Reconstruction in coastal Texas in the wake of Hurricane Harvey requires abdication of enforcement of immigration law, argued The New York Times’ David Brooks on Saturday’s PBS NewsHour:
And they could say, hey, we can’t do the wall right now. We got to rebuild Texas. And, by the way, on the background, a lot of people are going to need a lot of construction workers in Texas. And this is a country with a construction worker shortage.
So, maybe this isn’t the time to crack down on immigration. And so I think there’s a possibility, if they want to look functional, to seize this moment, whether they will or not. But I’m going for maximal optimistic unrealism.
Unity during crisis in an “ethnically diverse” city like Houston undermines concerns about social and cultural fragmentation resulting from the status quo of demographic change, said Brooks:
To me, the two biggest things that happened was, first, Houston came together. And that is significant, because Houston is the most ethnically diverse city in this country. And there’s an argument that is sometimes made, oh, we will never have solidarity as a nation if we’re so ethnically diverse.
Well, Houston does it. And so if they can do it, I think that argument against making our country diverse or opening up more immigration falls down.
Adjacent Mark Shields for a segment hosted by Miles O’Brien, Brooks neglected to delineate between lawful and unlawful immigration. Leftists and Democrats regularly conflate both legal and illegal immigration.
Brooks also framed political progress as predicated on the passage of legislation and expansion of state power. Republicans, he said, “have to get something done.” The GOP must not reduce spending in any other dimension via “offsets” in funding relief for persons and businesses damaged by Hurricane Harvey.
Reducing federal spending via “offsets” to mitigate financial burdens on taxpayers amounts to a “crazy [and] insane way to do government.”
Watch the segment below.
In June, Brooks connected economic dynamism to “a lot of immigration,” neglecting to set parameters to qualify or quantify the volume or nature of immigration. Support for President Donald Trump’s immigration and refugee admission proposals, he added, was rooted in superficial and racial considerations.
Also in June, Brooks cast debates between “big government versus small government” as obsolete, implying that public consensus was reached around his view of the proper size and scope of government.
Despite operating as a de facto left-wing Democrat in his commentary and analysis, Brooks is described by Wikipedia as a “conservative.”
H/T Ian Schwartz at RealClearPolitics.
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