One of the more egregious examples of power politics in the [...]]]>
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.
“It’s a lottery” whether Brown will sign or veto the Trust Act, said the bill’s author, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco. The bill went to the governor’s desk Friday after a 48-26 vote in the Assembly and earlier approval in the state Senate.
Ammiano’s bill would restrict jails from holding immigrants for deportation unless they committed a serious or violent felony. It is meant to counter the Secure Communities fingerprints program that alerts U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement whenever local police jail a deportable immigrant.
Immigrant advocates say the federal program deports too many noncriminals and low-level offenders, while most sheriffs support the ICE partnership and want Brown to veto the Trust Act.
Brown and his aides declined to comment on any pending legislation, but he has supported Secure Communities since he was attorney general.
“Every person arrested, their fingerprints are taken and they’re sent to my office, and I now send them to the immigration office,” Brown boasted in a 2010 election debate with his Republican challenger Meg Whitman. “If they’re found to be here illegally, they’re made subject to deportation.”
Ammiano is hoping for a change of heart by Brown and others who the lawmaker says were misled into believing the program was focused on deporting criminals. Brown “signed a boilerplate memorandum of understanding … based on a number of lies, not by him, but by ICE,” Ammiano said.
Also coming soon to Brown’s desk may be a measure by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, who has until the end of the week to usher through the Legislature a bill that would grant driver’s licenses to young illegal immigrants who get work permits from the Obama administration.
Two other bills were introduced Friday, just one week before the Legislature adjourns for the year on Aug. 31. One surprise proposal known as a “safe harbor” bill seeks to protect most of the state’s undocumented residents by allowing them to work and live in the state if they’ve been here since 2008, have no felony convictions and meet other conditions. Its proponent, Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, D-Sylmar, introduced the last-minute bill by “gutting and amending” another one focused on vehicle pollution.
The fourth bill, the only one with Republican support, is a mostly symbolic measure to consider work permits for undocumented farm and service workers. Unlike his original version, however, the watered-down bill by Assemblyman Manuel Pérez, D-Coachella, would not actually grant state work permits, but rather would set up a working group to develop the idea.
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 [...]]]>
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.
The less objectionable section was [...]]]>
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.
The California Dream Act has drawn strong support across the Latino community, said Jaime A. Regalado, director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs.
“If [Brown] was looking at the balance sheet, understanding politically that he needed to sign one of these measures, it was not going to be competitive,” Regalado said. “It’s seen as a civil rights issue in the Latino community, especially for youth. The farmworkers’ struggle is not necessarily seen as what it once was. This is an issue of the now, an issue of the moment, part of the Latino agenda and part of the future.”
But opponents of the legislation say it will diminish opportunities for U.S. students.
“Obviously it falls into a different realm when the money is coming out of private pockets than it does when it’s coming out of taxpayers’ pockets,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates halting illegal immigration, “but nevertheless, foundations and other institutions that get tax exemptions should not be promoting policies that encourage people to remain illegally in the United States.”
During a signing ceremony at Los Angeles City College, Brown largely brushed over the thorny politics of illegal immigration and sought to frame the legislation as part of the struggle to maintain education funding during California’s budget crisis.
“The debate is very clear: shrivel public service, shrink back, retrench, retreat from higher education, from schools, from the investment in people; or make the investment,” Brown said. “This is one piece of a very important mosaic, which is a California that works for everyone.”
Brown used the issue last year against his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, during a Fresno debate.
After an undocumented student had asked the candidates to explain their position on such legislation, Brown said that he backed the proposal and that Whitman wanted to kick undocumented students out of college, adding “that is wrong morally and humanly.”
His NYT piece was the usual formulaic sob story of the American Dream thwarted by [...]]]>
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.
General public pro- and anti- sentiment has been raucous.
“He’s taken a huge personal risk” one immigration lawyer said about Jose. He could get deported back to his native Philippines any time. But the evocatively-named ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) is sensitive to bad publicity. So much for equal treatment. And Barack Obama’s most recent tepid and indecisive immigration speech in El Paso two weeks ago could help. Illegals “have to admit they broke the law,” the President said, “pay their taxes, pay a fine and learn English.”
So, except for the fine, I guess Jose has passed the Potus sniff test. The head of ICE himself, John Morton, issued a memo in June telling his agents to use “discretion” in going after illegals, considering factors including whether they had come here as children. Hello, Jose.
Then there’s Jose, the person. I’ve stayed in touch, been on panels with him and as recently as January recommended him for an important job at the Hearst newspaper division in New York. I feel silly for it, but not felonious.
Last month, he went to dinner at the home of a local big time businessman and philanthropist, seated among digital media gurus, and was being considered there for a job at a prestigious journalism institution back East.
During that period he was quietly and carefully lawyering up and basting his plans for coming out and starting a new organization – Define American – to get the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act passed and raise awareness that the illegal population is also upscale as much as it involves day laborers and house cleaners. Though most of the latter don’t have media handlers and legal teams.
While publicity and good lawyers may save his residency, the most likely road kill in the Jose conflagration could be Peter Perl, a Post training editor who knew the secret and kept it. The Post said ominously that what he did “was wrong.” It’s the knowing that sideswiped careers of people like Meg Whitman and failed federal job candidates Zoe Baird and Bernard Kerik.
Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli told me “what Jose did was wrong. It’s a compelling and interesting story” and Jose is a “talented and imaginative guy.” But Brauchli seems to feel duped.
No so much former Post managing editor – now managing editor at Frontline, Phil Bennett. “I’m torn,” Bennett said when I spoke with him a few days ago. “Honesty matters. But what Jose has done is courageous and I admire him for it.”Jose is a hustler, what one friend called “a classic self-promoter” who wisely identified those who could and would help him. He had to be to maintain the life he did. He refers to the “underground railroad” of secret allies and assistance, but his was like a posh lounge car, not a grape field.
He says he’s flabbergasted to be the story instead of reporting it. “The irony is that I had to come out to be unemployed,” he says, now that he won’t be able to get a legitimate job; his only financial support comes from his new organization’s backers. Coming out as gay in high school wasn’t “nearly as dangerous.” While close friends knew his sexual orientation, they didn’t know he was here illegally.
He’s now freed from the fear that cut into his pleasure over his many successes – a documentary screened at the Tribeca festival, the Zuckerberg get. But the future is, as they say on TV news, uncertain. He complains about his Times mug shot but revels a little in their proposed magazine headline: “OUTLAW.” He’s just barely 30.
For me, despite the subterfuge, he’s done what he intended: given a surprising, articulate and human face to an important issue for at least some of those millions of people out there floating in terrifying limbo. For me, it’s the face of a friend
Like many successful young people blessed with talent and brains, Jose has a healthy dose of hubris. He’ll have to watch that as much as he will the approaching footsteps of ICE enforcers.
But if he can come out, the force of his story – both good reaction and bad – and his project just might lubricate the politically tarred-up wheels of government and help craft sane immigration policy. If it has that effect, we should forgive him his lies.
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 [...]]]>
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.
“Whether it will be an issue of that level of intensity [as in 2008] not having a candidate in the field who will centralize it is another question,” he said.
During the 2008 Republican presidential primary, Tancredo forced many of the other candidates to shift their positions on immigration.
During a debate in November 2007, Tancredo took note of the political dynamic: “I have to tell you, so far it’s been wonderful, because all I’ve heard so far is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo. It is great! I am so happy to hear it.”
However, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who had been a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, subsequently won the nomination.
“As Tom Tancredo dropped out of the race, immigration became discussed less and less, even among Republicans,” King said.
After a failed third-party bid to become governor of Colorado, Tancredo told his supporters of his plan to keep illegal immigration at the center of the GOP’s presidential primary debate.
Gingrich’s strength, as evidenced by his many appearances on Fox News, is transitioning from talking about healthcare reform to unrest in the Middle East to rising oil prices. Without a doubt, Gingrich will be a force to be reckoned with during the presidential debates.
“He can get into the weeds of the weeds,” Kingston said.
The 67-year-old also has shrewdly recast his public image. As House Speaker, he was a partisan who clashed repeatedly with President Clinton. Gingrich went through two messy divorces, and had an extramarital affair as he led the effort to impeach Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
He admitted his infidelity five years ago, making it less of a story now.
In 2003, he founded the Center for Health Transformation, and for many years stressed the need for “bipartisan solutions.”
Gingrich’s weakness is retail politics, where he can be brusque.
After his speech at CPAC, Gingrich made his way to the basement of the Marriott Wardman Park hotel, where “radio row” was set up for interviews.
Along the way, conferees asked him to pose for photos and sign autographs. After he disengaged from one group, two young women asked him to pose for another photo.
“Very quickly,” he said, before getting on the escalator with his staff and security.
Kingston said glad-handing has never been Gingrich’s strength.“He’s not going to sit around and eat barbecue and talk about last week’s bird hunt,” the 10-term lawmaker said.
Kingston compared Gingrich to Babe Ruth, who hit 714 home runs but also struck out 1,330 times: “That’s his nature: to come up with a lot of ideas, and some of them aren’t workable, but other things, like the ‘Contract With America,’ are major changes in American policy.”
However, Gingrich must be closely watched. He thinks his political brilliance can overcome cultural chasms [...]]]>
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.
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 [...]]]>
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.
Now Whitman has expanded her language tribalism to broadcast ads for Chinese [...]]]>
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.
]]>Tequila! Whitman, Fiorina down shots in appeal to Latinos, NBC, October 9, 2010
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. [...]]]>
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.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
]]>(Many in Silicon Valley and beyond remember Fiorina’s 2004 remark: “There is no job that [...]]]>
(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.
