Fixing the GOP Part 8- Changing the tone on Immigration

JoeB131

Diamond Member
Jul 11, 2011
165,919
30,359
2,220
Chicago, Chicago, that Toddling Town
In my continuing series of how the GOP stops the bleeding, let's talk about immigration.

The thing is, the GOP actually does have a legitimate point here. Illegal immigration does have a negative effect. It drives down wages, and it increases stresses on social services. Giving Amnesty by itself won't fix the problem, and the GOP should actually resist the temptation to pander. (Immigration alone wasn't the reason the GOP lost the Hispanic vote 71-29).

The problem was the tone. The anger on illegal immigration should never have been directed at the immigrants themselves. They really weren't the problem. The problem was the people hiring them, directly or indirectly, because they were cheap. When the GOP did this, they came off as a little mean-spirited and a lot racist, and they got exactly the result you expected.

The Hypocrisy was best defined by the candidate himself, who announced when he discovered his landscaping company was using undocumented workers, says he said to the owners, "I can't have illegals here, I'm running for office, for Pete's sake."

The other foolishness on immigration is that we can somehow build a fence to keep them out. As General Patton once observed, if Oceans and Mountains can be overcome, anything built by man can be overcome.

Part of the problem was Simpson-Mazzolli, the immigration reform signed by Reagan that gave amnesty to 3 million illegals. It also put the burden of workplace enforcement on the employers, which was pretty much like putting the foxes in charge of watching the henhouse. True, most employers, to their credit, do the right thing and verify. And then you have the ones who don't care.
 

Forum List

Back
Top