Illegal Immigrant Prediction

Only if you are a Drudge Report-reading newshound would you know that our abominable Congress has recently been trying to pass "comprehensive" immigration reform. The disconnect between these unctuous pols and the public on this issue is truly astounding. Clearly, they are acting as whorish lackeys for the money dispensers - those farsighted, rationalist party chieftains. Why else would a sitting politician ignore his current constituent voters for the sake of very hypothetical future voters?

I am also aware of, and partial to, this theory that Congress has agreed amongst itself to pass something now on illegal immigration simply because it wants the messy issue over and done with before next year's elections. A "comprehensive" bill allows them to claim that they have dealt with every thorn from enforcement to eventual citizenship. The issue is just "too divisive" and these incumbents don't want to have to debate any upstart challengers who are fired up on border jumpin', identity thieves. That's wonderful, the slimeballs are thinking about themselves first and whom they serve second third fourth - who knows where we fall on their list? Or maybe it's more of what I described in the first paragraph - namely, that they don't want to have to fight with the money dispensers during the election season, when they really need them.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to make one, prescient prediction.

There will be a massive public uproar against and clampdown on illegal immigration whenever it is that the economy turns sour.

This isn't so much a prediction as it is a history lesson. Whenever financial times have gotten tough, the outsider has always been shunned if not blamed. The Jews were economic scapegoats in ascendant Nazi Germany. The Poles were thrown out of England after WWII when jobs became scarce. In fact, that is how my grandfather, a Polish pilot, ended up in South Africa; nobody dared hire a Pole in England while Englishmen were unemployed thus my grandfather set off for Johannesburg with his English wife and 2.5 children. He had no job lined up and enough money in his pocket for about a week's worth of food. (Remember the Poles became personae non gratae despite having rescued England from the brink of Nazi domination.)

And the most recent example of economic scape-goating was the welfare reform of the early and mid-1990s. It can be argued that seeds of that were sown by the 1990-91 recession.

Mark my words, the values of your house and portfolio won't be the only casualties of the next recession - you could lose your gardner as well.