Immigration and the GOP Is it still the party of Reagan, or of Tom Tancredo?

Wall Street Journal ^ | 3/31/2006 | Review and OUtlook

[pageonetoo]

As Congress battles over immigration, the consequences are likely to be far greater than the details of border walls or green cards. The most important political outcome may turn out to be the message that Republicans send about the kind of the party they are and hope to be.

To wit, do Republicans want to continue in the Reagan tradition of American optimism and faith in assimilation that sends a message of inclusiveness to all races? Or will they take another one of their historical detours into a cramped, exclusionary policy that tells millions of new immigrants, and especially Hispanics, that they belong somewhere else?...

...The immediate danger is that Republicans will ignore their longer-term interests by passing a punitive, and poll-driven, anti-immigration bill this election year. Any bill that merely harasses immigrants and employers, and stacks more cops on the border, may win cheers in the right-wing blogosphere. However, it will do nothing to address the economic incentives that will continue to exist for poor migrants to come to America to feed their families. And it will make permanent enemies of millions of Hispanics, without doing anything to draw illegals out of the shadows and help them assimilate into the mainstream of American culture and citizenship.

This is not Ronald Reagan's view of America as a "shining city on a hill." It is the chauvinist conservatism usually associated with the European right. How Republicans conduct and conclude their immigration debate will show the country which kind of "conservative" party they want to be.

[RetiredSWO]

Same here:
Are these people rioting for special rights
or simply celebrating their heritage?
Are they here illegally?
Are they breaking the law?
Did they ignore our sovereign borders?

Or did they (or their ancestors) ask for
permission to enter America?

[sinkspur]

I am paraphrasing his words, but someone many of us know said, "He who climbs over the fence, and does not go through the gate is a thief."

That Someone was not talking about immigration. You, of course, know that, but you'll misappropriate His Words anyway.

[Dane]

In this area (DC Metro), there are usually no single hispanics mowing yards. They come in one or two trucks with trailers, carrying multiple mowers and weed-eaters. A crew of 3-10 performs the duty, in short fashion. The front man is usually a white guy

And the concept of efficently mowing lawns is evil how?

Is it evil in the same way the Japanese car makers make better cars than GM.

[RetiredSWO]

The left knows how to play conservatives like a fiddle and these well organized and media savvy demonstrations have given the left the "reaction" they expect from conservatives and their hope to split people apart, the calling card of the modern left.

And how's that working out for them?
Then again maybe it is as Republican Senators
are now turning into Democrats

[sinkspur]

Ronald Reagan had respect for the rule of law. He had that 1986 amnesty forced down his throat by a Liberal Democrat congress.

No he didn't. He signed the amnesty willingly.

This wonderful site is no longer reflective of Reagan's vision, of hopefulness and opportunity.

Instead, it is turning to the narrow, cramped, inward-looking pessimism of Buchanan.

I never thought I'd see it.

[normy]

BS...one illegal alien will take care of two hundred different yards in a month.

Wrong, three or four illegals will take care of 200 yards a month while another 3 or 4 will do another 200. The boss, the white guy in the big red Chevy that pulls the trailer will drop the illegals off in the neighborhood. He will charge 25 to 50 per lawn making him somewhere in the range of 15,000 per month. He will then pay his guys maybe 500 a week tax free (contract labor). That leaves him with 11-12000 for his family.

Of course these illegals have no loyalty to America and send much of the 500 home so their family can live high in Mexico.

Let me also take on this "harder workers" myth. True some work hard and some don't. I worked with an American guy who was Hispanic and as we drove by the guys standing on the corner waiting for a contractor to show up he called them "a bunch of lazy bitches". I was shocked because I was under the impression all Mexicans were hard workers, until I worked around them and found out some were and some were not, surprise, just like everybody else.

When I got out of the Army I went to Alaska to work on a crab boat. In Alaska you can work on a boat and make a years wage in about 3 months. You work for 15 to 18 hours a day and then go home and live off it. That must mean all fishermen are incredible workers.

[EternalVigilance]

Oh and do you need me to stick to two syllable words from now on?

If those who are paid to enforce the traffic laws refuse to do so, then no, we have no traffic laws.

What part of that don't you understand, newbie?

[RetiredSWO]

Why is everyone assuming Mexicans are doing American lawns?
I keep my yard the good old-fashioned American way.

My wife does it

I even got her a riding mower

;~)

[Hop A Long Cassidy]

>>>"Any bill that merely harasses immigrants and employers"

They left out the world "illegal"

As in "illegal alien." This debate is over illegals - criminals who break our laws from the start. Can't the Wall Street Journal say the word "illegal?"

[EternalVigilance]

LOL...

Reagan's amnesty was intended to be a one-time thing, and was supposed to be accompanied with enforcement.

Surprise, surprise, it didn't quite turn out the way the politicians promised...

How in the world can you create 'a shining city on a hill' when you're making policy that creates second-class 'semi-citizens' who are working for slave wages?

If you folks have your way, America will be a gray city on a garbage dump.

And we'll all be living there, except a few special folks who can afford to live behind gates.

[RetiredSWO]

"Should these fanatics waving Mexican flags be deported?"

If they are illegal

Wouldn't that be a great solution
Tell them take their flag back where it belongs

[RetiredSWO]

I serve no King.

[normy]

There are internment camps in Central Texas that the Germans were kept in. You can actually go visit them. Chechs and Bulgarians were also interned.

Google Internment camps Texas or Japanese Italian German Internment.

[Hop A Long Cassidy]

>>>"Has open borders done much for conservatism in California?"

A little inductive proof! Great post.

The great Republican state of California - NOT ANY MORE!

[junta]

It has enriched the rentier class though.

[normy]

In the days after the Dec. 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor, some 31,280 ``enemy aliens'' were swept up -- ostensibly because of possible allegiances to the Axis forces. Among them were about 10,000 Germans and 3,000 Italians, Christgau said. The rest were Japanese and smatterings of other European groups. Pearl Harbor forever changed the lives of Lothar Eiserloh and his family. He was an American-born Ohio school boy in 1941 when his father, Mathias, was picked up by the FBI and whisked off to an internment camp. Overnight, neighbors shunned them and customers no longer bought chickens from his mother. Their bank account was frozen. Unable to survive, they lost the house and, by 1943, the desperate family joined Mathias in the Crystal City, Texas, internment camp. Lothar was 8. His sister, Ingrid, 13; Ensi, just 2. ``Just the week before I'd been pledging allegiance to the flag in school, then I get there and I'm looking up at guard towers and men holding machine guns,'' Eiserloh recalled. In January 1945, in the middle of the war, the family survived a harrowing deportation to Germany for a prisoner exchange. Eiserloh's brother, Guenther, was born on the train that took them to New York, where they were put on the S.S. Gripsholm. His weakened mother and the sickly infant spent the entire 14-day journey to Marseille, France, in the infirmary, and suffered in winter cold during the hours of their ``exchange'' in Bregenz, Switzerland. When they finally settled in Johanna's hometown, the Gestapo set upon them, beat up Mathias and imprisoned him, apparently on suspicion of being a spy for the Allies. ``I remember my father saying, `I never want to have anything to do with Europe anymore -- all they do is fight wars, ancient battles, over and over again,' '' said Eiserloh, now 66 and living in the Ingleside Terrace neighborhood of San Francisco. They had immigrated to America to avoid that.

This was part of an article in the San Jose Mercury News. There were many Europeans from Latin America that were imprisoned in Crystal City in Texas but there were also Italians and Germans as well as people from other Axis nations who were Americans or legal residents who were imprisoned or had assets frozen. I do not say this to question the government during that time, only to say there were German and Italian immigrants and citizens who were interned as well as Japanese.

[budwiesest]

We hit the streets "en masse"

Hitting the streets is a south-of-the-border type of thing- where representation hardly exists for whatever ails the people.

We have a representative government and expect our reps to enforce our laws as expressed in our founding documents.

Again, huge, outdoor protests/demonstrations are the tool of those wishing to excercise 'mobocracy'.

[Dane]

Those German and Italians were probably interned because of not their ethnicity in particular but because of their political symapthies and intelligence that they maybe spies.

The Japanese were interned soley on their ethnicity.

[Dane]

Wrong, three or four illegals will take care of 200 yards a month while another 3 or 4 will do another 200. The boss, the white guy in the big red Chevy that pulls the trailer will drop the illegals off in the neighborhood. He will charge 25 to 50 per lawn making him somewhere in the range of 15,000 per month. He will then pay his guys maybe 500 a week tax free (contract labor). That leaves him with 11-12000 for his family.

I guess you would be happier if this guy was doing a "less' evil living to you than running a lawn care business, such as operating a crack house.

[RetiredSWO]

Were there 1/2 Million people at the pro-Bush demonstrations?
Did they block traffic - cause damage - burn flags - raid city hall?