Redstate

And before you give me any platitudes about people coming here as naive immigrants to seek freedom and opportunity, I'd appreciate it if you learned some Spanish, traveled down to Mexico and listened like a fly on the wall to some of the conversations that go on among the millions of people who want to seek their "freedom" here. What they want is to seek my money.

"I am absolutely for calling the illegal influx an "invasion." It's more than an invasion -- it's a complete overthrow of this country."

Yes, that rhetoric will lose TX, FL, AZ, and NM in the next election.

And I have never contended this had to do with an amorphous "freedom." It does have to do with economic freedom or what you call "making money." People can make more money in the U.S. than in Mexico for the same work. It would be nice if there was an orderly and legal way for this to happen. The President and the Senate have agreed on such a system. I presume the House will join them soon.

But as long as people like you believe a bunch of workers coming to make money to send home to their family should be characterized by a term that means soldiers attacking a country violently to take control of it you will be ignored and sometimes ridiculed. And you will take down the Party with you. My hope in this article is to persuade people to put forth policy ideas without trying to upset millions of people who have voted Republican in the recent past. But alas that seems to much to ask of you.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

You really disappoint me. But as long as people like you believe a bunch of workers coming to make money to send home to their family should be characterized by a term that means soldiers attacking a country violently to take control of it you will be ignored and sometimes ridiculed.

People like me, Adam? Or do you mean the millions of people in America who are going to be forced to pay for the "bunch of workers" who want to come on over here when we already have problems in this country keeping people employed? When a lot of our own people are barely earning enough to pay their electric bills and keep their phones running?

I wish you would change your mind. You don't seem to realize that the problem we have on the southern border is one of our own creation and that there is no solution to it other than closing that border and selectively letting people in. You couch that in the language of persuading people to "put forth policy ideas" but you don't offer any, except to say that immigration hawks are endangering the party because -- lo and behold -- immigrants are voting against them!

But I'll put it a different way, since you're trying to be an economist, Adam: how much is your plan going to cost me, the average taxpayer, over the next ten years? Do you have any idea of that number, or is coming up with something like that antithetical to your specious argument that immigration hawks are "hurting America?"

That shows that my reasoning is economically unsound, then I'll start thinking about your argument. In the absence of that, I don't want to hear another word about why this country cannot enforce its immigration laws without the Republican party being dangerously imperiled.

I've never managed to get him to engage in debate on the politics or economics of immigration.

There are an infinite number of jobs and only a finite number of people.

When people say there are no jobs- they mean there are no jobs that they are willing to do at the current wage.

But wages are not the only measure of wealth, we are consumers as well as producers. It is clear that large immigration benefits America economically more than it hurts. Now there are three caveats:

1: There are specific groups that are economically harmed by immigration. However, their pain is outweighed by the amount of people benefiting from immigration.

2: This does not address cultural issues, such as immigrants learnig English and American culture.

3: This does not address the issue of legal vs illegal immigration- as there may be different type entering in each group. For example, illegal immigrants are probably more likely to be criminals (as in other than illegal border crossing) than legal immigrants.

I think there are plenty of reasons that can be used to argue for stricter border control without adopting rhetoric that offends legal immigrants. In fact I think the case is overwhealming, that when treated properly, legal immigration is a great benefit to our country.

And you'll get ten different answers. The numbers I've heard being bandied about concerning how many immigrants we can expect to cross the border in the next 20 years if we continue to do nothing to stop them ranges from 10 to 50 million. In a population of roughly 300 million that amounts to an "invasion" to me.

Every single one of those people who comes across the border illegally is going to want clean streets. They're going to want public order and police protection. They're going to want the fire department and the ambulance workers and emergency medical technicians. They're going to want free emergency room care. They're going to want to go to public school. They're going to want to apply for student loans. They're going to want pap smears, breast cancer screening, cheap prescription drugs, and food stamps and unemployment benefits if they get laid off. They're going to want psychiatric care if one of their uncles goes crazy. They're going to want low-income heating assistance programs and WIC cards to buy their groceries.

In short, if we don't enforce the laws, they're going to think that coming here en masse is something that we welcomed them to do, and they're going to expect to be treated like every other American citizen who is already here.

I've yet to hear people like Adam explain to me in detail how we intend to pay for that, or make the case that this massive influx of labor is going to do anything except price American labor downward.

Meanwhile, of course, Jeffrey Sachs wants 0.7% of our GDP to combat world poverty. The United Nations wants lawsuits on behalf of indigenous peoples because of displacement caused by global warming. And Algore wants a carbon cap n' trade Monopoly Money scheme. The Democrats want to make college tuition free, and give healthcare to every American, even though the cost of both of those has been rising hyperinflationally for the past decade or so.

Where's the money for all that going to come from along with the rest of the money we're going to need to pay for all the immigrants we've imported?

Truly great argument.

Adam needs to check out the illegal immigrant % in prisons. And Just Me is right that we have to change the law on birth on the soil citizenship.

But you raised the free tuition issue. I find it quite telling that the libs, whine about tuition costs squeezing out the lower middle class yet don't offer to take pay cuts so these po folks can go to Harvard.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

Just to put the icing on the cake. When I lived in Chicago, I bought one of the first condominums that was constructed as a gut rehab of an old, circa 1930's development that was purchased by real estate developers. My wing of the building was completed last, and the developer (who has now taken flight for parts unknown) used illegal immigrant labor during the construction of more than half of the units in the building.

Why? Because doing so slashed the construction costs by more than 50% so that he could keep more money for himself and about 5 of his buddies. Unfortunately the quality suffered as well: when I went to sell my condo., I had to spend almost three weeks repairing egregious (and downright dangerous) construction flaws that they had left behind:

1) The cabinets in the kitchen were being held over the range and refrigerator solely by the mounting plate for the microwave oven. They literally fell off the wall while we were cleaning them.

2) The central air-conditioning ductwork and piping was done so shoddily that with only a year of use, all of the coolant in the system leaked out, rendering the AC inoperable and costing more than $2,000 to repair. More than 30 units in our development suffered from the same problem, so apparently this was the standard operating procedure.

3) Half of the electrical outlets in the unit, once you removed the faceplates, weren't even placed into wall boxes -- they were just left hanging inside the wall, sometimes without even wire nuts and proper grounding.

4) The cable television wires were run through the walls through the simple expedient of knocking a big hole in the plaster with a hammer and pushing the wire through, then screwing the faceplates directly into the plaster.

5) All of the shelving in the unit was screwed directly into the plaster without even using plastic anchors, so that if you put 5 pairs of jeans on the top shelf it would pull out of the wall.

6) The hoses connecting the washer/dryer units to the water taps were the cheapest and shoddiest hoses you could buy, as were the hoses that connected the gas range up to its supply. When we pulled out the washer/dryer to paint behind it, we found that the cold-water hose had been cross-threaded onto the back of the machine, ruining the threads and simply WAITING to come loose one night when I wasn't home and filling the entire unit with water.

Those were just the big ones. Meanwhile the developer and a few of his friends made an enormous profit through the use of the illegal labor. I spent more than $8,000 correcting all these problems and paying for a comprehensive inspection before I sold the place. Of course, at the time I bought it, I didn't think I needed one because the unit was "brand new" and my real estate agent assured me that it was constructed to the highest quality standards.

That's who the trade in illegal immigrants is helping. The guys who are vacationing in the Florida Keys after "developing" vacant properties in big cities at windfall profits.

In fact, I dated the Brazillian (kind of Seinfeldian if you remember the episode) and got her naturalized ...and I got her a green card!

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

My father and I just kept muttering under our breath to each other while we fixed all of the flaws:

"Hecho en Mexico."

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

Believe me, there were several other people in the development who would have liked to sue also, but the developers had long since left the scene and the city, and absquatulated for Parts Unknown. The management company left in charge of the property after the contractors left professed that they could no longer reach them. We asked, though, and if I had had more money and time to waste, I would have tracked them down, but I needed to sell the unit. That's why my father and I did all the remedial work personally, and had it fully inspected personally.

Part of the problem is that once you take ownership of any property, it's very difficult to sue the developer of that property for things you discover after the fact. And the things we found were not immediately obvious, and I had owned the place for a couple of years. In other words, I think legally that when the ownership transferred to me, and I signed the contract, I basically absolved them of any liability. Neat trick.

Because when my dad arrived in Chicago we thought that we were going to be able to do a relatively simple repainting job on the place and sell it immediately. The first thing we needed to do was remove the carpet, and as we did that and then removed the electrical outlets to repaint the place we started to discover the really serious construction flaws.

I had known, for instance, about 1 or 2 closet shelves that seemed a little wobbly but I assumed they were just outliers. Little did I know that they were *all* done so badly.

And then it really began to hit home one night, because we decided to replace the microwave oven rather than leave my old one there. We thought that we should give the new owner a brand-new microwave, because I'd used mine pretty heavily (I still have it -- it works perfectly, but it's obviously been used.) We started taking the microwave oven down and the entire set of hardwood kitchen cabinets fell right on top of us. That's when we began to realize that we were in for a long haul.

like a case of your typical corrupt contractors. Contracting is one of those occupations that is full of corruption, kick backs, and short cuts.

You do see more illegals involved in construction work-although I don't know that they are to blame specifically for the screw ups, so much as they are just another way for a contractor to make a easy money.

Laborers around here make $7-8 an hour in contracting-so they don't exactly come with loads of skills (and the ones that work around here are US citizens and they are as often as not just as incompetent).

like a case of your typical corrupt contractors. Contracting is one of those occupations that is full of corruption, kick backs, and short cuts.

I paid over $120,000 *in cash* for my unit when I bought it. I used a cashier's check that cleared the same day. The bad-apple contractors (and the bunch is getting pretty rotten) know that they can get away with this because 1) their workers are illegal and won't complain to anyone and 2) if their workers complain to anyone they can always get other workers who won't complain to anyone and 3) if their workers complain to anyone they can always blame it on a technical oversight in their hiring procedures that will go to court and a bunch of lawyers will get involved and by that time they will have gotten their money and moved on to their next development, in another state.

Did you at least seek damages against the people you hired to inspect the unit prior to purchase ?

Thats assuming the developer was unavailable or judgement proof ?

Like the vast majority of the people in the development, we didn't hire anyone to inspect the place before we bought it, because we assumed, like everyone else, that the units were *new*. And they were new -- it's just that once you started to peel back the layers, there were all kinds of hidden flaws.

I looked at more than 10 properties before I decided on this one before I bought it and it shure was pretty when I did the walkthrough with the real estate agent -- everything was spotless and worked perfectly. A little excitement added to the mix and some careful shepherding by the real estate office and the next thing you know, you're signing the papers. And then you own it, pal.

I will say that we did realize a profit on the sale overall. But we did the work commensurate with that profit. The new owners received a condominium that was better-constructed than the one I moved into, with nothing to hide.

I'm telling you, I must still have some lib-dem in me (or maybe COMPASSION FROM CHRIST-Joli, for shame) or is it plaintiff trial lawyer?, but that comment knocked the breath out of me.

Being a 6/2001 convert, I just really never would use that phrase. Boy, I've got a lot to learn.

I'll be on the lookout for a comeback against the Insurance Defense Lawyer "Phant." probably will serve up a "strict liability on him

smile to all

but really joli, some things we just

maybe this is a southern thing....I'll think about it

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

Btw didn't you say your a real estate attorney ?

But yes its a harsh world, and developers like the ones above are all too common.

of representing criminal defendants and civil plaintiffs. Yes, I have been in corporate law for 5 years mainly in the real estate investment area, and sometimes I am repelled by some of the things that the wielders of caveat emptor say and do, most of which is just business sense, but which does sometimes strike what remains of the old plaintiff's lawyer (and compassionate defender of the down-trodden) who would never concede the application of caveat emptor, EVER. There is always a caveat to that caveat. No lawyer worth his salt would ever simply bend over and grab ankles at that theory, even if applicable. Its against my religion, except when hired by a business entity that needs it!

Its not you brother, its just to see that phrase thrown out in this context, just kind of jolted me.

Be careful. I'm over 40.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

I seem to come across more strident in print than I mean to.

BTW

Be careful. I'm over 40.

Are you like me ? In that when you were younger you never imagined getting this far ?

I was raised to always do my best work, even if I didn't expect to have to do it. Donks consider that "karma" but I consider it being "square" and giving people a fair deal when you give your word.

There used to be a time in this country when "being square" wasn't used as an epithet by people who wanted to make fun. Really the main reason we spent almost three weeks working there came down to:

1) We wanted to protect the value of the unit for our neighbors -- that's square, because we knew that the value of this condo affected the value of all the others.

2) We wanted to the new owners to feel that they had purchased a residence that they could be confident in and truly happy with. That's square, too: because even after I left there were a lot of people in that development who knew my name, and I wanted my successors to be pleased to live there.

3) We wanted to realize a profit on the sale but we weren't about to cheap out on the property just because someone else had broken the rules and left us with some unpleasant choices and work to do. That's square because it gives a positive example to others.

What's not square is what the original developers did. I hope someone eventually squares off with them. :)

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

And people like Adam will rationalize all of that by saying that I'm just a mote of nothingness in the continual flow of capital and labor.

He could care less, and that's why he hasn't provided any good arguments so far.

This one isn't about immigration policy. But you seemed to have missed that.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

I'll be happy to calmly and rationally discuss immigration policy in a manner that will be sure to have people with attention spans shorter than 30 minutes snoozing at their keyboards.

But I think a little harsh and even divisive rhetoric is actually helpful right now, to get people's attention -- especially on Capitol Hill. We have Senators and Congresspeople from both parties who have been reported by Mexican government officials as being absolutely deaf to the outrage their constituents have expressed thusfar. They just tune it out. I don't know whether yelling louder is the final answer, in fact I know it isn't, but it seems that we're having a real problem getting people to listen in the first place.

Pro-immigration activists have no compunction about using the term "Apartheid" when they scream about any attempts by the United States to enforce its laws. If anything, our side has been too genteel, reserved and reticent. I'll make a bet that there are more Congresscritters who know the color of Britney Spears' undewear (it's clear) than are listening to their constituents or can even give me a halfhearted economic analysis of the impact of continuing the status quo. It's about time we started making them earn their money if they want to maintain that wall of silence.

I keep noticing that we had a Republican Majority in both houses, and a Republican President in office for 6 of those years and nothing, 0, Nada, zip, was done by this same majority about reforming the immigration system, securing the borders or anything related to this topic.

Oh wait, we had a Hillaryish "listening tour" this past summer on the topic, and we have 700 miles worth of fence that was not funded. Whoops, I forgot the symbolic deployment of Guard forces on the border, neither armed nor with powers of arrest. Boy I feel better now because of the great work done by the 109th Congress on this topic.

If the voters rejected anything, it was overwhelming rejection of people who were promoting a plans that had no chance of passing, in short more not getting the job done.

_______________________________
Another South Park Republican spouting off !

SteveLA, you hit the nail on the head.

If the voters did reject anything relating to immigration and illegal immigration, it was over five-and-a-half years of total failure by the Bush administration to secure this nation's borders. Most of the Demcoratic candidates that defeated incumbent Republican representatives ran as being as tough or tougher than their Republican opponent on illegal immigration.

Approximately 11.5 percent of Republican seats in Congress were lost. However, only about 6.7 percent of the members of Cong. Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus lost their seats.

Cong. Tancredo, incidentally won re-election with 58.8 percent of the vote while facing both a strong Demcoratic challenger and a Libertarian. His challenger, Bill Winter, publicly voiced his support for the McCain-Kennedy bill that rewards illegal aliens with legal status and a path to citizenship.

www.smashleftwingscum.com and www.tancredo4prez.blogspot.com

...how, precisely, will that be a victory for Rep. Tancredo and his supporters?

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

On October 3, 2006, Sen. John Cornyn said "It’s one thing to authorize. It’s another thing to actually appropriate the money and do it". He said that 700 miles of fencing approved by Congress would probably not be built because of a lack of money and other practical considerations.

I was never convinced that funding for the fencing would be appropriated, particularly by the United States Senate.

I've never believe nor posted that a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives will aid the cause of border enforcement. It will likely harm that cause.

With regard to the newly-elected Democrats that claimed they would be as tough or tougher than the Republican incumbents they defeated, I believe that for many of them it was simply campaign rhetoric and they have no true committment to border enforcement.

Brad Ellsworth and Heath Shuler are newly-elected Democrats that defeated members of Cong. Tancredo's caucus. I do believe that both of them would vote to appropriate money for the fence.

Democrats controlling the House is certainly not a victory for Cong. Tancredo nor did I suggest such a notion. One of the points I was making is that many of the Democrats that defeated Republican incumbents portrayed themselves as being tough on border security and campaigned on the notion that Republicans have failed to secure this nation's borders. Most Democrats that defeated Repbulican incumbents did not do so by claiming to support an immigration plan that provides for legalization of millions of illegal aliens and a path to citizenship for those illegal aliens such as the Senate plan does.

Another point I was making is that it is rather absurd to blame the loss of House of Representatives on Republicans that supported an enforcement first approach, as opposed to an approach that embraces comprehensive immigration reform when the numbers show that approximately 93.3 percent of Cong. Tancredo's caucus, the strongest supporters of the enforcement first approach, were re-elected.

Did you support passage of S.6211, the Senate immigration reform plan?

Did you support passage of H.R.4437, the "Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005"?

www.smashleftwingscum.com and www.tancredo4prez.blogspot.com

WE NEED YOU MAN.
I agree with you on Shuler and Ellsworth.

and the dems generally
and everything else you said!

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

Thank you very much gamecock.

The re-election rate of the members of Cong. Tancredo's caucus disproves the notion that Republican candidates will not be successful during elections when they support an enforcement first approach.

I look forward to seeing Cong. Tancredo again lead his Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus during the next Congress.

www.smashleftwingscum.com and www.tancredo4prez.blogspot.com

Democrats will win in 2008 if Republicans stay hardline on illegal immigration. It plays very well in the South, but Republicans already have those states. Southwest is the area that Republicans need to worry about short term. Calling it an "invasion" is a bit dramatic to me because they just looking for a better life. People don't call it an invasion because Cubans are fleeing here and it is just because we don't like Castro. It time for both sides to come up with a plan that works. I don't approve of the Senate's plan as of this moment. What Republicans should do is to try to make the future plan actually solve the problem Republicans no longer have committee power but in the Senate being in the minority is still not a horrible thing.

People don't call it an invasion because Cubans are fleeing here...

There are hundreds of thousands of former residents of South Florida who would beg to differ.

"It never hurts to remind those who would vote for your opponent to vote...on Wednesday" - TMYN Blog

I was just thinking of one other thing, and I really want someone responsible to explain it to me using whatever arguments they can muster:

America is commonly believed to be a "nation of immigrants" and yet, most of the immigrants who built this nation arrived here before our social-welfare system was so developed that Hillary Clinton started thinking that illegals should recieve Social Security benefits.

My family arrived here on a steamship circa 1890 with absolutely no guarantees that they would even be able to survive in the New World. They worked like dogs and stacked one dime on top of another and actually contributed to the strength of this country through two world wars and beyond. They sent all of their children to college with cash money that came from a real bank account that they had used to save money with, never taking a dime from the government. My uncle went to the University of Massachusetts and graduated as a dentist. My father went to Johns Hopkins and graduated as an electrical engineer. My aunt went to the University of Maryland and has been a teacher for more than 35 years. Not a penny of their tuition came from the government. NOT A PENNY.

Now we have people who are telling me, effectively, "to h$(l with that" and saying that people who arrive here because we won't enforce our immigration laws are entitled to a much better life than my grandparents had when they helped build this country through their sweat, toil, and frugality. Why should I pay for them, Adam?

Because I'm being charitable? Out of the goodness of my heart? Because I think that when they start working they're going to be more productive than their initial indications show?

John
--------
Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

If I remember correctly Bush got 42% of their vote.

Look, maybe Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, but as long as a significant minority votes Republican we can continue to win for a long time- giving us the time necessary to convert Hispanics to the gospel of free markets.

So even if 'hispanic' weren't an entirely arbitrary, subjective definition, there'd be no way to know that figure.

I believe the VNS figure was 44%, but given the amount of tweaking they had to do to get their figures to match the actual popular vote percentages, there's plenty of reason to doubt it.
--
Run like Reagan!

I'm a troll, but I can explain a few reasons why the 44% number is extremely dubious:

(1) No poll in the run-up to the 04 election had Hispanics going for Bush by more than 35% or so, a number typical for GOP candidates in national elections (until 06).

(2) Even if Bush was wildly successful in making inroads, no GOP candidate has ever come close to the 44% figure postured by that exit poll. For example, when Reagan trounced my boy Mondale in '84, he still was only in the mid to upper 30s among Hispanics, just a little better than average.

(3) Though the general media exit poll and another by the LA Times both had figures above 40%, another poll conducted by a center for Latino studies somewhere pegged the number closer to te low to mid 30s.

(4) In the media and LA Times exit polling, suburban Hispanics (a rare breed) were greatly oversampled, due to the fact that the polling agencies made no attempt to distinguish by race when creating their samples, only by neighborhood/geographic location. Therefore, while they had a ratio of suburban/urban voters that was representative of the overall national picture, the percentages of urban Hispanics and blacks were undersampled. These Hispanic suburban voters, unlike suburban blacks, are more likely to vote for a GOP candidate to a degree that is statistically significant.

(5) There was no demograhpic category of Hispanics (born-again Protestants, Catholics, upper income, middle income, lower income, college educated, no high school degree, etc.) that was polling at significantly higher levels of support than usual for Bush, certainly not anywhere close to the 44% figure postured in the exit polling.

While it is likely that Bush improved upon his 00 performance, and the performance of nearly all his GOP predecessors, it is more likely that he was in the 37-38% range, rather than the 44% range.

However, I would agree that demonizing a group of people in campaign rhetoric is a bad idea if you're trying to reach out to them. I would also point out that much of the blame for the economic troubles associated with immigrants (and state service recipients in general) lies with the businesses that pay them low wages and push the responsibility for providing health care, college/retirement savings, etc. onto middle class taxpayers while the executives pocket the extra earnings from the low wages. But then again, I'm a kos troll :)

You state your case rationally, you identify yourself upfront and you are respectful of the audience, not to mention we don't have to remind you of our profanity policy.

Welcome to RedState. Hope to hear more from you. And you're wrong about immigrants. :>). But you knew that...
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

My only quibble would be no links. It's OK, we're all policy geeks here. :)

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

"It never hurts to remind those who would vote for your opponent to vote...on Wednesday" - TMYN Blog

There is no real way to tell how many people of different ethnic groups vote for a party. But the best estimates are that Bush got maybe 40% in 2004.

but as long as a significant minority votes Republican we can continue to win for a long time

Depends on what you consider a long time. The Hispanic share of the population is growing fairly rapidly. It will grow a lot more rapidly if we offer US citizen ship to the estimated twelve million illegals. Due to the way our laws work, they would then be entitled to bring their family here to join them. We are potentially talking about up to thiry million new *poor* voters entering the system within the next ten years.

giving us the time necessary to convert Hispanics to the gospel of free markets.

We have not converted African-Americans to it, why do you think we will ever convert Hispanics? In terms of poverty rate and out of wedlock births, Hispanics are basically identical to blacks.

Most Cuban-Americans were middle to upper class folks to start with and as such tend to vote GOP. The GOP's hardline on Communism has certainly helped there too. But if you factor Cubans out of the Hispanic mix, you'll find that the populaion does indeed skew heavily Democratic.

And look at poor uneducated voters. They are not a Republican constituency. They pay very little in taxes and want as much free stuff as they can get.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

Most of the early Cuban arrivals were of the upper and middle classes. Whatever partisan splits that might have naturally occurred in this population after they became US. citizens were snuffed out by what was perceived as a betrayal by JFK at the Bay of Pigs. The partisan registration of the earliest Cuban refugees was more a protest over this than a buy-in to Republican ideology.

Then, Jimmy Carter's Mariel Boatlift changed the equation significantly, while simultaneously giving the earlier arrivals a much broader power base and disproportionate clout. Today, the CANF's power base is eroding. Not only is there the expanding Cuban lower class of second and third generation descendants of Marielitos, there are growing enclaves in South Florida made up of people whose native allegiance is to other South American, Central American and Carribean states. It's likely that in 20 years, the Cuban monolith will be gone and the scales will tip based more upon whether or not the ancestors of the post 1980 Cuban population in Miami are more interested in what government can do for them than what they can do for their country.

"It never hurts to remind those who would vote for your opponent to vote...on Wednesday" - TMYN Blog

Re: It's likely that in 20 years, the Cuban monolith will be gone

Also playing a role in the above is assimilation: Cuban-Americans have tended to become just plain old unhypenated Americans in the second and third generations. I work (in S Florida) with folks named Vargas and Sanchez, people in their 20s, and other than the fact that they can still speak Spanish, they are otherwise indistinguishable from other Americans at my office. You would also expect their voting patterns to assimilate to the American norm as well.

They vote democrat for 10-15 years and then many switch to the GOP.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

You write of a "few," a meager sampling, and chances are those you work with are at the higher end of the assimilation process. I agree with you to that point, but no further. The total of my experience is exactly the opposite.

Assimilation is inhibited if there is a continual replenishment of foreign diasporas. I went to work in a Federal Government position in Downtown Miami in 1985 and was culture shocked to say the least. Today, when visiting my wife's relatives in northern Broward County, I get the same feeling I got when doing business in northern Dade county 20 years ago. I feel a stranger in my own country when there. Even my uber-liberal father-in-law instructed me to jump at the first chance to vacate and expressed that he would do likewise if his business allowed it. He's looking at lots in Tennessee to build his retirement home.

When 60% of of the residents Dade county are foreign born, who is left there for them to learn from and properly assimilate? In all of America's history, no diaspora has ever become dominant in the manner seen at the southern end of Florida. It's absurd to assume the results will be the same as before, and I'd say that even if we didn't have the contemporary nanny state because of the sheer numbers.

I moved away in large part to spare my family from any further imposition and expectation that we assimilate to other cultures. That's not to say I dislike other cultures, I don't; I just happen to like mine better and think it should be carried forward or this nation will become something other than America. Today, I can look through my Outlook address book and quickly see that the vast majority of those with whom I grew up no longer live in the region, or in the state for that matter (thank God for Classmates.com). The same can be said of most of those who were my earliest business associates. More than half of those who attended my wedding in 2002 as "friends of the groom" and all of my groomsmen flew in from other states.

The key life incident that compelled many if not most of my friends who moved away was the birth of their first child. I knew by 1995 that I'd eventually have to move if I wanted to be employed in my chosen profession until retirement. But it was the birth of my daughter that motivated me to finally give up on the notion that the region remained worthy of raising a child there who would not end up misinformed about what it means to be an American...at least in the manner I was taught.

Next year should be my high school 30th reunion, but it appears there will not be one. There are too few left of my 300+ fellow graduates to plan it. It's a danged shame. In generations past, those immigrants who would not or could not assimilate generally felt compelled to return to their former homelands; almost one in three who came in previous waves repatriated within five years. Today we have the Bizarro World opposite with the original residents being the ones who are compelled to relocate. Assimilation does not merely "happen." There has to be a directed intent of society and government free from the shackles of political correctness. I just don't see that happening any more, and it ticks me off.

On some level, all of this just has to be wrong. Why am I so often guilted into not expressing I feel this way? Were all my friends racist bigots for leaving? Or were they just being prudent?

"It never hurts to remind those who would vote for your opponent to vote...on Wednesday" - TMYN Blog

Re: Assimilation is inhibited if there is a continual replenishment of foreign diasporas. I

Well, yes, but only as a result of the simple mathematical fact that if you are continually adding unassimilated immigrants to the mix, the percentage of unassimilated people in the total population may stay the same or even increase since you are constantly renewing the first generation group, who tend not to assimilate. The later generations however do assimilate just as earlier immigrant groups do. And the Cubans, unlike Mexicans, but very much like 19th century immigrant groups, have only limited ability (if any at all) to travel back home and re-acculturate to their homeland. Of course many older Cubans still cherish the dream of returning to Cuba permanently once El Jefe has shuffled off this mortal coil, but I suspect that their children and grandchildern have no more desire to do that than I have to "return" to Germany whence my mother's grandparents all came.

Re: Today, when visiting my wife's relatives in northern Broward County, I get the same feeling I got when doing business in northern Dade county 20 years ago.

Huh. I live in Broward, in Ft Lauderdale, just off I-95. The main foreign presence that strikes me here is not Cuban (though we have plenty I'm sure)* but rather other Caribbeans, Haitians speaking Creole, and other Islanders speaking odd dialects of English. Though here I'll be a bit un-PC and admit I feel a lot more comfortable around these people than I did around the hordes of Muslim (I do mean Muslim, not Christian Arab, the latter tend to assimilate quite well) immigrants up in the Detroit area.

* Another un-PC observation: Cubans tend to be either European or African by ancestry, and as such are not easily distinguishable from the rest of us by sight. I suspect this helps with their assimilation too since they easily fit into our pre-existing "White" or "Black" categories.
Re: He's looking at lots in Tennessee to build his retirement home.

LOL. Given the exorbitant cost of housing here, there's a steady out-migration of older people for Tennessee and North Carolina-- just about anyone who is not dependent on a job to make a living since the one great benefit of living in S Florida is a booming economy. (Broward's unemployment rate is an unbelievable 2.8%, also very different from my native Michigan.)

Re: In all of America's history, no diaspora has ever become dominant in the manner seen at the southern end of Florida.

Um, Louisiana's Cajuns? The Pennsylavnia "Dutch"? Granted the former were already in residence, but even to this day they form a majority in some areas of Louisiana and in unguarded moments they can heard referring to the rest of us as a "them" whom they are careful to differntiate from their own.

Re: It's absurd to assume the results will be the same as before

Ah, but we have something else that the past lacked: mass media and mass entertainment. Indeed our mass culture in general. McDonalds, Walmart, Madonna, American Idol, even televangelizing and Pentacostalism-- these institutions are Americanizing the whole planet; I very much doubt they are ineffectual at home.

element was from New Jersey.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

The later generations however do assimilate just as earlier immigrant groups do.

How does this happen when there are not enough Americans around for them to assimilate to? And don't come back with "they get it from mass media and pop culture." These entertainment institutions are full-tilt purveyors of multiculturalism, not assimilated Americanism.

I sense you confound and conflate assimilation with enjoying the artifacts of pop culture. That's really scary to me.

If I'd felt that these folks were truly assimilating and divorcing themselves entirely from allegiance to other lands, I'd not have been so angered. If I didn't look at education and see that there are 163 cultures and 55 language groups now accommodated by the Broward schools, I'd have been less alarmed about educating my kids there. And if I didn't finally come to feel a total stranger in my own home town, I guarantee you that I'd still be there. And I'm sure that many if not most of the hundreds of thousands of former south Floridians who now live elsewhere would agree.

If you didn't grow up there before it was balkanized, you don't know what has been lost in south Florida. I don't like it there any more. It is fine that you do. But please, don't try to sell me that people haven't up and left in droves to get away from the side-effects of unceasing mass immigration down in your neck of the woods. And don't intimate that they were somehow wrong for doing so. It isn't going to work.

...the one great benefit of living in S Florida is a booming economy....

That's a relative statement. It depends on what you do. My business there declined severely after 9/11 and did not rebound because, one-by-one, my subcontractors were driven out of business via a combination of H1B visa workers undercutting the market price and other providers of my services having no qualms in offshoring programming work. I guess it makes me a bad person for trying to remain loyal to the programmers who worked with me as my business grew. But that's a whole 'nother issue.

I live in Broward, in Ft Lauderdale, just off I-95.

Well, I grew up in Wilton Manors, which has its own issues. When I drive through town these days, I'm glad my parents didn't live to see it. If you think my comments about downtown Miami in 1985 were about the Cuban influence alone, you're mistaken. It was the third world atmosphere that appalled me. For a year, I lived in a waterfront Miami highrise. What a pleasure it was that all these "assimilated" cultures added the color of ritually-slaughtered livestock to my daily view of the waterway. And of course today work on the chicken patrols that round up illegally free-range future sacrifices provide full-time duties for some county workers in Dade County (don't ask me to call it that other silly name).

Broward's unemployment rate is an unbelievable 2.8%

Funny, I was just taking note that all three of the Christmas letters we got this year from various people in my wife's family in South Florida all reported, in as joyful spirit as possible, that the year had been hard because while their businesses still thrive, they had a hard time. Wives went back to work in husband's offices to help make ends meet, and while the word wasn't used, I now know that I have cousins who are working full time but would be considered "underemployed" if the government would be honest about such things. Come to think of it, I should consider that I, myself, was "underemployed" during the last year before we pulled up stakes and fled relocated to a more hospitable place. Because I was working 200+ hours per month, I never considered that I was technically underemployed. But I was making a third of what I did pre-9/11, thanks in large part to bad government policies.

It's too easy for someone to fall off the roles, still be seeking work, but be left out of the unemployment figures. The higher skilled are the ones most likely to be suffering outside the "official" statistics because they often tend to remain unemployed for far longer than benefits are paid. Or they are forced to accept a job that is far beneath their skill levels. But that, again, is a whole different issue than what we are discussing here. Let's just suffice it to say
I'll believe unemployment figures about the time I believe government figures that there are only 11 or 12 million illegal aliens here today when Bear Stearns, in whose business interest it is more important to be right on such estimates, reports that there are more than 20 million illegal aliens here.

"It never hurts to remind those who would vote for your opponent to vote...on Wednesday" - TMYN Blog

Re: How does this happen when there are not enough Americans around for them to assimilate to?

??? There are millions upon millions of non-Hispanic (and non-immigrant) Americans in this country.

Re: And don't come back with "they get it from mass media and pop culture." These entertainment institutions are full-tilt purveyors of multiculturalism, not assimilated Americanism.

Why do you say that? Pop culture is dumb as a brick and pretty trashy, but it's decidedly American, just not in a high-falluting, high-brow way. Sure it's a bunch of dirty laundry flapping in the wind, but it's still American dirty laundry.

Re: I sense you confound and conflate assimilation with enjoying the artifacts of pop culture

People assimilate on their own level, which for most people means the pop culture level. That's always been true. Once upon a time that meant jazz ("The Devil's music") and penny Westerns. Today it's MySpace.com and Gwen Steffani.

Re: If I'd felt that these folks were truly assimilating and divorcing themselves entirely from allegiance to other lands

I actually have some concerns about the Mexicans in this regard: they are far too tied to Mexico still due to geographic proximity. Unlike the Chinese or (yes) the Cubans, they can go home and come back as often as they want and hence remain Mexican. (Canadians can do that too, but Canada's culture is so similar to ours it doesn't much matter). And yes, I have some concerns about some Muslims since their religion, at least in its stricter version, tends to isolate them. But most immigrant groups are rather stranded here, even if the Internet etc allows closer contact with home than my German immigrant ancestors had, and most of these people still assimilate.

Re: If you didn't grow up there before it was balkanized, you don't know what has been lost in south Florida.

My hometown isn't what it was when I was a boy either, albeit for very different reasons. But whenever I am tempted to cry over the lost past I remind myself of Herakleitos' words, "Time changes all, and we step never twice in the same river."

Re; That's a relative statement. It depends on what you do.

I work for Morgan Stanley up in Boca. I agree, even here there are no doubt businesses that are in a slump. Real estate is certainly hurting (due in part to homeowners getting delusions of grandeur over the ridiculously inflated but largely mythical value of their homes). Still, a visit to Michigan or Ohio would correct any doom-and-gloom economic outlook one might have concerning Florida.

Re: Well, I grew up in Wilton Manors, which has its own issues.

Yes, it's very gay. Even the muffler shops have rainbow flags. But from I've read and heard the gay influx actually saved the town, regentrifying it and halting the creeping slum decay from west of Powerline. Place looks very well tended if a bit too glitzy for my tastes.

Re: It was the third world atmosphere that appalled me.

I used to live up in St Pete. We had "third world atmosphere" there, but it wasn't immigrants that created it. No, it was good old trailer trash po' white folks. For all I know their ancestors may have come over on the Mayflower but (yes I'm sounding like a snob) those people included the dregs of humanity and the cops practically had to set up a sub-station in some of those trailer parks. Trashy, dysfunctional people are everywhere. Stupidity, laziness and immorality know neither race nor ethnicity.

Re: But I was making a third of what I did pre-9/11, thanks in large part to bad government policies.

I don't know your business but if it's construction/real estate related then, yes, that's in a slump here. But as far as Florida politics goes, while the state legislature is a bit of a laughingstock, I am rather of the opinion that Jeb Bush has done an excellent job for the state, and I look forward confidently to Charlie Crist tenure as well. Maybe not an A+, but at least a A-.

Re: The higher skilled are the ones most likely to be suffering outside the "official" statistics because they often tend to remain unemployed for far longer than benefits are paid.

Unemployment stats do not derive from who is collecting benefits (a common misconception). However I rather doubt your claim about high-skilled people in Florida lacking jobs. I'm an IT person, more or less. When the company I worked for in St Pete ended up in Chap 11 (bad management), and I was out of a job last February, I posted my resume online. I was back to work in three days, and, finding that job unacceptable, found another job ten days after that, then needed just six more weeks to land a job here in S Florida (long story why I moved). My cell phone rang incessantly with recruiter calls. In fact, I am still getting calls and emails occasionally.

The Cajuns were in Louisiana when it was purchased. They came as part of the package deal -- having been evicted from what's now Nova Scotia decades before.

Trust me on this one.

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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.

Re; The Cajuns were in Louisiana

Yes, and my post noted as much. That said, they were a bunch of unAmerican foreigners with their own distinct ethnic identity who dominated the region for generations (and still do in the more out of the way back bayous). They are also an example of an ethnic group which has maintained its own distinct identity, language (to some extent), and subculture while nevertheless meshing in well with the larger nation. The Pennsylvania "Dutch" are another example (and the Amish being a really extreme subset of them).

[1]Yes, and my post noted as much. [2]That said, they were a bunch of unAmerican foreigners with their own distinct ethnic identity [3]who dominated the region for generations (and still do in the more out of the way back bayous). [4]They are also an example of an ethnic group which has maintained its own distinct identity, [5]language (to some extent), and [6]subculture while nevertheless meshing in well with the larger nation. The Pennsylvania "Dutch" are another example (and the Amish being a really extreme subset of them).

[1] No, you referred to them as a diaspora. The implication was that they diasporaed after Louisiana joined the Union.
[2] No, they weren't any different from the French who already lived there. Now, over time, they interbred with Spaniards, Indians, and the odd escaped slave; but really, they always thought of themselves as the same, just not as snobby, as the folks of New Orleans.
[3] I think you misunderstand the concept of "control." It's one thing to say that an area overwhelmingly populated with an ethnic group will, with democratic norms, have its governments filled with that ethnic group; it's another to say they've "dominated" the region. I submit to you that if you had even an inkling of Louisiana history, you'd never make that statement.
[4] Not so much, any more than the Irish and Italians did. Again, it would be helpful to know some of these folks personally (as opposed to merely as moderators on internet boards on which you post). All that zydeco music is for the tourists. Cajuns stopped thinking of themselves as different after Louisiana caught it following the Civil War.
[5] A tiny fraction of living Cajuns regularly speak Cajun French. (My great grandmother was considered an oddity in the 1950s for not being able to speak English.) A somewhat larger, but still tiny, fraction know how to speak it fluently, but do not. (Very little need for translation services.) All that's mainly left is a smattering of patois in the English spoken in the area. Business and worship and romance and everything else is conducted between Cajuns in English accented no more than that of the folks of Minnesota, New York, Boston, or Malibu. (One of the reasons for this is that the use of, and teaching of, Cajun French, was forbidden by law in Louisiana schools for almost the entire twentieth century, which sort of puts the lie to the whole "they dominate the region" stuff.)
[6] See language, above. Most of what you see now is for the tourists. My own family, as Cajun as it comes, no more adheres to a distinctive culture (unless by "culture" you mean "gaming the welfare system and enjoying crawfsh boils") than does a tenth generation son of English Anglican settlers. Heck, Cajuns are turning more and more to Pentecostalism, which by itself suggests that the "distinctive culture" is no more.

Stick to creative reimaginings of the history of Orthodox teaching on birth control.

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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.

Re: Um, Louisiana's Cajuns? The Pennsylavnia "Dutch"? Granted the former were already in residence

?????
Here are my exact words from above:

"Um, Louisiana's Cajuns? The Pennsylavnia "Dutch"? Granted the former were already in residence..."

Who do you think "the former" is referring to? Or is the phrase "already in residence" causing you some misundersatnding?

Re: Stick to creative reimaginings of the history of Orthodox teaching on birth control.

The Eastern Orthodox Church has no categorical teaching on birth control. There are of course various theologoumena (non-binding theological opinions) in existence on the question, and no doubt you will even be able to find some which will be similar to Papal teaching on the matter*. I never denied that As a general rule married couples (obviously unmarried couples should not be having sex!) are counseled that they are free to determine the number and timing of their children and to use any non-abortifacient means to do so, but should, as in all other seruous decisions, approach the choice with prayer and, when possible, with the counsel of a spiritual elder.

* However you will find that it is not the simple sex act itself which should be open to children, but rather marriage as a whole; no couple should wed under our teaching if their desire is firmly set against having any children, ever.

Re: A tiny fraction of living Cajuns regularly speak Cajun French

Yes, after 200 years of assimilation. (And strangely enough the major language sources on this disagree with your claim that Cajun French has died out) But how many still spoke French in 1850? That's the valid comparison, all in all. The Cuban population of Miami, of whom the original poster was complaining, has been in S Florida less than two full generations so far. It's a little early to be despairing of assimilation.

First comment:

(1) In your first comment, you quoted a comment to which I was not replying. I'll happily concede the minor point.

(2) Consider the word "history," not "present practice."

Second comment:

[1]Yes, after 200 years of assimilation. [2](And strangely enough the major language sources on this disagree with your claim that Cajun French has died out) [3]But how many still spoke French in 1850? [4]That's the valid comparison, all in all. The Cuban population of Miami, of whom the original poster was complaining, has been in S Florida less than two full generations so far. [5]It's a little early to be despairing of assimilation.

[1] You said, "has maintained," which tense suggests current state. You gotta pick your battles.

[2] Please quote where I said Cajun French has died out. I wouldn't say that, because I speak it (poorly) and some of my very ancient relatives still speak it fluently. Most of the major language sources will tell you that it's collapsed in the last hundred, and especially the last fifty, years.

[3] A lot. Of course, there was very little "American" presence in Cajun country in 1850; the non-Louisiana natives tended to cluster in New Orleans and points thereabout. They had no desire to live in what were then largely underdeveloped swamps. Thus, this is a pretty cruddy analogy.

[4] If you say so. I was teaching you what it's like to deal with your pedantry.

[5] I don't despair of assimilation. I think it can and has worked. I despair of Mexican assimilation, but that's because Mexico is sitting right over the border, and cross-border travel is too easy to force those folks to assimilate. I despair, slightly, of some kinds of Muslim and Chinese assimilation. On the whole, I think it's a non-issue. But thanks for the admonition.

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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.

Re: I despair of Mexican assimilation

Well, I don't know about despair, but I believe I did mention that I too worry about Mexican (and Muslim) assimilation-- or rather, non-assimilation. But I was replying to a poster fretting about Cubans, not Mexicans.
By the way, may I ask (with sincere curiosity) why you worry about the Chinese? I will agree that they do seem to keep elements of their own culture alive, but does that mean they don't assimilate? There are several groups in our culture which fight hard to keep their own cultural identity (Greeks insisting on Greek in their churches, even though there may not be one single Greece-born member; Orthodox Jews with all the Kosher stuff this implies; and of course the one grouop we haven't mentioned in this thread yet, the American Indians.) Maybe I'm more tolerant of the survival of folk customs and even (in secondary or specialized usage) other languages. Non-assimilation, IMO, means a group reamisn forever on the outskirst of American society, generally poor and marginalized, often by its own choice. If I see Chinese or Cubans or whoever graduating from top universities, pulling down upper middle class incomes, sitting in legislatures, and buying the latest fad-toy for the kids at Christmas, I consider them to be assimilating.

By the way, may I ask (with sincere curiosity) why you worry about the Chinese?

I don't worry about "Chinese assimilation." I worry about "some Chinese assimilation." Historically, Chinese immigrants have assimilated, especially after the first generation, remarkably well. I suspect at least a sizable plurality will continue to do so. What concerns me, at the macro level, is that Chinese nationalism is and has been on an upward spike; part of what has historically made assimilation easier is that the "originating country" did not have as strong a call to nationalism when the immigrants left. Given some rather well-publicized first and second generation revanchists the last ten years, I'm concerned that we can no longer say the same of China with the same certainty that we did in the past. It is, incidentally, why I find Mexican neo-ethnic nationalism so worrisome; it undoes what good is done by separating the immigrant from his originating country, which in the Mexican case, is small enough as it is.

(This is why I qualified my statement.)

Non-assimilation, IMO, means a group reamisn forever on the outskirst of American society, generally poor and marginalized, often by its own choice.

I don't really disagree with this. I do note that the real concern, to my mind, is when they remain self-marginalized at every level but the political one, then enter politics as an ethnic grievance group. Bad times for all concerned.

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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.

Re: part of what has historically made assimilation easier is that the "originating country" did not have as strong a call to nationalism when the immigrants left.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Much of Europe (definitely Germany and Italy) in the 19th century had strong nationalist movements in place at the same time their peoples were streaming over to America. However, it is true that it's easier for any immigrant to keep one foot in the home culture via cellphones, the internet and cheap airfare these days than it was back then.

Where you from Cher? I come from Eunice, my mom was a Doucet.
Like a lot of cajuns I am in exile in dis here Houston.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

You know, the usual.

Family in Erath, no less.

I'd love to be in exile in Houston, instead of out here.

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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.

assimilated into US culture don't vote monolithically democratic.

They tend to split their votes-although still lean democratic.

Southern CA. Texas is probably the same but I don't hang out there so I can't speak from personal experience.

There are large chunks of real estate where Mexican is the only language spoken. All of the signs are in Spanish and the only restaurants available serve tacos.

Maybe they used to assimilate, but these days they expect me to speak Spanish. My bank hires mortgage originators who barely speak English and all of our documentation is in Spanish. The folks apply for mortgages are legal, we are required to verify their SSN and their immigration status.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

The only thing Tom Tancredo has to apologize for is telling the truth.

Re; There are large chunks of real estate where Mexican

Um, there is no such thing as the "Mexican" language, any more than there is a "Canadian" language.

As for assimilation, the reason there are so many unassimilated Mexicans in some areas of this country is because of the continued flood of people over the border. The later generations do assimilate, but there's always tens of thousands of fresh immigrants coming in (mostly illegal of course).

isn't all that close to Spanish. I used the term on purpose. The nastiest racism (or whatever you would prefer to call it) I've seen was in New Mexico. I ran a company that hired large numbers of unskilled workers. They generally broke down into Mexican, Indian, Black, White, Cuban and Spanish.

There was a strict pecking order among the workers and the Spanish (descendents of the Spaniards who trekked across the region) were the top of the totem pole (no pun intended). They would not associate with or talk to the Mexicans and nobody talked to the Cubans. It took a while to break the barriers - we fired a couple of dozen people in a rather public manner - to even get them to talk to one another.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

there's Mexican dialect, and it's rather distinct from European Spanish. I learned Castillian in High School (mi profesor de español era de Madrid) and I find the Mexican dialect incomprehensible. Still, imagine how a person educated in Oxford English would feel if plopped down into the hill country of West Virginia.

have been in Moscow as far as my ability to understand what the cab drivers were saying.

And when I moved from California to Boston it wasn't much better.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

My brother had a girlfriend whose family came here from Liverpool. I tagged along to a party at their house once, most of the guests were also Liverpuddlians (and all very well lubricated that night) and I might as well have been in the back country of Papua New Guinea for all I could understand their "English".
Who was it said that the US and Britain are two nations divided by a common language?

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

You can usually find someone to speak English to you, but they sure resent it. You get glares of disapproval for daring not to speak Spanish in "their" country.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

was that the policy debate is legitimate, but that the debate needs to be carried out carefully, so that in heated rhetoric we do not say things that imply emnity towards legal immigrants and thus offend potential voters.

We needs many many more laws to set this country straight. We should pass lots of new laws every year so we can undo all of things that need to be undone without fixing the problems that causes them to happen. Woohoo! More laws! More laws! All together now ...

We need a fence and better border patrol.

The fence may change the migration dynamic, but it won't stop the flow. We need a meaningful immigration policy. As long as the migration rate is outpaced by job hiring in America, people will find away to get here. If you want to slow the flow then we need to find incentives to help/force 'disadvantaged' Americans to do less desirable work.

"find a way" around a fence?

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson - http://gamecock.townhall.com

Funny, I had a discussion with a Chinese citizen just the other day about this. It turns out, China has a real problem keeping the N. Koreans out, and their #1 concern with N. Korea is not turning it into a state of fleeing refugees that can't be absorbed into China.

KJI set off some firecrackers a few months ago. The moral bankruptcy of the UN and most of the world's governments prevent them from joining us in tough sanctions that would bring down the evil N Kor regime.

Did you know that N Kor is the only nation where the population has been getting shorter in height over the past decade?

The lib dems got all huffy when Bush said that he loathed Kim Jong Il for how he treats his people? That wasn't "politic" of him.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson - http://gamecock.townhall.com

"fence" isn't quite the word I would use to describe the DMZ. No opposition on my part to securing the borders, but if people get huffy about the idea of a fence, try proposing a minefield along the southern border:)

1 - Put tough old retired spinster 1st and second English teachers at the border with a grammar book and a ruler

and

2 - Require all University professors to teach in Cuba or Iran for 6 months per year until they quit blaming America First.

I consider the second group the hardest to assimilate.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

On #1- That might be enough to keep me away from any border state for a good long while.

On #2- well, good luck on that. Not holding my breath here;)

KJI is dispicable and his state is isolated. N Korea is an Asian problem and there is no good reason for the US to concede any concessions to them.

Funny you should choose that point to mock, because it's Adam C's side of this that mostly wants new, better laws instead of just enforcing the ones on the books.
--
Run like Reagan!

Income taxes are not the only contribution made by lower income workers.

You have to include:

Sales tax
Social Security/Medicaid/Medicare

Property Tax (Yes, even if they are renters, because of course rent incorporates the cost of property taxes)

Corporate Income Tax (as workers produce a surplus that is shared between the worker and the corporation).

I'll say it again, wages are not an adequate measure of wealth. Immigrants increase the GDP per capita- ergo they are an economic plus.

As for large numbers of children- some of us actually consider children to be an investment good and not a consumer good. (ie they're a economic plus, not a burden).

Then you say that these children are "very often out of wedlock" which is exactly the type of language that is likely to offend Hispanic voters.

In my experience most Hispanic families have a father present. Now, granted there may be no formal marriage. But this is usually due to Catholic opposition to divorace, and not due to a lack of respect for fatherhood. (It might also depend on rural vs city, I speak more from rural observations).

As for the welfare state- if the person is working they are not on the welfare state are they? In my experience most Hispanic immigrants don't even know about the welfare state until long after they arrive in America. I think the best way of handling this is to preclude immigrants from being on welfare.

Are you from California? I ask because I've heard that immigration is extremely messed up there. If you are, consider that California is not the only state experiencing immigration. Texas has absorbed nearly as many Hispanics and Texas seems to be doing pretty well- the border towns are hit pretty hard, but the rest of the state seems to be okay.

Please don't forget the services they consume.
Health Care
Social Services
Police Services
Defense
Education
Roads/infrastructure.

Of the above they consume these at a disproportionate rate.

The government runs on a deficit overall and they aren't even paying a full share of the shortfall.

I'm from the land of fruits and nuts, and the illegal immigration situation is out of control and you are wrong on the benefit to society by illegals, but not for the reason you state.

The vast majority of illegals in CA are working off the books, in the underground economy. They pay no taxes, outside of sales tax, they bring their families to our state, they clog our schools, our hospitals.

My gripe, or rather my goal is to get all workers in the state paying taxes like the rest of us, then we might be able to have another Tax payer revolt over against the Tax and spend Democratic party if the Republicans ever get back to being fiscal conservatives like a former Governor of our, Ronald Wilson Reagan. If th 6 Million illegals in CA and businesses that hire them had to pay all the taxes legitimate business did, there would be a great opportunity to be the party that hates spending.

As a matter of fact, the easiest way to deal with the illegal alien problem in my book is to start going after businesses that hire them. Throw a few greedy business owners in jail who are hiring off the books, skipping on paying state taxes, workman's compensation and a few other taxes, things would change in a hurry.

_______________________________
Another South Park Republican spouting off !

Being an employer, it's not that hard to check status. Plus, if people are being hired off the books that's a violation of a whole litany of laws.

Start fining business, big fines that are not discharge in a BK. Make the fines accrual to the owners of the business if it's privately or closely held. Freeze their assets. Make it very, very public. Second offense is a felony and the owners personal assets are subject to confiscation for payment of taxes. Jobs for illegals and off books payroll will go away in about three days.

The biggest problem at that point will be adding lanes to southbound I5 between San Diego and TJ.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

And if they are being paid on the books, how hard is it for the IRS to realize one social security number is getting paid 20 times.

with the INS or DHS.

not to mention the fact that Presidents and governors don't seem to have the spine to enforce these laws for some reason. Why don't they Beck? Plus, they don't have the guts to go after Mexicans in mass for for of losing a voter. A fence, on the other hand, once built, works simply by being!

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson - http://gamecock.townhall.com

I'm in the mortgage business. We ferrit those out all the time. The probability of you getting a fake or stolen ID past me is so close to zip it's off the charts.

With respect to enforcement, no spine. No respect for America. That goes for POTUS and the Gov's. I am frankly disgusted with Bush's apparent idea that we should welcome Mexicans into the US simply because they are "good people, with families who want to work". I'm concluding that, assuming Iraq turns out well, the invasion from Mexico will offset any good historical points from Iraq.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

Every time I hear someone say that this ethnic bloc or that ethnic bloc would "make good Americans because of their family values" I'm repulsed. Name me a culture that does not have family values! There is no such thing.

The only valid argument that any leader should make on behalf of one culture over another is this: "They have a burning desire to forsake their allegiance to mother country, to learn of our heritage, and to embrace our mores and values while becoming completely, unreservedly American. There is no artifact of their native culture that will keep them separate. There are no agents from their original home working against them becoming both self-sustaining and loyal only to their new nation."

I find it is more than a bit demeaning and insulting to the intelligence when someone tries and sell us on the wisdom of singling out one ethnic group that that has "family values" for membership in what has been a fairly exclusive little club, despite what the MSM might have you believing these days. Such bald-faced preference indicates that the salesman has at least some level of antipathy for cultures that he's not trying to sell me.

Now, I'm not saying that all cultures are equally compatible with temperate liberty. They probably aren't. But don't try to tell me that "family values" is a qualifying factor, for that argument excludes no culture and would prohibit none of the 5 billion or so residents of planet earth who would love to come share our standard of living from coming to "enrich" us.

Today, the argument is for Mexicans. Who will it be tomorrow? What favorite flavor of the world's cultural Baskin Robbins (that's a heck of a lot more than 32 flavors) will be preferred by our next president?

"It never hurts to remind those who would vote for your opponent to vote...on Wednesday" - TMYN Blog

First of all, I am for the fence and think that the best Americans are immigrants from Gujaret (sp?), India and the Hmung from Laos (and Scots-Irish in SC, of course).

I also think that the Mexican influx has been too great too fast and also poses a problem when they can go "home" anytime and see themselves as trans-nationals.

But I have commented before about shared "values", not particularly family values, but that fits too,

IN AN AMERICA THAT IS INCREASINGLY SECULAR.

What I like about most Mexicans, Brazilians, south of here, is that they are mostly people of faith, still believe in the concept of shame, good and bad, sin. In higher percentages than jaded sophisticated Americans.

(I am of course an elite sophisticate that also happens to be an evangelical!)

I think we need to carefully control immigration given that the negatives are outweighing the positives in Mexican immigration.

One thing that is great about this country is our ability to assimilate anyone from anywhere, even if they are not Christian. My Indian Hindi friends do share the same values as me. They love Baptists cause they don't tear up hotel rooms!

more later

I know what you mean in your comment. I would just say that too many Americans don't have the same values we used to have more in the past. In fact, many Mexicans remind me of old fashioned Amricans in some of their piety. Its refreshing.

Now lets build the wall and keep them the heck out! unless we say may I

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

One thing that is great about this country is our ability to assimilate anyone from anywhere..."

We just don't know about the long-run implications of our immigration policy post 1965 because there has not been enough time passed to constitute a "long run." Prior to that, this nation had proved quite capable of assimilating those who came from Western Europe, but very little of any other cultural sort.

Get back to me in 60 years on this. My concern is that it will prove to be a fallacy that we can "assimilate anyone from anywhere." My fear is that my kids are going to live out their lives in a far less great a place than my parents did.

Is that unfounded? If so, why?

"It never hurts to remind those who would vote for your opponent to vote...on Wednesday" - TMYN Blog

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

attitude that essentially sees Texas and Mexico as having their own special neighbor relationship, is, quite frankly, dangerous. He will not enforce the border, and I wonder if anyone will given the political fears they have with respect to business, campaign contributions and the Hispanic vote.

Becker, after the tech bubble, fall-off in drug use, drop in DUI and crime generally, we're ALL in the real estate/mortgage business now! Why do you think I moved to Atlanta in 2001 and now in Charlotte.

But fake IDs fool many non-beckers in and out of the mortgage business, and most employers that hire large numbers of workers require ID. Moreover, many of the small businesses are not going to be deterred and would be a waste of time to go after. I'm for enforcing the law, but there are dangers in being to aggressive and charging the innocent.

The fence requires nothing but to be built.

(I'm thinking of moving my church letter from the Baptist Church to the local Fence Church, I've said it so much the last few days. I just want to make sure that all that electronic equipment and jewelry in the basement is legit.)

Many of the conservative dems I know think that the Mexican border problem is #1 now. We are losing California aren't we?

I really see some major repercussions coming in the heartland on this issue due to bankrupting schools, hospitals, crime and large enclaves that don't speak English.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

because employers don't verify them like we do. They could, but they need legal cover from the feds, which they won't get. Costs about $25 per head and is very accurate.

With respect to CA, it was lost a LONG time ago. Not to Mexicans either. I personally want the border fence they're supposed to build in AZ extended to the AZ/CA border. Gotta have a visa to visit AZ if you've got a CA drivers license. Shut down immigration from CA perminently.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

Re: Gotta have a visa to visit AZ if you've got a CA drivers license.

I assume this was tongue-in-cheek, because you are presumably aware that it would be flat out unconstitutional.

I'll e-mail you on that.

Was Cally lost to the libs?

I tried a med malp case in LA in the 90s and saw the Lakers. Everybody was amazed at my clear non-smog reddened eyes (I personally think they liked the whole package...and unlike Minneapolis, where I also tried a major case for a week)

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

The illegal immigrant issue. IMHO, seems like a simple twist on supply and demand- as long as there is work available, people will cross the border, by whatever means necessary, to get it. Dry up the supply of available jobs, and noone comes looking for what isn't there. Of course, as Steve said, this would necessitate getting tough on business owners who hire illegals, but if they have no reason to come here (no jobs), they won't come.

Immigrants increase the GDP per capita- ergo they are an economic plus.

False. High skill immigrants increase per capita GDP, low skill immigrants lower it. That's really pretty obvious if you think about it.

..some of us actually consider children to be an investment good and not a consumer good. (ie they're a economic plus, not a burden).

They are a financial liability now, whatever they may be in the future. Their future (financial) worth depends largely on their skills and education. The fact is that we can predict fairly accurately what children are likely to earn, in the aggregate, by looking at some background characteristics, notably their parents income.

There is a widespread belief that Hispanics (by which is meant Mexicans and Cental Americans) are "good minorities" - which itself is a thinly veiled shot at what are then considered the bad minorities, but set that aside. The data do not bear out this "good minority" theory in any case.

CIA fact book;

• In 2005, 37.0 million people were in poverty, not statistically different from 2004.
• Poverty rates remained statistically unchanged for Blacks (24.9 percent) and Hispanics (21.8 percent) between 2004 and 2005. The poverty rate decreased for non-Hispanic Whites (8.3 percent in 2005, down from 8.7 percent in 2004).
• The poverty rate in 2005 for children under 18 (17.6 percent) remained higher than that of 18-to-64-year-olds (11.1 percent) and that of people 65 and older (10.1 percent)—all were not statistically different from 2004.

If you look at Table 5 in this census report, it shows that Hispanics have the lowest earnings of all the measured ethnic groups.

I don't have the underlying raw data, but Heather MacDonald writing in City Journal (a reputable author in a respected publication) has this to say about Hispanic birthrates:

Unless the life chances of children raised by single mothers suddenly improve, the explosive growth of the U.S. Hispanic population over the next couple of decades does not bode well for American social stability. Hispanic immigrants bring near–Third World levels of fertility to America, coupled with what were once thought to be First World levels of illegitimacy. (In fact, family breakdown is higher in many Hispanic countries than here.) Nearly half of the children born to Hispanic mothers in the U.S. are born out of wedlock, a proportion that has been increasing rapidly with no signs of slowing down. Given what psychologists and sociologists now know about the much higher likelihood of social pathology among those who grow up in single-mother households, the Hispanic baby boom is certain to produce more juvenile delinquents, more school failure, more welfare use, and more teen pregnancy in the future.

I encourage you to read the whole article.

If sites like RedState are going to be really useful, I think it must be as places where serious information is spread and where policy ideas are floated and then sink or swim under skeptical scrutiny. I don't say things to be offensive, and I don't not say things because I worry that some will be offended. I say things because, to the best of my knowledge, they are true.

And to the best of my knowledge, the immigration into America of tens of millions of low skill immigrants is not in the best interests of America, the Republican party, or conservatism. If you want to change my mind you'll have to do it with facts and logic, not sentiment.

First some facts:

* 12% of hispanic households have are single mother, compared with 5% for non-hispanic whites and 19% for Blacks

*Divorce rates for Hispanics were at 7.6%, compared to 10.8% for non-hispanic whites.

The link is too long for me to put here, but it's from the Census Bureau data that MacDonald's data is from, granted mine's straight from the source and a direct interpretation of the data (hers are not). Her article made me feel uncomfortable, the beginning sounded like she was more afraid of white populations decreasing in majority then anything else. And the rest of her article was filled with unverifiable anecdotal evidence, hardly a strong argument.

And for some logic, it shouldnt be a suprise that poverty rates and low wages are common among the hispanic population. After all, those coming across the border are very poor and taking the lowest wage jobs. What is suprising is that with this influx of poor immigrants, that the poverty rate is not increasing. If anything that tells us that part of the population is assimilating well into society as more immigrants enter.

they (the lower 50%... maybe we for some of us here?) also contribute their labor. I mean, without 50% of the population doing all the menial work, the people in the upper income brackets wouldn't be making any money that they would later have to fork over to the IRS

things you think about during 40 hour work weeks in a factory where you make the same repeated arm motion for 8 hours until it's time to go home...

You aren't one of them.

I would give you an economics lesson but it would bounce off your head. Go back to Kos, you'll feel at home there.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

Okay, I'll go back to Northwestern... poor economics department there...

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

So, what you are saying in a sense, is that no-border-enforcement RINOs who can't set aside their differences with the majority of the American people (let alone their party) and are willing to stab fellow Republicans in the back cost us those seats?

Yeah, that was sort of my take too. Worst part is, they still want to blame it on those of us who frequently hold our noses and vote for them anyway.

Graf, yes, Kolbe and GOP money in the primary had a big effect. JD lost because even though I like his politics, JD is a jerk.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

Brad Ellsworth did try to portray himself as being as tough or tougher on illegal immigration that Hostetler.

Here is what Elssowrth said on his campaign website about immigration:

"We face a national crisis when it comes to illegal immigration. The honest truth is that part of it is our own making. When we capture illegals here in Vanderburgh County, my deputies call INS and INS tells them there’s no place to put them. That’s not right. It’s also not right when an Indiana employer passes over an American for a job only because an illegal worker is cheaper. We need to tighten our borders, enforce the laws we have, and punish employers who break them. This is about economic security as much as it is national security."

Here is a link to the webpage containing that information: http://www.ellsworthforcongress.com/issues_details.asp?id=40.

www.tancredo4prez.blogspot.com and www.smashleftwingscum.com

Let's say you own a bar and you hire me (police officer) to check ID's at your door and later on that night I write you a ticket for serving underage patrons that I let in. Then you are made to do a "perp walk" to be an example for the rest of the bars in town. Pretty good idea, eh?

If you always find yourself arguing the exceptions rather than the rule you just might be rapidly sliding down your own slippery slope to irrelevance. -CommonCents

but I think would be a more cost effective way to prevent illegal immigration than the current and proposed approaches.

It isn't a just way to administer the law. Justice isn't some small detail that can just be safely ignored to accomplish an objective. There are a lot of employers who have complied with the law 100% who have masses of illegals working for them. Are these the guys who should be going to jail?

Most illegals probably have fake documents they can use to prove eligibility. You can get a fake birth certificate and SS card on a street corner for 20 bucks. That SS card satisfies the employer's I-9 requirements. The ball is in the government's court at that point. They just have no interest in doing anything with it.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

It's not like any of this discussion is actually relevant. Starting in January the big immigration question on the GOP side will be "Can we keep any version of a border fence intact?" I'm guessing 'no', by the way - unless, of course, it comes bundled with an general amnesty and a generous guest-worker program.

(pause)

Umm, that is the compromise that Congress will offer. In fact, it's probably the best-case compromise.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

we'll be lucky if Republicans don't have to apply for resident alien visas.

John
--------
Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

Because 1) You will never have 100% enforcement of employment law. There will always be the nanny and Home Depot crowd. 2) There are people who don't come here to work. Some people come here to smuggle things into the country, gang bang, commit crimes and sell drugs on the street. Those people won't be discouraged by any lack of employment. They don't need legitimate employment.

I believe that we do need improved border security but not to prevent illegal immigration. We need to control our borders so that we can prevent terrorists, criminals and contraband from coming into the country.

And we need a fence for that. A fence makes the border much more enforceable than leaving it wide open so people can drive over in their SUVs loaded with cocaine and marijuana, then simply drive back across the border if they run into the BP and try again tomorrow night somewhere else.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

1. We had serious enforcement on businesses, and I don't mean some silly little fine; fines are just a cost of doing business. First offense a serious fine, $100,000 per person; second offense double the fine and 1 year in jail for the CEO and the BOD members for each illegal on the the payroll;

2. We eliminate welfare and medical care, beyond emergency treatment, for illegals;

3. We eliminate all education for the children of illegals

4. We eliminate the anchor baby citizenship; only children of citizens and legal resident aliens are citizens; his would also exclude children born to aliens on temporary visas/visa waivers such as tourists, students, temporary workers, etc.

With zero incentives the flow of illegals would essentially dry up and those here would go home. The only people sneaking across the border would be crimianls and terrorists.

John
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Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

the born on US soil=US citizenship. I think the US is one of the only countries that grants citizenship this way.

But I agree that controlling illegal immigration has to be enforced in all areas.

YOu need to control the flow of immigrants. I admit I think we need to make the immigration proccess easier, and I think we should accept more legal immigrants than we currently do. I also think we have to deport anyone caught here illegally.

I think penalties for being caught with forged or stolen documents in order to appear legal should result in prison and automatic deportment with no chance of legally coming to the US again.

You also need to make the hiring of illegals very painful to businesses so that they don't hire them-the risk of getting caught has to outweight the benefits of hiring.

Amnesty is something I sit on the fence with. On one hand I don't like amnesty, because it basically says "hey you broke the law, but we don't care", but I also don't think it is feasible to deport every illegal currently in the US.

...Section 5 of the 14th amendment reads: "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

Congress should have, and surely would have if it had foreseen problems like those we're having today, enacted legislation that treats the children of non-citizens born on American soil the exact same way in which the children born to foreign diplomats on American soil are treated. They are citizens of their parent's countries of origin because the parents do not fall under the jurisdiction of the United States.

I find no argument compelling why Congress cannot change the citizenship status for future "anchor babies" while simultaneously removing this "enabling legislation" for the 14th Amendment from the purview of the Supreme Court via the Exceptions Clause.

Yes, this use of the Exceptions Clause is controversial and, perhaps, contrary to the Framers' intent. But, if one reads the Congressional Record during the framing of the 14th Amendment, it becomes quite clear that Congress did not intend for the amendment to apply to foreigners or anyone who had not placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the United States by sworn allegiance in the legal, usual and customary manner: The completion of the naturalization process.

I'd like to see Congress try it on for size. There is nothing more irritating to me about government than to learn of Americans, or residents of states, have been unduly harmed simply because Congress or some State Legislature has ignored its responsibility to enact specific enabling legislation within a reasonable time after a Constitutional Amendment has been put in place.

"It never hurts to remind those who would vote for your opponent to vote...on Wednesday" - TMYN Blog

Re: They are citizens of their parent's countries of origin because the parents do not fall under the jurisdiction of the United States.

This is true, but would not be acceptable in any application to illegal immigrants. "Not under the jurisdiction..." means that American laws would not apply to them, so no matter how heinous a crime they might commit the most we could do is deport tham as we do with diplomats.

Didn't we go over this two separate times on the Sophist's diaries.

1- Illegals are tried all the time for crimes they commit in this country. (You must be conflating diplomatic immunity with this issue, which is a separate issue)

2-The term "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is not a reference to whether courts may exercise jurisdiction over them in legal matters.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

Re: But, if one reads the Congressional Record during the framing of the 14th Amendment, it becomes quite clear that Congress did not intend for the amendment to apply to foreigners

What is the precedent on this? There were plenty of children being born to non-citizen immigrant parents in the late 1800s. Did those children gain citizenship automatically under the 14th or did they have to be naturalized?

It was up to states, and there was no "illegal" immigration per se. The Congress passed an statute later in the century and conferred jurisdiction on the babies born to illegals or allowed the INS to do so. There is no SCOTUS case on point as per the 14th since all of their cases follow the statute which allows congress to implement the jurisdiction subjectivity.

I'm going to do a diary this week that will include a lot of statements by the drafters in congress and court case reasoning that make it clear that the amendment did not put the decision on jurisdiction in the hands of foreign pregnant women.

more later

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

on this matter. But I am curious about youyr attement "There was no US citizenship before the 14th."
Who issued passports in the early 19th century? Surely not the states?

Frankly I doubt that it would take a change to the Constitution and even if it did we need to do it. The Congress has changed the manner of determining US citizenship for persons born outside the US a number of times in our history. If they have that statutory authority then they must certainly have that authority for persons born inside the country. For example, our refugee policy provides for wet-foot/dry-foot status; if you get to dry land you get to stay. On the otherhand if you get intercepted on a boat even inside US terrorial waters or even on the beach but still in the water you go back.

IANAL but I would think that reasonable considertions would protect it from challenge in court. For example I'm not proposing ALL aliens would be denied birthright citizenship, only those who are not here on "permanent" visas, including tourists, students, temporary workers and of course illegals. And I am at a loss to understand why that is a bad thing.

At the same time I don't hold out much hope of fixing any of these problems. As time goes on I am coming to the belief that too many Americans have decided that there is nothing special about America. Far too many of us seem to think it just comes naturally, its all for free, it will always be like it is. Or worse, that it needs to be destroyed and replaced by something more "multicultural", more "international", something more "kumbiyah."

You simply cannot have tens of millions of people every year, bringing "alien" cultures to a nation without any restrictions, controls and requirements and expect that it will not change the nation. There is more than ample evidence of this, with far smaller numbers than we face, in Western Europe; England, France, Sweden, etc, are all significantly different places than they were 20 years ago, and not one of them is better for it.

Frankly I am at a loss to understand how it is so hard to understand that having 10 million unassimilated Spanish speakers from Latin America enter this country every year will not change the nature of the nation. We do not require that they learn our language, in fact we go out of our way to avoid inconveniencing them; we make no requirement that they adopt our culture, in fact we denigrate our culture at every turn; we allow them to steal identities to get jobs and then propose that they are entitled to Social Security. Look at the places they come from; Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, et al. Does anyone truly believe that they do not bring the attitudes about corruption or what is right and wrong with them?

Unless of course one believes that there is nothing unique about the American culture.
---------
PS I live in South Florida, and Tancredo is wrong in saying that Miami is like a third world country; it extends way beyond Miami.

John
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Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

The Supreme Court settled this issue a hundred years ago and Congress has not addressed it - and will not address it. You need a Constitutional Amendment.

Which you will not get.

Moe

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

I'll get the info from The Sophist's diary where we got into this is detail. It would take a Congress with guts and a SCOTUS with the same to uphold the law given the murky ruling coupled with a century of practice that began when illegal immigration babies were not an issue.

more later, but I think the main reason the case in the 1890s did not settle the issue is that it did not deal with an illegal and the reasoning was superfluous and therefore dicta since the interpretation of the Amendment was not necessary to reach the decision.

more later

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

So does Congress, who will not revisit this issue.
So does the Executive Branch, who has no intention of ever visiting this issue in the first place.

All props to The Sophist and his diary, but right now this isn't the primary problem that immigration restrictionists are going to be facing. The problem is going to be keeping the Fence (I'm not nearly as convinced as you are that the freshman Democrats are going to jump ship over this*).

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

*Or anything else.

the legislation, Bush would use his veto pen for a second time.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

border to jump ship. I wrote this after all:

Drawl and That's All: The Myth of the Moderate Southern Democrat in D.C.
http://gamecock.townhall.com/g/374d9ac6-55fb-4d66-a872-e93ed4b1d14a

My confidence is in the democrat voters that this issue is so important to, will switch to the GOP in 08 if we nominate a border hawk.

Now, what SCOTUS case do you refer to? I don't think there is one that deals with the precise issue. The reason I say the issue is not TECHNICALLY settled is that the 1890s case did not deal with (and I'll get you MY stuff from Sophist's diary. I'm proud of the research. Indulge me!) the case of an illegal's baby. Moreover, all the cases after that dealt with the STATUTE, not the 14th Amendment.

Congress could change the statute.

more later

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http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

to your argument as I am not inclined to accept that there is nothing that can be done short of amending the Constitution.

With respect to Moe, I do accept that no one is likely to actually do anything about it because far too many Americans no longer care about America.

John
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Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

Because my reasons for opposing changes in birthright citizenship are neither unprincipled nor incoherent. And they are certainly not due to a lack of caring about America.

Retract, sir. [If that was your intent, of course; otherwise, smile and deny.]

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

what those reasons are?

I am adamant against setting the precedent that a person's citizenship may be retroactively removed from him or her for actions done by another. Which will happen, even if it this proposed policy comes with an amnesty for previous infractions; we just shunt the problem of good Americans who pay for their parents' bad choices down the road a bit.

Worse are the social implications. I can trace my citizenship back four generations before the first illegal immigrant shows up; does that make me better than John Smith, who has three illegal immigrants as grandparents - and worse than Bill Jones, who has twelve generations of legal immigrants to brag about? Of course not... now. But if there comes a point where citizenship for the son may be removed because of the sins of the father, that sort of distinction becomes important. Not to mention a matter of blackmail. In other words, we don't have 'good blood' and 'bad blood' in this country; I decline to have that change.

Note that I do not claim that anyone supporting revocation of birthright citizenship favors the above societal changes. I am merely predicting that such changes are likely if the policy is implemented.

Moe

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

First off, there is something of an open question as to whether or not the children of illegals are citizens. The Supreme Court has never ruled on this one way or the other.

But in any case, I'm unaware of anyone proposing to strip citizenship from people who currently possess it. The Constitition expressly forbids ex post facto laws.

Perhaps you are reasoning that a Congressional regulation clarifying the matter would amount to stripping of citizenship?

if there comes a point where citizenship for the son may be removed because of the sins of the father

Well, if that ever comes to pass I'll be standing alongside you to oppose it, along with everyone else on Red State. But I know of nobody suggesting such a thing.

No, there is no question on the subject. The Courts have consistently ruled that the Constitution requires as expansive reading of the 14th Amendment as possible. Congress has chosen not to fiddle with that ruling, despite multiple opportunities to do so*. It's settled law. The question may be reopened, which is not the same thing.

Second, I have, in fact, seen people argue precisely for that ex post facto law that you are rightly decrying; alas, I don't have handy links, so I'll have to concede that one as being an unproven, veracity-dubious statement until evidence shows up.

Third, consider this scenario: a law revoking the automatic citizenship of illegal immigrants passes tonight. Tomorrow, two illegal immigrants skip over the border. They have a child 9 months later: call him Pedro Martinez. Twenty-one years from now, the cops sweep down, deport them both - as well as Pedro, who gets pulled out of his college dorm and tossed into a country that he knows nothing about - and may not even speak the same language as him.
If this isn't punishing the child for the sins of the parents, then I don't know what is - and it will happen.

Look, I want a fence and I want real assimilation of our immigrant population; and I've lost my earlier acceptance of bilingualism. But birthright citizenship is a third rail for me - and I'm not the only one whose craw it'll stick in.

Moe

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

*I recognize the right of Congress to overrule the USSC, btw.

John embezzels millions of dollars from the bank he works for. His children grow up living a lavish lifestyle and attend a top college.

The FBI tracks down John, he is thrown in jail, and all his ill-gotten wealth confiscated. His children are suddenly destitute and forced to drop out of college.

Are they being punished for the sins of their father? Clearly they are not. They do end up seemingly suffering because of his crimes, but from a legal standpoint they are not being punished for them. They are back where they would have been had their father never broken the law in the first place.

We're getting off topic here so I'll leave the last word to you, and hope to discuss the matter further on a different thread.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

This can happen right now... a family of illegal immigrants slips over the border with a 6 month old child. That child does not have citizenship and can be deported 21 years later to a country that he knows nothing about. How is that any different? The only way we would be able to avoid this situation entirely is to offer automatic citizenship to any minors who are here illegally.
---
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

citizens, not the courts. So, yes, they are citizens under federal STATUTE law.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

Well done. That's an aspect I hadn't even thought of before, and I'm on your side on the birthright citizenship issue.
--
Run like Reagan!

Which will happen, even if it this proposed policy comes with an amnesty for previous infractions; we just shunt the problem of good Americans who pay for their parents' bad choices down the road a bit.

If I'm reading this correctly, you are saying that even if we change the law tomorrow, the child of an illegal immigrant born the day after will still constitute a "good American". In other words, the law is irrelevant in any case and can never define who is an American.

...may clarify what I'm trying to say.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

Re: I am adamant against setting the precedent that a person's citizenship may be retroactively removed from him or her for actions done by another.

Is anyone proposing that we do this? I'm not sure we even could (ex post facto and attainder laws are forbidden elsewhere in the Constitution). The only proposals I have seen on this matter propose only to eliminate birth-right citizenship in the future, not in the past.

I'm not sure how

With respect to Moe, I do accept that no one is likely to actually do anything about it because far too many Americans no longer care about America.

can be interpreted to infer anything other than exactly what it says. It can, and should, be interpreted to mean that "I agree with you that no one is likely to do anything", and my reason for agreeing with you is that for far too many people America is now just a place. I think it is an indisputable fact that to a great many, far too many, Americans, America in not that "shining city on a hill" but just a place to live and make money in safety.

I accept that your reasons are neither unprincipled or incoherent; I have no way to know what your reason are as you haven't stated, at least in this thread, why you oppose changes, only that such changes would require a Constitutional amendment and that such a thing would not happen. And I agree it will not happen.

At the same time, I do not view my reasons as unprincipled or incoherent either. I have never been able to understand why it made sense to grant citizenship to someone who was the result of a tourist visiting NYC. And what was once upon a time a quaint tradition is now being intentionally manipulated for personal advantage by people who are intentionally violating our laws.

John
--------
Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

...to alteration of birthright citizenship (here); but I apologize for my tone.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

came after I started my reponse --- one of the hazards of asynchronous processes.

Others have noted objection to your reaons and I can't say much new in that respect. I don't see the problems you raise as being real but I won't deny that they could never happen, just that I think they are very, very unlikely.

John
--------
Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

I've already heard the arguments against extending the decision to cover children of illegal aliens; call me when they're being made by 5+ Supreme Court justices and/or 3/4+ 1 of the House and Senate.

Moe

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

and that therefore, Congress could change the statute and that the Court could uphold the law without reversing a case, and by accepting many of the reasoned arguments that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was a limit on birthright citizenship.

Congress decided to make the children of illegals subject to their jurisdiction. They can take it away.

Can I e-mail you if 50% plus 1 or 10 in congress makes the argument? I won't call unless....see yours above!

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

In US vs. Wong the USSC ruled on the subject of the extensiveness of the 14th. They have been given explicit opportunities to overrule that decision (most recently, Claremont's a amicus curiae involving Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld; they have not. I am aware that various people here feel that both the original case and the matter of the amicus curiae were decided wrongly, but that actually ain't my problem. As for Congress, I've always agreed that the legislature retains the right to rein in the judiciary; it's explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, after all. But you're going to need more than 50% of both to do it; a Presidential veto is a foregone conclusion.

Bottom line*: birthright citizenship has been gut-shot and is now bleeding out in the same ditch that they threw meaningful corporate enforcement. You can maybe save the latter... or you can save neither.

Moe

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

*And it really is, for me at least: my thanks to Jon for offering me the last word, but I've been on the ragged edge of losing my temper this entire thread. It's so blipping futile.

child of an illegal alien. All else was dicta. Subsequent cases did not present the opportunity to rule on the applicability of Wong to a child of an illegal since the STATUTE and INS regs grant citizenship, and the 14th makes Clear that Congress may EXPAND citizenship eligibility.

You do make some compelling arguments for maintaining the current statute law and INS regs.

I'll read hamden again. I just remember that the court avoided the issue and need to re-read more closely.

SCOTUS has never directly ruled in the case of the citizenship of a person born to an illegal alien violating the laws of the US, as to whether that person is a citizen by virtue of the 14th amendment. NEVER. They haven't had to, and so they shouldn't since Congress and the INS regs, grant citizenship to them, as they are allowed to do under the 14th's clause that gives congress the power to expand.

So, its "settled" law only in the sense that congress and the INS have settled it. The Court has not addressed it.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

keeps telling us that the Constitution is a living document and needs to be viewed in the context of the times. So if illegals were not a problem when the Constitution was formualted and are now then they should be all in favor of us "adapting" it to suit today's situation :-)

John
--------
Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

point of view. Given the new trend to kill babies outside the womb for "parts" or due to the lack of sufficient puffiness of the lips etc, maybe we could define "born" as "survives to age 18 without being killed by their parents."

sounds right

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

I cannot comprehend how anyone could approve of what they are reportedly doing.

But I can comprehend how that is the logical end point of the arguments for unrestricted abortion, unbrideled stem cell "harvesting", etc. Once you start down that path the next step is oh so much easier, and the next even easier, until you end up where they are. It follows as the night the day.

John
--------
Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

there are a lot of things we are not going to get. There is a non-zero probability that our grandchildren will grow up in an America that we would not recognize --- and it won't be a better America.

John
--------
Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

Re: There is a non-zero probability that our grandchildren will grow up in an America that we would not recognize

The America I grew up in during the 70s and 80s would not have been very recognizable to my own grandparents (all born in the late 1800s), and I'm sure they would have deplored aspects of it too. Time tends to do things like that. And even now, at the "vast" age of 39 I am occasionally horrified to find myself thinking "Boy, how things have gone you-know-where in a handcart since I was a kid." I mean, I hope I'm not getting nostalgic for the era of Watergate, Jimmy Carter, disco and the polyester leisure suit!

Nah, make it a misdemeanor as follows:
1) $100 per person per day the person has been employed by your company.
2) Each officer of the corporation, inlcuding BoD members is personally subject to the penalty and the usual incorporation protections don't apply. Also make it illegal to buy insurance against the offense.
3) Regardless of the total sum of the fines, the offense never rises to a felony count.

I'm not out to win over the bastages, I just want to beat on them until they give up.

The Irish are secure, esp the Scots-Irish variety.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

problem, the other measures would virtually eliminate illegal immigration. That is not to say that we don't need it for other reasons such as criminals and terrorists. On the otherhand, if they are all thats sneaking across the border, well we could try shooting first and asking questions later.

John
--------
Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

to do so much that could have been but haven't done since IKE was president. Don't get me wrong. I'm for better employer law enforcement, maybe even an ID card (got to think on that), but a fence is so simple and so self enforcing. Quite frankly, I was for the fence after 911 before illegal immigration was on the radar screen for me.

I like pence's idea to make them all go out of country to apply for work.

Why the desire to avoid building a fence? Or am I reading you wrong?

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

Please don't misunderstand, I am all in favor of a fence --- backed up by a crocodile filled moat if necessary :-) I was simply arguing that if we did the kinds of things that rational people would do the fence would be superflous. IF we passed the laws rational people would do; IF we enforced those laws the way rational people would do; IF ...

But far too many people in this country have grown up in, or come to, the view that there is nothing special worth preserving in America. That it obviously not to say all of us have, but clearly a very large, and growing, number of people are of that mind now.

John
--------
Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

to enforce the laws. You think enforcing tougher employer laws and a national ID card are relatively easy? Relative to what? A Wall works. See all those tree bark eating North Koreans fleeing to South Korea? No

Walls stop terrorists too.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson - http://gamecock.townhall.com

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

John
--------
Ethnic humor is part of human nature. The Dutch tell Belgian jokes. The Belgians tell French jokes. The French tell English jokes. The English tell Irish jokes. The Irish tell Irish jokes.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson - http://gamecock.townhall.com

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

The Democrat won - the natural order has been restored - nothing to see here. Move along, folks.

-------------
"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

But my points are that (a) even the dems don't think that being pro-immigration is a clear political winner; and (b) there are a lot of dem voters that are up for grabs on this issue.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson - http://gamecock.townhall.com

Not to sound offensive, but what about your free market principles?

I'm hoping I'll have time later while people are still checking this post (it's finals time for me now), but I'd like to write a comment about the compromise between free-market policies and security that don't hinder either. As I've stated before I'm a Democrat with very strong libertarian leanings, and also come from a rather large hispanic community. Suffice to say this is an issue I keep up to dat with and spend a fair amount of time learning about, and to me it seems like the big hinderance of compromise is miscommunication on facts such as social services payment and consumption, unemployment, etc.

I'd like to write a comment about the compromise between free-market policies and security that don't hinder either.

What you mean is not a compromise, but a synergy. Compromising means losing part of what you want to get some, or most, of what you want, from someone else who does the same. If a deal doesn't hinder either side, then by definition it isn't a compromise. But you probably knew that, and used "compromise" as a catch-all, right?

Anyway, free markets can only exist inside units of governance. They are not idealized free markets, since a plethora of legal differences exists between units of governance that affect the markets in all kinds of knowable and unknowable ways.

I trust your analysis will take all of that into account.

But it doesn't matter, at least not if you are trying to convince me that allowing people to move here makes economic sense for the immigrant and both countries, because I would already agree to that.

I have a friend who came to this country legally, with his parents, from Mexico, in the 1930's. After a stint in the army (bronze star, purple heart) he got a job with an international company, was transferred to Mexico City, looked up the old village, married a local girl and raised five children.

After spending his life there (yearly Thanksgivings at the regional consulate) he retired, became sick, and was informed by Mexican authorities that he was a gringo and needed to go home. They wouldn't take care of him, booted him out, and he had to move north. The United States of America was good enough to speed along the processing of his wife so she could visit him daily at the nursing home -- but now she is separated from their children and grandchildren.

The double standard Mexico expects from the United States runs against natural law.

I know a lot of democrats, and on average they are more hard line on immigration and could be switched to the GOP if the next GOP Presidential nominee will build a fence. Most people want to seal the border and then would be quite liberal on the other related issues. I'm still no convinced that most Mexican-Americans favor an open border.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

If you want to peel away the trade unions this is the issue.

and beyond.

The politics of this seem so obvious. If the 2006 election demonstrated anything, it's that anti-immigrant politics is a loser. Who needs electoral votes from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Florida....? Pete Wilson showed us the way, didn't he?

have occurred. 2006 was a Year 6 grievance election for change and divided government, war weariness, in which many of the blue dogs ran on getting tough on illegal immigration.

To have a country, we have to control the border. Many dems will switch parties over this issue in 2008. The problem we have had is that Bush is a lib on the issue. The House prevented amnesty from passing.

Romney and Giuliani are tough on the border.

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com

did Pete Wilson's "anti-immigrant politics" (I take it you're referring to his support of prop 187) hurt Republicans in California? I've heard this claim made many times, but never with specifics or supporting evidence. On what grounds are you making it?

It had to be 187. Massive tax increases from a RINO couldn't possibly have had anything to do with it, right? People will see whatever they want in victories and losses.
---
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

Governor Wilson was nearly written off for dead against Kathleen Brown, but he rode 187 to an improbable comeback win.

The issue that loses our votes in California is abortion. Shall we abandon that?
--
Run like Reagan!

This mindset never ceases to amaze me.

You don't like the atrocious, idiot judges the Democrats insist on. You don't like the welfare system. You don't like the anti-assimilation, coddling policies of the govt towards immigrants.

Yet you support an immigration policy that brings in millions who will vote for the party that demands awful judges, and supports pro-welfare, anti-assimilation policies.

That really doesn't make sense. But you are right that we should be wary of blaming immigrants. Human nature is a hard thing to overcome, no matter where people come from, so its a bit ridiculous to expect immigrants to look a gift horse in the mouth.

And the talk about 'throwing out the brown people' smacks of white guilt. I mean, really, who is saying that? And if you're going to point to some fringe statements by some anti-immigrant person or group, then I can just as easily point to equally racist, separatist talk spewed by radical latino groups and individuals.

Print it. Frame it. Send it to the RNC as a lovely Christmas gift.

"It never hurts to remind those who would vote for your opponent to vote...on Wednesday" - TMYN Blog

www.race42008.com
http://theminorityreportblog.blogspot.com/
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson http://gamecock.townhall.com