A Modest Response to 24Ahead’s Criticism of DRM

It comes to my attention that DRM has been criticized by a lame little blog named 24Ahead.com.  Although the website isn’t worthy of being used by DRMCapitolGroup.com for toilet paper, when one is engaged in manly debate, one should respond.

For starters, the first accusation was that I shouldn’t tell Americans to shut up in my article.  When I said that Mitt Romney needs certain people to shut up about immigration, I’m talking strictly about Romney’s needs from his own party: he needs Republicans to stop talking about immigration because every time it makes the news cycle a hundred Mexican-Americans change registrations from Republican to Democrat, and the anti-immigrant rhetoric is poison for young and independent voters.  This is clearly the first subtlety of my writing that has escaped 24Ahead.  Sure, these clowns are Americans, but they don’t represent the more broad “American public” that 24Ahead is implying that I’m referring to.

Now, wading through the many misspellings that make it read as though the article were composed by a drunken teenager texting while driving, it seems the next argument is based on the DREAM Act taking college educations away from American citizens.  In this regard, there may be a glint of truth: if a non-citizen gets a spot in a school, that’s a spot not available for a US citizen.  The way he frames it, however, you would guess that the DREAM Act would empower the government to go around “affirmative actioning” educations from the hands of good, decent Americans to some undeserving Mexican who just burrowed under a border fence.  The truth is that the undocumented immigrants who qualify for the DREAM Act and are applying for college have typically worked much harder than their citizen counterparts to get through school.  The DREAM Act would level out the field for certain scholarships and allow them to compete, not guarantee funding, thus creating a more free market for education.

As for the claim that it would drive down wages, that’s just wrong.  Having undocumented workers afraid to push for their rights when their boss is withholding pay may.  Having documented workers who know what their rights are and are empowered to see them enforced, however, is the answer to being screwed over by your boss for illegally-low or withheld wages.

Opening up to a larger pool of talent will allow job creators to connect with a broader array of skills.  This will lead to a more thriving job and employment market and ultimately increased, not decreased, job opportunity for all.

On to the next charge, that “Romney never ‘pushed’ SB 1070.”  Romney sure as hell “pushed” SB 1070, and if you were a politician or anyone important I’m pretty sure you’d be getting slapped with a “pants on fire” rating.  What else could you label calling SB 1070 a “model for the nation” at a time it was being debated in the courts and state legislatures across the nation?  It was because of SB 1070 that a wave of state immigration laws have gained momentum, such as HB 56 in Alabama.

24Ahead also claims that both Romney and Ryan are on our side when it comes to immigration, largely because Romney agreed with some points of Rubio’s DREAM Act alternative and Ryan is saying that we need comprehensive immigration reform.  For the first part, Romney has gone on record saying that he would sign a military-centered bill such as the ARMS act.  The problem is that this provides only a tiny fraction of the relief offered by the DREAM Act, and the DREAMer community is not interested in such cheap compromises.

Comprehensive immigration reform is often what you hear when a politician wants to opt out of signing on for the DREAM Act, so that he can throw his arms up in the air when a bigger deal can’t be pushed through and say “at least I tried” to the people he’s trying to impress that want reform.  They know that anything bolder than the DREAM Act on immigration would be seen as an overreach and something which would rally the Republican base against it and allow Republicans to cash in on anti-immigrant sentiment while they looking “tough on immigration” like Lamar Smith for the cameras.

All in all, the article critiquing me was very poorly written, something that I could have spat out drunk at 2 a.m. while watching Netflix.  It seems as though there are certain gaps in understanding the basics of how politics actually works, such as throwing people into an overreach situation to ultimately frustrate their attempts.  In the future, whomever writes for 24Ahead, please don’t make fact checking your articles my chore.

Good day, sir.