"It's going to be very important to "police our own" fellow conservative and anti-illegal immigration friends to ensure that ad-nauseum cries of "racism" from the left don't stymie our efforts to secure the borders and strengthen laws."
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Very well said.
Why don't we start here:
I think it needs to be repeated, over and over and over again, that 40-50% of Hispanic-American voters in California voted FOR Prop 187 - to deny taxpayer funded services to illegal aliens. They see, quite correctly, that illegals hurt THEM by draining away tax money and jobs from the 'legal' community. There is also a sense of resentment that this new generation of illegals think they should be able to 'go to the front of the line' - the line that the legal immigrants had to go through patiently to achieve their legal status.
We need to repeat this to REPUBLICANS more than to the 'other side' - because they seem to think that all Hispanic-Americans think like La Raza (which misconception is why all these front groups have gotten their power over the years).
La Raza types will never vote Republican. But Hispanic Americans are fairly conservative/traditional, and will. Republicans should be on the side of law, order and fairness - which means ENFORCE immigration law and make EVERYONE play by the rules! It's the natural position for Republicans to take!
(rant off, sorry!)
Nor should bilingual education or college tuition rates be political tools. All of the children in America represent our future and it is to all of our advantages to educate all of them as best we can, regardless. It's not an Hispanic issue.
NAFTA and CAFTA aren't Hispanic issues. Public health isn't an Hispanic issue.
Republicans don't need to change any substantive policies to appeal to Americans of Hispanic descent that I know of.
We can play politics with political things such as appointing Hispanics to highly visible offices, celebrating Hispanic holidays, recognizing the contributions of Hispanics to our nation, locating government buildings and post offices in Hispanic neighborhoods, running ads in Spanish, hiring more Hispanic police officers, campaigning in Hispanic areas, including Hispanic leaders in public affairs, etc...
By the way, many years ago I was on a committee that oversaw MART. I never heard anyone express an opinion contrary to that of our President at that time, Ronald Reagan. I did get requests on things such as immigration of family members from Mexico and various import and customs problems, recommendations for jobs, college admissions, etc... but not one single policy issue.
Roger that, Brother ~ you got it ~ Bump!
In my opinion the GOP should tackle this head on by returning to our principles as a color blind party.
Up until 1999 the GOP prided itself on being color blind. One of our principles was that laws and lawmaking and governance should be based on things like merit and need and that skin pigment had nothing to do with either. People were to be judged as individuals, not racial groups. We left the group politics and the racial pandering for the Democrats.
GOP principles have always included things like law and order, national security, national sovereignty, low taxes and small government. Tolerance of illegal immigration violates all of these principles and when that is coupled with racial pandering where we blatantly promote policies which compromise our principles with things like amnesty for lawbreakers just for the sake of buying racial votes you can understand why the GOP rank and file is furious.
We should return to our principles on illegal immigration and use them to BROADEN OUR BASE by appealing to working class people and particularly rank and file union types where we have already been making good inroads due to values issues and 2nd Amendment issues. Our appeal to the working class should be absolutely color blind but it should spell out in no uncertain terms how illegal immigration is the most damaging to the working poor and lower middle class. We should paint the Democrats as betraying this constituency while our tough approach is principled and good for people who work.
Most Hispanics work and some would listen and vote with us. Maybe even some blacks would too. Frankly I am not interested in attracting the Hispanics for whom we need to sacrifice our principles and buy their vote to gain power. What good is power if you have to use it keeping promises that violate your principles. I am not saying that we should not reach out. We should definitely invite them into our party and we should make room for them to participate and advance based on their merit. But they should come into the GOP because they share OUR principles and the should be thought of as Republicans, not hyphenated Hispanic-Republicans.