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NY Times Editorial on Mayor Mike, Colbert, and Rupert

Posted October 3, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Federal Immigration Policy

Here are excerpts from today’s editorial in The New York Times:

It is too late to make a difference this year, but Congress, or at least one subcommittee, finally heard a thoughtful discussion about immigration. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and Rupert Murdoch, head of the News Corporation — both billionaires — told the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee that rational and well-regulated immigration is an economic necessity.

Mr. Bloomberg told how New York City, rich in foreign-born, job-creating entrepreneurs, was riding out the bad economy far better than other parts of the country. He warned that America’s refusal to fix its broken immigration system is a form of “national suicide.”

Mr. Murdoch lamented that the world’s best and brightest earn advanced degrees here and then go home, stymied by red tape and arbitrary visa quotas. He argued that giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship would bring them “out of a shadow economy and add to our tax base,” and said “it is nonsense to talk of expelling 11 or 12 million people.”

When Representative Maxine Waters asked where, on Mr. Murdoch’s Fox News, it was possible to hear arguments like his, Mr. Murdoch said she could find them in The Wall Street Journal. That is a start.

A few days earlier, the same panel heard from the TV satirist Stephen Colbert, who told of his difficult day picking crops with migrant farm workers. His appearance, mostly played in character as a conservative blowhard, was a comedy routine wrapped around a heartfelt truth: that farm workers do a difficult and dangerous job that most Americans will not stoop to do.

We are not sure all committee members got it. We believe a lot more Americans would, if their elected leaders talked as bluntly and as persuasively as Mayor Bloomberg and Mr. Murdoch — and with as much heart as Mr. Colbert.

Tags : bloomberg, colbert, congress, immigration reform, rupert murdoch

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