Dems guilty of 'political cowardice' on immigration (WILLIE HORTON ALERT)

Remember Willie Horton? He was the convicted rapist who was allowed out on a weekend pass and attacked another woman while Michael Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts. Playing to white America's fear of black men, Horton was used in a campaign ad against Dukakis when he ran for president in 1988. It probably cost him the election.

Fast forward almost 20 years. Illegal immigrants are the new Willie Hortons of this campaign season. They are being used to rile up American fears of Mexicans and the Latinization of the United States.

Republicans are having a field day taking a hard line and blaming illegal immigrants for everything wrong with this country. Demo-crats, afraid they will also lose big, are too sheepish to take a stand on immigration.

"It's a kind of political cowardice," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "We need people to speak the truth on these issues and not run scared."

Instead of bashing Republicans, who won't change their hard line on immigration, immigrant advocates are now going after U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Democratic chief strategist, who they say has betrayed the immigrant community.

They're furious Emanuel has called immigration the new "third rail of politics," a topic so charged it could result in political death. They are running ads in Spanish, Polish and Korean slamming Emanuel.

"There's a lack of leadership. There's a lack of action," said Young Sun Song, a community organizer with the Korean American Resource and Cultural Center in Chicago.

Emanuel said Democrats will not give up on immigration reform. But immigrant advocates charge he is backtracking.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is doing it, too. First she kind of said yes, then she said no on giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, an idea proposed and then nixed by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Clinton and Congress need to stop flip-flopping and propose real solutions. They failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year. As a result, we have chaos with states and cities proposing everything from asking landlords to play immigration police to the driver's license proposal.

Yes, we do need secure borders. Nobody is calling for open borders. Yes, we also need comprehensive immigration reform to legalize many of the people who are law-abiding and contributing to our economy. So what's the alternative?

Kick out all the illegal immigrants in a nationwide raid. Practically, that won't work, and it would have a devastating effect on our economy. Are you willing to pay $5 for a head of lettuce? Are you willing to pay $12 for a sandwich? This is the kind of inflation we could see without the illegal immigrant work force.

The number of legal immigrants applying for citizenship doubled to 1.4 million in fiscal year 2007. Many have illegal immigrant relatives and are likely to vote for candidates who support amnesty for their families.

Immigrants and their children are and always will be part of the American fabric. For the first time this year, the Census Bureau found two Latino surnames -- Garcia and Rodriguez -- are among the top 10 most common last names in the United States. In the Chicago area, two-thirds of the Latino population are citizens.

Most Americans are ashamed of the way immigrants have been treated in the past -- from Japanese internment to bigotry against the Irish and the Italians.

We need a real leader to step forward, one who isn't afraid to defend immigrants. We need a leader to remind us how immigrants have -- and will -- strengthen our, and their, homeland.

As someone who was around in 1988, paying attention to the election, and saw the commercial, I'd like to tell those of you who have only heard about it, that it never occurred to me that Willie Horton was black when I first watched the ad. He was just a small figure in a revolving door. I needed racist Democrats to tell me WIllie Horton was black. And Dukakis didn't lose the election because of the Willie Horton commercial. Dukakis lost because many perceived him to be a schmuck and he was not the one most likely to continue the Reagan prosperity.

What you neglected to mention is that it was Al Gore who first used the Willie Horton issue against Dukakis...not the Republicans.

Yes, one more time about the lie that if we don’t have illegal aliens we won’t be able to afford to eat!!!

Without illegal aliens, the price of agricultural products and other goods and services will NOT soar. The definitive study on this subject is the University of Iowa’s “How Much Is That Tomato?” The study concludes that ‘since labor is such a small component of the end-price of agricultural products (which includes price to the growers, transportation costs, processing /storage costs, grocers’ profit, etc.), using minimum wage workers instead of illegal aliens would increase prices of agricultural products by approximately 3 percent in the summer and 4 percent in the winter ... hardly the making of $10 heads of lettuce, $25 hamburgers, $1,000 per night Days Inn hotel rooms like the pro-illegal alien lobby claims.

HeadOfLettuceCostIf we doubled the wages of farm workers, the cost of a head of lettuce would increase by 6 cents to $1.06. For labor costs to force lettuce to $5 per head, ...
www.lawatchdog.com/HeadOfLettuceCost.html - 6k -

“When you take home a $1 head of lettuce, only 19 cents go to the farmer; and six cents of that go to the worker who picked it, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,191146,00.html__

“Many people fear the first part of such a response, claiming that prices for fruits and vegetables would skyrocket, fueling inflation. But since all unskilled labor — from Americans and foreigners, in all industries — accounts for such a small part of our economy, perhaps four percent of GDP, we can tighten the labor market without any fear of sparking meaningful inflation. Agricultural economist Philip Martin has pointed out that labor accounts for only about ten percent of the retail price of a head of lettuce, for instance, so even doubling the wages of pickers would have little noticeable effect on consumers.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/krikorian200401070923.asp
AND

“According to the University of California, the cost is about 22 cents to grow and harvest a head of lettuce. Of that, about 15 cents goes for farm labor. If we doubled the wages of farm workers, the cost of a head of lettuce would increase by 15 cents - even less if labor-saving machines are justified.....For labor costs to force lettuce to $5 per head, farmers would have to pay field workers $280 an hour”.....Glenn Spencer...

ttp://libcom.org/news/article.php/minutemen-anti-racist-action-050306

http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=lettuce

The add paid for by the Bush/Quail campaign was the first. It showed ‘prisoners’ going through a revolving door while detailing the Dukkakis furlough program. The actors portraying the prisoners were of several races and Willie Horton was not mentioned.

I didn’t see who paid for the second add, but it was obviously down to Bush and Dukakkis at that point and the add was pro Bush. It did include a couple photos of Horton. This was obviously not the Gore add, but perhaps paid for by the RNC or the Bush/Quail campaign or some pre 527 advocacy group?

Anyone seen the original Gore Horton add? It isn’t up on Youtube like the others.

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