Posted on 03/29/2006 4:27:02 PM PST by thoughtomator
HOW THE GOP CAN SURVIVE THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE
By DICK MORRIS
March 29, 2006 - The immigration bill pending in Congress poses as crucial a test for GOP efforts to reach out to Hispanic voters as the 1964 Civil Rights Act did in determining the future partisan preferences of America's African-Americans.
In 1964, the Republican Party, led by Barry Goldwater, was painted as sacrificing the interests of civil rights to its goal of attracting Southern support, although Republicans backed the bill in far greater numbers than Democrats did. But when Goldwater ran for president rejecting civil rights legislation, it doomed GOP chances among black voters for at least the next 40 years.
Will the Republican need to appease its anti-immigration base similarly vitiate President Bush's efforts to appeal to Hispanic voters?
Hispanics, let's remember, were the swing voter group in 2004. Having voted for Al Gore by 30 points in 2000, they sufficiently trusted Bush to back Sen. John Kerry by only an eight-point margin. If the Republican Party now turns its back on these newly swing Latino voters, it may permanently lose its ability to win America's fastest-growing voter group, perhaps dooming the party altogether.
But the demands of the GOP base must also be accommodated. Here's how:
One must separately consider the three key elements of immigration reform under discussion: The border fence, the guest-worker program and the criminalization of illegal aliens and those who employ them.
The GOP base wants a fence. It is vital to the entire concept of whether or not we can control our borders. All efforts to beef up manpower on the border have failed to stem the daily flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico. A fence is the only way to do it. By backing a fence and demonstrably taking control of our southern border, the Republican Party will appease the demands of its base.
But to prevent disaster among Latino voters, it must accompany the fence with a more liberal policy on guest workers and criminalization.
Simply put, the fence must have a gate that swings open for immigrants we want and need. To avoid permanently antagonizing our southern neighbors and to keep the labor supply on which so much of American business and prosperity depend, we need a guest-worker program.
The GOP base, happy with the fence, will probably go along with it. Whatever the Congress needs to do to differentiate the guest-worker program from amnesty it should do, but it must pass a generous guest-worker program. (If it is necessary for those here illegally to return to Mexico and reenter as registered and enrolled guest workers, to convince the right that a guest-worker program is not amnesty, so be it).
With a 4.7 percent unemployment rate, we will be slitting our own throats by denying our economy access to Mexican workers. We just need to make them legal, not illegal. With a border fence to enforce the difference, a guest-worker program will work politically.
And it is also important for the Republicans to avoid symbolic acts like making it a felony to be here illegally or to employ someone who is. The same practical deterrence is quite possible through the fence, and merely upgrading the jail time from a misdemeanor to a felony won't make much practical difference.
Judges, in any event, are not about to crowd our jails with millions of felony illegal entrants. Deportation is and will be the answer to those we catch -- and deportation has new meaning with a fence in place.
Yes to the fence, yes to guest workers and no to greater criminalization are the keys to giving the Republican Party access to Latino votes in the future while coping with an issue that roils tens of millions of Americans.
Look at the US retirees moving in there. Did you know that the Mexican govt allows US citizens to keep US dollars in Mexican banks. Not to mention that the mexican banks are partially owned by US Banks.
As my compadre Luis Delgado was lamenting the other day, the damn gringos are going to own everything in Mexico.
You confuse psychic with knowing human nature.
We also highly subsidize some of the industries that employ the most illegals.
Cheap labor? Only for the CRIMINALS who directly employ them. They're bleeding the rest of us taxpaying, law-abiding citizens dry. We have a glut of uneducated and unskilled labor in this country, not a shortage. That's why wages are going down below legal minimums.
The point of my previous post is that we're likely subsidizing that supposed $5 of value created to the point of a net loss. At best, it's a very poor ROI, and we'd be better served by extending further tax cuts to private citizens to stimulate consumer demand, or building infrastructure and R&D capability with that money.
We're importing social problems and poverty. The effect of this policy has already played itself out in Europe. We have empirical data to suggest that it serves no purpose for developed nations to continue importing unskilled and uneducated workers.
Your logic is based on the misconception that employers want to hire illegals. If an employer can get a legal worker, he has no need for the illegal.
Well said!
Wrong. They've invaded us. Not vice-versa.
I probably should have used the more descriptive 'regime change' in my previous post.
Don't you know you're supposed to blame the GOP's failure in California since 1994 on Prop 187? Didn't you get the memo?
The illegals are allowed to live in this country with a defacto legal status and they are allowed to work in this country. That is not an invasion.
The RNC's heavy support for squishy moderates in California primaries couldn't possibly be the problem out here. No, it has to be the one-issue nativist xenophobe conservatives that are the problem. The fact that a lot of latinos are among the knuckle-draggers fed up with Open Borders is of no consequence. We MUST reward the Undocumented Workers in order to curry favor with... with... you know.... the lawbreaking element that we need in order to win elections. Yeah, that's the ticket.
I hope you and your wife don't mind supporting me.
No. My logic is based on the correct assertion that any given company will want to pay as close to $0 as possible for labor. That is why we had to outlaw slavery and indentured servitude in this country.
If a company wanted to hire a legal citizen, we have plenty available. Your logic is based upon the lie that there is a shortage of available labor. There is not.
Much of Bushie's 'guest-worker' plan is lifted from policies in place in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. No thank you to slavery or purposely importing impoverished slums.
Spin that Mr. Knownothing.
This is bias, plain and simple. Why is it not an appeal to anti-ILLEGAL immigration folks vs. appeasing radical Hispanic groups? Oh well, consider the source, I guess.
If you weould take the time to read the bills, you would see that the Bush Plan is a compromise between Kyl-Cornyn and McCain-Kennedy.
Yes to the fence - It should be the first priority
Yes to guest workers - We need to make illegal immigration more difficult and legal immigration easier.
Yes to greater criminalization - They are lawbreakers!
http://jednet207.tripod.com/PoliticalLinks.html
Who did he doom himself with?
The white liberals.?
There are very large Hispanic populations in Kern, Tulare, Fresno, Stanislaus, Merced and San Jaoquin counties yet they all seem to vote Red and conservative.
There are overall few Hispanics in the north coast counties and they seem to always vote blue and liberal.
Rural area Hispanics vote conservative?
Urban area Hispanics vote liberal?
Wonder why that is? I say rhetorically.
and correction; meant to say.
Those counties seem to vote red and conservative. ( In place of they all.)
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