Scott Galupo

By Scott Galupo, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

One of the things that continually puzzles me about the immigration debate—not just in Arizona, but generally—is how the left almost exclusively frames it in terms of economic opportunity and civil liberties.

And yet the cost of undocumented immigrants has an appreciable impact on just about every policy arena that liberals care most about--whether it’s rising healthcare costs, schools that are long on pupils and short on funding, the environmental degradation and aesthetic blight of exurban sprawl, pressure on low-income wage-earners, or widening inequality.

Illegal immigration is not the lone culprit of any of these problems, but, at the very least, it exacerbates them.

Maybe it’s the perception of conservative racism or xenophobia; maybe it’s the potential bonanza of future Democratic votes. Whatever the case, liberals are oddly tone-deaf to the challenges of importing so much poverty.

If I’m wrong about this—if I simply haven’t read widely enough—I’ll happily stand corrected.

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