Posted on 11/28/2005 7:24:33 PM PST by neverdem
Tancredo for president, and other battles
Meet Jorge Humberto Hernandez Soto. The Mexican national is helping to flog Congress toward a showdown over the nation's immigration laws. Soto—unlicensed, illegal, and drunk—managed to get a borrowed Ford Explorer going 100 miles per hour the wrong way down Interstate 485 outside Charlotte, N.C., hitting another car and killing an 18-year old college student in the process.
Incidents like the one involving Soto, who was sent back to Mexico at least 17 times by U.S. authorities before his deadly wreck two weeks ago, are fueling popular demand for action—any action—at the federal, state, and local level. Across the nation, reliable weather-vane politicians like North Carolina Rep. Sue Myrick are rushing to demonstrate their tough-on-immigration credentials, lining up behind tougher immigration and border control legislation.
As a result, what was once Rep. Tom Tancredo's (R-Colo.) own personal hot-button issue is now a national immigration-reform movement. Fanned by talk-radio, not to mention Republican mania for some kind of wedge issue now that they've abandoned fiscal conservatism, immigration is shaping up as the Us vs. Them issue, certainly for next year's midterm election and perhaps 2008 as well.
Tancredo is sniffing around Iowa and has the dreaded and dread-filled potential POTUS candidate's book—In Mortal Danger—on the way. His Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus now has 91 members and expects to get actual House floor votes on several of its reform bills when Congress returns. With the GOP leadership in disarray, there is no telling how many votes the proposal might get.
As ever, a clumsy Bush administration move sparked the political firestorm. The White House spit out a half-hearted immigration reform plan, the core of which was a conceptually sound but poorly explained guest worker program. Many conservatives of a populist stripe never heard anything past the words "guest worker." A guest worker has to work somewhere, you see, and work means a job. A job that an American citizen would otherwise have. This is an absolute article of faith among the immigration reform camp.
They believe, for example, that contrary to several decades of experience, there exists a wage rate at which American citizens will claw sweet potatoes out of the sandy South Carolina soil with their bare hands, Jorge Humberto Hernandez Soto–style.
The reformers also promise harsh penalties on employers who hire illegal labor, a reflection of the certitude that the Bush administration is slow to act on the issue because "big business" wants cheap labor. You know, those corporate sweet potato buyers who could pay $10 a pound for tubers, but just like sticking it to the working man in between sipping double-scotches and buying yachts.
However, nothing reflects the profound shift in congressional thinking about immigration than the sudden conviction that "anchor babies" are part of America's immigration problem. Children born of illegal parents in the U.S. become citizens automatically, thus serving to anchor their parents to the country, sucking up entitlements and public school seats in the bargain. Along with a sturdy border fence, an end to anchor babies has become one of the magic-bullet fixes many reformers insist upon.
"I'm all in favor of people from other countries becoming U.S. citizens, but I don't know that it is appropriate to become a citizen automatically just by having the parents come into this country illegally and then be born here," Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) told The Arizona Republic last week.
Shadegg is one of 69 co-sponsors of a bill that would end America's policy of birth-rights citizenship. At one time advocating this change—which would seemingly require an amendment to the Constitution—was mostly for show. But reformers have recently embraced the interpretation of the 14th amendment offered by Chapman University School of Law professor John Eastman.
Eastman turned heads in September in testimony before the House Immigration, Border Security and Claims subcommittee by arguing that the amendment could be read to mean that children born to illegals in the U.S. were not citizens precisely because, as illegals, the parents had not subjected themselves to the jurisdiction of the U.S. government.
It is a controversial reading of the amendment, and the change would still face many hurdles—not the least of which would be the Senate —even if it were somehow to pass the House. But that such a fundamental change in American law is even under serious discussion underscores the degree to which immigration reform is a salient national political issue, as opposed to a state-wide or regional concern. There is no denying that House Republicans, Tancredo especially, intend to run with an immigration crackdown for 2006 and see where it leads.
Jeff A. Taylor writes the weekly Reason Express.
he also ignores the original intent of the 14th amendment:
"Every Person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons."
Senator Jacob Howard,
co-author of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, 1866.
....uh... No, it's not. It's a literal reading that parrots the authors intent.
;-)
Note the 10 most wanted in texas, they are marked white males but this is just another government cover up of what is happening.
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/wanted/
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,
1. The act of invading; the act of encroaching upon the rights or possessions of another; encroachment; trespass.
Tancredo reminds me a lot of Buccannon, neither can be elected, both don`t work well with others and don`t accomplish much, and in the end , hurt Republicans.
(To be honest I always thought Tancredo was the name of a character from Star Wars.)
You're full of feces. Tancredo has a high lifetime ACU rating in the upper 90s from the ACU and has national name recognition. His objective is not to win the Presidency but to force the feckless GOP to toughen its stance or else lose votes to the Rats.
If the Republican Party can't get their membership to help halt the invasion of our southern border, then they DESERVE to be hurt.
Too bad Tancredo committed political suicide by proposing to nuke Mecca.
If someone who was born within the limits of the United States, is currently in the U.S., and is wanted by the government of Mexico subject to Mexican jurisdiction or to United States government jurisdiction?
I really like Tom Tancredo and what he has to say .
I would vote for him .
He should ask Zell MIller to run as his VP .
A split ticket ;^)
Why do you and your three friends keep spewing this silly deceptive half-truth every time there's a post that mentions Tancredo?
George Bush and Howard Dean are the only politicians who would allow terrorists sanctuary at Muslim holy sites after the US is nuked. Your position isn't as popular as you seem to believe it is.
FYI, if Tancredo runs for President, not one opponent will condemn him on his Mecca comment because to do so would force the critic to explain what he'd do if the US is nuked.
BWAHAHAHAHA! How can you possibly hurt Republicans??
jeez you are right.
Crime is being transfered from Mexico to here
I am ready to go to battle over this issue.
enough is enough
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