On Friday, President Obama appeared for a radio interview on Spanish language radio's "Piolin por la Manana". The show is hosted by an LA radio host named Eddie Sotelo, who goes by the name of "Piolin" (Tweety Bird). Sotelo originally came to this country illegally and was pending deportation when he eventually arranged to legitimize his status. He is a popular radio host in the LA Spanish-speaking community and is an activist pushing for amnesty for illegal aliens.
In the interview, Obama made some interesting statements about Republicans and about those Americans who are clamoring for a secure border and crackdown on illegal immigration. He referred to them as "enemies of Latinos."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44123.html
This is downright disgusting for a president of the United States to tell a particular ethnic group that a particular party are their enemies. It is also disgusting for him to refer to those Americans who demand that the government enforce the law as enemies of Latinos. We (including myself, who is married to a Mexican) are not enemies of Latinos, and for the president to use that kind of language is nothing less than race-baiting and unworthy of a president. He came to office on the promise that he would bring us all together. Instead, he has divided us as few if any presidents have done-this time along ethnic lines.
It is disgraceful.
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I think your position is somewhat more nuanced than those the president was talking about. You have, when pressed, affirmed that you do NOT favor mass deportation of 12 million residents of the United States who arrived here without proper documentation.
Unfortunately, the Republican Party establishment HAS defined itself as "the enemy of Latinos," with the result that the headway Republicans were making in 2000 among Hispanic voters have largely evaporated. (Incidentally, a lot of Muslim voters supported GWB in 2000 also). Look at how John McCain has backed off from supporting an orderly process for dealing with the status of those who are, in fact, living and working and raising families in the United States. I don't think the characterization is entirely unearned.
Finally, although I don't endorse flagrant imitation of the Atwater-Rove school of political mendacity as the way for Democrats to win elections, the GOP has no moral ground to complain. You might, but the party doesn't.
Insisting on enforcing border and immigration laws does not make one an enemy of Latinos
Hmmm, "... Arrived here without proper identification.". Sounds so benign, like it was an oversight or some kind of mistake. Not that it was ILLEGAL, or anything like that.
When a country loses control over its borders it loses it's sovereignty. While the Democrats see lots of votes and is all in favor of easy right to US citizenship, the Republicans look at what is best for America as a whole. The US should select those kinds of candidates that have promise of helping America, like professions or skills we need.
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Gary, I completely agree that it terrible for the President to use the class struggle strategy. I thought that the Democrats would have given that up after the John Edwards campaign failed so badly. On the whole, it divides us.
They have all these constituencies .... Blacks, trial lawyers, union members, teachers, professors (sorry), women, Latinos, illegals, etc. They always have to mollify one group or another who gets something some other group doesn't get. As I wrote here somewhere else, the Republicans look for what is good for the country, not this or that group. Specifically, lower taxes, smaller government, stronger military, higher morality. You will find that their recommended policies conform to these principles. The Democrats typically support policies that result in higher taxes, bigger government, etc.
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Miggie, you are correct that a country needs to have control of its borders. Gary has highlighted some very disturbing penetration of our territory by Mexican drug cartels. These bands are the most fundamental enemies of ordered liberty imaginable. The earliest autocratic governments in human history emerged in very much the same manner, leading directly to early empires such as Sargon of Akkad and Hammurabi of Babylon.
Much as I sympathize with the Quakers who smuggled Salvadorean refugees across the border at the height of that country's U.S.-financed civil war, if our border patrol can't stop a few Quakers, how is it going to stop ruthless gangs with special forces military training and an advanced arsenal?
However, illegal or not, the fact is that twelve million people or so are living, working, renting, paying taxes (yes, they do pay taxes, including social security - which they may never collect on) in this country. To round them up and ship them south would produce a horrendous dislocation in American communities.
So, we need a rational solution. McCain USED TO advocate a balanced solution to legalize the status of those here while tightening up control of the border. He chickened out on that as an expedient to getting himself renominated.
And so Gary, unfortunately the Republican Party, on the whole, does much more than advocate securing our borders. On the whole, despite your own best intentions and your sincere devotion to your wife, the party has set it self up with positions that give Latinos good cause to regard it as their enemy, more often than not.
The party essentially did that because their strategy was to block any significant legislation on President Obama's watch, although they may well be willing to reconsider if they are in a position to take credit for more or less the same legislation in the future.
Siarlys,
We can stop the cartels on our border with our military and an effective wall. We don't have the will, and that is the problem.
Of course we can't round up and deport 12 million people. It is impractical. Here is the fousesquawk solution:
1 Build the wall and put however many personnel on the border as necessary. Border state national guards and military bases could be a start. When our troops come home from the Middle East they can help.
Crack down on the criminals. This requires cooperation between police and immigration. No more sanctuary cities.
Crack down on big employers who use illegals as a matter of practice.
Then-finally, we can decide on a humane solution to deal with the law-abiding workers who are just trying to survive. Secure the border comes first-it's called stopping the bleeding
The ultimate solution, however, lies in Mexico. The real blame lies in Mexico City.
"The earliest autocratic governments in human history emerged in very much the same manner, leading directly to early empires such as Sargon of Akkad and Hammurabi of Babylon."
I am more familiar with the damage the Goths and the Huns and later the Visigoths and Ostrogoths did to the Roman Empire.
We have the strongest military in the world and could easily enforce our borders if we had the political will to do it.
The supposed 12 million illegal aliens also commit a disproportionate amount of crime and use up a disproportionate amount of welfare, medical care, and other public services. Some of them may pay social security taxes but my guess is that not that many pay income taxes.
It is not necessary to "round them all up." We should deport all those that we catch that break the laws. We should enforce the laws on hiring illegals. We have gone through these efforts before and what happened was that they began in much larger numbers to migrate back out themselves when it became tougher to live here illegally. We should end the anchor baby laws which entitle scores of relatives to come in legally based on one baby born here "legally."
By asserting that the Republicans determined to block any significant Obama legislation, you are parroting a DNC talking point. For someone who claims not to be a Democrat, you do a good job spouting their line. It turns out that the opposition to Obama legislation was based on principles. Namely, that the legislation was bad for the country.... Bailouts, takeovers of one industry after another, ObamaCare, Cap and Trade, were opposed because there are better ways to do things than tax and spend and build a gigantic government that intrudes on the liberty of the people. (Yes, the Tea Party Line).
You want one set of strategies and I want another. You believe it is because the Republicans are just evil and oppositional. I believe the Democrats are badly mistaken and ignore how their strategies have failed here in the past and in other countries around the world.
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Your guess is about as good as the latest headline in the National Enquirer.
First generation immigrants, by all available studies, have LOWER crime rates than any other population in the same locality. Their CHILDREN tend to have high crime rates - have acclimatized themselves to their American surroundings. How would they NOT pay taxes? They work, for employers subject to IRS enforcement. Taxes come out of their own paychecks, it doesn't cost their employers anything to collect it, but it could be costly not to do so. Now compliance with worker safety laws, there the employer sees a risk worth taking to save some money.
The REAL question is whether they get more in benefits than they pay in taxes. The average Mexican immigrant collects over his or her lifetime $55,000 more in benefits than he or she pay in taxes.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/mexico/mexico.pdf
That Report look like the National Inquirer to you?
Also for California alone:
"Analysis of the latest Census data indicates that California's illegal immigrant population is costing the state's taxpayers more than $10.5 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. Even if the estimated tax contributions of illegal immigrant workers are subtracted, net outlays still amount to nearly $9 billion per year. The annual fiscal burden from those three areas of state expenditures amounts to about $1,183 per household headed by a native-born resident."
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=iic_immigrationissuecentersffec
You have a lot of convictions that, no matter how firmly held by you, still don't bear scrutiny. In other words, there are many areas that you just don't know what you are talking about.
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The fact is that in California, the state is collapsing under the weight of the burden illegal aliens put on our emergency rooms, schools and yes, the prison system. It is far beyound the economic benefits we get from their cheap labor. If you don't live in California (as Miggie, Lance and I do) you can't begin to understand the problem.
.org usually denotes a bias.
Show me some officially vetted statistics. You too Gary. You SAY they are costing all this money, but you don't provide hard numbers, nor how anyone managed to parse which dollars went to "illegal immigrants" and which didn't.
By the way Miggie, how much to YOU cost the state and federal government, compared to how much YOU pay in? Don't know? I didn't think so. It would be awfully hard to figure out. Oh, I KNOW you have an OPINION: you pay millions in taxes and never get anything back. If your house caught fire, would the department stand around and watch it burn?
Anyway, Obama is appealing to Latinos who vote. Non-citizen immigrants don't.
Siarlys,
A year or two ago, I posted some stats put out by an official in Sac. I'll let you dig it out. If I remember correctly, the figure was 100 million annually.
I see, Siarlys, you only accept evidence from the Economist magazine and businessmen you know. All the others that don't support your convictions are biased, regardless of how comprehensive the report. As far as I'm concerned, you'll have to find support your contentions on your own.
You have, once again, made some kind of oddball challenge as to whether I know whether I consume more services than the taxes I pay in. Does anyone know this?
I do know that I pay in a lot of taxes and have done so my entire adult life. The taxes come from people like me and, if you had your way would go to more people like you who are at the trough. Where do you think the money comes from? Losers who don't work and those who want to depend on the government (i.e. those who pay in taxes) to support them? Lefties always think that the government itself produces the money they suck out of it.
I'd say someone like you who has to work until they are 70 in order to collect a few hundred dollars more a month in Social Security is a pretty pathetic underachiever. How unfair it is that you don't get more of a share of what others have earned.
Don't think I am anything like you. I retired long before 70 with more than enough earned and saved for me and my family for a long, long, time. I live in one of the most beautiful places in the country in my own home with a view of the ocean.
Far too many non-citizens vote Democratic, as do felons, dead people, and voters with made up names. You think ACORN, SEIU, New Black Panthers, and other voter fraud organizations register Republicans? They are all organizations that support Democrats and other Left Wing screwballs, led by the Community Organizer in Chief.
Face it, NOTHING will change any of your views.. You have a stake in the welfare/entitlement state and refuse to see where it will lead the country. Keep supporting illegal immigrants, they will give you the votes to keep you on the dole.
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Another typically incomprehensible comment from Siarlys. Who raved about a "Jewish Bolshevik Capitalist Conspiracy"? You know that Bolshevik and Capitalist are at opposite ends of the spectrum? What do you do, search for 3 or 4 syllable words to put in the same sentence just to make people think you are writing some profound witty comment???
BTW, the first one to say the other is a Nazi admits intellectual failure.
This reveals the fundamental psychological defect of the Left today: a failure of imagination. You don’t understand that opposing preferential treatment for illegal aliens is not the same thing as calling for genocide. You don’t understand that cutting off benefits for lazy whiners is not a pogrom or that good people can oppose egalitarian agendas with unearned entitlements without being fascists.
Start taking your meds again, you are no longer lucid at all.
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