The Conservative Case for South Park

Tonight's episode of South Park had a meaning behind it. To summarize shortly, people from the future arrive in South Park looking for jobs because the future is so overpopulated and there are no jobs for these people. As a result, they'll work for much lower wages, that they hope to save and then have available in the future for their families. The people from the future take all the unskilled labor (and some of the skilled labor), which turns the displaced workers against the new arrivals. There was even a debate on The O'Reily Factor (fake of course), that pitted a redneck conservative against a hippie liberal. In the end, Stan, one of the child characters on the show, comes up with an idea to get rid of the travellers from the future. His idea was to make the future better so that they wouldn't want to come back to the past.

The reason I bring an episode of South Park to the forum is that there's a very obvious parallel drawn between the people from the future and Mexican immigration. And the ultimate solution that Stan comes up with is to make the living situation in the future better so that the people of the future wouldn't want to leave. That sounds very much like the conservative case for free trade as a solution to the immigration problem. That case is that we can prevent immigration into the US from Mexico, or at least slow it down by building up the Mexican economy.

There are other aspects of South Park that would definitely make conservatives cringe, like the massive homosexual orgy, but the subtile message that it delivers shows that you can't put Trey Parker and Matt Stone as strictly liberal either.

UPDATE: Dan reminded me that I didn't stick my neck out and comment on what I thought the correct policy for the US should be. Simply put, I do favor free trade. That much is obvious. The real question is what I think about immigration. I think legal immigration is just fine. It's the illegal stuff that I oppose and wish the government would get a handle on actually enforcing the laws on the books. That would serve as a further deterrant to illegal immigration, which would make law enforcement easier. But like I mentioned earlier, free trade and the improvement of living conditions in these countries would serve as a discouragment for people to attempt to move here illegally. That's my two cents on immigration.