There's no great mystery as to why Mitt Romney is struggling so badly with Latinos: Romney has gone out of his way to deliberately antagonize the entire community -- endorsing "self-deportation," vowing to veto the DREAM Act, palling around Kris Kobach, using "illegal" as a noun, and describing Arizona's SB 1070 as a "model" for the nation.
And how many of these data points were raised in last night's debate? Literally, all of them. This, however, was the moment that amazed me.
For those who can't watch clips online, and who missed the debate, President Obama twice slammed Romney for having endorsed "self-deportation" as a credible immigration policy. Romney responded, haltingly:
"Self-deportation says let it, let people make their own choice. What I was saying is, we're not going to round up 12 million people, undocumented, illegals, and take them out of the nation. Instead, let, make people make their own choice. And if they, if they find that, that they can't get the benefits here that they want and they can't find the job they want, then they'll make a decision to go a place where, where they have better opportunities."
Oh, I see. Self-deportation, which started as a satirical joke before being adopted by conservative Republicans as a serious policy, is really about choices. Sure, the underlying point seems cruel, making immigrants' lives so miserable that they'll leave the country altogether, but for Mitt Romney, it's really just a celebration of "illegals" -- there's that word again -- having the freedom to "make their own choice."
In other words, instead of trying to Etch A Sketch his way out of his self-deportation agenda, Romney thinks he can convince Latino voters the idea isn't as ridiculous as it sounds.
Yeah, Mitt. Good luck with that.
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We should be more blunt about this "self-deportation," Steve. Making life so miserable for a specific group of people, so much so that they choose to leave our country, is a euphemism for ethnic-cleansing. We need to call it what it is.
Let's have a little bit of respect.
We stole this land by force of arms from the Indians and the Mexicans. Jackson ignored the Supreme court and deported the Cherokee from their lands, and when Mexico refused Jacksonian democrat Polk offers to buy California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Texas, he simply had a convenient war and stole them.
And we have the gall to call the Mexicans the illegals.
Con Safos. Have a little respect for the truth, and don't indulge in the fictions we collectively have bought into.
Justice would be a defunding of the drug lords by ending the drug wars.
Justice would be trade agreements that penalize deals with Mexican companies that rape the people of wealth even more vigorously than the US 1% does.
Justice would be an open border in North America, not out of any sense of guilt about Polk's actions, but because it is good economically for the US. There is a great deal of commonality between the plutocracy of Mexico and the United States. We anglos simply delude ourselves that we are able to keep the plutocrats in check.
Part of that subjugation is that we have bought into a story about our nation's superiority over Mexico, our superiority over the cultures of the American Indians. Buy buying into the language of a dominant culture, the language of the benefits of predation, we buy into the notion that the best person to lead the nation is a predator like Romney who is the ultimate illegal, brushing aside any rules in order to win- to seize wealth from others.
The Romney types appeal to the greed of individualists as Polk and Jackson did.
Predation of the white on the brown- we feed on it daily. Just take a look at in the kitchens at the restaurants. Maybe thank them for their hard work, their honesty, and their patience. Tell them you are with them, and we'll straighten this injustice out.
Con Safos.
Justice would be a revision to NAFTA so our subsidized corporate agricultural products can't be dumped in Mexico, destroying Mexican agriculture and sending the farmers here to work as gardeners for the fat Norte Americanos who support the people who drove them from their land and then assault them for coming here.
Real justice would be to see the Wall Street scum swinging from ropes, with Romney in the top ten.
Where is the tape of Romney saying he thought SB1070 should be the model for the nation? I can't remember if it was during primary debates or some interviewer's question during that phase of the campaign, but I do recall a report about it. Please, James Carter IV, we are counting on your excellent research skills to find this elusive tape.
Maybe if we gave Texas and California back to Mexico...
Here is my problem with illegal immigration,
:
A) Illegal immigrants do not go through a health screening to prevent them from carrying disease into our country(this could be offset some by having a week of immunity for them to go to free clinics to be checked and handed a certificate if they are healthy or given treatment if needed)
B)Many illegals are taken advantage of first by those they pay to sneak them in ,then by greedy employers who take back half their wages for fees and fire them if they get sick or injured on the job(Protecting all workers rights while hitting employers who do this with stiff penalties would help as would a work for citizenship idea)
C)Latino gangs are becoming a big problem in our bigger cities--Obama has made it a priority to deport the criminals first (got a problem with that?)
Paul
A) As a legal immigrant from 30 years ago, there was no health screening until I became a permanent resident, by which time I had been here 5 years. Any disease I might have been shown to have at the screening (and they only looked for TB) I probably would have caught in the USA. Also there are very many illegal immigrants from Ireland and Scotland. But we don't mind them - they are white, speak English, and jolly good chaps. Also regular tourists from overseas don't go through health screening so illegals are not the only potential problem.
I agree with the rest of your post.
Hmmm...thanks so how about this from http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=3384cc5222ff5210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=6abe6d26d17df110VgnVCM1000004718190aRCRD
Introduction
These Questions and Answers provide basic
information about the general vaccination requirements for immigrants (including
individuals seeking adjustment of status), and specifically about the assessment
made by the civil surgeon to determine whether an applicant meets the
vaccination requirements. These Questions and Answers do not address the
vaccination assessments conducted by panel physicians overseas.
For refugees
only, health departments may be considered a civil surgeon for purposes of
completing the vaccination record....
johnmesserly... i wish i could "like" this post a hundred times.
notanidiotlike...... damn right! russian imigrants have organized crime. so did the irish. so did and do the italians. its because mexicans are brown. we have open borders with canada. it is blatently a race issue. aways has been. and whoever talked about health screenings... thats way insulting dude. you dont ask that of white illegals. either way, your food has been cooked and prepared by mexican kitchen staff for years. if they had some comunicable desease this whole country would have had an epedemic by now. but it hasnt. why? because this isnt the 1400's.
I think it's interesting that such a firm believer in American Exceptionalism wants to make America LESS of a land of opportunity.
I think he actually would turn back the clock to where illegal immigration goes unreported and employers abuse them with low pay and unsafe working enviroments.He just wants to play both sides until elected.
His record is proof to me that he would love illegals to drive wages down and rid us of the minimum wage.
Romney does not give a Mitt about anyone not likely to vote for him. His compassion is doled out, no credibility about caring for the average person. If you have 250 million, giving away a few bucks for him(lots more than a few bucks for most of us, I'll agree) is expedient. He has a position for all seasons and all people, none of which is trustworthy unless it makes money for his friends and himself. I would not trust him with my dog (if I could afford a dog), let alone my country.
This is exactly Romney's position on the 47%. Heck, make that the 99%. Let 'em starve. Eventually they'll go away. Kinda like not feeding feral cats.
Really "Those people" expect jobs, food , shelter and healthcare .
What a bunch of parasites.
"I can't believe this guy is even in the polls"
This is just another case of how Romney's pandering to the hardcore right is coming back to bite him. He has tried so hard to convince them he is a conservative that now he is having trouble trying to convince the center that he isn't.
In all honesty I don't think he personally really cares about undocumented people living here. To him they are nothing but cheep labor and part of the people he thinks are beneath him.
He is not pandering, it is what he believes.
Except, of course, when he's "running for President, for Pete's sake!"
Whether it is pandering or not it is as sickening as it is mystifying that people in this country think this attitude is a GOOD THING.
I want to point out that EVERYONE came here illegally. Everyone is an immigrant to this continent. We have always been a nation of immigrants. I don't understand why that is suddenly changing in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. We have lost the compassion that we once had as a nation. 9/11 changed in us so many ways, but most of all it took away our compassion for others and our own. Republicans need to realize what John Donne said is true.
They need to understand it. We have a responsibility as a free nation to welcome with open arms these people. Not drive them away. Has everyone forget what the stature of Liberty says on it?
Have we fallen so far that we no longer help our fellow man? I am not sure why the Republicans are being this way except to think they are nothing but racists, but there is more to it than that. It's a bunch of blue blood business leaders who hope for a return to the Gilded Age in America when Business ran everything, and they got rich off the suffering of Americans, and immigrants who came to this country seeking a better life. That's the world that the Republicans want again, but that isn't what America needs or do I want. We need to work with immigrants like we used to get them integrated into society not Demonize them.
I really like what you said, but the truth about the history of immigration in America is that as soon as each wave of immigrants found a place to live, they went and kicked the next ones getting off the boat. The Scotch-Irish who came here in the 18th and early 19th Century were among the leaders of the anti-Irish movement when the (Catholic) refugees from the potato famine arrived. The middle class Germans who came here after the failure of the 1848 revolution looked down on the working class Germans who came here to get away from the damn Prussians after the Civil War, both of them looked down on the "Polacks" and the "Guineas", all of them hated the Chinese, etc., etc. America's always been a "hazing contest" for the new arrivals. My wife's family came here as refugees from Lithuania after WW2 (migrating from a refugee camp in Germany) and all the "native born" sons and daughters of the previous immigration waves there in Chicago taunted them as "DP kids" and said "go back where you came from."
When my Quaker ancestors, refugees from the Thirty Years War, bumped into the continent in 1680, had they done so 100 miles north the "Good Pilgrim Fathers" would have put a hot poker through the mens' tongues for "speaking heresies" and hanged the women as witches.
This country has never "welcomed immigrants," since before it was a country.
TCinLA, agreed, excepting the first inhabitants who were by all accounts more welcoming than most. And maybe your Quakers too. Perhaps that's the key: people saw how well that worked out and decided they wouldn't be dispossessed like Native Americans.
The question still remains: Will these illegals (N) self-deport (V) by aircraft, or binder?
Mitt didn't do well at the debate by and large. And to me this was the moment, where you knew he had completely lost the debate. When you're asked how will you help those who either came or was brought here or born here without being a citizen of this country. And you ended up saying everything under the sun, of what you're not going to do. And adding that you would seek to make life so hard for the ones who are here, so miserable that they will go back home. You've lost what little footing you ever had on the issue.
Dream Act, No! E-Verify, Yes! Papers Please Law, You Damn Right! Make it so miserable, they want to go back home, Completely Agree! Proved that you are a moron on the issues and lost even more of the Latino Community voter block? Without a Shadow of a doubt. Because Mitt, you're completely and utter clueless that telling these people this, isn't how you get them to vote for you.
Granted the Libya moment was the nail in the coffin for Mitt. Immigration was what placed him in the coffin in the first place. After that exchange, he lost the debate flat out. Then in his closing statements to say he cared about the 100%. Only to get smacked down by The President, again. Was the dirt being thrown over said coffin.
We are spending 10 billion dollars on a 2 billion dollar wall so we won't have to spend 1 billion dollars on poor people. Mexico is a capatalistic christian democracy, so what's the problem? Whatever the problem Socialism will be the answer, and of course we "can't go there"...
Besides the idea of making the United States so awful for "illegals" they want to leave, I was bothered by his comment about giving the children of illegals, born in the United States, a path to citizenship by letting them serve in the military.
What's the idea here? Re-open some of those down-sized military bases and have the illegals fix them up, let them raise their children until they're of age to serve in the armed forces? Or insert them in the Middle East, where they might "mix" with the population and can act as insurgents?
GOP might appreciate the idea of illegals fighting for "king" and country to earn a green card in the good ole US of A.
Besides the idea of making the United States so awful for "illegals" they want to leave, I was bothered by his comment about giving the children of illegals, born in the United States, a path to citizenship by letting them serve in the military.
Thank you, yes. That bothered me terribly. For one, this is already in place--that if you serve in the military, you may apply for citizenship. So why suggest that it's something you want to enact? Second, he said "children of illegals"--makes me think of sacrificial lambs. Want to get a green card? Send your child to war and if he comes back, you'll get your chance because he can be a citizen and therefore apply for your green card as his parents. Third, is this the only "path" he could think of? Holy f*%k. Fourth, way to suggest something Mitt didn't want to do in the first place--serve. Instead, he went to France to fight bad escargot and that loathsome french bread.
So Mittens tried the etch-a-sketch shake up and it didn't work, what else is new? Part of the problem with the "conversation" around immigration especially as it pertains to Mexico and Latin America is that it is a false conversation. The reality is that for what three hundred & fifty years Africans brought to this nation as slave labor built this nation into what it became. Right now, the new low/no wage slaves are the people that come into this nation illegally, why because they don't have work in their country and because they will work for much less than natural born Americans!
Just think about it, this nation may be a nation of immigrants but each group that has come here has had their necks stepped on by those that came earlier than they did. The problem right now is that as a nation WE have been groomed to be selfish, individualistic, me-first and screw everyone else - and that is why WE are so divided on "immigration". Those people living in the shadows because they are not citizens they work, love, live, laugh, have children, pay their bills - the same way that the rest of US do, and they are contributing to the system even if they are not benefiting from it! From gardeners to domestic servants to babysitters to office clean-up workers - these are the people that you pass by and act as though you don't see, stop demonizing them!
And Mittens because you think "these people" are beneath you, that's why you cannot get their votes no matter how much you shake that sketch box!
Interesting that Romney covered his bases with his rhetoric by referring to "12 million people, undocumented, illegals." You know, "undocumented" people, or for the right-wing base, "illegals." You know, "THEM."
12 million illegals, 12 million jobs. Finally, GOP math that works.
Sounds like making them an offer they can't refuse.
Why don't we have a guest worker program? Wouldn't businesses support this idea?
Business can presently petition an employee for a green card, but this system is not perfect. Many of my friends suffer abuses under this program. They are expected to do everything their employer asks them to do, like work long hours--and we're not talking 8AM - 7PM. We're talking as late as 10PM or 11PM. They basically can't displease their employers--so no asking for raises, no expecting that "earned" days off will go unnoticed, no demanding for benefits that should've been due to them in the first place. I've had friends give up on the whole idea because it just wasn't worth the abuse.
On the other hand, a good and honorable employer would have to jump hoops to be able to petition employees for their green card. It's not easy thing to produce papers and applications and documents showing that you're financially capable of petitioning someone.
The system is flawed and complicated.
The system is flawed and complicated.
It is worse than that. Since 9/11 and the Patriot Act this country has become xenophobic and paranoid. Admittedly there were problems before 9/11. But to turn away just about all foreign students - even those from friendly countries - is stupid. How else do we get future leaders and shakers to be pro-USA?
Actually, correct me if I do not state this accurately, but present laws require citizen verification as a stipulation to employment, but these laws are not enforced. If they were, then the impact would be that fewer people who are undocumented and not citizens would be denied jobs. This was the deterrent intended in the legislation.
I listened to all of Romney's suggestions about immigration. But the president and many people are missing the big picture. Romney is not proposing any new laws that are not already in effect. The idea of penalizing employers for hiring the undocumented workers or a government program to check a person's citizenship status is already a law. It is a question of enforcement and Romney would have us believe that he is going to do more despite the fact that business enjoys hiring the undocumented because they provide cheap labor. If anyone thinks Romney is going to enforce the laws, then you are dreaming. Bush could have vigorously enforced the laws but did not. Romney is full of El Toro caca.
Another example of him wanting to be made president so he doesn't have to do anything new -- except change the tax code to pay less taxes and make more money.
After four years, he can say "sorry, thought that would work" and "couldn't raise taxes to pay for the growing deficit because I signed the Grover pledge."
He'll leave office (if elected) and go back to whatever house he wants to live in at the time, protected by secret service, and living off all his ill-gotten gains.
Since when does Grover Nordquist or anyone else not elected to office get to decide what policy is in this country? Mr. Romney is the Republican nominee for President and has yet to lead on any public issue in this campaign, so I cannot see him leading this country anywhere at any time. Vote Obama.
"describing Arizona's SB 1070 as a 'model' for the nation" But, apparently, he didn't. I watched the tape of the February debate and he clearly meant a different law---the E-verify law. The President put Gov Romney in such a perfect and well deserved box last night, and it is clear that the Gov is no friend to those who have come to this country and want to continue to contribute here, that we don't need to out-GOP the GOP by twisting their words around.
Last night Obama missed another opportunity to nail Romney.
Just like with the auto industry,Romney wanted the housing market to hit rock bottom.He said that homeowners should go into foreclosure and investors should nthen buy the houses and the homeowners would then rent from the investors.
Further evidence that he does not care about the middle class.
Romney's plan? He would bust the economy like Bush did thus causing illegals to seek work elsewhere. Hey it worked back then.
Nevermind that he will get rid of the minmum wage and you will lose everything to the repo guy while Bain buys your old factory and sends the jobs to China.The illegals will go home!
Huh, so maybe this is what Romney's talking about when he says he's really pro-choice.
Here, finally, is another specific cut Mr. Romney will make to balance the budget. When 12 million immigrants self deport that will save (assuming $200 in average processing costs and transportation) the INS $240 million! Every little bit helps! That is assuming, of course, the immigrant can cover the transportation cost out of his own pocket. Do not hold your breath, Mr. Romney.
During an election it isn't the time to really discuss immigration, but when Obama is re-elected we really need to start the debate. It's a huge isse.
I'm a citizen,now, but I'm also part of the immigrant community. Bush,Sr. started these "criminal" deportations. I know someone that got into a argument with the lover of his ex-wife. it was mostly hushing & shoving. the other party file a complaint. it ended with him being deported. he entered this country legally, at the time he was in this country for 17 years. I think that deportations have gotten better, but we have a long way to go.
I'd like Americans to form a currency like the Euro for North,Central and Soth Amerima and no borders. Let's start talking about that.
please correct my statement to:
I'd like Americans to form a single currency for North,Central and South America and no borders for Pan-America.