Posted on 07/12/2006 10:52:11 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
White House political strategist Karl Rove said Tuesday that the highly charged immigration debate has "clouded" the views of some Americans, leading them to dismiss the importance of immigrants and their contributions to the nation.
"Everything that this country is, everything that we have achieved, everything that we hold, everything that we promise, is because we are a nation of diversity, brought together by immigration, and sharing a common dream," Rove told members of the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights group, the National Council of La Raza, gathered in Los Angeles.
Alluding to the deadlock over immigration reform on Capitol Hill, Rove said the debate had "clouded the views of some people in America and led them to fail to understand that Hispanics, and all immigrants, are real Americans."
"It is vital that our country not fall into this trap," he said.
Rove's appearance before La Raza comes at a time when both political parties are vigorously courting Hispanics, the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population and a key voting bloc that could determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress.
President George W. Bush has urged Republicans to broaden the party's appeal, but the GOP's divisions over immigration reform threaten the effort with Hispanics. A Republican-backed House bill calls for stricter enforcement of immigration laws and various English-only policies.
In a 20-minute speech, Rove gave an enthusiastic endorsement for Bush's plan, which calls for stricter border enforcement along with a way for those who have been in the United States for some time to become citizens. Rove was applauded politely by most of the audience, and he ignored a smattering of protesters who were escorted from the hall.
In a statement, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Rove "is the one person most responsible for the anti-immigrant platform being adopted by congressional Republicans around the country.
"In 2002 it was African-Americans who were scapegoated with the use of the anger point code word `quota,' and in 2004 it was gay Americans. Now, ahead of the 2006 elections, it's immigrants," Dean said.
La Raza, based in Washington, D.C., says it has 40,000 members along with a network of several hundred affiliated community groups that focus on civil rights, immigration, education, health and other issues. The left-leaning group is supportive of Bush's call for a path to citizenship for illegals who have been in the country for a number of years.
La Raza Vice President Lisa Navarrete praised Rove's remarks for emphasizing the need for a comprehensive reform bill, not just border enforcement.
"You cannot pretend that 12 million people do not exist, or contemplate in any way that 12 million people will exit this country," she said, referring to the estimated number of illegals in the country.
La Raza's meeting in Los Angeles took place not far from where hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and their supporters demonstrated last spring against the House GOP immigration reform bill calling for stricter enforcement.
On Yahoo as OPINION
"THE RACE" SCHOOLS: YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20060712/cm_uc_crmmax/michelle_malkin20060712
Michelle Malkin
Top White House adviser Karl Rove traveled to Los Angeles this week to pay homage to the anti-immigration enforcement lobbying group for Latinos: the National Council of La Raza.
"La Raza" is Spanish for "The Race."
It's bad enough the White House lent its prestige to The Race's annual conference. But did you know the Bush administration has forked over millions of federal tax dollars directly to The Race?
According to GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood of Georgia, The Race snapped up $15.2 million in federal grants last year alone and more than $30 million since 1996. Undisclosed amounts went to get-out-the-vote efforts supporting La Raza political positions. The U.S. Department of Education funneled nearly $8 million in taxpayer grants to the group for a nationwide charter schools initiative.
Among The Race's most infamous government-funded charter schools is La Academia Semillas del Pueblo, the Los Angeles public school that teaches "Aztec math" (ancient dot math is the new math) and the Mexican indigenous language of "Nahuatl." The ethnic separatist principal of the school, Marcos Aguilar, told a sympathetic UCLA interviewer:
"We don't want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don't need a White water fountain. . . . We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger. And ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction."
That's the tip of the iceberg. I found dozens of other publicly subsidized charter schools sponsored by The Race and funded with our money, including:
-- Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz. According to The Race, the school's success rests on "Aztlan's ability to integrate a meaningful Chicano Studies program into their lives, language, and academics, as a means of developing their intellects as well as their pride and self-esteem." The school's name -- a reference to a mythical swath of the vast Southwestern U.S. expanse, which Latino activists claim is their rightful homeland and which they seek to reconquer for Mexico -- says it all.
-- Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz. Who needs the three R's? At Mexicayotl, it's all about the three M's: me, me, me! The school's program is "structured and developed around the concepts of identity, culture, and language." Second mission: supporting local ethnic lobbying efforts "to right social injustices by educating the community and helping create social change." Under "greatest achievements," the school's website lists its participation in a "Peace & Dignity Run"; its visit from Rigoberta Menchu (the Marxist academic fraud from Guatemala who lied her way to a Nobel Peace Prize); and its sponsorship of the local annual Dia de los Muertos (the Mexican holiday).
-- The Dolores Huerta Preparatory High School in Pueblo, Colo. It's named after the far-Left Latina labor union activist who recently railed that "Republicans hate Latinos," praised illegal alien marchers and screeched that "We didn't cross the borders, the borders crossed us" in a hate-filled tirade before Arizona students.
-- Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn. Board of Directors member Louis Mendoza, an activist Chicano Studies professor, pushed the school to lobby for the federal DREAM Act (providing in-state tuition discounts to illegal alien students not available to legal non-residents). The school's website features one flag on its front page: the Mexican flag.
The White House will tell you that the National Council of The Race is a "moderate," mainstream civil rights group. But there's nothing "moderate" about The Race's advocacy of driver's licenses and in-state tuition discounts for illegal aliens. Or its opposition to strengthening security for identity documents and improving cooperation on immigration enforcement between state, local and federal enforcement immigration officials. Or its all-out war on the House GOP's border security and enforcement-first bill passed last December.
President Bush pays lip service to immigration enforcement and assimilation, while the White House sends Karl Rove to make nice with the separatist leaders of The Race and the Bush Education Department showers our tax dollars on radical Reconquista schools. It doesn't add up.
Unless, of course, you're using Aztec math.
Michelle Malkin is author of the new book "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild."
Rove had a Sister Soulja moment and he blew it. The speech he should have given:
Amigos and Amiga’s: Today I come at the request of the President of the United States to inform you that the time has come when the United States of America will begin to defend its borders against those who are being dispelled from Mexico because of failed socialist policies and lack of educational opportunities as well as Islamo Fascists who want to use our open borders to murder Americans including Latino Americans.
The policy will be that we will build a wall with the most modern technology possible from the Gulf of Mexico to California it will be manned by a combination of U.S. Army personnel and border patrol with orders to fight the Coyotes who prey on the Mexican people and to return their human cargo.
We will require Mexico to reform its economic and educational system by placing an embargo on all legal immigration from Mexico until these reforms are in place. We will not place economic sanctions on Mexico because this would place their socialist economy and oligarch government in even worse condition than it already is.
As for those who are illegal and already in the United States we will have a two fold policy. We will crackdown on all employees who hire illegals. We will prosecute anyone who has hired an illegal alien in the United States with penalties of fines and jail time for offenders. We will deport any worker found on the property or in the employ of those employers.
Finally a word about assimilation, the days of people living in the United States and not becoming part of the greatness that is the United States are over. Mexicans who want to balkanize themselves into little portions of American cities do themselves or the nation no service. All schools will be in English, they will teach the history of the United States of America, the culture of being an American. Multiculturalism is a curse on all people living in America, making them unable to advance in the most opportunistic society ever created. Those who don't assimilate will always be mowing lawns and cleaning pools, I'm sure La Raza doesn't want that.
And finally, you lost the Mexican-American War, as the moonbats say, Move-On. Mucho gracias and viva Estados Unidos.
"Everything that this country is, everything that we have achieved, everything that we hold, everything that we promise, is because we are a nation of diversity, brought together by immigration, and sharing a common dream," Rove told members of the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights group, the National Council of La Raza, gathered in Los Angeles.
Utter B.S.. America was founded on the WORK ETHIC and Christianity. America was NOT founded on RACISM or today's new term "diversity". "Diversity" had NOTHING to do with the success of America.
BTW, the settled here LEGALLY unlike today's "diverse" criminals and other assorted LAW BREAKERS.
No, its stories like this one from the AP that "cloud" the debate. No one dismisses the contribution LEGAL immigration. The argument is about ILLEGAL immigration. I swear, I am beginning to think the MSM is being intentionally obtuse.
Please bring in more persecuted people from Darfour, East Timor, Zimbabwe, Karen tribesmen from Myanmar... people who would kiss the ground to be here, learn our language, and become Americans.
As to ungrateful La Raza activists who have OVERTLY told you, Mr. Rove, that they want to take over the entire Southwest and turn it into a corrupt socialist hell-hole just like home...
You wrote the reply I was intending to write. I would just add that previous immigrants came expecting nothing but opportunity. They weren't jumping into the "social safety net," stealing freebies that Americans established for their fellow citizens, not for anyone who can sneak in.
OTOH,several million non-english speaking illegals who,on average,have a third grade education,pick lettuce and routinely show up at Emergency Rooms for medical care would be a net *drain*...and a substantial drain....on this country.
I agree ... .
What I don't understand if ROVE was part of the "leak" WHY is he still there? He should be shown the door!
bump
They settled here at a time when all that was required was an address and a 60 second medical exam that largely looked for head lice and eye conditions. And if you had money and could afford a first or second class ticket, you might have even been able to escape that. But you are right, they brought a work ethic, fueled by the horrible conditions from which they escaped.
Oh, sure, that's it. Americans are bigots that see brown faces and want to do them harm, right Rove?
It couldn't be that we have NO problem with Hispanics or even Mexicans are their own merit.
It couldn't be that what we really have a problem with is people that come here illegally, learn that word Mr. Architect you seem to have misplaced it, whether from Mexico, Russia, canada or the Middle East simply because...they have broken the law? It couldn't be what we have a problem with is people wishing to retain their own lanaguages, their own cultures, their own alliagince to a FORIEGN country rather then embrace the one they live in?
I used to dread the day this administration left office, simply because I personally liked the current occupant and thought the alternatives in '08 were far worse. Thanks a lot Rove, you and the President have reversed that opinion completely. I am now living day to day with the simple goal of outlasting your push for amnesty till '09 when hopefully we find a candidate that will actually respect our culture, our borders, And the hard working Americans, many of strong Faith, people you think are racists.
It has to be more than mere hispandering for votes.
Perhaps something like the NWO agenda and the NAU.
Any other theories except (R) group insanity?
About now, you can count on one hand the number of loyal American conservatives remaining in the (R) base.
The Bush Administration groveling and pandering for the latino vote..... Notice that the sleazy sob Rove never used the words ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION in his little soap box speech. Jimmy Carter could have written this speech.
What's even worse, he attempted to portray our country's founders as 'multiculturalists' and "diverse", (as the word 'diverse' has come to mean in modern politics), which is a gross lie and slander on America's founders. They were Europeans who founded and built this country on their Christian faith, and on their toil, sweat and blood. They actually had to fight and defeat the Mexicans of their day, and they could have cared less about things called "inclusiveness", "multiculturalism", and "diversity". Those things were believed to have been divisive weaknesses in America's early days, and rightfully so.
After reading this little White House Fantasy Land speech by Rove it's just extraoridinarily clear that all of Washington are pretty much the same, Republican and Rat. Self-serving politicians with modernist views who wish to force their will and their personal vision upon Americans, without regard for the truth and the will of the American people. They will persue amensty for illegals relentlessly, and they will continue to steer this debate away from ILLEGAL immigration by "forgetting" to mention the word 'illegal'. They're all a bunch of liars.
Assuming the "immigrants" are here LEGALLY and successfully obtain US citizenship.
They generally don't favor amnesty and special rights for illegals either, but the administration seems to believe Hispanics all think and act alike. A form of prejudice, imo, but then I don't look at Hispanics and see them as potential maids, gardeners and field workers born to fulfil my every need either.
They need to take a hard look in the mirror and re-consider which group is engaging more in prejudice and racism here.
Not that there aren't a few racists that want everyone of another color to stay out, but they aren't the majority on the border enforcement side of the debate. Given every other statement I hear from the establishment seems to consign Hispanics to menial labor and/or address them as a collective because of their heritage/skin color...I have my doubts about the establishment's real views.
If you're referring to immigration from Europe before the Ted Kennedy changes, it was a whole lot more complicated than that. They needed a residence and a sponsor whom the government could trust. They needed a JOB waiting for them and the medical exams were much more far reaching than "lice". Many with communicable diseases were turned back. They also needed some documentation from their originating countries, which was to help eliminate known criminals from entering the U.S. through immigration.
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