Posted on 05/18/2006 5:14:48 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted yesterday it's "just not clear" if his Mexican-immigrant grandparents settled in the U.S. legally.
The nation's top cop - who is the first Hispanic attorney general - has become a pointman for the White House on divisive immigration reforms President Bush is pushing.
"Three of my grandparents were born in Mexico. They came to Texas," Gonzales told CNN.
Pressed by Wolf Blitzer, Gonzales conceded he didn't know if they sneaked across the border like millions of illegals at issue in the current debate.
"It's unclear. It's unclear," Gonzales said. "And I've looked at this issue, I've talked to my parents about it, and it's just not clear."
Gonzales has often cited his grandparents' Mexican heritage and his dirt-poor upbringing in Texas in a big family headed by his migrant worker parents.
"My grandparents were Mexican immigrants. I remember visiting them as a very young boy - there was no telephone in their house, no television, no running hot water," Gonzales said during a naturalization ceremony for new citizens in December.
Gonzales is the latest in a series of Washington politicians to talk about their immigrant heritage.
Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) recently recalled how his illegal Italian-immigrant mother was arrested by the feds in 1943.
I think it's about 90% certain that his grandparents were illegal unless they grew up in San Antonio. That's the problem with the BP, which is heavily Mexican-American, as well. Their relatives were/are illegals, and they identify with those sneaking into the US.
Now I don't remember for certain, but I don't think, even in 1977, one just "transferred" from the Air Force Academy. The fact that he was an enlisted member of the Air Force might or might not change that. At minimum, one would think he'd have to pay back the cost of his education from '75 to '77. (I myself left USAF active duty in '75, and got my MS in '77, and I was still an active reservist during that time, and an Air Guardsman for another year after that. After a break of 4-5 years, I then rejoined the active reserve for a few more years)
I certainly don't mind immigrants, and I have tried to learn some Spanish so that when I am in the nursing home I will have someone to talk to. Slowly, I have come to the position where I think letting those that are here register and progress toward citizenship quickly might be alright. Where illegal immigrants work, presumably no income taxes or social security are deducted, so we are losing megabucks as a nation because of it. Their pay can be easily 25% lower than a citizen's and still equal or beat the citizen's take-home pay. Much of their income is sent back to Mexico, whereas a citizen might spend it here; and Mexico gets to duck its own economic development problems to some extent by exploiting its own poor and needy in virtually offering them no alternative to illegally crossing the border and finding employment up here. I have come to suppose that if we can identify the illegals and their employers and collect from them what a citizen would pay, they won't displace as many of our own citizens in jobs which don't pay spectacularly, while we will collect from their employers the social security payments they always should have been paying, and maybe some penalties of consequence, and this perhaps might make working cheaply in the U.S. less attractive than heretofore once the field has been levelled vis-a-vis the illegals immigrants and the underclasses of our own citizens who can not make it on the take-home they get, versus the illegal who pays no tax, no social security, and whose employer pays no social security match nor any benefits whatsoever. Meanwhile, aggressively go after employers who are not collecting social security, income tax, or paying their social security match and the federal deficit and the illegal immigration problems will both largely disappear!
So his Grand Parents might have been illegal.
So What.
That's quite a reach. My best friend's grandparents came across the border as fully paid, ticketed passengers on a train in the early 1900s. How that constitutes "illegal", I don't know. Further, American born hispanics of Mexican ancestry don't as a rule identify with illegals any more than German Americans in fighting in WWII identified with Nazis. Maybe you should look at this: Hispanic American Group Joins House Leaders to React to Pres. Bush's Address & Oppose Senate Amnesty
Point taken. But by now, the Left has determined that negligible assimilation works, as long as the "needy class" coming in overpowers the "providing class".
We are in those times.
More here than meets the eye, eh?
I think the illegals are paying taxes, they have deductions from their paychecks, they just use false SS #s, and probably get returns even. If what I said is true, they could be eligible for EIC, and take out considerably more than the pay, like a lot of lower income families with kids. To fix the tax problem, they need to demolish the income tax, and go to the FAIR tax. I know a lot of people don't like it, but it could be very fair for the poor and rich alike.
No. They didn't even buy me a Foster's.
Miserable b*stards!!!!
They sure tried.
Then they had to go kill Germans in a completely unnecessary war.
Well, it was a safety meeting....
Nothing safer than a few beers!!!
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