.
I clearly am missing something when it comes to this topic. Here's what I'd like to see, someone please tell me why it's so terrible:
- If you're here, you get guest worker status. You can work and you pay our taxes.
- When you get guest worker status, you go to the back of the immigration line.
- Your kids have the same status.
- You work (kids go to school) while you're waiting your turn.
- When you reach the front of the line, you're in.
This seems so simple. What am I missing?
.
[MENTION=34298]Mac1958[/MENTION]
makes some very solid and interesting points.
I want to tell you all two different small stories:
My mentor, with whom I apprenticed many, many years ago, is an arch-Conservative. He is a damned fine person with very, very strict Conservative beliefs. In terms of beliefs, he and I are like night and day.
Ca. 7 years ago, when then President Bush, Jr. tried to push immigration reform through, my mentor was visiting me, we met up not far from Vienna. Over a bottle of wine, as I asked him what he thought about this all, he, an arch-Conservative, said the following to me:
1.) It's a shitty situation, built on the backs of both parties.
2.) Illegal aliens have built a shadow economy that would better serve our economy were it to come into the open.
3.) Most illegal aliens do jobs that most Americans don't want to do.
4.) Most illegal aliens come from catholic backgrounds and tend to have a more Conservative worldview, at least at the onset.
5.) It would cost far more to root them all up and send them back than to find a way to incorporate them into the Union.
6.) If the GOP doesn't do it, one day there will be a DEM president and the DEMS will do it and then they will get the credit.
And those words came from the mouth of an arch conservative. 7 years ago. Pretty prophetic stuff.
Second story:
A man I worked with for a while, a guy who did administrative stuff, once told me that whenever he had to do some kind of disciplinary process on someone, it was always a matter of discerning between
intent and
perception. In other words, a person who may have screwed up badly may intend one thing, but it will be perceived in another way.
And so it is with the GOP. Do I think that most Republicans hate immigrants, esp. illegal immigrants?
NO, I don't.
But there are just enough GOP freaks out there who have had access to a microphone or TV interview, who have said batshit crazy things about illegal immigrants - and let's be clear here: in almost every case they are talking about Latinos - and automatically linking LEGAL immigrants who are Latinos with illegal immigrants. And that is where the GOP shoots itself in the foot every day over this issue. Every single day.
So, even if many, many Republicans don't
intend it, it sure as hell is being
perceived that way. Mitt Romney was forced to shoot himself in the foot with the "self-deportation" thing in order to assuage the extreme-right of the GOP and those words came back to bite him squarely in the ass in the fall.
Now, back to you, Mac: I see no problem with your ideas. But be careful about the children part. Kids born here, irrespective of the nationality of their parents at that time, are US citizens.
[MENTION=28109]Amelia[/MENTION] makes the point - and correctly so imo, that, if we don't completely, hermetically seal the border (meaning, the Texas / Mexico border), then in 20 years, we will be right back where we are now. Please remember that the Obama administration has put more boots on the ground at the border than any other administration and the Obama adminstration has deported more illegal immigrants than any other, but that is not enough. We may have to build an electronic - and - physical fence, along the entire stretch, without exception.
My advice to the GOP would be to take part in this, for it is going to happen, anyway. If the GOP kills immigration reform once more, polling is already showing that the Latinos will simply give up on the GOP. There were already strong indications of this in 2012. Latinos really, really liked Bill Clinton. They are going to be crazy for Hillary, mark my word, and if she selects a Latino as her running mate, and I suspect she may just do that, then the sleeping bear that is the Latino vote will awaken.
What is not acceptable is the excuse on the part of GOPer that Latinos will never vote GOP and so, "**** 'em". Really?
President George W. Bush, Jr, got 45% of the Latino vote. A real GOP outreach could possibly bring the GOP more, but the situation is absolutely hopeless for the GOP so long as it continues to demonize Latinos, plain and simple. Whether or not it is
intended, it is being
perceived so. And as long as you have assholes like Rep. King from Iowa talking about Latino drug-dealing teenagers with calves the size of melons or a total whackazoid like Tommy Tancredo calling for literacy tests for LEGAL immigrants to be able to vote whilst also saying that we should nuke Mecca, or Louis Gohmert babbling on and on and on about El Quaida getting in bed with Mexicans so as to smuggle over "anchor babies" who will then grow up to blow up our cities -
as long as your team has these kind of absolutely batshit crazy nutz going around doing this kind of shit, the Latino community will never, ever trust you.
I also would like to know why Republicans are so damned defeatist about their chances at recruiting Latinos into the GOP. Were the Congress to adopt Obama's proposal from LAST YEAR, then that would mean at least 12 years would have to pass before the first illegal aliens would be naturalized, which means that they would probably first vote in
the 2028 elections. Does anyone think that the GOP is SOOOO paralyzed that it cannot convince Latinos on the battlefield of ideas that maybe their party is better, when they would have about 14 years to get the job done? Really?
Had Republicans been that defeatist in 1980, then the Reagan Revolution would never have happened, for Reagan brought people into the GOP whom most GOPers thought would never sign-up.
So, those were my two cents.
[MENTION=20412]JakeStarkey[/MENTION] [MENTION=20321]rightwinger[/MENTION]
