I suppose I should not write about this, but it steams me quite a bit, and has done for a number of years now. And yesterday I got email (from a list that I have REPEATEDLY asked to get off of, I should note) that just irritated me to the point of having to do something about it.

In the song “Resist”, Rush says: “I can learn to close my eyes To anything but injustice.” I, on the other hand, am less tolerant. Stupidity and bogus logic go on my list as well.

So, here it is.

For a long time (too long) I worked for an organization called NumbersUSA. I should note that when I say “worked for” I don’t mean I was an employee, but that I did contract programming jobs for them through another company. While I was doing it, I had a real problem with the message that they were peddling, and which I, with my programming skills, was promoting. The message, in a nutshell, is that all the problems that we face in the USA are because of immigrants, and that we should not allow any more immigration, or, at the very least, push immigration levels much lower.

This message is patently hogwash. However, even if it had a shred of supporting evidence, they managed to completely alienate me by couching almost all of their messages in racist terms. Of course, they don’t admit that they are being racist, but most racists don’t.

So, anyways, here is the note that I received yesterday. I don’t recommend that you read the whole thing. It is long, rambling, and daft. But I’ll summarize one point.

A border guard was murdered, and it is presumed that it was done by illegal aliens in an attempt to get across the border. This proves conclusively that our immigration policies are too lax, and we should crack down even more on immigration.

Um. Yeah.

The logic in here completely escapes me, and alternate interpretations suggest themselves.

The guard was killed specifically because we have stupid immigration policies, and his death would have been averted if we had an open-border policy like most other modern, civilized nations have with their friendly neighbors.

Or, perhaps …

If our immigration policies are in fact moral, and it is in fact correct that we should keep immigrants on their side of the border, with lethal force if necessary, then surely the people working in these positions should understand that they are combat soldiers, and that casualties happen in that situation.

Or, perhaps …

If we crack down on immigration further, we should certainly expect to see an increase in this type of occurrence, since we will be increasing the tensions, and creating more of a war-like scenario.

Finally, my dear friend Roy Beck claims, in a wild passion, that our own borders (with friendly nations, he fails to mention) have less of a military presence than we have in some foreign nations (with whom we are on somewhat less friendly terms, and are, in some cases, in a state of near-war with) and that this should not be.

Clearly, Roy is living in a different world than I am. The USA has a lower immigration rate than most other developed nations. Nations like Switzerland, understanding that their nation is best served by bringing in the adventurous people around the world with enough chutzpah to leave their home and move somewhere else, actually offer incentives for immigrants. But Roy, under the strange impression that all of the whiteys that he does business with, and who give him large cash donations to keep the [insert favorite racial slur here] at bay, are in fact native residents of this soil and not, in fact (gasp!) immigrants themselves.

When we lost the NumbersUSA contract, I felt an enormous surge of relief — I no longer had to devote my days to supporting something that I felt was grossly immoral. I can tell you numerous stories of things that this organization accomplished, but you might have better luck just reading their web site. I won’t directly link to them, just in case they have the technical know-how to reverse-track to my web site and sue me for slander or something.

I made a comment on IRC today that struck me, after the fact, as being rather profound. Here ’tis:

<Bacchus> Majority rule, except when the minority objects.
<Bacchus> That’s American democracy in a nutshell.

And there you have it.