It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Sting

The desperation to save the long-since-trashed Bush Legacy has reached out to the immigration issue. First we had the misdirection of a report that claimed homelessness is down - it isn't; it's rising - and now we have them pimping yet another report using our gullible media to make a problem sound like Bush fixed it when in fact the "fix" was his derailing of the economy.

The number of illegal immigrants in the country has dropped by as much as 1.3 million in the past year, an 11 percent decline since a historic peak last August, an immigration research group in Washington said in a report released Wednesday.

The report, by Steven A. Camarota and Karen Jensenius of the Center for Immigration Studies, found “strong indications” that stepped-up enforcement by immigration authorities had played a major role in the decline.

Sure they did. Bush's harsh methods kept people from crossing the border to find work, did they? Maybe. Maybe there's a simpler, less Bush-friendly explanation, though.

The study’s methods and conclusions were questioned by other demographers and economists, who said the decline might be less than the center reported and was more likely the result of the weak economy, especially in low-wage construction and manufacturing where illegal immigrants are generally employed.

“The decline can easily be explained by changes in the economy,” said Steve Levy, senior economist at the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. He said California had lost 134,000 construction jobs since the summer of 2006.

“The housing sector woes and weakening economy have been known for a long time and can explain why unauthorized immigrants would stop coming and why some of those here would leave,” Mr. Levy said.

Oh, yeah. That.

Comments

[eRobin]

Well, one way of mitigating whatever immigration problem we have is to improve the economies of neighboring countries so that people want to stay in them. Another, of course, is to wreck ours so that people don't want to come. BushCo picked the latter. No surprise there. I have quite a few friends who see the coming of the Amero and the lowering of the standard of living in the US and Canada. It's hard to argue with their predictions. Fun times ahead!