Political Football and Immigration Reform: Is the GOP Playing Games With Our Economy?
December 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Another great post from our guest blogger, Robert Gittelson.

Last week people across the country celebrated the beloved American holiday of Thanksgiving, hundreds of millions of proud Americans, (some 12,000,000 or so being undocumented, but American none-the-less), opened their homes to friends and family, feast on turkey, and of course, watch football.

It is that other favorite American Pastime – political football – that is on my mind, as I write this article. You see, earlier this week, in response to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s speech at the Center for American Progress, the Republican anti- Comprehensive Immigration Reform starting team decided to suit up, and get in the game. On November 20th, they wrote a letter to Sec. Napolitano that attempted to explain why, in their narrow minded opinion, now was not the time, (nor would there ever be a time), for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. The letter was signed by 12 Republican Restrictionist Senators, (their starting 11, plus a punter – although one could argue convincingly that they are all punters).

It is in the spirit of continuing this football metaphor, that I reference a very good article by Mary Giovagnoli at Immigration Impact.
In the article, she takes the Restrictionist arguments to task and labels their letter thusly: “It’s a playbook for the coming year, showing how to make points that are long on emotion and short on facts.â€