Shocker: RINO NY Times opinion writer backs amnesty.

David Brooks writes for the NY Times, where he's billed a conservative.  That's bullshit, since Brooks invariably supports the liberal position on every issue. 

He stays true to form on the topic of amnesty--oooh, sorry:  Immigration "reform" in an opinion piece for the Times yesterday (titled "Pass the bill").  In it, Brooks cites a number of point in trying to make his case.  Among them are the fact that the CBO allegedly claimed amnesty would increase GDP by a few percent over ten or 20 years.

He cites a separate study by the American Action Forum claiming amnesty would increase per capita income by $1,700 after 10 years.

How...interesting.  Because just seven paragraphs later he agrees that amnesty would drive wages down, but brags that it would decrease wages less than expected.

The second conservative complaint is that the bill would flood the country with more low-skilled workers, driving down wages..... In the first place, the recent research suggests that increased immigration drives down wages far less than expected. Low-skilled immigrants don’t directly compete with the native-born. They do entry-level work, create wealth and push natives into better jobs. 

Which is it, Mr. Brooks?  Do you claim amnesty will increase wages, or drive them down?  Do you even realize that you contradicted yourself?

And consider the next two sentences after the bolded one above:

Low-skilled immigrants don’t directly compete with the native-born. They do entry-level work, create wealth and push natives into better jobs.

Does Brooks believe--as he seems to be implying--that there are no entry-level jobs in the U.S. that are being performed or sought by Americans?  Because if there are any, seems to me low-skilled immigrants will be competing directly against low-skilled Americans.

Brooks's claim that immigrants will "push natives into better jobs" is similarly flawed:  An unskilled American isn't automatically going to develop increased skills just because the Democrats declare amnesty.  In fact, just a few 'grafs earlier he claimed "this bill radically increases the number of high-skilled immigrants."  What possible reason does Brooks have to believe the folks who are "pushed into better jobs" won't be these high-skilled amnesty winners instead of low-skilled Americans?

We could go on but you get the drift:  Brooks's job is to write pieces to give upper-class Republicans enough psychological cover to support amnesty.  He does this by asserting at the top of the pieces that all reasonable people support amnesty.  And since his readers all want to be thought of as reasonable people, that's a wrap.

There's no need to be consistent or truthful since no one actually reads those pieces critically.  Thus just the headline and a few assertions are enough to do the trick.

You think I'm kidding about no one reading his stuff critically?  Hey, the contradictions got by the vaunted Times editorial staff, right?

Blogger Drew at Ace's summed it up nicely:  Supporting amnesty means supporting policies that hurt Americans in order to provide benefits to people from other countries who have broken our laws.