Immigration

The blogosphere is alive with talk about the new Arizona law. Megan (with a libertarian argument against the law), Ezra, James Fallows, Paul Krugman yesterday, etc. This issue is going to go away. The lesson we learned last time is that the populace is not going to allow any law that gives a path to citizenship to someone who is here illegally. "Undocumented immigrants?" Sorry fellow liberals, I think this is misleading. They are undocumented because they are illegally here. Here Krugman makes the point that if we want a safety net, we cannot afford to include the whole world. My favorite comment was by a commenter on Fallows blog who points out that the French have a national ID card (as well as Communist China). Do conservatives really want to be like the French?

But just because a number of people who favor the law are racist, it does not mean that there are not good conservative arguments. That is a form of ad hominem argument, one which Leonard Pitts made the other day in the op-ed section. Krugman also engages in superficial type-casting at the end of his piece.

In a similar vein, NBC news last night reported on a new $90,000 prostrate treatment and said it raised ethical problems because not everyone could afford it. A good friend pointed out when I was thinking about health care reform that no one was talking about the big issue: what basic level of health care should be provided to everyone? Money does not grow on trees.

Addendum: I should add that I am not making a comment about this particular law. I have not thought about it sufficiently. Megan makes some very good points about whether everyone would welcome the probable intrusions by police. Others say that what matters is how it is enforced. These seem right. Another question is whether there is a better way. And I don't really understand what people in Arizona experience as a result of illegal immigration. I am just saying that it is unlikely that we will get a national immigration law. There is too much diviseness on the issue. And frankly, I don't think immigration is all that important as a national issue or global issue.

Another addendum: I read somewhere in the Times that conservatives do not favor a national ID card, which partly shows how little I know about "conservative thought." What then? The army on the border? Sounds pretty expensive to me.