Immigrants might be able to vote one day!
And that would be a tragedy, according to our conservative friends on either side of the pond.
Over in the US corner, we have those who are convinced that legalizing immigrants will lead to greater strain upon the tremendous entitlement programs of the US (yes, I was being sarcastic). When it comes to the ballot box, according to CPAC speaker Robert Rector, immigrants' political affiliations are ruled primarily by "free stuff".
"There's nothing evil about the immigrant. They're just acting out their natural intent," he says. "They're going to vote for free stuff."
Because in case you didn't realize, undocumented workers' main priority is not working, and living off medicaid and food stamps -- the same social security policies for which their tax payments create a net benefit in excess of $7 billion a year, according to the center for immigration studies.
Well, seeing as Obama doesn't seem too concerned about improving immigration policy right now, I think America's safe from those marauding illegal immigrants, their potential legalization and their insatiable desire for "free stuff".
Not so in the UK. As the tabloids revealed last week, the Labor government has been ethnically re-designing the makeup of Britain by opening the floodgates to foreign workers, in the hopes that friendly immigration policies will demand loyalty in the grateful, eager-to-please, newly minted Briton, and that they will consequently vote Labour. There is little evidence to support the claim that the Labour government has been implementing a "secret plot to lure immigrants" to the UK apart from speculation and tabloid hysteria. In all honesty I'm unsure why new immigrants would be automatically compelled to vote Labour -- presumably the government has been offering them "free stuff" to make sure of this.
What I find absurd about all the myths and horror stories concerning the hypothetical legal immigrant (who will obviously have a liberal, left-leaning, "free stuff" bent), is that everyone knows naturalized citizens and legal immigrants are often the most conservative mofos around, concerned primarily that their old compatriots from the mother country don't get the same opportunities that they had - that they suffer. God forbid new immigrants have the opportunity to work legally, vote for whom they want, and get naturalized as a Brit or an American. There's a word for this. I think it might be hypocrisy. You only have to look at Schwarzenegger, Amanda Platell and anti-immigrant campaigner Pauline Hanson -- who is emigrating to Britain -- for evidence of this.
But as most anti-immigrant campaigners in America and the UK would have you believe, Arnie, Amanda and Pauline are special. White, educated immigrants who rage against immigration are very, very different to those other people. The ones we don't want in our country.