Southwest Mississippi has a heady political year coming up. Here in Mississippi's 3rd Congressional district, our Congressional Representative, Chip Pickering, has announced he is not running for re-election. Trent Lott, the state's long-serving senior Senator, retired in December. This means that in November, in our neck of the woods we will elect a brand-new U.S. Congressman, Senator, and President all in one day. An uncommon event.
The local newspaper has been running profiles of the candidates for the 3rd Congressional seat. Yesterday, the confection was Gregg Harper, Republican candidate and resident of Rankin County. He seems like a typical Republican, affable enough, pro-life, in favor of the Iraqi War. In fact, he seems to think the only problem with the Iraqi War is that the government is not selling it well enough:
“The Republican Party has done a lousy job explaining why we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said, adding that officials need to better explain the country’s role in fighting Islamic terrorists “who want to destroy everything we believe in."
Interestingly enough, he is anti-stem cell research, but with a twist. His son has Fragile X syndrome, exactly the kind of disease stem cell proponents (erroneously) believe stem cell research can cure in short order. So in a sense, he is willing to practice what he preaches.
None of this is as troubling as this passage:
The main issue in the district, Harper said, is immigration.
“We need secure borders; it’s an issue of national security,” he said. “We need to enforce our existing (immigration) laws. I’m opposed to amnesty. I don’t think taxpayer benefits should go to illegals.”
This is exactly the claptrap that alienates me from the Republican party. I will save you a trip to the U.S. Census website and tell you a little about the 3rd Congressional district. Pike County, where I live, has a population of about 38,000, 51% white, 48% black, 0.7% Hispanic. Rankin County, where Mr. Harper lives, has a population of about 130,000, 81% white, 17% black, and 1.3% Hispanic. Unless Mr. Harper has detected a huge number of African or white-European illegal immigrants, there is no serious immigration problem around here.
This is the problem that I have with the immigration issue: It is a problem of the rich. Poor counties like Pike (per capita income $14,000) don't attract illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants go where the money is, to relatively wealthy states like California, Arizona, Texas, and New York. They tend to flock to big cities like Chicago, Denver, and Atlanta, bypassing rural areas like Mississippi. Yes, migrant workers do go to farms, but usually corporate farms, and corporate farming is not a big player in the Magnolia State.
We don't have an immigration problem here. Yet Mr. Harper calls this the number one issue in his own district at a time when we are at war, when the majority of Mississippians couldn't find Iraq on a map, when half a million Mississippians have no health insurance, when our per capita income is one-half the national average.
The best measure of a person's decency is his priorities. Ask someone what his first priority is, and his answer gives you pretty good insight into his character. Right now, President Bush's first priority seems to be securing legal amnesty for the telecom companies for privacy law violations. For the new Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal (also a Republican), it is comprehensive ethics reform for politicians. The depth of the chasm between the two priorities is arresting.
So here we have Harper, with all the things he ought to be worrying about, like education and crime and excesses of executive privilege and the mortgage crisis, and what's on his mind? The immigration status of Hispanics, who make up about one in one hundred Mississippians. Good God.
Of course Harper is just mouthing the tripe of his national party. The G.O.P. has no answers to America's real problems, so it makes up fake ones instead. Make no mistake, I think immigration laws should be enforced, but what threat do illegal immigrants really pose to our society? They take jobs no one else wants. They work for white people for half of nothing, and while their bosses charge the market rate for their services, the workers themselves are often are stiffed on their paychecks anyway. They get no insurance, no legal protections, no schooling, and as little health care as possible, and in return do a lot of our most unpleasant labor so uneducated Americans can work in air-conditioned malls. There is no strong evidence that they commit more crime than anyone else. Yes, they take jobs away from Americans. Now go find the nearest illegal immigrant, kick him across the border, and take over his job for 4 hours. I dare you. In 4 hours you will be out looking for him, begging him to take his old gig back.
People as clueless as Harper should be shoveling horse stalls for a living. I think I would trust the priorities of a Mexican who risked his life walking across hundreds of miles of desert so he could nail shingles for a living and send half his pay back to his family south of the border, over someone like him.
That is why I am not a Republican.