We’ve been looking at this illegal immigration thing all wrong, according to The Nation’s Barbara Ehrenreich. It’s not about what the illegals should have to do to become citizens. It’s about what we should be doing for them!

Undocumented workers shouldn’t be fined; they should get a hefty bonus!

For all they do for us, she says, forget about the $5,000 fine. It’s us who owe them money. Why?

First, those who do not remain to enjoy the benefits of old age in America will have to be reimbursed for their contributions to Medicare and Social Security, . . ..

Second, someone is going to have to calculate what is owed to “illegals” for wages withheld by unscrupulous employers: The homeowner who tells his or her domestic worker that the wage is actually several hundred dollars a month less than she had been promised, and that the homeowner will be “holding” it for her. Or the landscaping service that stiffs its undocumented workers for their labor. Who’s the “illegal” here?

Third, there’s the massive compensation owed to undocumented immigrants for preventable injuries on the job.

Ehrenreich says when we have fully compensated those victimes, then she is “confident” it will exceed the $5,000 proposed fine under the amnesty bill.

Wow, that sure gives me a new perspective. What was I thinking?

I guess I better go find my checkbook.

You have to love Liberals. They say America is evil because it once had slavery and segregation, but for years now they have pushed the identity of the group, the tribe, the race. They love hyphenated Americans and pitting these “identity groups” against Them, the evil white establishment that holds the little guy down. It’s the old strategy of divide and conquer. Keep the electorate fractured into groups and you can control it by setting yourself up as their champion. What a shame that the drive to unify has turned into the drive to control.

How bad has it gotten? Behold the indoctrination:

Commencement weekend is hard to plan at the University of California, Los Angeles. The university now has so many separate identity-group graduations that scheduling them not to conflict with one another is a challenge.

The women’s studies graduation and the Chicana/Chicano studies graduation are both set for 10 AM Saturday. The broader Hispanic graduation, “Raza,” is in near-conflict with the black graduation, which starts just an hour later.

Wait, it gets even better.

Some students are presumably eligible for four or five graduations. A gay student with a Native American father and a Filipino mother could attend the Asian, Filipino, and American Indian ceremonies, plus the mainstream graduation and the Lavender Graduation for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students.

And think of the linguistic benefits!

At the more intimate identity-group events, foreign-born parents and relatives hear much of the ceremony in their native tongues.

Unfortunately, the absurdity of all of this groupthink is lost on those seeking to keep us separate. They have a power agenda to pursue, after all.

But the core reason for separatist graduations is the obvious one: on campus, assimilation is a hostile force, the domestic version of American imperialism. On many campuses, identity-group training begins with separate freshman orientation programs for nonwhites, who arrive earlier and are encouraged to bond before the first Caucasian freshmen arrive. Some schools have separate orientations for gays as well. Administrations tend to foster separatism by arguing that bias is everywhere, justifying double standards that favor identity groups.

What a sad, pathetic spectacle is the modern liberal college campus. The author sums it up neatly.

As in so many areas of American life, the preposterous is now normal.

Wake up, Americans. Today we have massive immigration, both legal and illegal. We have government indoctrination centers (public schools) teaching segregation based on race and ethnicity. Assimilation to the culture is an “imperialist” idea. How can America remain America with such powerful forces working to tear it apart from within? At the rate we are hurtling towards the abyss there will not be much left to leave to future generations, however hyphenated they may be.

Paris? What happened in there?