a new tactic: getting a new guy to repeat the same old clich?© ridden inanities — apparently thinking changing the packaging might help.

At least that seems the most plausible explanation for the otherwise laughably sophomoric essay Iowa’s Job Thieves By Michael Judge — March 17 2007. Discussing the aftermath of the recent meatpacking raids, it starts with a large dollop of sentimentalism:

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa — It's the third Sunday of Lent and Deisy Garcia, her 10-month-old son Jesus heavy in her arms, is praying for one thing and one thing only — her husband's release from the Polk County Jail.

(Lent — son called Jesus — praying — GET IT?)

and immediately puts its foot squarely on a land mine

I am an American citizen, a taxpayer and a homeowner," she says through an interpreter

What is Deisy Garcia doing being a citizen if she needs an interpreter for such a simple conversation? What does this tell us about Michael Judge’s comprehension of the citizenship process, or indeed of the question of assimilation that he left this unremarked?

Judge then wastes a good deal of space on the insignificant issue of whether the false US IDs used by the arrested men were bought from Americans, and quotes approvingly from the local business men who have rushed lemming-like to profit from the influx — without considering whether their self interest taints their opinions. Not stopping to ask what native Iowans might think about their school district abruptly becoming 40% Hispanic, the article moves on to completely mis-state the Iowa employment situation

There's a joke in Iowa that the state's biggest exports are corn and people. With an aging population and young people going elsewhere for opportunities, meatpacking, construction, manufacturing and other low-skill labor-intensive jobs are being filled by immigrant workers, documented or not.

Young people will certainly go elsewhere if traditionally attractive professions like meat packing are swamped by non-English-speaking cheap labor. Judge gives no thought to the effect on native-born workers of the influx, but does find an applauding quisling, Ken Anderson of the Marshalltown Chamber of Commerce:

This economy is demanding this kind of workforce and our immigration system just does not match what is required by our economy.

In fact of course, the economy is being presented with ”this kind of workforce” and is simply reacting. If labor were expensive, capital and ingenuity would be substituted, as traditionally it always was in America. Object to Ken Anderson.

About the only positive aspect of this sorry performance is the headline. No doubt this is a sneer by some East-Coast rooted sub-editor who thinks the idea wanting to live and work in Iowa laughable. But the fact is these illegals are stealing — remunerative employment, health care, education, even the chance to live in an English speaking country. Judge appears oblivious to this. Just possibly, the galley slaves at the Journal, who have occasionally shown signs of deviationism on this question, slipped one in.

Tell Michael Judge (an instructor at the University of Iowa School of Journalism) he needs to work harder on critical thinking (be polite).

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