Matt Yglesias must be busy moving into his expensive new townhouse, but he found time to smear Mickey Kaus as an immigrant-hater.
Kaus had the gall to point out that some of the beneficiaries of amnesty will be working in the construction industry — a sector of the economy that happens to employ more than 1 million native-born Americans (see Table 9 here).
“I don’t understand, Kaus wrote, “Everyone knows immigrants only do “jobs Americans won’t do”! Karl Rove wouldn’t want his son doing some grubby construction job anyway, would he?”
It’s a good point.
Rather than address the substance, Yglesias responded by casually wondering if Kaus “hates immigrants more than he hates Davis-Bacon rules.”
A few weeks ago Yglesias pretended to be concerned about long-term unemployment — a problem almost certainly exacerbated by both illegal immigration and Davis-Bacon.