The message in the headline is a plain fact and is a perspective on the immigration issue which is hardly ever - or even borderline never presented. It needs to be presented in bumper sticker format and pushed out to help flip the conversation. Follow me below the squiggle for a long chat about what I believe is a message gap which exists even within the world of the American liberal which should corrected.
I'm a talk radio junkie. For those who are not aware we still have left wing talk radio in this country. Air America sadly failed but on Sirius XM we have a channel called "left" and we also have a ton of podcasts and other listenables from a large number of left wing talkers. This is what I mainly listen to. Every once in a while I will dip my ear into the nastiness of right wing hate for as long as I can bear so I can truly say that I have a handle on what they are saying but that's not really important in the scope of this.
For those who haven't listened, most left wing talk radio tends to be presented by incredibly knowledgeable people. People like Thom Hartman, Ari Rabin-havt, Mark Thomson bring an arsenal of history, context, stories of personal involvement and a serious depth to the issues. They also frequently take calls and I would say that the majority of the callers are very intelligent as well. They do allow calls from right wingers (which for the most part are pretty uniformed) as well as a good number of left minded people who are either partly uninformed or they can't express themselves that well. It is a mixed bag but again - I would say the majority (IE - more than 50%) are intelligent, liberal and can speak to issues.
On a recent long drive I listened through part of 3 call in shows which all addressed immigration. I was truly surprised by the calls. The vast majority who discussed the immigration issue spoke about "Illegals" and carried the memes of the right wing - illegals take jobs from Americans and that allowing a pathway to citizenship was going to bring down wages more and cost "Americans" jobs. I didn't mention the name of Ed Schultz in my first list because of all of the liberal hosts I think he is most frequently compared to right wing talkers. He certainly has the least depth of historical knowledge and he presents himself in a very different fashion than the others. I've heard him accused of bloviating and at times not knowing what he is talking about and I can't argue strongly against either claim but I still find myself listening. He is at the heart a truly liberal guy in the very passionate sense that he embraces liberal philosophy from a mid-western and gun owning perspective (which is a very real thing).
I mention this now because it was his show that had the most. Caller after caller who were not Republican "plants" who went to excruciating and I believe real depth to speak about how they agreed with policies like Health care for all, women's rights, that they always have and will continue to vote D, many of them union members .... and then they went on to pitch the "It will cost us jobs and I don't agree at all - they are 'Illegals' - they entered the country illegally". For what it's worth on this issue Ed is 100% in favor of a road to citizenship and he went blow after blow with them. What was clear was that he knew that again - these people were not lying about their other progressive views and what was clear as well was that he sounded truly flustered that all of the callers seemed to support the idea coming from one of the first callers that -- because they 'broke the law' that really deportation was the best bet.
And - as I mentioned - it happened on other shows too - on Thom Hartman the same thing came across.
But back to Ed and what he attempted to do - without much success sadly - but - he kept hammering this point which should be obvious but is hardly ever made and could honestly be a great bumper sticker:
For every "illegal" worker there is an illegal employer giving them a job
We know it here at Dkos but do we actively think it - do we use that word? "We want to pass this bill to stop illegal employment". How about that? People talk about other countries where there isn't the 'illegal worker' problem but they never mention that in other countries - people who aren't citizens and don't have a visa CAN'T WORK! Aren't employed en masse and don't provide a backbone of jobs that they are paid for by countless large corporations who are breaking the law by continuing to do this.
Given a chance and messaging this message could possibly open a lot of eyes. I don't think it's almost ever presented like this and it should be.