Nerve Endings Firing Away

Tancredo has gone wacko. How much more could he be, you ask? Well, when he was running for the Republican nomination he thought the single most important issue in America was illegal immigration. Somewhere down the line, he managed to generalize that to all immigration. In today’s NY Times, he writes in a very brief op-ed [along with other Presidential also-rans] that the United States ought to close its doors and take its welcome mat inside:

What is also missing is a recognition that our borders include our international airports, where tens of millions of tourists and other visitors enter our country on various types of temporary visas — or without any visas if they come from one of 27 “visa-waiver countries.” [source].

Ah-ha! So America in order to be safe should view all the people coming in at her airports suspiciously even after they have been granted visas by your own government. As for those “visa-waiver countries”, they are supposed to be your closest friends or allies. Dude, your brand of xenophobic policies failed to excite even the bottom half of the conservative wing of the Republican party and you ended up getting less votes than even Ron Paul whom your party passionately hates. As your party folks would say, the market has spoken so slink away.

Fortunately for America, Bill Gates has a diametrically opposite view on immigration and economic growth. Bill Gates rightly points at much needed immigration reform especially in terms of expediently dealing with permanent residency. Thankfully for the country, I’m sure Americans take Gates more seriously than they ever would Tancredo.