That’s a quote from a column yesterday by Howard Goodman [send him mail] in Florida.

Gangs braced by struggles of young illegal immigrants, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, April 1, 2007

TALLAHASSEE – Seven people had just been shot in Lake Worth, three of them shot dead. So I asked state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, whose district includes Lake Worth, about our gang problem.

She immediately walked over to her desk and picked up a page from Sun-Sentinel.com with the headline: “Battered sailboat carrying 101 Haitian migrants lands on South Broward beach.”

“I think a lot of the problem might be here,” the liberal Democrat said.

Now, I have plenty of respect for the thousands of people who escape desperate poverty in their homelands and brave awful hardships to get here, work hard, send kids to school and quietly obey our laws, even if they had to break the immigration laws to get here.

I understand that our economy has come to depend on their low-wage labor. I’ve seen how a hard-line stance on illegal immigration is often a despicable code for racist or anti-Hispanic prejudice.

But it’s time to own up. It’s become clear that our porous borders and our casual acceptance of illegal immigration have contributed to a rising tide of gunfire, drug dealing and gang life.

Mr. Goodman and Rep. Brandenburg have just been “mugged by reality,” as the saying goes. Of course, you can see that old habits of thought die hard–even when Haitians are actually shooting people in large numbers, opposition to Haitian immigration may be a “despicable code” for “racist or anti-Hispanic prejudice.”

Judging by the absence of MSM drum roll, it may really be that the “White House” immigration plan, accounts of which began to appear last Thursday, was actually leaked. That is encouraging: it appears that Democrats, when approached by GOP Congressional hacks trying to cut a deal for the Administration, preferred to expose the plan, sit back and watch the row. This suggests the Treason Lobby pessimism reported on Saturday by Peter Brimelow may be widespread, and that embarrassing their opponents seemed to these Democrats more rewarding than co operation.

After some confusion, pro-Amnesty forces started the predictable wail that the proposals were inadequate, and lesser MSM outlets experimented with AP’s blatantly misleading headline White House offers more conservative immigration plan By SUZANNE GAMBOA March 29 2007.

As is often the case, the most lucid accounts of these US immigration policy subterfuges are to be found in the Anglophone Indian press. These newspapers know a large element of their readers are extremely interested in the matter and they have no incentive to deceive. Thus the Indo-Asian News Service account New US plan moots work visas for illegal immigrants Magalorean.com March 30 2007 goes straight to the key (using “moots” in the English English sense of being a pivotal component):

Under the plan circulating on the Capitol Hill, undocumented workers could apply for three-year work visas, dubbed as Z visas. They would be renewable indefinitely but renewal would cost $3,500 each time.
The undocumented workers would have legal status with the visas, but to get a green card, making them legal permanent residents, they’d have to return to their home country, apply at a US embassy or consulate to re-enter legally and pay a $10,000 fine.

These Z visas, in other words, are amnesty. Costly, and giving rise to plenty of rent-seeking opportunities for bureaucrats and immigration lawyers, but perpetual. Green Cards would be obsolescent and consequently all the proposed changes in their issuance essentially irrelevant.

VDARE.com insists that any Immigration proposals meet an acid test: what do its proponents say about Birthright Citizenship? Any failure to deal with this belated and dubious interpretation of the 14th amendment, which, rather than any Congressional determination, is why all babies born here are citizens, destroys the reform credentials of any plan. A proposal such as this, which envisages the presence of large volumes of alien young women, and ignores this question – as of course it does – is just another immigration acceleration/nation wrecking measure. Patriots who do not want their country converted into a Spanish-speaking third world slum must reject it.