He’s done it again! Almost immediately after Peter Brimelow congratulated Punditry Entrepreneur David Frum on breaking the MSM/Inside-The-Beltway taboo in calling for an immigration moratorium to address America’s chronic unemployment problem, than he posts on Frum Forum Res Judicata: Legal Immigration is Not the Answer by Howard Foster August 15th, 2011

Howard Foster of course is the Chicago lawyer whose RICO suits against companies employing illegal immigrants VDARE.com has been happy to publicize over the years. He has written sensible things of Anchor babies and Refugee policy as well.

Foster’s Frum Forum note is eminently reasonable:

The bad economic news, especially persistently high unemployment, requires an examination of our immigration policy. The U.S. currently admits about 800,000 legal immigrants per year, all of whom are authorized for employment.

…how can we not tie the number of legal immigrants to our unemployment rate during a crisis? And why aren’t the Republican presidential candidates demanding this?

… Argued correctly, Republicans can use this issue to make serious inroads into the unemployed vote, and the votes of those afraid of becoming unemployed, which according to economists and pollsters, is about a third of the electorate… We need a halt on all legal immigration until unemployment falls closer to a natural rate of about 5%.

Tellingly, the reaction of the FrumForum readership judged by the comment thread is hysterically hostile, not excluding coarse language. It reminds me of the fury which broke out when the Anchor Baby/Birthright Citizenship issue was ignited last summer. Clearly a large part of the FrumForum readership is absolutely wedded to electing a new people through nation-breaking immigration. One comment by “Rabiner”:

Your policy prescription is jingoistic and xenophobic. It’s also extremely dangerous to design policies to cater to people who share those views but you do it anyways.

So what is David Frum up to? He is well aware of the intolerant and repressive habits of the Neocons and the Left – having exhibited the tendency himself on occasion. Although he has sometimes said deviant things on immigration he obviously knows how dangerous it is – witness his resolute evasiveness when the Center for Immigration Studies naively invited him onto a panel with Stephen Steinlight in 2004.

Frum has made a career (which has furnished him with a sumptuous independent webzine with no visible means of support) speculating on opinion trends amongst the rich and powerful – some ventures being more successful than others.

Maybe he judges the intensity of the unemployment crisis will produce recognition of the obvious in the circles in which he wants to move.

This needs watching.