At Least Someone's Still Working For Us

The obligatory link: Bill would block credit cards for illegals

Three cheers for Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. It's nice to see at least one member of Congress standing up for what's right, even though it may cost them politically in the future. She's introduced a bill which, as the above link states, would prohibit Bank of America's asinine plan to offer credit cards to people without acceptable forms of identification.

For those who didn't catch the beginning of the story, click here for a refresher.

Tricked By The Cover

The obligatory link: Dems urge GOP to halt immigrant prank

Wouldn't you think that the GOP was actually doing something? Well, aside from the fact that they can't be troubled to do much in the way of actual work on illegal immigration, anyway? No, unfortunately, all the ruckus is about the College Republicans "Catch an Illegal Immigrant" bit.

The sad part, though, is where the RNC actually reponds:

Tracy Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said "we find these activities both egregious and offensive and condemn them wholeheartedly." But she noted the College Republicans are independent of the RNC: "We do not control their activities."

Egregious... Merriam-Webster has it as "conspicuous", often as in "conspicuously bad". Of course, the only reason the whole thing is conspicuous at all is that people keep writing stories about it. Which leads us right into the next part. People are writing stories about the event, making it conspicuous, as it were, because they're "offended". (And yes, that belongs in scare quotes if anything does.) Frankly, I take issue with people who condemn as offensive folks who are essentially trying to get out a message of, "Hey, there're people over here breaking the law... Y'all wanna do anything about it?"

Well, file it under "there's no such thing as bad publicity", I suppose. Maybe if it stays in the public view long enough, people might actually get the idea. ... ... ... Then again, maybe not.

How To Shoot Yourself In The Foot

The obligatory link: Immigrants who wire money get help from the Fed

In a way, I feel like this story goes hand in hand with the one earlier about having the IRS go after eBay sellers. Again, we have the government, in a bid to gain extra revenue, doing something that actually holds revenue down. Of course, this has the added "bonus" (if you can really call it that) of tying in with the illegal immigration issue.

Actually, it's a lot like the Bank of America story from a couple weeks back, too... which, not surprisingly at all, gets a mention in the article. It's another way that we could be getting locks on illegal immigrants for deportation, but even though we're spending money to do things like keep National Guard units on the border, easy solutions like this to the problem of finding the illegals already in-country never see use.

Until We've Naught Else To Give

The obligatory link: BofA aims new credit card at illegal immigrants

Sure, they're a company, and they're welcome to extend credit to whoever they think they can hook for it, and drag money out of. At the same time, though, why can't they be troubled to just take care of this in Mexico in the first place, and see if they can solve the illegal immigration problem on that end? Sorry, I'm just not seeing what good comes from making life easier for illegal immigrants here...

Now, on the plus side, if they have to register anything like a permanent address so BoA can get ahold of them, the government could then request those records to get a lock on the illegals... Of course, given the current policies as to such people already in the country, that wouldn't really do any good....

Sorry, I'm trying to find an upside to this, and I'm failing. Anybody else want to give it a shot?

TWD's also got a post on this at his site.