By: Devona Walker
Why does the mainstream media ignore that when covering it? The immigration mess in this country is not a fake problem. But the debate surrounding how you solve it is completely artificial. Immigration reform has been the most politically divisive issue in this country for going on six years. That is insanely idiotic when you consider that both sides essentially agree on how to solve it. You cannot find one (unless you are talking to those racist nativists) anti-immigration groups that honestly believes this country can or should deport millions of illegal immigrants. Likewise, you cannot find one pro-immigrant advocate who believes we should not do more to enforce the rule of law and secure our borders.

It all boils down to who is going to blink first. Who is going to take up this fight, which is political suicide in the short-term for Democrats and in the long-term for Republicans?

And which one do you do first? Do you secure the borders first? Or do you start a legal process by which illegal immigrants currently in the country can begin a process of becoming a legal citizen? Yes, amnesty folks. Despite all the vitriol on the anti-immigrant side of things, there is not one expert among them who does not believe that “amnesty” in some form must be a part of solving our current immigration mess.

Yesterday a judge in Arizona temporarily shot down the most controversial parts of the state’s stringent immigration enforcement law. It should be noted that she would not have taken that step if she had not thought there was considerable merit in the federal case against the state of Arizona.

The truth is the law doesn’t have a chance of becoming law as it is written. It does not merely encourage, but requires racial profiling. But it also violates due process. It sets up a system in which the innocent can be indefinitely detained without any proof they are illegal. Validating someone’s immigration status at present takes several days and the Department of Homeland Security has already been sued several times for detaining legal citizens. If the federal government can’t get it right, with all the resources and training available to them, how do you think some small-town Arizona cops will fare?

But the really inexcusable thing about this whole immigration farce is that the folks penning these “enforcement-only” immigration statutes around the country, know these laws are not enforceable or legal.

The little-known secret behind this whole “anti-immigrant” movement is that the laws are not written by individual legislators, but the legislative arm of a far right anti-immigrant group called FAIR, that is the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Each bill serves as test legislation for future bills. They have built this movement entirely upon bias, fear and emotion and have no intention of actually helping resolve the immigration mess in this country. Their ultimate goal is to repeal the 14th amendment, which is citizenship by birthright. They want to create a situation where you are not necessarily a U.S. citizen simply be the act of being born in this country. They feel citizenship should be reserved onto to children born in this country and whose parents were also American citizens. They also feel admittedly that Latinos, not necessarily illegal immigrants, are a threat to our country.

It should be noted that in our last presidential election we had two choices, Sen. John McCain and Barack Obama. If these birthright folks had their way, neither would be eligible for U.S. citizenship. Obama’s father was Kenyan and McCain wasn’t actually born in this country.

It should also be noted that the far right folks fueling the anti-immgration debate and writing the immigration statutes are not at all in line with most Americans concerned about the rate of illegal immigration, the impact on social services, public schools, or necessarily the potential that exist for the Mexican drug war to spill over into U.S. cities. These folks are not even in line with groups like the conservative) Center for Immigration Studies, they are simply exploiting the immigration tensions that exist to further their nativist movement.

The last 11 states that enacted immigration statutes had direct connections to FAIR. FAIR is a fairly controversial group. It has been listed since 2007 by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. It’s not necessarily immigration legislation that caused them to receive this distinction but because of its historical ties to a Eugenics Foundation (Eugenics is a pseudo-science founded in the late 1800s that deals with the improvement-as by control of human mating-of hereditary qualities of a race or breed).

SPLC has also investigated FAIR’s founder John Tanton, a guy who has been warning for years, not about illegal immigration, but a “Latino onslaught.”

“In a majority of the states where legislation has been proposed or discussed, the leading lawmakers behind the bills are associated with FAIR’s legislative arm, a group called State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI) that operates in at least 35 states,” it was reported in Colorlines.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, FAIR has received more than $1 million in grants from the Pioneer Fund, a group that promotes the notion that blacks and Latinos are inherently less intelligent than whites.

In at least seven of the 11 states where these “immigration enforcement” statutes have been proposed, there are legislators “drafting” them that are member’s of FAIR’s state legislator’s group and Arizona is no exception.

In South Carolina, it was Rep. Michael Pitts. Pitts is a listed as a member of SLLI. The language in the South Carolina bill is strikingly similar to the one in Arizona. In Missouri, SLLI member Rep. Brian Nieves signed on as a co-sponsor of a draconian anti-immigrant bill recently referred to a legislative committee. In five other states-Maryland, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and Texas-the same is true.

Kris Kobach, a lawyer who works with the FAIR legal arm, IRLI, helped write Arizona’s SB 1070.

Why is Arizona any different?

Well, until now, FAIR’s strategy appears to be to have been to eat away at the rights of immigrants along the margins. That is, all the states up until this point, have not had significant immigrant populations or problems in terms of illegal immigration. Instead, FAIR chose conservative strongholds where they would be able to find legislators who found it politically advantageous to propose stringent immigration enforcement statutes. But in terms of really affecting the lives of immigrants, these bills were not that consequential — as those states do not have large populations of immigrants. This, of course, also meant there would be little resistance and pushback from Latino voters.

The difference in Arizona is that it does have a large Latino population. After Arizona, they will probably be emboldened enough to take on Florida, New York, Texas and California. Arizona is a very critical test case for the anti-immigration crowd. And this federal suit is equally critical when it comes to stopping the madness long enough to address the problem at hand.

About The Author(s): Devona Walker is a veteran print journalist. She has worked for The Associated Press and the New York Times company. Currently she is the senior political and finance reporter for theloop21.com. She lives in Columbia, Missouri where she is working on a Master’s in Public Policy and her first novel. Follow her on Twitter. Find her on FaceBook. [ More Articles By Devona Walker ]

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Peter Beinart: “Five years ago, Republicans backed tax cuts-but said deficits didn’t matter. Today, they say deficits are all that matters, but still like tax cuts. During the Bush years, Republicans mostly insisted, in Dick Cheney’s famous words, that “deficits don’t matter.” Now they say deficits are virtually all that matters. Their rhetoric has shifted radically, but their policy prescriptions haven’t changed one bit. You might think that people terrified of deficits would be concerned about permanently extending tax cuts that will add at least $2 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Nope. [ READ MORE ]

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Fox and Friends’ ‘Stupid‘ Side-Kick To Blondy Gretchen Carlson, Steve ‘Douchee‘ Doocy Ridicules Democrats:

Psycho talk: Steve Doocy misconstrued the Democrats’ desire to discontinue Bush tax cuts.

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Doocy falsely claims 47 percent are “not paying taxes,” asks should they “be allowed to vote?“

Recycling old falsehoods, Limbaugh names “liberalism” as the sole cause of the economic crisis

Limbaugh: “For every day Obama’s in that office, he denigrates it”

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Media Matters: As Andrew Breitbart’s Shirley Sherrod smear dissolved, rather than blame Breitbart for posting the deceptive clip of her speech, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and Rush Limbaugh ludicrously began speculating that he and the conservative media could have been the victim of a “set-up” that had been “orchestrated” by the White House. [ READ MORE ] [ TIMELINE OF BREITBART'S SHERROD SMEAR ]

Meanwhile, after apologizing for doing what he does best — misinformation and spewing “garlic garbage,” Osama Bin O’Reilly of the O’Garbage Factor, couldn’t help himself but open up a new line of attack on Sherrod: O’Reilly claimed that her story about taking a white farmer to a white lawyer — what she called “his own kind” and “one of his own” — reveals a racially-tinged world view.

….then he attacked Rachel Maddow, who responded forcefully:

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Fox & Friends dredges up debunked claim that NAACP president was in attendance at Sherrod speech

MediaMatters: After Andrew Breitbart posted a deceptively cropped video and smeared Shirley Sherrod as a racist, Fox & Friends followed suit, airing the video clip and claiming that Sherrod’s remarks were “Exhibit A” of “what racism looks like.” The full video of Sherrod’s remarks has since shown that Breitbart’s clip was incredibly unfair, yet Fox & Friends has not acknowledged its mistake or apologized for attacking Sherrod’s character on national television. [ READ MORE ]

When will Fox & Friends apologize for attacking Sherrod?

Despite accusing Sherrod of Marxism and “discriminating against white farmers,” Beck proclaims that he took her side

Beck’s purported “facts” about Sherrod resignation ignore Fox’s online promotion of deceptive video and his attacks on her

Bonus Video:

Kirsten Powers pushes back on Hannity’s “bogus” claims about New Black Panthers case

Hannity falsely claims Obama DOJ dismissed “a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party“

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The United States Senate — A Club For Rich, Old White Republicans Who Do Not Give a Rat’s Ass About The Un-Employed.

Top Senate Republican Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) insisted last Sunday that Congress should extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans regardless of their impact on the deficit, even as he and other Republicans are blocking unemployment insurance extensions over deficit concerns. “[Y]ou should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes,” said the Arizona Senator during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to — if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that’s what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.” [ READ MORE ]

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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   [ By: Paul Krugman ]
There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was, most people agreed, the decent thing to do.

But that was then. Today, American workers face the worst job market since the Great Depression, with five job seekers for every job opening, with the average spell of unemployment now at 35 weeks. Yet the Senate went home for the holiday weekend without extending benefits. How was that possible?

The answer is that we’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused. Nothing can be done about the first group, and probably not much about the second. But maybe it’s possible to clear up some of the confusion.

By the heartless, I mean Republicans who have made the cynical calculation that blocking anything President Obama tries to do — including, or perhaps especially, anything that might alleviate the nation’s economic pain — improves their chances in the midterm elections. Don’t pretend to be shocked: you know they’re out there, and make up a large share of the G.O.P. caucus.

By the clueless I mean people like Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for senator from Nevada, who has repeatedly insisted that the unemployed are deliberately choosing to stay jobless, so that they can keep collecting benefits. A sample remark: “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job but it doesn’t pay as much. We’ve put in so much entitlement into our government that we really have spoiled our citizenry.”

Now, I don’t have the impression that unemployed Americans are spoiled; desperate seems more like it. One doubts, however, that any amount of evidence could change Ms. Angle’s view of the world — and there are, unfortunately, a lot of people in our political class just like her.

But there are also, one hopes, at least a few political players who are honestly misinformed about what unemployment benefits do — who believe, for example, that Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, was making sense when he declared that extending benefits would make unemployment worse, because “continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” So let’s talk about why that belief is dead wrong.

Do unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to seek work? Yes: workers receiving unemployment benefits aren’t quite as desperate as workers without benefits, and are likely to be slightly more choosy about accepting new jobs. The operative word here is “slightly”: recent economic research suggests that the effect of unemployment benefits on worker behavior is much weaker than was previously believed. Still, it’s a real effect when the economy is doing well.

But it’s an effect that is completely irrelevant to our current situation. When the economy is booming, and lack of sufficient willing workers is limiting growth, generous unemployment benefits may keep employment lower than it would have been otherwise. But as you may have noticed, right now the economy isn’t booming — again, there are five unemployed workers for every job opening. Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work — but they can’t take jobs that aren’t there.

Wait: there’s more. One main reason there aren’t enough jobs right now is weak consumer demand. Helping the unemployed, by putting money in the pockets of people who badly need it, helps support consumer spending. That’s why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus. And unlike, say, large infrastructure projects, aid to the unemployed creates jobs quickly — while allowing that aid to lapse, which is what is happening right now, is a recipe for even weaker job growth, not in the distant future but over the next few months.

But won’t extending unemployment benefits worsen the budget deficit? Yes, slightly — but as I and others have been arguing at length, penny-pinching in the midst of a severely depressed economy is no way to deal with our long-run budget problems. And penny-pinching at the expense of the unemployed is cruel as well as misguided.

So, is there any chance that these arguments will get through? Not, I fear, to Republicans: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” said Upton Sinclair, “when his salary” — or, in this case, his hope of retaking Congress — “depends upon his not understanding it.” But there are also centrist Democrats who have bought into the arguments against helping the unemployed. It’s up to them to step back, realize that they have been misled — and do the right thing by passing extended benefits.