Marc Cooper on Immigration in the Nation

From The Nation, Apr. 3, 2006, Showdown on Immigration, by MARC COOPER

Phoenix

Local Republican Representative J.D. Hayworth–author of a new book calling for a border shutdown enforced by the military and the suspension of legal immigration from Mexico–was adeptly working the conservative crowd gathered at the Biltmore Hotel. Having already publicly called on a fellow Republican, President Bush, to “apologize” for calling the Minutemen, a militant anti-immigrant group, “vigilantes,” Hayworth was really amping up the scare-tactic rhetoric. “We could have Watts again!” Hayworth excitedly warned the 350 “movement conservatives” brought here in late February by author and activist David Horowitz for one of his regular strategic confabs known as Restoration Weekends. If Congress legalizes the undocumented already here, Hayworth told the crowd, it could create a “permanent subclass” that could, in turn, produce “rioting like they did in France!”

One needed only to glance around the hotel ballroom in which Hayworth was speaking to perceive the yawning gulf between the tone of the current immigration debate and the quickly shifting realities of the American workplace. Even as Hayworth thundered away–invoking the title of his book Whatever It Takes as a call to stop illegal immigration–the rapt audience, including former Attorney General Ed Meese and chief Swift Boater John O’Neill, leisurely munched away on shrimp quesadillas with guacamole. Platters of stuffed empanadas, crab cakes and glasses of merlot and chardonnay were bused to and from the guests by a quietly efficient platoon of waiters with name tags reading José, Graciela, Mirta and Roberto. “Let’s hope that Hayworth’s deportation program doesn’t kick in before the finger food is finished being served,” cracked one moderate Republican.

The rest of this article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060403/cooper

KJ