Is This That Hard Of A Concept?

Over at Campaigns & Elections, Jordan Lieberman thinks that there is something funny about Tom Tancredo (R-CO) preferring Mexican food:

Illegal immigrants may be the reason Rep. Tom Tancredo is running for president, but there’s one place he always runs during campaign breaks: Mexican restaurants.

The Republican hard-liner spent half an hour debating various options for a good Mexican dinner after a campaign event last week in Muscatine, Iowa. The problem? His first pick, Mami’s Authentic Mexican Food, had recently participated in a “Boycott of America” march advocating amnesty.

He and his staff ultimately settled on Carlos O’Kelly’s Mexican Cafe. “In Denver, we always go to Three Amigos, Dos Amigos, Two Tostados—something like that,” he told C&E over a table laden with enchiladas and margaritas.

“In D.C., we go to El Paso in Arlington, just off Glebe Road.”

Let me explain this in simple enough words that even liberals will understand it.

Like Tancredo, I like Mexican food. I don't have any hostility towards Mexico, or Mexicans. There's a darn good Mexican restaurant in Horseshoe Bend called El Durango where my wife and I eat almost every Friday night. The previous owners were clearly Mexican immigrants, and so are the new owners.

I don't mind if Mexicans or other immigrants want to come to America. Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.

I do object to anyone whose desire to come here means that they break the laws to do so.

I object to such a vast movement of immigrants that it drives down the wages of unskilled Americans. First priority needs to be for Americans who would otherwise be dependent on social services because their wages have been depressed by competition from unskilled laborers from elsewhere. (I'll simplify this for Democrats: if you claim to be concerned about poor Americans--why are you working hard to make sure that their miserable wages drop even more?)

I object to the United States being the pressure relief valve for Mexico's corrupt political class. Mexico has sufficient resources to be a First World Country. Yes, it is more crowded than the U.S. But it has far more resources and land per person than Hong Kong did. The corrupt Mexican political elite has injured the workers of that country long enough--and until the pressure starts to build internally, this isn't going to change.

I object to a system that is so broken that terrorists can easily enter the United States by hiding in the stream of incoming illegal immigrants. Mao Zedong described the relationship of guerrilla fighters to the peasants as fish in water, and terrorists entering the country in that stream are much the same. Trying to cut off the flow of illegal immigrants will certainly reduce the flood to a trickle--which makes it more likely that we can identify anyone entering the country for criminal or terrorist purposes.