I’ve received about a half dozen comments on this week’s Dispatches column, “Immigration misperceptions stymie reform,” mostly from people who think I am a) crazy or b) a pie-eyed, or who make less-than-veiled attacks on the ethnicity of the undocumented.
I share some of it here, just to give you a taste:
From “BajaRat”: “Illegal aliens are criminals and parasites, one and all. Their very presence here and practically everything they do on U. S. soil is illegal. They need to be ferreted out, rounded up like cattle, punished for their numerous crimes, then booted back to whence they snuck in from with such extreme prejudice that they will never, ever think of violating our sovereignty again. Enough is enough.”
Hmmm. Check the language — parasites, cattle, criminals who’ve committed numerous crimes, sneaky. Pretty harsh.
From “From Gay Marriage to Illegal Immigration”: “Hank Kalet, there you go again. Lets start from the basic premise that illegal immigrants are not legal immigrants. It is not fair to those legal immigrants that may have waited their turn to enter this country legally.
Kalet is a liberal in every sense of the word.
We seem to have excused Turbo Tax Cheat Tim Geithner from paying his taxes even after he signed a form notifying him that he needed to pay his taxes that the IMF gave him a separate check specifically for this tax. So what do we do – we put this guy in charge of among other things the IRS. Now that is pretty blatant.
So now Hank Kalet wants us to lump in illegal immigrants with the legal ones. Hey, no need to follow the law. furthermore, lets be sensitive and give these folks a drivers license. I would say they might as well drive illegally as well. In-state tuition should be given as well. Lets not forget the free health care at the emergency room.
Please don’t give us this c r a p about the TV guys and Republicans. Either it is the law or it isn’t. That is the part that infuriates us.
Now if you want to call Hank directly at the Packet to discuss this be sure to press #1 for English, or is that #2?”
Yes, I am a liberal. And yes, I do believe gays and lesbians should be able to marry. What this has to do with the plight of the undocumented is beyond me, as is the odd Tim Geithner tangent. Best I can tell is this may be an Obama reference — you know, “the devil.”
This “it’s the law trope,” by the way, is a logical non-sequiter, failing to address the underlying ethics of the immigration debate. Yes, the undocumented have broken the law — as have all of those people who drive above the speed limit, lie on their tax forms, do home remodeling without a permit, smoke the occasional joint or authorize torture in interrogations. All of these things are illegal; their morality, however, has nothing to do with their legality.
The issue is not necessarily the law, but the ethical underpinning of the law. Laws change — slavery was legal and endorsed by the U.S. Constitution and interracial marriage was against the law until the 1960s. The question, in the end, is what purpose a law serves and I see no public purpose to taking a hardline approach with some poor manual laborer, but letting a presidential administration off the hook for violating national anti-torture statutes (yes, this is my own non-sequiter, but I think it’s a relevant one).
Hank Kalet 
Hey, Herb, don\’t forget us tinfoil hats that say:(1) Unless they have put a plastic garbage bag over the Statue of Liberty, there\’s no such thing as an \”illegal\” immigrant. The problem is welfare. Welfare for both citizens and immigrants. Cut that out and the problem virtually evaporates!(2) Marriage is none of the gooferment\’s business. It\’s an outgrowth of WW2 wage and price control cheating and the rascist South. Time to tell the gooferment to butt out.(3) And, since we\’re addressing \”racist and homophobe\” loons. Where is Obama\’s birth certificate? There\’s a reason that his education records are being defended vigorously by very expensive lawyers. And it ain\’t cause he got a D in calculus.Argh!Liberal or conservative. Please keep your gooferment to yourself!
Obama\’s birth certificate is in Hawaii and one can even google his birth announcement in Hawaiian newspapers (The Honolulu Advertiser, for example). You need to loosen the tinfoil hat, it\’s cutting off blood circulation. So where do the tin foil hatted loons think Obama was born? Indonesia, Kenya, North Korea, Kazakhstan or Mars? I guess the loons think that Hawaiian officials have been bought off and faked Obama\’s birth certificate. I would expect nothing less from the goofertarians.From factcheck.org:http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html\”We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as \”supporting documents\” to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.Update, Nov. 1: The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirmed Oct. 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu.\”As for the other comments on eliminating welfare, be prepared for millions more in poverty and homelessness. We will call the new tent cities Libertarianvilles.
Sorry A, but you\’re misinformed.Hawaii has never released his original birth certificate, O is blocking it, and Hawaii has made only the statement that there is a document on file. Hawaii allowed foreign births to be registered there. It\’s on a different form than a real birth in Hawaii. There is credible testimony by two relatives that he was born in Kenya.The organizations you cite are IN FACT \”house organs\” of the Democratic campaign. And, are not credible witness about anything. (They may well have been duped into defending a mistaken belief.) The fact that snopes echos it; doesn\’t make it so.The fact that there were two different fraudulent copies put up successively on the Obama campaign website started this whole dust up. Guess those were NOT manipulated either?Sorry, but what\’s being hidden and why?Add to it that his student records at Occidental College are being hushed up as well makes the matter stink like a dead fish.What is everyone hiding?Sorry, will we find out in 40 years that he was in fact born in Kenya?!? Before you dismiss tin foil hats, remember that there were rumors that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor. It wasn\’t until Stinnet\’s book came out that we found out that he did know and actively sought to lure the Japanese into an attack. That allowed him to get into WW2 and end the Great Depression.Just because it sounds far fetched, doesn\’t mean it\’s impossible. Bet you believe the Warren Commission too!