If you're like me and you employed a number of gentlemen of indeterminate immigration status over the weekend, you've probably been following intently President Bush's "Iraqin' the Border" tour across the Southwest. In case you haven't, it's his latest press tour, the goal of which is to distract from the deterioration of his party as a result of the broadening realization that his administration is full of moustache-twisting "nefarious bastard[s]" by pushing a refried immigration plan.

But it would be easy to turn this post into an indictment of Bush's delusional assertions "guest workers" would volunteer to go back to Tijuana after their six years are up or that it would be cost-effective to "harden" our borders with fences and surveillance cameras. The truth is that no one in government dares to discuss the real problems with immigration. Lucky for you, I'm not in government. Because that means that I can discuss the problems with immigration. And that I can't impose a "show me your boobs" tax.

Problemo Numero Uno de Immigración: The Relativity of Shitty
I know it's a nice, neat zero sum equation to say that illegal workers from Mexico are taking jobs from Americans, but it's simply not the case. Go to the nearest McDonald's and ask if they're hiring. Stop by the closest car wash and ask if they need towel guys. Whether it's cleaning hotel rooms, picking grapes, or collecting and recycling an '83 Chevy pickup full of scrap, there are plenty of jobs out there. The problem is that most Americans deem this work too shitty to count as a job.

Now I know what you're thinking: But the pay for those jobs is too shitty to live on! I agree, and so does pretty much everyone else here. So Americans don't take them. What do illegal workers do? Take two, three, or four of them. They live with 50 relatives, and they carpool like a motherfucker. Sure, that's a shitty way to live, if you're accustomed to the way Americans normally live.

The bottom line is that "shitty" in America doesn't compare to "shitty" in Mexico. Shitty in America is flipping burgers for eight hours so you can take home fifty bucks and not have health care. Shitty in Mexico is not working at all, getting your dirt house robbed by some cartel's bandidos, and then getting ass-raped by the polícia while filling out the report.

Problemo Numero Dos de Immigración: Brown People
White America doesn't like the idea of being a minority, but with these dusky Catolicos breeding like rabbits, that's what it's going to be. So let's stop the bleeding, hope for a Latino sickle cell, and rethink that abortion stuff.

Problemo Numero Tres de Immigración: Mexico
Would you risk your life paying every cent you have to a smuggler so that you could move to France, work in a cheese store, and be treated like an ignorant second class citizen? Of course you wouldn't, because you're sitting there in a comfy office chair eating a Hot Pocket. But if that Hot Pocket was a mule turd, you had diarrhea streaming out of your ass, and the only doctor in town was booked up for years performing cut-rate eye lifts on Tuscan housewives, would you? Maybe you'd consider it.

If you take a look at the miserable den of corruption and poverty that is Mexico, it's a testament to our racism that more of them aren't over here. So how do you solve the problem? I'd say invade, but I don't have the faith in that I used to. Maybe you could start by dismantling the organized crime rings that run the country. Not by dumping more money into the bottomless pit that is the DEA, but by handing the entire market over to organizations with experience turning illicit activities into well-regulated and virtually limitless tax revenue streams -- Phillip Morris, Seagrams, and GlaxoSmithKline.


President Bush, above, straining to comprehend. Either that or pooping.

Analogcabin @ 10:52 AM
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