Posted on 03/08/2007 9:12:33 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Immigration reform is a predicament wrapped in a dilemma.
While it is common for issues to separate Republicans and Democrats, immigration is an issue that opens yawning divides within each group.
"We are engaged in a struggle for the soul of the party," Mel Martinez, the general chairman of the Republican National Committee, told me.
Martinez said Republicans must back more than border security if they are to survive politically. The party, he believes, must back legislation that will lead to the "regularization" of illegal immigrants already in this country.
Alex Castellanos, media strategist for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, sees it differently.
"Of primary importance to Republican voters is that we are at war and our borders are porous and it is petrifying," Castellanos told me. "How do we not lock our borders at night?"
Both Castellanos and Martinez are loyal Republicans, both are Cuban-Americans and both came to this country as children. But they divide over immigration.
Martinez, who is also the junior senator from Florida and the first Cuban-American to serve in the Senate, said the issue is unifying in one respect: It is uniting Hispanic voters against the Republican Party.
"Hispanics share a language, but not much else," he said. "But I believe this issue has galvanized the Hispanic community like no other issue has. This is a moment in history, a moment in time. An emerging class of Americans view it personally and passionately, and the political outcome will be very long-lasting."
There is another wrinkle: A number of big businesses depend on the cheap labor that illegal immigration provides, and the Republican Party risks a lot when it risks crossing big business.
"We need guest workers, because the business community depends on workers from other countries because they can't get the workers here," California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, told me recently.
They not only risk (once again) being portrayed as weak on security and soft on crime, but there is also a split within the union base of the party: Younger unions with Hispanic memberships that are likely to gain from a guest-worker program oppose older unions that believe illegal immigrants are taking jobs from American workers.
But the Democratic uproar has been drowned out by the roar emanating from the Republicans, some of whom feel the party is at a historic crossroads on the immigration issue.
Matthew Dowd, who was a senior strategist to George W. Bush in 2000 and his chief strategist in 2004, has said that if Republicans are to win national elections in the future, they must increase their share of the minority vote. And the Hispanic vote is the most fertile ground.
"Hispanics are more like European immigrants of the early 1900s or late 1800s," Dowd said. "They are like the Irish: They start out Democratic, but as they become part of the economic mainstream, they become much more valuable to Republicans."
President Bush, a former border-state governor who speaks Spanish and campaigned on creating a more sympathetic immigration system when he ran in 2000, favors a law that includes a guest-worker provision instead of a law that just addresses border security.
In 2006, Republican Sen. John McCain joined with Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy to sponsor such a bill. It failed, but the two will soon introduce another version.
The greatest political implications are for McCain, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination against Romney, who is pushing border security, and Rudy Giuliani, who has been sympathetic to immigration in the past but is not taking a high-profile role on the issue at the moment.
Monday, I interviewed top strategists for all three campaigns.
Castellanos, working for Romney, said America had to make its borders less vulnerable to illegal aliens. "This is not a slap at Hispanics; that does not mean you put the torch out on the Statue of Liberty," he said. "People come here and are productive. But there is a legal way to do that."
Rick Davis, CEO of the McCain campaign, said, "If you are an Hispanic today, you are registering Democratic. The outcome of the debate on immigration is very important to the future of the Republican Party."
Davis said that in 2004, Bush got more than 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. But in 2006, after the controversy over immigration, Republicans running for Congress got only about 30 percent.
"There is a message there and it isn't good," Davis said.
Michael DuHaime, executive director of the Giuliani campaign, tried to wend his way through the minefield. "I think this is an issue that is going to be talked about, but in a much larger, broader context," he said. "It is a key issue, but there are other much larger and broader issues, like cutting taxes and cutting spending."
Democrats may face considerable and conflicting pressure from organized labor if immigration reform comes up for a vote in Congress.
The fast-growing Service Employees International Union endorsed the Kennedy-McCain bill last time around. The AFL-CIO and Teamsters opposed it.
The possibility exists of a Democratic Congress and a Republican president joining forces to pass immigration reform and to sign it into law before the November elections next year. If that happens, both parties are likely to seek credit from Hispanic voters.
"We need to secure the borders and we need a guest worker program that works," Schwarzenegger said. "It all depends on how you present the thing."
I would NEVER allow them to become US citizens - that is the punishment. If they want to become US citizens they should go back and stand in line.
That seems to be the case, barring a major citizen uprising.
Who cares about open borders?
Who cares about abortion?
Who cares about the 2nd Amendment?
Who cares about gay marriage?
Who cares about socialized medicine?
/s
If the border was mined no one would try to cross it thus no casualties.
Short of the fence option (with signs and blaring klaxons that the land past the fence(s) is full of landmines), there would be a lot of accidents, probably quite a few with children--at least initially.
Nonsense. Signs are cheap and word-of-mouth would spread the news like wildfire (not to mention every radio and TV station on the planet) long before the job was done. No one would try to cross.
That needed repeating...bump.
sw
Except for blacks race is not an issue to base ones vote. Hispanic American Citizens by and large support protecting our borders and removing illegals. Black voting patterns indicate that race is the most important factor - not necessarily if one is black but one does what is best for blacks not America.
A better solution altogether is to enforce current laws against employing illegals. Dry up the jobs and illegal aliens will deport themselves at their own expense. And they can afford it if they can send $20 billion back to Mexico every year.
Well! That's all that matters, how 'valuable' they are to whatever party. NONE of these people have any respect for these 'immigrants' much less the rest of us. They're just a commodity. It's disgusting.
They could at least keep pretending they aren't pandering and using them.
The business community (some who hire illegals) just lost 2 to 5 % of their income with these Alien Visa cards. Before, the alien had to pay cash. The retailer will now pay a percent of that sale when it's paid by credit card.
Kind of a 'catch 22'. Maybe some businesses will finally get on the Chamber of Commerce if they lose some $.
"We are engaged in a struggle for the soul of the party"
Martinez defines the struggle to secure amnesty for illegals and a massive immigration preference for Mexicans/latin americans as "a struggle for the soul of the party".
I'm sure all the businessmen will gladly pay the fee to gain the business. Most businessmen care less about the effects on America of their hiring Mexican illegal aliens than they do about their next Mercedes Benz or BMW.
This is just another piece of the plan to dismantle the USA and merge us with Canada and Mexico.
The New Alliance Task Force and Partnership for Prosperity is a part of the urban legend known as the North American Union.
Rates of assimilation are no different at all than earlier groups of immigrants. Same rate of language learning. Same rate of intermarriage second gen. The only really bad area re: assimilation is the tendency of Latinos (the big group of present foreigners) is their tendency to go directly to work after HS, rather than go on to college.,p. If you insist, I will post the links for you, but it will mean I have to trawl back thru my old posts and find it. It is a myth that they are not assimilating.
Are your Mexican/Mexican descended acquaintances light skinned or mestizos?
Bingo. You nailed it. There is a real caste system throughout Latin America. Because of our REALLY screwed up immigration quota system, most Mexicans who can come here legally now are the wealthy, and that means they are disproportionately light skinned. Southern Mexico is poorer, has more Indian "blood" in the mestizo population, and are generally discriminated against and looked down on. (Crap, for that matter Mexicans are kind of the "Irish" of Latin America, looked on as brutish, coarse, and boorish by many Latinos). Oaxaca is a state in Southern Mexico, bordered by Chiapas. The two have some of the highest Indian populations in the country.
The Reublicans are at the crossroads. They may lose some votes if they oppose amnesty etc, but they will gain some from the poor American who has been displaced by the illegal immigrant.
And they will save our culture.
Bump!
"It is uniting Hispanic voters against the Republican Party."
Not doing anything is turning lifelong Republicans against the Republican party.
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