Immigration

Via Andrew, here's Huckabee on Benazir Bhutto's murder: "We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there's any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country. We just need to be very, very thorough in looking at every aspect of our own security internally because, again, we live in a very, very dangerous time," Huckabee said during a news conference Thursday night in West Des Moines. Over Christmas lunch a friend warned me not to be quite so dismissive of Huckabee. He's not just a hick I was told. And perhaps he isn't: this answer cannily ties security (whatever that is) to immigration after all, shoring up Huckabee's weakness on that front.

Part of Megan McArdle's response to Kerry Howley's excellent guest-worker article: But mostly, I worry about having a large number of people in the country who are, definitionally, not planning to stay here. There's something corrosive about transience: witness the way college students treat their neighborhoods. (And don't tell me they're young; they're prime guest-worker age.) Civic bonds can withstand culture clash, but I'm not sure they can withstand pockets of people who are just there for the job. To what extent - if any - does life in Washington DC support Megan's theory? What lessons, if any, might be extrapolated from Washington's experience with what amounts to a sort-of-kind-of guest worker programme? Discuss.

Of course, it is too late for Tom Tancredo's presidential ambitions. And yes, he's a loon. But still, this advertisement he aired in Iowa repays watching. This sort of thing is terribly unpopular - and vulgar - in Washington, but there are plenty of people who will agree with the guts of what Tancredo has to say here. And not all of them are Republicans. [Thanks to Garance for the spot].

If one were to compile a list of all the issues in which elite - and, er, libertarian - opinion is most completely out of touch with "ordinary" people's concerns, there's a more than decent chance immigration would be at the top of the list. As Garance reports from Iowa, it may also be the last issue with which Republicans can credibly thrash Democrats. People (like me) in Washington are relaxed about immigration - including illegal immigration - but that's not true in the mid-west, to say nothing of the south or parts of the south-west. Which is why the question of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants is a topic that is not likely to go away any time soon. It doesn't take much imagination to consider how popular it will be with talk radio.