We've Got a Helpin' Hand to Lend

If the Democrats in Washington knew what’s good for them, they’d come out in vocal and unequivocal support of immigration. In the days of my youth (hmm), I wrote on the importance of immigration in American society. I would now like to comment on the importance of immigration for the Democratic Party.

On a principled level, the goals of the immigration movement are at the very heart of the progressive agenda. A popular argument against immigration claims that jobs are taken away from lower-class workers. However, the plight of the working-class American is the plight of the exploited-class immigrant, so the American and immigrant labor movements -- superficially adversarial -- are in fact united under the sweat and blood of the down-trodden worker everywhere. Immigrant and American workers are brothers within the larger battle against economic injustice. The fight for higher wages, labor law enforcement, greater health-care coverage, and tighter checks against worker exploitation does not discriminate against race or nationality; it is a fight that promises higher living standards for all workers everywhere.

A progressive embrace of immigration is not just humane policy, moreover, but wise politics. Numerically, the Hispanic population could become a powerful voting block for the Democratic Party; Ideologically, they're not far off. Standing at literal geographical crossroads, immigrants tend to oppose globalization and colonialism. They see the government as an agent of human welfare, as a force against the economic injustice that they embody. Racially profiled and socially discriminated against, they know first-hand the importance of civil liberties and personal freedom. And the list goes on. Importantly, immigrants remind America that border patrollers and barbed-wire fences cannot snuff-out the brutally real problems of global injustice. We should ask not, how are immigrants crossing into our country, but why. We should investigate the practices that perpetuate the destitution which forces these people into our nation -- not just deport them.

Yes, Hispanics are a fixture of social conservatism, but political alliances are fostered not spontaneously self-assembled. We should acknowledge the Immigration Movement as born from the struggles of progressivism, and love it as our own.

Update: El Norte, all your questions will be answered. Salta la sangre '06.