Liberal Two-Step

NRO: Dems Only Pay Lip Service On Border Control

(National Review Online)  To take perhaps the least important, but most extreme example, look at the group formerly known as Zero Population Growth. Whatever the merit of its goals, its name was refreshingly devoid of artifice and nicely summed up its raison d'etre. The impulse to stop the growth of America's population was an important element of liberalism in the 1960s and 70s. But it started to become an embarrassment once the fertility rate of American women reached replacement level (the number of births per woman needed to maintain a stable population, i.e., zero population growth). Today, population growth continues but it is driven mainly by immigration and births to immigrants -- whether good or bad, this is a statistical fact. So, did ZPG shift its focus from birth control to immigration control? No -- instead, it changed its name and abandoned its very reason for being! Three years ago, the group morphed into "Population Connection," an anodyne name whose chief virtue is that it allows the group to avoid any awkward questions about immigration.

The environmental establishment has shown the same tendency. It used to be an article of faith among green groups that slowing America's population growth was critical to preserving wilderness and protecting endangered species. But once that could only be achieved by limiting immigration, it was dropped like a hot potato. This issue has been most visible in the Sierra Club. Over the past several years, a group of Club members dedicated to limiting immigration has been involved in several campaigns to change Club policy. The board elite waged a scorched-earth campaign to avoid acknowledging mathematical realities of immigration, going so far as to silence immigration-control liberals running for board seats by filing SLAPP suits — a favorite tool used by corporations and developers against environmentalists.

Same with the ACLU. The group refused an open-and-shut free speech case in New York City -- because it was about limiting immigration. In 1999, an immigration-control group named Project USA started putting up billboards in New York with pictures of two children with the inoffensive (and accurate) caption, "Immigration is doubling US population in our lifetimes," citing the Census Bureau as the source. City officials threatened the billboard companies with financial retaliation if they weren't taken down immediately, and the companies caved. One staff attorney told Project USA privately that the ACLU couldn't take such an obvious free-speech case because "there is a large and growing immigrants' rights faction within the organization."

Ditto with Big Labor. From the days of Samuel Gompers (an immigrant himself) until just a few years ago, the labor movement was at the forefront of efforts to enforce immigration laws, playing a central role, for instance, in the effort to prohibit the employment of illegal aliens. Obviously, such a policy promoted the economic interests of America's blue-collar workers, but also reflected union members' intensely patriotic views, which were so apparent in the AFL-CIO's steady commitment to fight Soviet Communism. But no more. In 2000, the executive committee of the AFL-CIO voted to embrace amnesty for illegal aliens, increased immigration levels, and an end to the ban against employing illegals.