Open wound

German immigrants in Madison, Wisconsin, 1897. Spartacus Educational, UK.

Brooks is scratching at the open wound in the conservative movement, which is the issue of immigration. When the Nixonians first pitched the big tent of the Southern Strategy which was to join together the Republicans of yacht club and country club with the unreconstructed nullificationists of the South, it was always a doomed coalition, and immigration was [jump]
the issue that doomed it. Snake-Handler issues like abortion and exotic sexual proclivities were not a problem, since the White Shoes did what they did in private, and the yahoos didn't need to know about it; White Shoe issues like the pathological hatred of taxation were not a problem, because the Snake-Handlers didn't know how to read their returns and learn that they were not paying any taxes. But Tories cannot hide that they like immigration, and Know-Nothings cannot abide it.

Both are (unusually) a little bit right and a little bit wrong. The Tories are right in believing that immigration creates economic activity which is in the medium-to-long run to everybody's benefit; they are wrong to think that depends on their ability as employers to cheat immigrants of a fair wage. The Know-Nothings are right to fear that immigration will lower everybody's wages, but wrong to blame it on immigration instead of government failure to impose and enforce a living wage.

So Brooks, representing the Tories, is pissed off at the attention being given to the Know-Nothings like Jim De Mint (newly installed as head of an institution, the Heritage Foundation, that was once highly respected by people like, uh, David Brooks) and their ludicrously defective report on the imaginary consequences of excessive immigration, and wants it known. He brings out a sarcasm so heavy he can't quite control it, with the cliché that Latin Americans are all conservatives, or would be if it weren't for the fact that Gringo conservatives are unable to hide their hatred and fear. So with no further ado:

Shorter David Brooks, "Beyond the Fence," May 6, 2013:

Q. Why do we need comprehensive immigration reform?

A. We need more conservatives.

Q. Why are immigrants conservative?

A. Brown, you know. Tribal. Church and family.

Q. But don't we have conservatives of our own?

A. Oh, well, but you have to pay them overtime... And sick leave...

H/T Driftglass for half an idea. I mean not that he only had half an idea, he always has considerably more than that, but that that was all I felt I needed to borrow.