If you're like me, you've had it up to here with the refrain of "what part of illegal don't you understand" from right-wingers trying to use the immigration debate to distract hard-working Americans from the structural reasons behind their ongoing economic woes.  

Rather than running scared from this simple-minded chorus of xenophobia, it's high time progressives stood up and called a spade a spade.  Allowing immigration status to be used as an excuse to exploit workers is not only morally wrong, it's bad for other workers.  Standing by while hundreds of working parents are rounded up like cattle, separated from their children, and detained for days to weeks without regard for due process is not only cowardly, it's un-American.

Instead of tolerating the completely impractical solution of deporting 14 million undocumented immigrants, we need to come up with practical plans for integrating them into our society and helping them continue contributing to a national economy that they are already propping up.  In the meantime, we need to make sure that the hysterical calls for cracking down on "illegal" immigrants doesn't continue to victimize the very same class of "legal" workers that the crack-down is putatively intended to protect.

Fortunately, a few enlightened state leaders in Iowa are taking some moderate but laudable steps toward achieving this agenda.

Amidst the current economic downturn, states legislatures across the country are faced with some of the tightest budget crunches in recent memory.  According to the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities,There are currently 20 states facing a combined budget shortfall of $35 billion in 2009, with 8 more projected to enter the red in 2010.  With over half the country's states facing immanent deficits and the rest struggling to stay in the black, the temptation in most statehouses has been to "tighten up the belt," slashing spending on crucial social services and trimming back the public workforce wherever possible.

This slapdash strategy is  a recipe for disaster.  At a time when private spending is already plummeting, laying off state workers and cutting off help to those in need is the last thing our ailing economy needs.  A far more humane and farsighted solution would be to seize the current economic challenges as an opportunity to create a fairer tax system; one  that would increase state revenues, extend help to those most in need, and ask corporations and the wealthy to do their fair share to help the country through tough times.

Every four years about this time of year, we hear the usual complaints about states like Iowa and New Hampshire and the super-sized influence they enjoy in deciding the presidential nomination for everyone else in the country.  But we never hear quite enough about the far more outlandish distortion of democracy foisted on us by the Electoral College.

Sure, we know all too well that under the Electoral College system a candidate can lose the popular vote and still sneak into the White House.  But what we don't talk about nearly enough is the profoundly repressive effects on voter turn-out and civil rights produced by this flawed and outmoded system.