What is going on in their minds? How can they have come to a policy that effectively contracts out a chunk of immigration policy to criminal gangs that smuggle human beings? I can only guess, but I suspect it has to do with the tendency of some Leftists to approach every question in terms of race.

I’ve noticed that this tendency is especially strong in the U.S. It’s difficult to discuss policing, prisons, drugs policy, higher education, free speech or (particularly) welfare without some pundit making it a race issue. For a certain kind of Leftist, the fact that many illegal immigrants are not white is the single most important fact about them, trumping everything else.

Listen, for example, to Francois Crepeau, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants: “It is remarkable that in most of our countries we have nothing against numerous Germans and French coming in and we dislike profoundly that people with darker skin colors are coming in. There are elements of racism in this nationalist, populist reaction to migration.”