Demos losing poor Hispanic voters who want effective border security

The Arizona Daily Star ^ | 09.25.2006 | John Kromko

[axes_of_weezles]

Opinion

Guest Opinion: John Kromko

Demos losing poor Hispanic voters who want effective border security

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.25.2006

In 2004, Arizona voters passed Proposition 200, which cut some social services for illegal aliens. While impacts of this proposition have been frequently debated, one profound aspect has been ignored: the poorer a voter was, the more they supported Prop. 200, regardless of ethnicity.

In heavily Hispanic precincts, about 40 percent to 45 percent of voters voted for Prop. 200, about the same percentage that voted for Bush.

If you're wealthy, an alien probably won't take your job or health-clinic seat. You may even be happy that aliens are paid lower wages at your business. But if you're poor and can't get a construction job or a seat at the clinic, you know why.

Democrats have driven a wedge through their own ranks by alienating poor and middle-class voters of all ethnicities who used to be solid Democrats. Many of these disenfranchised voters turned to the Republicans in the hope that they would enforce immigration laws.

Ironically, Republican politicians talk tough on immigration to pacify their constituents. But they'll never actually do anything because the plutocrats who finance Republican campaigns want Third World competition with American workers. What a joke to see Republican politicians touring the border after having been in power for years and doing nothing.

Even more of a joke is watching Democratic do-gooders unthinkingly working for those same plutocrats. Democrats who would never work to ship jobs to the Third World are doing much worse. Why are Democrats committing suicide with traditional Democratic voters for the sake of people who probably wouldn't vote strongly Democratic if they could vote?

At the core of the Democratic Party are people who really, really believe in fairness and justice for minorities, women, Native Americans and everyone. I agree with them. In 1962, I used my college summer vacation to go on a civil rights freedom ride. I have marched with farmworkers and was a leader in the struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment.

These experiences truly enriched me. But they later caused me to make the error of confusing situations where people were denied what was rightfully theirs and people who were denied what was not rightfully theirs. Many people have made the same mistake.

Two years ago, I needed a medical procedure that would cost $14,000. Desperately, I considered going to Canada and using their national health plan.

Why can people see that it's legally and morally wrong for me to cheat Canadian taxpayers but feel that it's perfectly fine for Mexicans to cheat American taxpayers? Neither Mexico nor Canada gives free service to illegal residents.

Will Democratic candidates seize this moment in history and stand up for the people they used to represent, plus millions of disenfranchised voters? Will Democrats have the courage to merely enforce existing law by saying, "We promise to secure our borders and to aggressively prosecute businesses that hire illegal aliens"? Republicans can't say that because their base won't allow it.

Or is our democracy truly a sham contest between Democratic corporate shills and Republican corporate shills?

Write John Kromko, a Democrat, at jkromko@dakotacom.net.

64 Comments on this story

[hispanarepublicana]

Well, your phrasing of "squabbling among themselves" when the story made no mention of illegals squabbling with illegals is what set my alarms off. Can you explain what you meant by that?
BTW, Mr. HR and I spend plenty of tax money to pay for services for "poor NON-hispanics" as well. We can talk about the evils of the welfare state all day, and we can talk about poor people of all ethnicities, and we can talk about the government's complete lack of balls when it comes to border enforcement, but never assume that "hispanic" always equals "illegal."
Your parents must be proud to see that they have raised a an adult American citizen free of ethnic prejudice.
(Oh, and it was my great great great great grandparents who "came here legally".)

[ChildOfThe60s]

"We promise to secure our borders and to aggressively prosecute businesses that hire illegal aliens"?
Republicans can't say that because their base won't allow it.

He is completely wrong on this point. The Republican base is probably the most solid group of voters in favor of draconian steps to halt illegals.
The truth is that the party elite see themselves as beholden to other interests than the party base. That and they are elitists and that speaks for itself.

[CBart95]

Your hispanic hypersensitivity is understandable but not acceptable. The reason is that illegals,and most of them are hispanic, are the "elephant in the living room".

They are the defacto problem...in this time of war and with the overload they cause on the entire fabric of our way of life. Along with the cute little "mamacitas" and "papacitos" are hundreds of thousands of convicted and freed Mexican prison inmates who have flooded our communities all over the US bringing alarming increases in violent crime and and criminal activity...a fact you in your ridiculous "Latin Pride" appear to wish to totally ignore...along with the criminals who govern the Mexican government.

But wait... it's even worse than that, Tex.

All your freeloading "invaders" have stressed our social and government services abilities to the failure point overloading hospital and critical care services as well as every other kind of government operation to the failure point as well.

Yes. There are muslim terrorists among them. What a fine cover all these mexicans provide for all manner of foriegn invaders with inscrupulous and criminal intentions? It's part and parcel of the new age of world war that employs inconventional and non-militaristic warfare techniques...like confusion in news accounts and criminals deliberately attempting to shame alarmed citizens about "political correctness" when they see their communities overrun by illegal mexican immigrant invaders...

like you are trying to do right here,Patriot.

Fixing all this is not going to be easy...and sissies who take umbrage over plain honest talk won't add anything to the process except to slow it down or ruin it and aid the enemy cause.

If you are the real Texas American you purport to be, you'll join the rest of your countrymen and pop open a can of "WhupAss" and get busy on really fixing things.

[hispanarepublicana]

Fixing things ____where illegals are concerned is something I'm all for.
Lumping all hispanics together in thought or writing, (albeit a pain in the a$$ to always have to type in "illegal alien" before the word "hispanic") is what gets under my skin. But, words matter.
It is unacceptable and hurtful that if I tear off a toenail with the weed-eater and am sitting in the E.R. waiting room thinking only something as innocuous as how my pedicures are going to look for months to come, that someone else is sitting there thinking, "Oh, great, another illegal whose trip to the E.R. is going to hit me in the Hip-National."
All the more reason to fix this invasion situation, but not a reason to assume all hispanics are illegal or anchor babies.