It’s known that Vermont is a dairy state, and it’s widely understood that many of our farm workers are undocumented.  Some even pay taxes.  

Despite being a fairly crucial aspect of our own industry, and despite the current existence of federal laws which restrict access to undocumented workers, our own senate has supported a “kick ’em while they’re down” amendment.  One of my own Senators, Jeanette White, did the right thing here:

Through a late amendment, the bill also would exclude undocumented workers, which Windham County Sen. Jeanette White said was unnecessary.

“There was an amendment that was put on that says that Green Mountain Care can’t be provided to undocumented workers. And in my mind, it was unnecessary to put that in there because federal law already says you can’t use federal money for undocumented foreigners,” said White, a Democrat. “It was put in at the last minute and I don’t think it does anything.”

You’d think in such a liberal area of one of the most liberal states in the country, you’d have both the state senators on board with White’s statement.  But, in fact, Peter Galbraith, new in the VT state senate after running on a platform of “hey, I’ve been on TV!” voted to support this do-nothing-but-bash-immigrants-anyway piece of dreck.

For those of you unfamiliar with Galbraith, while he does live in Vermont, he doesn’t seem particularly interested in Vermont.  His campaign itself was a series of public appearances in which me said vaguely leftish things that sounded nice, few of which had anything to do with Vermont itself, and when pressed on issues about Vermont specifically, showed little to no interest in discussing the topic.  

But this is what happens when a well-known leftist runs for a local office in a community which is known for not only being leftist, but leftist to the point where even I think they’ve gone over the deep end too many times.

TO be clear: this isn’t the sort of amendment you support to change policy.  This is the sort of amendment you support in order so that, down the line, when running for higher office, you can say “I’ve been tough on immigrants.”  It’s not about clarity.  It’s political gamesmanship, the sort we see too often.

Galbraith’s a politician, and probably a good one.  After all, he managed to get elected to a political office without actually promoting much in the way of genuine policy initiative.

It’s not that he doesn’t have goals.  It’s just that those goals do not seem to have anything whatsoever to do with Vermont, its people, or even its migrant workers.