I usually find the slogan used by some conservatives that “the Democrats are the real racists” because of the Democratic Party‘s historic support for slavery and segregation to be vapid and intellectually lazy. But it does have relevance to a recent talking point that has become increasingly prevalent among liberal elites eager to defend the practice of illegal immigration.

Over the past week or so, several prominent legacy media pundits and Democratic politicians have turned to making an economic case against the deportation of illegal immigrants, claiming that a whole bunch of jobs would go unfilled if millions of illegal immigrants were deported, with catastrophic consequences for the national economy. Implicit in these arguments is a fundamentally racist assumption that Hispanic illegal immigrants are useful for filling low-wage jobs that most people don’t want to do. In other words, they view illegal immigrants as cheap, low-class labor.