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California Legislature Passes Legality-Lite Bills to Aid Illegal Aliens and Foreign Criminals

While states like Arizona and Alabama have succeeded to some degree in exerting more control over the illegal alien brigands in their midst, the California legislature is in a mad rush to legalize the millions in the state as far as it can.

One of the more egregious examples of power politics in the all-Democrat-run capitol was the unscrupulous technique called “gut and amend” to push through a bill that has not gone through the normal process.

‘Safe harbor’ for California illegal immigrants?, Daily News, August 23, 2012

Last winter, a Los Angeles-area lawmaker launched a petition drive to place an initiative on the California ballot. Its name was innocuous: The California Opportunity and Prosperity Act. Its aim was not: It would have allowed illegal immigrants to live and work in the state without fear of deportation.

Not surprisingly, the drive failed to get enough signatures, and that should have been the end of that.

But no. This week, Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes revived the effort to give as many as 2 million illegal immigrants “safe harbor” in the state. Using the sneaky “gut and amend” method of slipping controversial laws through the Capitol in the final days of a legislative session, the Democrat from Sylmar has turned a state Senate bill about vehicle pollution into a bill to make life easier for illegal residents.

Fuentes had told The Sacramento Bee the proposed ballot measure was a “moderate, common-sense approach” to immigration reform, and his spokesman told the newspaper this week that the effort “shows that we’re a compassionate state.” Both said it’s a reaction to the federal government’s failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform.

The state’s voters should be the judge of all that. Or, if such a significant change in such an important policy is to be considered in the Legislature, it should be done with time for careful thought and public comment, not in the frenzy of the last week of the 2012 session. [. . .]

California legislators must think the state has too much public safety to unleash foreign criminals with such abandon. It’s all up to Gov. Jerry Brown now to sign or veto the evil bills.

Following is an overview of the whole assortment of legislation that puts the pleasure of lawbreaking foreigners before the rights and safety of the citizens.

Flurry of immigration bills will test Gov. Jerry Brown, San Jose Mercury News, August 28, 2012

California lawmakers are pushing this week to pass four bills that would make life easier for immigrants living and working here illegally, but all require the support of a governor who chooses his immigration causes carefully.

Gov. Jerry Brown won praise last fall from Latinos and immigrant communities when he signed a law giving illegal immigrant college students access to state financial aid, but this season he must sift through a more complicated set of measures that opponents view as defying federal prerogatives.

The flurry comes in the last days of the 2012 legislative session and tests the compassion and political future of Brown, who supports a path to citizenship for California’s more than 2 million illegal immigrants but has repeatedly said the solution must come from the federal government.

Already on Brown’s desk is the Trust Act, which would partially pull California out of an immigration dragnet that has deported about 80,000 people from the state since Brown, as attorney general, signed a federal-state partnership in 2009. Continue reading this article

Ann Coulter Recommends a Candidate Based on Immigration and Obamacare

Ann Coulter observes that America is being irrevocably changed by immigration, and it must be stopped very soon.

She thinks Obamacare is just as bad, and makes a decent case. Perhaps, but toxic levels of immigration, particularly Mexicanization (not so much diversity) poisons major aspects of American society, not just the economy.

Only One Candidate Is Right on the Two Most Important Issues. AnnCoulter.com, December 28, 2011

In the upcoming presidential election, two issues are more important than any others: repealing Obamacare and halting illegal immigration. If we fail at either one, the country will be changed permanently.

Taxes can be raised and lowered. Regulations can be removed (though they rarely are). Attorneys general and Cabinet members can be fired. Laws can be repealed. Even Supreme Court justices eventually die.

But capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California. There will be no turning back.

Similarly, if Obamacare isn’t repealed in the next few years, it never will be.

America will begin its ineluctable descent into becoming a worthless Western European country, with rotten health care, no money for defense and ever-increasing federal taxes to support the nanny state.

So let’s consider which of the Republican candidates are most likely to succeed at these objectives.

In order to allow Democrats to indignantly denounce Republicans who said Obamacare would add to the deficit, the bill was structured so that no goodies get paid out immediately. That way, when the Congressional Budget Office was asked to determine if Obamacare was “revenue neutral” over its first 10 years, government accountants were looking at a bill that collected taxes for 10 years, but only distributed treats in the later years.

Starting at year 11, those accountants will be in for a big surprise when the government starts paying out Obamacare benefits without interruption.

Because of this accounting fraud, Obamacare can still be repealed. But as soon as all Americans have been thrown off their employer-provided insurance plans and are forced to start depending on the government for health care, Republicans will never be able to repeal it.

The vast complex of unionized government workers managing our health care from Washington will fight to keep their jobs (for more on this topic, see the Department of Education), voters will want their “free” government treats (for more on this topic, see Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) — and even if they don’t, there won’t be a private insurance market for them to go back to (for more on this topic, see IRS rules favoring employer-provided health care).

The only way to stop Obamacare is to beat Obama in 2012, and repeal it before the health care Leviathan is born.

Otherwise, starting in 2016, Republicans will run for office promising only to improve Obamacare. Newt Gingrich will be calling plans to reform it “right-wing social engineering.”

All current Republican presidential candidates say they will overturn Obamacare. The question for Republican primary voters should be: Who is most likely to win?

2012 is not a year for a wild card. It’s not a year for any candidate who will end up being the issue, instead of making Obama the issue. It’s not a year for one wing of the Republican Party to be making a point with another wing. (And there are no Rockefeller Republicans left, anyway.) It’s not a year to be gambling that America will vote for its first woman president, or that the country is ready for a nut-bar libertarian.

Running against an incumbent president in a make-or-break election, Republicans need a candidate with a track record of winning elections with voters similar to the entire American electorate.

Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich have never had to win votes beyond small, majority-Republican congressional districts.

Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have won statewide elections, but Huntsman and Perry ran in extremely red states that don’t resemble the American electorate. Only Romney and Santorum have won a statewide election in a blue state, making them our surest-bets in a general election.

But if Santorum wins, we lose on the second most important issue — illegal immigration — and he’ll be the last Republican ever to win a general election in America.

Just as Americans ought to be able to learn the perils of a welfare state by looking at Greece, we ought to be able to learn the perils of illegal immigration by looking at California.

Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate that no Republican can be elected statewide anymore. Not so long ago, this was a state that produced great Republican governors and senators like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, S.I. Hayakawa and Pete Wilson.

If even Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, two bright, attractive, successful female business executives — one pro-life and one pro-choice — can’t win a statewide election in California spending millions of their own dollars in the middle of the 2010 Republican sweep, it’s buenas noches, muchachos.

And yet, almost all Republican presidential candidates support some form of amnesty for illegals in order to appeal to the business lobby.

Among the most effective measures against illegal immigration is E-Verify, the Homeland Security program that gives employers the ability to instantly confirm that their employees’ Social Security numbers are legitimate. It is more than 99 percent accurate, and no employee is denied a job without an opportunity to challenge the records.

Although wildly popular with Americans — including Hispanic Americans — the business lobby hates E-Verify. Employers like hiring non-Americans because they can pay illegal aliens less and ignore state and federal employment laws.

Any candidate who opposes E-Verify is not serious about illegal immigration. If anything, E-Verify ought to be made mandatory to get a job, to get welfare and to vote.

Kowtowing to business (while pretending to kowtow to Hispanics), Paul, Perry and Santorum oppose E-Verify. As a senator, Rick Santorum voted against even the voluntary use of E-Verify.

Jon Huntsman claims to support E-Verify, but also wants to give illegals amnesty as soon as the border is sealed — as determined by someone other than us. Also, he gave driver’s identification cards to illegal aliens in Utah. (You’d think a guy no one has ever heard of would be more careful about ID cards.)

Following his latest guru, Helen Krieble, Newt Gingrich is for amnesty, combined with second-class status for illegals. Instead of giving illegal aliens green cards, Newt proposes giving them “red cards” so they can stay, take American jobs, have children, receive welfare benefits, attend public schools — and eventually be granted amnesty. The Republican primaries will be over before most voters realize what Newt’s “red card” scheme entails.

Only Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney aren’t trying to sneak through amnesty for illegal aliens. Both support E-Verify.

Numbers USA, one of the leading groups opposed to our current insane immigration policies, gives Republican presidential candidates the following grades on immigration: Paul, F; Gingrich, D-minus; Huntsman, D-minus; Santorum, D-minus; Perry, D; Romney, C-minus; and Bachmann, B-minus.

And that was before Romney said last week that Obama’s drunk-driving, illegal alien uncle should be deported!

That leaves us with Romney and Bachmann as the candidates with the strongest, most conservative positions on illegal immigration. As wonderful as Michele Bachmann is, 2012 isn’t the year to be trying to make a congresswoman the first woman president.

Two Little Indians sitting in the sun; one was just a congresswoman and then there was one.

California: Jerry Brown Signs Semi-DREAM Act into Law

The mainstream press from the Los Angeles Times to the commie People’s World agree that California’s new partial DREAM Act is a great thing. The whole Mexifornia DREAM Act couldn’t be pushed through even the totally Democrat government, so its evil author, Sen Gil Cedillo, chopped it into two parts.

The less objectionable section was just signed into law, wherein illegal aliens can mooch financial aid from private sources. The next piece of legislation AB131 is still in the state Senate and would permit illegal aliens access to public funds like Cal Grants. Illegals already get taxpayer-subsidized in-state tuition, which adds to their huge sense of entitlement.

Of course, it is crazy public policy to allot scarce funds and college slots to educating illegal aliens who cannot work legally even after graduation. What about citizen students whose parents have paid into to system for decades? As Assemblyman Tim Donnelly observed, “Bottom line is California doesn’t have enough money to take care of its obligations to its citizens right now.”

But Governor Jerry Brown called opponents “wrong morally and humanly.” Brilliant. Liberals believe they are morally superior when they spend other people’s money to uplift adored victim groups, such as illegal alien kiddies.

Brown signs California Dream Act, Los Angeles Times, July 26, 2011

New law covers private funding; governor signals he may also favor expanding public Cal Grants eligibility.

Following through on a campaign promise, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law Monday easing access to privately funded financial aid for undocumented college students. He also signaled that he was likely to back a more controversial measure allowing those students to seek state-funded tuition aid in the future.

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), author of the private financial aid measure, described it as an important but incremental step toward expanding opportunities for deserving students who were brought to the U.S. illegally through no choice of their own. Cedillo is pressing ahead with a more expansive measure that would make certain undocumented students eligible for the state’s Cal Grants and other forms of state tuition aid.

Brown said he was “positively inclined” to back that bill but would not make a decision until it crosses his desk.

“I’m committed to expanding opportunity wherever I can find it, and certainly these kinds of bills promote a goal of a more inclusive California and a more educated California,” Brown told reporters after the bill-signing ceremony Monday.

For Brown, signing Cedillo’s bill was a gesture of goodwill toward Latino voters, who helped elect him in large numbers last fall. Legislation providing education funding to undocumented students has been a top priority for many Latino groups, which have found many of their efforts thwarted so far at the federal level. Last year proponents failed to marshal enough votes in the U.S. Senate to ensure passage of the federal DREAM Act, which would have created a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. before age 16 if they attended a college or served in the military.

Brown’s position on the California Dream Act was being closely monitored after he angered some prominent Latino leaders by vetoing a bill last month that would have made it easier for farmworkers to organize. Though Brown noted in his veto message that he signed legislation helping farm workers unionize during his first stint as governor in the mid-1970s, his veto was sharply criticized by the United Farm Workers, which counted the bill among their top priorities.

But several analysts who study Latino politics said the California Dream Act was far more important symbolically to many in the Latino community. Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said the bill was viewed by many as a measure of social acceptance of Latinos because it would increase opportunity for the best and brightest among the undocumented. Continue reading this article

Media Honchos Lawyer Up over Illegal Alien Journalist Revelations

The anti-borders media and bloggers have been in a tizzy over an illegal alien journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas, who recently outed himself with details on enabling editors in the New York Times Magazine (My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant).

His NYT piece was the usual formulaic sob story of the American Dream thwarted by the mean government and its annoying laws. The various reactions have had the interesting aspect of media honchos tippy-toeing over the obvious ramifications regarding immigration law. Vargas’ big tear-jerker was refused by the Washington Post, which seemed fearful of being being prosecuted, as reported by Politico: Why did Post kill Jose Vargas story?

The article could be problematic for the Post, because it not only reveals that the paper broke the law by employing an illegal immigrant, but that Vargas told a mentor, Post assistant managing editor Peter Perl, about his immigration status. It is not clear whether Perl told anyone else at the paper.

Of course, scooting the article off to another newspaper won’t get the Post off the legal hook. Names were named, which was surely a strategy of Vargas to rope in the editors who hired him and force them to get on board like the good liberals they are. Vargas mentioned another newspaper that employed him, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Editor Phil Bronstein explained at length how he had been “duped” — probably as instructed by company lawyers.

Bronstein tried to play the aggrieved party in a rambling essay on his Chronicle blog, while still sounding sympathetic to his illegal alien scribbler. He worried about the “millions of people out there floating in terrifying limbo” but did not mention the citizens displaced by liars like Vargas in college slots and employment. The Chronicle is famously left-wing on border and immigration issues.

How many unemployed journalists, let go by newsroom downsizing over the past decade, are upset by this flouting of the law? Unlike most illegal alien articles created by the liberal press, this one affects the people who crank out the tiresome sob stories. But we are unlikely to hear any changes of heart about law and borders at least in public, since job-seeking reporters wouldn’t want to hurt their chances in one of the most liberal professions. Still, it would be interesting to hear some bar talk among journalists on this one.

Plus, someone should ask Bronstein whether he would support a new visa category for journalists to increase the diversity of the newsroom. How would that go over with reporters? It might make the media debate of immigration more interesting if practitioners had some skin in the game.

I was duped by Jose Vargas, illegal immigrant, By Phil Bronstein, Chronicle Blog, June 23, 2011

I was duped. I once hired an illegal immigrant to be a reporter for the Chronicle.
“I don’t think I’m a criminal,” Jose Antonio Vargas told me when we met last week, right before he announced his status to the world. “Don’t make me seem guiltier than I am.”

Jose lied to me and everyone else he worked for, and that’s not kosher, especially in a profession where facts and, more elusively, the truth are considered valuable commodities. In 2003 he wrote a story for us about illegals getting fake drivers’ licenses in the Mission when he’d used phony documents to get his own. He told me last week that he decided then that was a serious conflict of interest and wouldn’t cover immigration any more. But he later wrote on the topic for the Post.

Even though I didn’t know he was a lawbreaker when he worked for me, and he left the paper in 2004, his story lands me a little more directly in the atrociously rudderless but vicious debate on immigration reform.

After Jose’s essay was published on the New York Times website yesterday, detailing his deception in getting heady jobs here, at the Washington Post and the Huffington Post – and snagging exclusive access to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for a New Yorker profile – I have to wonder:

Am I a dupe? A felon – at least according to a tough new Alabama law that might find me guilty of “harboring” Jose when he was in my office the other day (I also bought him coffee)? Or have I unwittingly supported a potentially powerful new movement in the push for immigration reform?

There’s no way to tell for sure when immigration laws themselves are a hopeless jumble of unenforced, unenforceable or just plain unaddressed issues covering 11 million people. The most visible are Latino day laborers, but the Vargas confession may also open those gnarly closet doors for high-achieving white collar professionals.

“This is going to come off as a vanity act, but it’s not,” Jose told me last Tuesday, just before he left San Francisco for New York on what might be his last allowable U.S. domestic flight with his doctored-up I.D. “I tell stories for a living and this is the one I’ve been afraid to tell. I’m one of many like me. There have got to be undocumented workers out there even more successful than I am.”

Jose’s narrative of arriving in the Bay Area at age 12, discovering his illegal status at 16 and driving himself thereafter to somehow earn citizenship with the help of friends and family, has created a cat-in-a-blender bloodstorm, particularly among his fellow journalists. The Times has gloated on its blogs about bagging the story while the Post, which rejected it, is a little dour. Continue reading this article

Gingrich Pitches Nuanced Immigration Enforcement

On NumbersUSA’s excellent page rating Presidential Hopefuls’ Immigration Stances, Newt Gingrich got a grade of D- — underwhelming for a top Republican. But the poor assessment was deserved.

Last year I wrote about Gingrich’s twisted tap-dance of massive hispandering: Newt Gingrich’s Foray into Cultural Treason. He imagines his duplicitous outreach to “conservative” hispanics (with a hefty dollop of Spanish, e.g. in his semi-espanol website The Americano) will provide a diverse electoral boost for his ambitions. (See also Gingrich Escalates His Hispandering Outreach.)

Hispandering on a grand scale has required squishy language which Gingrich hopes will go unnoticed, like his statement, “We have to find policies that extend to every American, and that includes people who are not yet legal.”

Does he think patriotic Americans will overlook such an objectionable remark? Among the vital Tea Party voters, a 2010 CBS/New York Times poll found that 82 percent of that group “think that illegal immigration is very serious problem” compared with 72 percent of Republicans.

In the Internet Age, there are no stealth messages to separate constituencies. A digitally hip guy like Newt should know that. “Secret” hispandering certainly didn’t work out well for Meg Whitman, the record-spending California governor candidate.

Given that background, it’s interesting to see a Washington political publication take note of Newt’s conflicting positions regarding immigration enforcement.

Gingrich’s dual courtship of GOP base, Latino voters could pose problem, The Hill, March 1, 2011

Newt Gingrich’s simultaneous courtship of the base of the Republican Party and Latino voters could pose major problems for his likely bid for the White House.

Gingrich, who is soon expected to announce the formation of a presidential exploratory committee, frequently stresses the need for the GOP to reach out to Latinos. According to the 2010 census, Latinos are now the fastest-growing and largest minority group in the country.

Putting that call into practice, the former House Speaker has set up a bilingual news and opinion website directed at Latinos and has staked out a nuanced position on immigration reform that some critics have labeled amnesty.

At the same time, Gingrich has tried to woo conservative activists, coming out against the construction of a mosque near the Ground Zero site in lower Manhattan and calling for the elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The problem, according to some observers, is that Gingrich’s stance on immigration doesn’t lend itself to an easy explanation for a conservative talk-radio audience.

“If I was his adviser, I would just say, ‘Let’s call a truce on that one for now,’ ” said Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican who served with Gingrich in the House. “Immigration and illegal aliens are still a very, very hot topic. And people who will be voting in the Republican primary do not want to hear about any backdoor amnesty program.”

Gingrich uses phrases like “pathway to legality” to characterize his support for a measure similar to the DREAM Act, which grants young illegal immigrants U.S. residency if they enroll in college or join the military.

Other powerful players in the GOP, including former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, who have warned conservatives to watch their rhetoric on immigration.

Regardless, many right-wing bloggers have lambasted Gingrich.

Three years after Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) stole the spotlight on immigration issues in the GOP presidential debates, Gingrich says that deporting 11 million illegal aliens is unrealistic.

Gingrich doesn’t shy away from critics who say he is soft on illegal immigration.

“I’m just going to ask them a simple question,” he told The Hill. “They’re going to take somebody who came here at 3 years of age, who doesn’t speak Spanish and who just graduated from a high school in Texas, and they’re going to say to him, ‘We’re going to deport you.’

He pulled his deport-the-kiddies straw man on Laura Ingraham’s radio show last December and she called him on it (at around 3:50). “You concede we’re not going to deport 11 million people” was the basis of his argument — as if the clever former Speaker never heard of attrition-based enforcement.

“That’s certainly their prerogative. I don’t think the country will go for that. I think that’s so lax in a concern for the human beings involved.”

Gingrich emphasizes a border-security-first approach, which he noted in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last month.

“I am deeply committed to securing the border,” Gingrich told The Hill. “I am deeply committed to changing the deportation rules for felons and gang members. … But I also think we have a huge challenge — what do you do with the human beings who are engaged, some of whom are married, have children? It’s a very complicated situation, and I don’t you think you can just wave a magic wand and have some kind of a simple, clean answer.”

That’s a position that could cause Gingrich hardship in some early voting states.

In Iowa, Republicans such as Rep. Steve King have taken a hard-line stance against immigration reform, insisting on mass deportation of those in the U.S. illegally.

Robert Haus, an Iowa-based Republican consultant, said Gingrich will likely be challenged on the issue should he launch a presidential bid.

King said, “I want to hear [Gingrich’s] position very carefully before I would critique it. Mine is that the DREAM Act provides amnesty to people that came into this country [illegally], some knowingly and some unknowingly. Where do you draw the line? You’re going to get drug smugglers along with the little ladies.”

Immigration will be an issue for Iowa caucus goers, King said. Continue reading this article

Gingrich Escalates His Hispandering Outreach

Newt Gingrich is a clever fellow with many worthwhile ideas; his strength on national security and recognition that hostile Islam presents a severe danger are particularly welcome as a voice of reason against the loony peacenik in the White House.

However, Gingrich must be closely watched. He thinks his political brilliance can overcome cultural chasms which are largely unbridgeable. His outreach to hispanics is long standing and arguably extreme. When he was Speaker, a pet project was gaining statehood for Puerto Rico as a way to friend hispanics, despite the fact that Mexicans and Central Americans show no interest in Puerto Rican issues at all. In fact, a strongly Spanish-speaking state in the USA would create a bilingual country (like Canada), a deeply destructive dismantling of American community via official widespread language apartheid. The damage of Puerto Rico the state would be incalculable, in return for zero political gain.

Such dumb ideas based in diversity ideology have not gone away. Gingrich is one of those dreamy Republicans who likes to applaud hispanic family values, despite enormous evidence to the contrary, e.g. the growing number of out-of-wedlock births (which comprise nearly half of hispanic births in the US) and the willful abandonment of wives and children in the home country as part of illegal immigration.

In a blog from last winter (Newt Gingrinch’s Foray into Cultural Treason), I noted Gingrich’s statement that he supports English as the official language of the United States but “I’m also for campaigning in Spanish.” Only a coldly calculating politician could make that statement in all seriousness.

His bilingual website “The Americano” supposedly expounds conservative ideas for hispanics. But the site is not friendly toward traditional American values. For starters, the name is troubling — what is an “Americano” anyway? It sounds like a coded tribalism that Newt hopes to sneak under the radar. There’s immigration commentary (“Straight Talk”) from big-amnesty advocate Ruben Navarrette. And who knows what’s being written in Spanish?

Gingrich is looking more like a Presidential candidate with a side dish of hispandering, for example as he recently campaigned with his Americano gimmick at a two-day forum. Trashing sovereignty hero Tom Tancredo was clearly high on the agenda.

GOP Pushes Harder For The ‘Americano’ Vote — Transcript, NPR, December 3, 2010

In last month’s midterm election, Hispanic voters again sided solidly with Democrats. The decades-long trend is increasingly worrisome to Republicans. So in one of several new outreach efforts, former GOP House speaker Newt Gingrich has started a Web site. It’s called TheAmericano.com. And over the past two days, he’s used it to host a forum for conservative Hispanics. [. . .]

GONYEA: Most of the attendees call themselves conservatives and Republicans. They’re in the minority within the Latino community. Gustavo Bujanda is a vice president at a Dallas PR firm.

Mr. GUSTAVO BUJANDA: In being a conservative, I find myself that I also disconnect tremendously with where, at least right now, the Republican Party, or large parts of the Republican Party, are.

GONYEA: He’s talking about immigration and the tough language Republicans often use when debating the issue. Former Colorado congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo’s name came up a lot at this conference. This speech from his ’08 run for the GOP presidential nomination. It is vintage Tancredo. (Soundbite of archived audio)

Mr. TOM TANCREDO (Former Representative, Republican, Colorado): We see our communities turning into what Theodore Roosevelt called polyglot boarding houses, made up of immigrants who refuse to assimilate and refuse to speak English…

GONYEA: Bujanda says such words, though not representative of Republicans as a whole, send a message about the party.

Mr. BUJANDA: When I hear members of the extreme right of the Republican Party speak in the language that they do about immigration, I frankly take offense because there’s something about me that they don’t like.

GONYEA: He says there needs to be outreach to Latino voters, yes, but also to the party itself. The conference featured a lot of such dialogue during formal sessions but also in hallways and over meals. And despite all the talk of making a positive case for Latinos to embrace Republicans whose core ideals match theirs, there was also plenty of frustration that Democrats are viewed so much more favorably by Latino voters.

As numerous polls have shown, the Arizona law had great public support, even after months of media lies saying the law included racial profiling. Immigration enforcement is a mainstream value, not a fringe issue as the MSM continues to prattle, like in the NPR report above.

Attention, Gingrich: Americans don’t want their country invaded by 30 million foreigners who are then rewarded with citizenship for their lawbreaking.

Does he really think he can peddle his anti-American hispandering without citizens noticing? (A similar political strategy didn’t work out so well for California governor candidate Meg Whitman.)

The video below shows Newt inviting hispanics to his Americano clambake, with no mention of issues that would be considered controversial by that audience, namely borders, language and culture. The image for the organization shows a map of North and South America, so that must be what “Americano” means — a resident of the Western Hemisphere. Illegal alien Mexicans et al like to claim that they are already Americans, just like the French are Europeans. Continents — so handy for hispandering!

The best way to increase conservatism among hispanics would be to stop immigration entirely so that the hispanics already here will have a better chance to improve their lives.

UPDATE:

The Right Perspective comments on the Speaker’s contortions of logic and includes a clip from Laura Ingraham’s radio interview following his exercise in hispandering:

Gingrich Blinks on Immigration Stance

Ingraham then played a clip from the day before where Gingrich said, “we have to find policies that extend to every American, and that includes people who are not yet legal, every American, the opportunity to pursue happiness, the opportunity to have a work ethic, the opportunity to grow more prosperous, and we have to design a system where it is more advantageous to be legal than illegal.” She then asked Gingrich what he felt Americans voted for on November 2.

Jerry Brown Plans to Spend More on Alien Education if Elected

Democrat candidate Jerry Brown has been revealing his enthusiasm for illegal alien students in his quest for the governorship of California.

One measure was his declaration of support during the October 3 debate with Republican Meg Whitman.

Immigration dominates Whitman-Brown debate, San Francisco Chronicle, October 3, 2010

One of the most dramatic moments of the second gubernatorial debate came when a woman in the audience – who did not identify herself – said she was a student and an undocumented immigrant and asked their positions on the Dream Act, which would allow for a path to citizenship for college graduates.

Brown said he would sign the law if he becomes governor, saying “Ms. Whitman goes beyond opposing the Dream Act. She wants to kick you out of this school because you are not documented — and that is wrong.”

Whitman stuck to her opposition of the Dream Act, saying, “This is a very tough situation, but I don’t think it’s fair to the people who are here in California legally.”

What’s wrong with kicking out illegal aliens from state universities? They take up scarce slots that should go to citizen students whose parents paid taxes rather than broke laws.

More recently, Jerry promised illegal aliens a pathway to the California DREAM education (on the taxpayers’ backs), even though illegal graduates will not be able to work lawfully.

Bill Clinton, Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom address 6,000 cheering Dems at UCLA, San Francisco Chonicle blog, October 15, 2010

And Brown, noting his differences with Whitman on immigration issues, called for every student who’s qualified, “whether they’re documented or not,” to be able to attend California state universities, saying that would be “one of the first bills I sign” as governor once he deals with the state budget.

Then there’s this video…

Meanwhile, the court case against taxpayer-subsidized illegal alien tuition is moving along.

Fight over illegals’ tuition reaches high court, San Francisco Chronicle, October 6, 2010

(10-05) 18:21 PDT FRESNO — The issue of benefits for illegal immigrants landed at the state Supreme Court on Tuesday, as out-of-state students challenged a law allowing anyone who has graduated from a California high school to pay in-state tuition at a public university, regardless of immigration status.

The 2002 law, intended to encourage youngsters to attend college, enables undocumented students to pay the same lower fees as other state residents – at the University of California, $11,300 instead of $34,000 a year.

A lawyer for 42 non-Californians who pay the higher fees at UC, state university and community college campuses argued that the statute is discriminatory and violates federal immigration law.

“One of the privileges of U.S. citizenship is not being treated worse than an illegal alien,” attorney Kris Kobach told the court at a hearing in Fresno.

Meg Orders Chinese

California governor candidate Meg Whitman was a regular Speedy Gonzalez getting her Spanish-language ads on the airwaves immediately after her primary campaign (in which she pledged she would be “tough as nails” on illegal immigration — but later in Spanish, not so much).

Now Whitman has expanded her language tribalism to broadcast ads for Chinese — in both Cantonese and Mandarin to appeal to today’s diverse Asian community.

Predictably, pundits and expensive political consultants cite the Chinese as a potentially important group of swing voters. Aren’t they all?

Calif governor hopeful Meg Whitman courts Chinese vote, Reuters, October 13, 2010

Individuals of Asian descent make up 13 percent of the state’s population overall and about 6 percent of registered voters, said political science professor Jane Junn at the University of Southern California. Chinese-Americans account for the bulk of that number.

“It’s a pretty darn smart strategy on her part,” Junn said of Whitman’s recent Chinese-language media buy. “As far as we know, Asian-Americans are still up for grabs, and they’re going to be a critical swing vote, particularly in California.”

Here’s the Cantonese version:

The Whitman campaign released the following translation:

Announcer: Meg Whitman understands our community. She knows entrepreneurship, high-tech jobs and education are the keys to our future. She was a success at eBay, taking it from 30 people to 15,000. She can help California too.

She’ll get our economy moving with less taxes and red tape on small business. Control wasteful spending. Cut regulation. And invest in schools. More money in the classroom, help for higher education.

Meg Whitman. The change we need to get California going again.

Yoo hoo, Meg: voters are supposed to be citizens who are required to speak English. Some of us old-fashioned Americans still find non-English campaign ads to be offensive.

Carly’s Hispander Tour Continues, with Tequila Shots

California’s Senate candidate outsourcing millionaire Carly Fiorina, has expanded her Mexican outreach, by getting diverse with the help of a festive beverage. Joining fellow rich Republican Meg Whitman, the two made a splashy appearance at a hispanic awards celebration.

Tequila! Whitman, Fiorina down shots in appeal to Latinos, NBC, October 9, 2010

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina received a warm welcome here from the audience at the Hispanic 100 lifetime Achievement Award Gala. Before speaking, the two Republican candidates running for governor and Senate, respectively, downed shots of tequila as the crowd cheered them on.

Fiorina spoke first, saying, “Mucho gracias. This evening has spoiled me forever, from now on, I want to follow Paul Rodriguez [the emcee], and i think every speech should begin with a shot of Tequila.” Then she let out a yell, “It was great!”

Fiorina says California and the United States have been deeply enriched by Latinos, and pointed out that 25% of all Latino small businesses in the U.S. are here in California.

This description is a bit mild when compared with the event video below. Carly joined the crowd in an exuberant Viva Mexico toast with the mariachi band and embellished her remarks with an enthusiastic trill. She could have been campaigning for office in Mexico rather than the United States.

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California Carly Ramps Up Hispandering

I was going to steel myself and vote for Carly Fiorina, despite her despicable history of outsourcing thousands of jobs from H-P to Asia, in hopes of getting rid of Senator Boxer with her lifetime immigration voting grade of D+.

(Many in Silicon Valley and beyond remember Fiorina’s 2004 remark: “There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore.”)

The candidate comes with some unpleasant baggage regarding American jobs, so making herself more unattractive to conservative voters is contraindicated, yet she plunges ahead.

Consider her recent hispandering remarks:

Whitman and Fiorina court key Latino vote in rare joint appearance, Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2010

When Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina clinched their party’s nominations for governor and U.S. Senate in June, Whitman proclaimed on stage that their joint effort would be the Democrats’ worst nightmare. But they have gone separate ways on the campaign trail, never publicly crossing paths again until Friday night at a gala of a prominent group of Latino business leaders in Newport Beach. [. . .]

[Fiorina] touched briefly on the thorny topic of illegal immigration — which has been a point of contention in her race with Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer because of the Republican’s support for Arizona’s tough new immigration law. She said she would press for a guest-worker program to allow “as many people as possible to live the American dream” and criticized Boxer for seeking to kill a proposed temporary worker program. Boxer stated at the time that businesses were looking for a pool of cheap labor that would threaten the American worker.

“Really, I thought immigrants were the heart of this great country,” Fiorina said with a dramatic pause. “Our great nation must always be the place where people come to build a better life for themselves and their families.”

Fiorina also highlighted what she views as Boxer’s failure to address high unemployment and water shortages in the Central Valley and the importance of Latino culture in California, noting that a quarter of small businesses in the state are owned by Latinos.

Are candidates incapable of hispandering without insulting traditional Americans (i.e., “immigrants were the heart of this great country”)? Poking citizens in the eye is no way to win friends and gain votes when Americans are still the great majority of voters even in Mexifornia.

Meg Whitman’s Political Suicide by Hispandering

California RINO gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has blundered into the hazardous firing range of Los Angeles radio guys John and Ken for her rapid switch from “tough as nails” immigration enforcer in the primary to hispandering liar now in the general election. They are not happy that the E-bay billionaire is “talking out of both sides of her mouth in two different languages.”

In 2004, I wrote about John and Ken’s Political Human Sacrifice campaign to smack open-borders R-reps around: The John And Ken Show Roils California’s Congressional Republicans. They organized a campaign of voter anger upon many supposed SoCal conservatives who thought they could support open borders yet keep their seats in Congress. The main target ended up being Rep. David Dreier, who was not defeated but was given a serious scare and has improved his voting behavior since then (rating an A in 2008).

More recently, the radio guys have been running the Heads on a Stick campaign to fight out-of-control spending by the California government.

Whitman’s Spanish-language advertising (including billboards like the one pictured that condemn Arizona’s immigration law and Prop 187) does not match up with her statements in English, and John and Ken have noticed — big time. For the past couple days, their website has demanded of Whitman, “Stop the Pandering!” and includes contact information for her campaign; plus the radio show has been filled with fierce invective against lying politicians. During the 2003 Gray Davis recall, they supported Schwarzenegger for governor as being the real deal on the immigration issue. But he turned weasel, and as a result of being misled, John and Ken say they are now more demanding of straight talk from candidates.

(For a sample of what’s going on, listen to the 3pm hour from July 21, where the Meg-bashing starts at 3:19 in: AUDIO.)

Their radio show has a huge audience in Los Angeles, and the Meg-bashing is now getting attention from other media, even the liberal LA Times:

Don’t Mess with John and Ken, LA Times Magazine, July 20, 2010

A wise gubernatorial candidate should know better than to mess with John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, hosts of one of the most listened to radio programs in the United States. The John & Ken Show broadcasts live from Los Angeles every weekday on AM-640, for an astonishing five consecutive hours—including during peak drive time.

Since the early 1990s, John and Ken have built an audience of millions—one listener at a time—by waging grass-roots campaigns against elected officials they find hypocritical. Where they have made the most serious ground is in taking on governors, which is why their newest target, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, should take heed. In 1993, John and Ken were instrumental in toppling New Jersey governor Jim Florio. In 2003, they were instrumental in getting Governor Gray Davis recalled.

“In October 2009, Meg Whitman came on our show and made her position on illegal immigration very clear,” John told me in an interview earlier today, explaining that Whitman’s “tone and her words were all about how tough she was going to be.” Then last Friday, a Spanish-language op-ed quoted Whitman as saying there was little difference between her and Jerry Brown when it comes to immigration issues. John and Ken read that and were stunned—Brown supports amnesty as “a path to citizenship.”

On Monday morning, along came the final straw: “Visuals have great impact,” John said, relating a tale told by a listener, who was driving though the San Fernando Valley, when he spotted Meg Whitman billboards all across Latino neighborhoods, in Spanish, using “defiantly words you’d expect from Jerry Brown!”

The billboards read, “No a la Proposicion 187 y NO a la ley de Arizona” and are signed by Meg Whitman. (Prop 187 aims to deny illegal immigrants access to health care, public schools and other social services; Arizona law aims to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants.) […]

Will the candidate defend her actions on The John and Ken Show? She might have to—only this time, her campaign managers would be wise to brush up on the hosts’ backstory. ‘Cause when John and Ken talk, people listen and governors (or governors-to-be) fall.

Can eMeg’s copious millions of dollars spent on ads overcome the well-deserved bile from John and Ken? She spent over $70 million of her fortune in the primary alone, so she isn’t shy about shoveling out cash in hopes of hypnotizing voters. A Rasmussen poll taken July 12 showed Whitman virtually even with Democrat Jerry Brown, so she has been doing okay up to this point.

But a tangle with John and Ken will seriously hurt her. She has been making rookie mistakes in a big league game, and is likely to spend over $100 million and lose the election– because she thought she could hispander on immigration and get away with it.

California: Whitman Goofs on Immigration

In California, E-bay billionaire Meg Whitman is running for governor as a Republican, and spent more than $70 million of her own money to win the primary. In that primary, Steve Poizner increased his poll numbers by campaigning against illegal immigration and its huge cost to the state, and Whitman responded by claiming she was “tough as nails” on the issue.

After that win, Whitman rapidly backpedaled in the language of the invader: see Weasel Whitman Quick to Go Spanish.

Today’s report shows that Whitman is still unclear on the concept that the majority of California voters want their immigration laws enforced.

Whitman says she and Brown are similar on illegal immigration, Los Angeles Times, July 14, 010

The gubernatorial candidates continued to spar over illegal immigration Wednesday, with Republican nominee Meg Whitman insisting her positions are not so different from those of her Democratic rival, Jerry Brown, and Brown countering that their views are as different as night and day.

Whitman began the back-and-forth, publishing an op-ed piece in several Spanish-language newspapers that criticized the harsh rhetoric surrounding the debate and noting that she received flak in the Republican primary because of her opposition to Arizona’s controversial crackdown on illegal immigrants.

She says she and Brown opposed that law, as well as driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, sanctuary cities and Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot initiative that would have denied most taxpayer-funded services to those in the country illegally.

“Clearly, when examining our positions on immigration, there is very little over which Jerry Brown and I disagree,” Whitman wrote for the Eastern Group Publications in East Los Angeles, which distributes 11 newspapers. “Latinos seeking a candidate who supports amnesty for illegal immigrants won’t find one on the gubernatorial ballot this year.”

Whitman declines to say what should be done about illegal immigrants in the country, saying such a discussion cannot be made until the federal government secures the border. However, her words suggest she is not in the camp that supports deporting all of them.

“We must find a fair and practical solution to the status of the millions of undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States,” she wrote.

Whitman has gotten into trouble in this area before. Last fall, while visiting the border, Whitman said, “Can we get a fair program where people stand at the back of the line, they pay a fine, they do some things that would ultimately allow a path to legalization?”  The last three words are precisely those derided as “amnesty” by Republicans who have argued for stricter controls. A spokeswoman later said the candidate was referring not to citizenship but to a “temporary guest worker program.”

In the GOP primary, as rival Steve Poizner hammered her for those words, Whitman brought out her campaign manager, former Gov. Pete Wilson, a man celebrated by many conservatives and reviled by many Latinos because of his highly visible support of Proposition 187. Wilson appeared in a radio ad called “Tough as Nails,” in which Whitman said, “Illegal immigrants should not expect benefits from the state of California.”

Democrats point out that such a denial of benefits was the aim of Proposition 187. Whitman’s campaign, which has aggressively and expansively courted Latinos since the primary, says that in the ad, Whitman is referring only to the benefits that appear in the next sentence in the ad, driver’s licenses and admission to state-funded universities and colleges.

Jerry Brown must be having a good laugh at Whitman’s rookie screw-up. After all, the whole point of a political campaign is to point out the idiot positions of your opponent and then use them as a club to pummel him.

Large numbers of hispanics will never vote for a Republican, but if Whitman campaigned hard on tough immigration enforcement, she might convince disaffected white voters to choose her. Oh well.