Posted on 11/28/2005 7:24:33 PM PST by neverdem
Tancredo for president, and other battles
Meet Jorge Humberto Hernandez Soto. The Mexican national is helping to flog Congress toward a showdown over the nation's immigration laws. Soto—unlicensed, illegal, and drunk—managed to get a borrowed Ford Explorer going 100 miles per hour the wrong way down Interstate 485 outside Charlotte, N.C., hitting another car and killing an 18-year old college student in the process.
Incidents like the one involving Soto, who was sent back to Mexico at least 17 times by U.S. authorities before his deadly wreck two weeks ago, are fueling popular demand for action—any action—at the federal, state, and local level. Across the nation, reliable weather-vane politicians like North Carolina Rep. Sue Myrick are rushing to demonstrate their tough-on-immigration credentials, lining up behind tougher immigration and border control legislation.
As a result, what was once Rep. Tom Tancredo's (R-Colo.) own personal hot-button issue is now a national immigration-reform movement. Fanned by talk-radio, not to mention Republican mania for some kind of wedge issue now that they've abandoned fiscal conservatism, immigration is shaping up as the Us vs. Them issue, certainly for next year's midterm election and perhaps 2008 as well.
Tancredo is sniffing around Iowa and has the dreaded and dread-filled potential POTUS candidate's book—In Mortal Danger—on the way. His Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus now has 91 members and expects to get actual House floor votes on several of its reform bills when Congress returns. With the GOP leadership in disarray, there is no telling how many votes the proposal might get.
As ever, a clumsy Bush administration move sparked the political firestorm. The White House spit out a half-hearted immigration reform plan, the core of which was a conceptually sound but poorly explained guest worker program. Many conservatives of a populist stripe never heard anything past the words "guest worker." A guest worker has to work somewhere, you see, and work means a job. A job that an American citizen would otherwise have. This is an absolute article of faith among the immigration reform camp.
They believe, for example, that contrary to several decades of experience, there exists a wage rate at which American citizens will claw sweet potatoes out of the sandy South Carolina soil with their bare hands, Jorge Humberto Hernandez Soto–style.
The reformers also promise harsh penalties on employers who hire illegal labor, a reflection of the certitude that the Bush administration is slow to act on the issue because "big business" wants cheap labor. You know, those corporate sweet potato buyers who could pay $10 a pound for tubers, but just like sticking it to the working man in between sipping double-scotches and buying yachts.
However, nothing reflects the profound shift in congressional thinking about immigration than the sudden conviction that "anchor babies" are part of America's immigration problem. Children born of illegal parents in the U.S. become citizens automatically, thus serving to anchor their parents to the country, sucking up entitlements and public school seats in the bargain. Along with a sturdy border fence, an end to anchor babies has become one of the magic-bullet fixes many reformers insist upon.
"I'm all in favor of people from other countries becoming U.S. citizens, but I don't know that it is appropriate to become a citizen automatically just by having the parents come into this country illegally and then be born here," Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) told The Arizona Republic last week.
Shadegg is one of 69 co-sponsors of a bill that would end America's policy of birth-rights citizenship. At one time advocating this change—which would seemingly require an amendment to the Constitution—was mostly for show. But reformers have recently embraced the interpretation of the 14th amendment offered by Chapman University School of Law professor John Eastman.
Eastman turned heads in September in testimony before the House Immigration, Border Security and Claims subcommittee by arguing that the amendment could be read to mean that children born to illegals in the U.S. were not citizens precisely because, as illegals, the parents had not subjected themselves to the jurisdiction of the U.S. government.
It is a controversial reading of the amendment, and the change would still face many hurdles—not the least of which would be the Senate —even if it were somehow to pass the House. But that such a fundamental change in American law is even under serious discussion underscores the degree to which immigration reform is a salient national political issue, as opposed to a state-wide or regional concern. There is no denying that House Republicans, Tancredo especially, intend to run with an immigration crackdown for 2006 and see where it leads.
Jeff A. Taylor writes the weekly Reason Express.
Darned - you almost describe George Bush.
BTTT!
Hispanics (illegal aliens particularly) have become a protected class with GWBush at the helm. We're paying a high price.
FYI..Tancredo was on Fox, LIVE, this afternoon, speaking after the video of Bush's coments at the border was released...Tancredo pretty much dismissed the President's proposals, and he sure sounded like a potential candidate.
byby, you're kuku on Tancredo.
How many immigration reformers have tried to work with the Republican Party on this ... and failed miserably? How can you work on immigration reform when Karl Rove has W convinced Mexicans are the 'Republicans of the Future?'
How can you work with people who think we need massive waves of illegal Third World immigration to straighten out Social Security?
It is not Tancredo, whatever his many faults, who is behaving unreasonably here. It is the Republican leadership that will not listen to its base. No matter how you whitewash it, Bush wants amnesty and a guest worker program. We have a government that would allow 100,000 illegal aliens into Columbus, Ohio, when at the same time there are 100,000 displaced coal miners un-and-under-employed at the poverty level in southern Ohio and West Virginia.
It is thanks to Tancredo's pressure that GWB is at least incoherently mumbling something at least, about illegal immigration now. That, and the fact that some RNC Clymer may have left his country club bar long enough to notice that the Democrats are beginning to work this issue to their advantage.
Of course, we are inching toward a rational solution, which on this site is sometimes called 'downsizing.' Stringent border control. No Matricula Consular. Employer sanctions. No Drivers Licenses. No Birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens. When they go home, there will be no easy re-entry. Great ideas. Tancredo is simply saying, "NOW!"
My theory? Nothing will happen until (and if) the Congressional Black Caucus (God lov'em) suddenly and miraculously awakens from its corrupt slumber and notices that illegal aliens are shoving THEIR people even further down the totem pole of American economic life. E.G., illegal Mexicans working all over LA, when there's 50% unemployment among young people in Watts.
You want the GOP to win the 2006 races? You had better pray that this Tancredo's message gets maximum traction within the party elite. They could shut him up in a heartbeat with some good old fashioned common sense on immigration.
The Congress will change the immagration laws next year. They will spend more money on the border. Do any of you think that Tancredo will be in the room when the bills are writen?
Your trust in the good faith of GOP on immigration is indeed touching and quaint (something like your spelling). If Tancredo, or his ideas are not the biggest thing in that room, you are not going to see any meaningful strides taken to control a situation that is ruining this country on many levels.
"If Tancredo, for example, wanted to solve the problem he would be working with the Adminisration instead of immediately attacking as he did today"
There's no way to work with an administration that is dead set on a one world socialist government and the elimination of all borders and countries as they exist tody.
The word is getting out:
If that is the case, he has nothing but my contempt. Someone who isn't serious about winning just marginalizes the issue so the 'pubs don't have to worry about a vote against them going to real competition, ala Dr. Keyes, who did the pro-life movement irreversible harm.
If Representative Tancredo wants to make a real run for President, and find a VP who will bring in the extra boost in support he'll need, I'll be behind him 100%. If he's there to "make a point" the point is that someone will get elected without having to be 100% committed to stopping the invasion and saving the nation.
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