Gary Shilling writes on SafeHaven.com:

I am convinced that the housing bubble is gigantic and will burst before long with massive implications here and abroad. In fact, it’s the key to the global economic outlook.

Now, what does this have to do with immigration? Well, loosening immigration policy is one of the most effective and rapidly acting way to prop up real estate prices–particularly if you see policies expanded that importation of relatively affluent people—or those that provide services to relatively affluent people. If you cram more people into a given amount of real estate, all other things being equal, that real estate will tend to go up in price.

Now, what is interesting here is that we are seeing both the broadest level of home ownership in years combined with a trend toward increased concentration of wealth into a few hands. As I’ve shown previously, there is a big connection between extreme wealth and tendency to support open borders politically.

Basically what we have with immigration policy is a corrupt, largely incompetent elite that can not create real wealth for a nation via their leadership, but can through political means mine the value of the citizenship rights of the rest of the population. Historically, such elites have been dealt with rather harshly when the their chickens came home to roost. It looks like in the US today, these folks are just buying time–trying to avoid paying the piper as long as possible. [VDARE.com note: The collapse of the housing bubble raises another question: what are we going to to with all those unemployed construction workers? Or to put it another way, what are they going to do when they're unemployed?]

Nancy Snyder at Truthout writes:

As the many-faceted analyses continue to be examined in the wake of the 2006 midterm elections that propelled the Democrats to control both the House of Representatives and the Senate, a new factor came into play in campaign strategies: the issue of free trade. Incumbents who did not question the failed economic model of NAFTA that wrecked havoc on their communities found themselves on the losing end of this election. There were seven Senate seats and forty-four House seats that were won by fair trade candidates, and the issue was instrumental in the Democrats’ winning in such solid numbers.

I think the issue here ultimately is jobs_ and the availability of “good jobs” In a more abstract since, distribution of wealth and income is a major issue. The Republicans failed in part because their economic agenda had questionable distributional outcomes. It is plausible that there was some net increase in production of wealth, but not enough to give a broad majority of the problem visible increases in their economic well bing.

Fair trade isn’t so much an issue in its own right, but is related to the results is expected to achieve. Trade is a major factor in changing the distribution of wealth and income in a developed countries. When a developed country like the US opens its borders, distribution becomes in the US becomes more like that in the rest of the world. The countries with the most equal distributions of wealth and income tend to be countries with relatively careful border and trade controls.

Now, I’d guesstimate the relative importance of the trade to immigration to be 2-1–trade is roughly twice as important at present as immigration.(I’m basing that on the NSF estimate of $100,000 cost per immigrant and comparing it to the trade deficit). However, improving the trade situation will be pretty dang slow-and the immigration situation can be made worse(or better) pretty dang rapidly.

I question whether a Democratic economic agenda will get the desired response if it involved an attempt to fix bad trade deals accompanied with an immigration amnesty or major expansion or immigration. It certainly would be better for some folks, but I can easily imagine big blocks would get left out in the cold. For the democrats to have a serious political success they’ll have to have an economic agenda that benefits 70-80% of all Americans(because a lot of folks won’t vote their economic interests but will vote for some religious or ideological value) and that whole program will have to manifest net positive results in a 2-3 year time frame.

Now, my personal experience is a bad immigration program like H-1b pretty much single handedly turned a solid, stable industry into a jobs disaster within a 2-3 year period. Trade is going to take time to handle. You don’t build export industries over night-or create local substitutes for imports overnight either. The trade deficit originated as a chronic problem, and it will take years to correct that situation(assuming we are lucky and the foreign bankers don’t seriously yank the chain of the US and destabilize the government before that happens).

Now even if trade and immigration are properly handled, tax, industrial and monetary policy will I expect become major issues again. Those have all been put on the back burner by “guns, butter and tax cuts too” set of policies facilitated by large scale foreign borrowing.

While Townhall.com masquerades as a Conservative opinion clearing house, it has long been obvious that it is really being managed as Bush Administration/GOP Establishment echo chamber. Most of the columnists are what I referred to the other day as “Pilot Fish” for the Inside-the -Beltway leadership. Paul Craig Roberts and the late Sam Francis were banned; I believe Pat Buchanan has been censored sometimes.

Quite why not-very-covert Reconquista Ruben Navarette Jr. has been picked up as a columnist is mysterious; but it has one great virtue: the articulate ferocity of the hostile comments posted on the discussion threads following his pieces.

Escondido and others have it wrong on immigration Sunday November 19, 2006 is the usual arrogant demand that America lie back and enjoy being violated into becoming a Latino slum. A few comments from the thread:

- I am getting my hours cut at my job right know because they hired a guy from Honduras who makes $12.00 an hour and I make $14.00. This guy can’t say ten words in English. We all use short wave radios at work, but he doesn’t because he can’t understand what we say to him. And he’s going to replace me. And you’re going to tell me this is a self inflicted wound

-That’s it I’m done. I swear on my dead dad’s grave, I’m never coming back to this website again. If these people were flooding the country to become columnists and replace you, I bet you would think differently.

-I thought Townhall was a website for conservative thought. This article is pure liberal propaganda.

-The fact is that most of us have no influence at all on the Federal problem of illegal immigration. But it’s a clear fact that if in our own towns we don’t allow them to rent apartments or buy property, register to vote or driving licenses, put their children in school, sign up for ‘benefits’ or speak Spanish in default of English, they’ll have to go somewhere else. When it works in one town, the next town in line will try it and find it works for them too. And before you know it, word gets out that in this state they don’t make it pleasant for illegals– go somewhere else.

-The so-called cheap labor these people provide is heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. We provide them with free medical care, free K-12 education for their children (who are automatically citizens if born here), heavily subsided college educations for their children, and lots more. Middle class wage earners pay dearly for all this.

Linda Chavez’ recent pro-Amnesty spin on the election Immigration bust Thursday November 9 2006 attracted similar overwhelming denunciation (perhaps not quite as vitriolic – Linda’s style is not as obnoxious.)

Also of interest is the poor grades Townhall’s readers give pro-immigration columns (displayed in each writers archive).

When pro – immigration propaganda like this generates such huge quantities of well informed, articulate and angry opposition, as it invariably does nowadays when threads are offered, one has to wonder how long the Treason Lobby can keep the peasantry repressed. And how long Townhall will allow comments.