Posted on 07/08/2006 4:37:07 PM PDT by garbageseeker
LOS ANGELES - Former President Bill Clinton praised President Bush on Saturday for supporting reforms that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to seek citizenship but said the debate in Congress is being fomented by Republicans who want to divide America.
"I'm proud of him for doing it and I thanked him for doing it," he said of Bush during a "Cafe con Clinton" breakfast speech to the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights advocacy group.
Clinton said Bush's roots in Texas which has one of the nation's largest Hispanic populations have helped him view immigrants as people rather than statistics.
"It's hard to demonize people if you know them," he said.
But Clinton also argued that the nation's government is controlled by Republican ideological hard-liners who want to use immigration to divide Americans and distract them from issues such as the war in Iraq and the health care crisis.
Instead of equal opportunity, they support a "financial elite" because they favor "concentrated wealth and power," Clinton said.
"They believe in a government that is secret, unaccountable and that maximizes its own power," he said. "They really believe the world works better if they run it and we keep our mouths shut."
Clinton supported an immigration reform measure passed by the Senate that would provide a way for many of the estimated 12 million foreigners living in the country illegally to become citizens. A House-approved bill would make illegal immigrants felons and build 700 miles of border walls. House and Senate negotiators so far have not been able to work out a compromise.
Bush has said he wants to enforce the borders so fewer people sneak across but also provide a way for those already in the United States to become legal. He has praised Hispanic immigrants as hardworking and family oriented. Clinton used similar language in his own speech.
The message played well with La Raza, which opposes the House bill and whose current president, Janet Murguia, was an assistant in the Clinton White House.
Before Clinton's speech, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa noted a string of rallies over the immigration issue, including one in March that sent 500,000 people into the streets of Los Angeles and garnered international attention.
"You literally reshaped the political landscape of our nation ... we can still see a movement blooming before our very eyes," he said.
Both Democrats and Republicans have been looking for ways to court Hispanics, whose fast-growing population gives them the potential to become an enormous voting force. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was scheduled to address the convention on Tuesday
Lucky for Arizona, the word is out about Sheriff Joe arresting illegals, the numbers he is catching has gone down significantly each week... the word is getting back to Mexico to avoid Arizona so they are heading for California, New Mexico and Texas and starting to avoid AZ... what this shows is that enforcement efforts work and they work fairly fast.
Welfare reform (what little there was in reality) was forced on Clinton through public opinion. The polls showed the American People in dramatic support for reform - and we all know Clinton was a poll-hound.
Haiti - maybe, but debatable (where were the peaceniks back then?)
In that case you had better watch out for good 'ole Mike Huckabee here in Arkansas who is a supporter of LaRaza and it's affiliated groups. In fact - he was a speaker at the mondo convention in Little Rock - was it last year?
Mike is an open-borders guy - and loves to give away government money....particularly to illegals (his proposal to give illegals in-state tuition rates and state-funded scholarships was finally derailed by Jim Holt - the current Repub candidate for Lt. Gov).
Bump
Bump
I have never been thrilled about that too.
Excellent post.
The RNC types here on FR swear that these are future GOP votes - but we know better!
Anything that a "Clintoon" endorses..., I immediately reject (hopefully others do so as well)!
What else would we expect from the lying, impeached, draft dodging, accused rapist and probable traitor, but more of the same BS that made him such a big hit as president...
"The RNC types here on FR swear that these are future GOP votes - but we know better!"
You mean poor, uneducated, heavily into welfare, socialists aren't the core of the future GOP?
I'm afraid Sheriff Arpaio might be assassinated by the drug cartels for that very reason, because he's effective.
thanx :)
Karl Rove is probably telling Bush that the arithmetic is the answer, that the Mexicans are going to get into the country and vote no matter what anyone wants, because the Dems are going to help them, and Bush's successors will end up like Pete Wilson in California if they try to stop the Mexican train instead of getting on board.
Of course, that begs the question of what happens when China gets here.
And it also begs the question of constitutional responsibility to the electorate, who are being crushed by a) immigration-imposed social costs and b) hurt by falling wages caused by cheap immigrant labor.
Of course, the real reason is that the RNC's big contributors among the Park Avenue and Grosse Pointe crowds and down at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are demanding that the cheap labor be kept coming. That's all they've really cared about since (even before) the Irish potato famine, that and hard money/low inflation. And keeping the riff-raff out of the "good buildings" on Park Avenue. At least they've given up on trying to keep Jews out of the better resorts upstate.
Of course, those people think they'll continue to do well when China gets here, and Chinese start to freeze non-Chinese out of their business and financial arrangements the way they do in Malaysia and Indonesia......when they aren't bribing kwai loh presidents on behalf of PLA intelligence, that is, or "partnering" to get their hands on kwai loh technology and market access, like Lenovo's deal with IBM to buy their PC business (IBM "only" had 6% of the market, so selling out to the Chinese was the wise play, you see).
In pushing this demographic, cheap-labor play, American businesses are making the same mistake Carthaginian ones did when they stiffed Hannibal for operating funds for Italy. Short-term thinking, no vision, no sense of shared enterprise -- or, as things turned out for the Carthaginians, shared fate.
""The only way Bush could be more sure he's wrong on this is if Gore or Carter chime in in agreement."
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Jimmy Carter already did."
Hmmm, and Gore's too busy with the environment.
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