Where on the political spectrum do you lie? (Mods: Please don't move!)

[Kenyth]

Lastly, and this is the most controversial position I will take, is immigration. The most common denominator in all of America's public schools deemed "failing" is that their student body includes a higher percentage of first generation Americans than the national average. In today's America, corporations feel an entitlement to saturate the labor force with a revolving door of immigrant workers with the endgame of suppressing wage levels....and then leave taxpayers to pick up the bill for social costs. Highest among that list of social costs is schools overflowing with students who can barely speak English.

I talk about this all the time. I don't know of any middle class American who doesn't find this a huge problem. Cheap Labor Conservatives can be worse than Socialist Liberals! Almost every job market is being affected by this in some way! Sending jobs overseas is another way our workforce is being pressured.

[Amanda]

Kenyth, the immigration issue makes for strange political bedfellows.

On one side of the argument, you have the populist liberals and the cultural conservatives who are opposed to our current immigration policy due to wage suppression, soaring social service costs, rising poverty, and cultural fragmentation. As a working-class girl who has seen immigration in the meatpacking industry turn her hometown into a miniature Detroit economically, I definitely fall into this category.

On the other side of the argument are the limousine liberals and the Chamber of Commerce conservatives, who embrace lawless immigration policy for different reasons, but are still on the same side of the argument. The limousine liberals have fantasies of a multi-cultural utopia while the Chamber of Commerce conservatives want to use immigration policy to micromanage wage levels. Both groups perpetuate the "jobs Americans won't do" mythology as a strategy for swinging public opinion their way. By and large, it seems to work.

And given our President's embrace of "amnesty" for illegal aliens, it's pretty clear that he knows which political lobby butters his bread.

[Kenyth]

Amanda, you've just explained why I'm middle road and disgusted politically. Some elections, I feel as though I'm choosing between a rock and a hard place.