Posted on 09/22/2011 12:29:25 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Texas Gov. Rick Perry obviously needs some coaching on how to talk about illegal immigration — especially during the remaining Republican presidential debates.
Oh, Perry is doing fine. But he can do better if he stops being so polite and fires back at his opponents with both barrels. He needs to get off the defensive, and get on the offensive.
It’s not like he can avoid the topic. You can bet that it will keep coming up. In fact, it’s likely to make an appearance in the debate in Orlando, FL, which is sponsored by Fox News, Google, and the Florida Republican Party.
There are three reasons why this topic won’t go away for Republicans: GOP voters care about it; Perry’s Republican opponents see it as the Achilles’ heel for the GOP frontrunner; and the liberal media enjoys the sight of Republicans fighting with one another, especially over an issue that makes many of them seem dishonest, extreme, and out of touch.
For now, Republicans are livid over how Perry answered questions in the most recent CNN/Tea Party debate.
They hate that he didn’t apologize, grovel, and beg forgiveness for signing, in 2001, a fairness bill that allows illegal immigrants who attend state colleges and universities in the Lone Star State, and who are in the process of getting citizenship, to pay in-state tuition like any other state resident.
They hate that Perry, rather than give into bullying from the right wing, defends the concept to this day as having worked for Texas and benefited its economy by creating productive residents and not simply creating an underclass of uneducated individuals who can’t contribute to the economy.
But what they really hate are the words that Perry chose to defend what he did.
“The bottom line,” Perry said, “is it doesn’t make any difference what the sound of your last name is.”
Conservatives got the message. They knew exactly what Perry was trying to get across — that, often, especially in a border state like Texas, the immigration debate gets wrapped up in race and racism, ethnicity and ethnocentrism. The issue isn’t that people are coming illegally, as much as who is coming.
Nonsense, said Newt Gingrich, another Republican who is vying for the party’s nomination.
“It’s not about somebody’s last name,” Gingrich said during an appearance on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. “That’s baloney. That particular line I thought was slightly goofy. The question is whether you are legal or not legal.”
So, if Republicans don’t like what Perry is saying, I’d say he needs a new script. The next time the issue of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants comes up, he ought to say this:
Look, I don’t need lectures from the likes of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Santorum on how to handle the immigration issue. As someone who has lived on the U.S.-Mexico border his whole life, and been governor of the state of Texas for ten years, I know more about immigration than you four put together. Maybe things are different where y’all are from — Massachusetts, Washington, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. But, in Texas, we deal with this issue everyday. This is a complicated problem with a lot of moving parts, and yet you insult this audience and every American watching at home by proposing nothing more than simple solutions that aren’t honest and won’t work in the real world.
As long as college graduates earn much more than those with only a high school diploma, then it just makes sense for Texas to let driven and hard-working students go to college so they can graduate, get good jobs, pay taxes, and contribute to society. For the sake of a sound bite and some red meat for the crowd, you would leave these kids in a permanent underclass and pretend that they and their parents are simply invisible. That’s not what our party is about. It’s about expanding opportunity and allowing every individual to determine their own destiny through their own hard work and sacrifice.
Besides, standing here, what would you have me do? Turn myself inside out? Change my mind? Tell you and the audience what they want to hear, whether I mean it or not? No, thank you. I think voters have had enough of that kind of phoniness. Don’t you agree, Mitt? The reason people have responded so positively to my campaign is because they know that I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. And I say this: I’m proud of what we did in Texas with regard to in-state tuition for illegal immigrants who go to college, and I’d do it again. If you don’t like that, you’re free to vote for someone else. But if you vote for me, you’re going to get courage and common sense — and my approach to this issue has some of both.
Now, that would make for great television. And even better politics.
Perry might lose the folks in the room, but he’d win the respect and support of millions of people around the country.
For those who don’t know, Texas was one of the first states to pass an in-state tuition bill for illegal immigrants.
About 12,138 children of immigrants got in-state tuition in 2009, about 1 percent of students in Texas trade schools, colleges, and universities. Of that number, 8,406 were in community and technical schools, only 3,725 at universities, and 7 at health-related institutes.
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/study-most-new-texas-jobs-went-immigrants
RE: 81% of the jobs created in TX went to immigrants.
LEGAL or ILLEGAL?
Or does that not matter to those on the 'honest, moderate, and in-touch' side of the immigration issue?
You know, that might be right.
washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway
Oh wait...
Ruben Navarrette Jr.
That’s as far as I got.
“The bottom line,” Perry said, “is it doesn’t make any difference what the sound of your last name is.”
Conservatives got the message. They knew exactly what Perry was trying to get across...”
Oh we got it alright. Just not the way the dopey author thinks we did.
The second article I’ve noticed where Ruben Navarrette Jr. comes to the rescue of Rick Perry on immigration. With defenders like that...
My advice, exactly!
Perry:
- is against a fence
- uses the dishonest leftwing accusation that those of us who are opposed to illegal immigration are "anti-immigrant" and "divisive"
- says he wants to give legal status to the illegals but disingenuously claims this is not "amnesty"
Perry needs to (1) admit he was wrong and now support building a fence supported by all necessary border patrol personnel and other security measures (2) reverse his position on legalizing the illegals and (3) change his position on the Arizona law and allow law enforcement to inquire as to whether someone is a foreign citizen here illegally when they are otherwise lawfully stopped by police.
Here’s the source for the numbers cited in the blog:
http://cis.org/immigrants-filled-most-new-jobs-in-Texas
It only goes to people in the process of becoming legal. But don’t let that interrupt the hate-fest.
He's part of the crowd that has to get it staight about which country they live in and whose interests they seek to serve.
BTW, people who are illegal aliens ARE NOT working to get citizenship. Doesn't work that way. Somebody who said it does is full of frijoles!
“It only goes to people in the process of becoming legal. “
So, illegal aliens. They ain’t legal so they are illegal. Are Texans really that stupid, that they could be told such a lie then not realize we’re talking about illegal aliens?
I hold that the Texas legislature is a representative body of Texas and went shoulder to shoulder with their governor, who enjoys multiple re-elections made possible by the votes of the people of Texas. Texas is no Arizona. No matter how you try to slice it, jobs are performed by real people and Texas alone is responsible for half of the job gains in America during this crash. It wasn’t luck.
So, if Republicans don’t like what Perry is saying, I’d say he needs a new script. The next time the issue of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants comes up, he ought to say this:
Look, I don’t need lectures from the likes of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Santorum on how to handle the immigration issue. As someone who has lived on the U.S.-Mexico border his whole life, and been governor of the state of Texas for ten years, I know more about immigration than you four put together. Maybe things are different where y’all are from — Massachusetts, Washington, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. But, in Texas, we deal with this issue everyday. This is a complicated problem with a lot of moving parts, and yet you insult this audience and every American watching at home by proposing nothing more than simple solutions that aren’t honest and won’t work in the real world.
AMEN. Especially when no one seems to know a damn thing about the LAW and the Constitution regarding the real reason for border breakdown. It is hardly Rick Perry’s fault. Try CALIFORIA for a change Repubs and Dums have essentially removed the border post. Fence Yeah right.
Plus, every university and college in Texas will definitely charge you OUT OF STATE TUITION as long as you have that visa!
The jobs are created by private businesses. Some of them involve agricultural or construction labor jobs that mostly only immigrants, legal or illegal, will take, and some are probably food service jobs which, again, are taken mostly by immigrants because Americans seem to consider starting out as a bus-boy beneath their dignity.
ANd then again, there are the tech jobs, many of which are taken by immigrants because our own math and science education is so lousy in this country.
So if they were taken by immigrants (legal or illegal), the problem lies with our workforce, not with the jobs. We need to get the younger rural whites and urban blacks who could be laborers but who prefer to sell drugs for a living to actually go out and get some skills and do some roofing, some agricultural work, etc., and we need to get kids drifting stoned through high school to take math and science classes, and to learn stuff that really means something and will make them competitive with the Indians and Asians, who are probably the immigrants taking these jobs.
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