Schwarzenegger gains among Latinos. His election strategy pays off in best GOP showing since 1990

In cruising to a 17-point re-election victory this month over Democrat Phil Angelides, the governor received 39 percent of their vote, according to exit polling done for The Bee.

That threshold has not been reached by a GOP gubernatorial candidate in California since 1990.

State Sens. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, and Chuck Poochigian, R-Fresno, tallied only 23 percent and 20 percent of the Latino vote, respectively, in their losing bids for lieutenant governor and attorney general.

Running against the state's high-ranking Latino officeholder, Poizner -- a social moderate who spent more than $13 million of his fortune on his campaign -- received 35 percent of the Latino vote, according to GOP pollster Steve Kinney.

For the GOP to hold on to the Governor's Office in 2010, after the centrist Schwarzenegger moves on, Republicans may have to turn to a candidate who is more like Poizner and less like McClintock and Poochigian.

No GOP candidate for governor since the 1970s has won in California without getting at least one-third of the Latino vote.

An invader is somebody who illegally enters a country.

An immigrant is somebody who comes here legally.

Illegals don't vote - or aren't supposed to.

A recent poll indicated that among Hispanic American CITIZENS, the issue of illegal invaders was VERY down on their list of priorities. Essentially they want the same things all other Americans want. And Bush's open border policies resulted in even FEWER Hispanic votes this time around.

"I happen to like the illegals, because they work bloody hard for laughable wages. Hard work's gone out of style in this country, unless you're here illegally."

Then you approve of law-breakers. If you want more immigrant workers, get Congress to ease the route for legal immigrants. But no country can survive without controlling its borders. In the era of terrorism, this is even MORE important.

"This is the first time in human history that we've had an invading army keen on picking our crops and doing construction work for us.":

Well, actually, there was a time in history when invaders were eager to come in and fight for a country - they were called Goths and the rest is history.

"I think it would be a good idea to normalize their status and throw out the ones who are criminals, but acting as though they are some kind of sub-human species is appalling to me."

No body is calling them a sub-human species. We are calling them what they are - lawbreakers and invaders. I don't want to "normalize" there presence - it will encourage others. I want them OUT. I repeat, if you need more workers than you can get, get Congress to raise the quota for legal immigrants - people who want to come here and be American citizens, not just act as an invading column of cultural fifth columnists who are only interested in funneling bucks back to some third world rat hole to keep a bucnh of corrupt third world politicians in power.

"After digesting everything I've read about illegals, I think the negative effects of them have been enormously exaggerated and distorted. They do help wide swathes of our economy continue to run."

The U.S. had a flood of legal immigrants from southern and eastern Europe in the early part of the 20th century. Those people, for the most part, wanted to BE AMERICANS. They and their children learned our customs and language and NOBODY had "bilingual programs" in Italian, Greek, Polish, Czech or Russian. They were expected to learn OUR language and did.

Even today, there are LOTS of Chinese and Japanese immigrants who speak a language much more distant from English than Spanish and have no problem learning our language.

I think you view of the presence of these invaders is incorrect for several reasons:

1) For the most part, their employers don't provide medical coverage or social security coverage. If they get sick, our hospitals have to take care of them and the cost is absorbed by the hospital and by insured patients and their employers.

2) The majority of babies born in many hospitals are born to illegals who then become de facto citizens without going through the processes legal immigrants do.

3) A substantial number of criminals in our jails are illegals

4) Illegals hang out in public places in large numbers creating a problem for motorists and pedestrians trying to get through, while the illegals are waiting for contractors, and landscapers, etc to pick them up.

5) The very large number of these people, all coming from the same areas, essentially, leads to immense ghettos where English isn't spoken and the area essentially becomes an outgrowth of another nation. This is counterproductive to assimilation.

Unless this invasion is brought to a halt, unless we stop pandering to these people in our schools by requiring American students to learn Spanish, we will loose our sense of national identity, cease to be an Anglo-American nation composed of many disparate ethnic groups bound by a common language and culture, and become instead, another Latin American country - the goal of MANY of these illegals, and those who support them here and in their homelands.

And I think that is NOT a good thing.

If illegals don't vote, or at least mostly do not vote, and legal immigrants support Proposition 187, why did it kill the Republican party in California for over a decade?

I have to assume that legal immigrants have empathy for their people not yet here and want to make it easy for them to come. Maybe they didn't understan the pollster, or maybe they told the pollster what they thought he wanted to hear.

I have to admit, I have my own moral compass, which says that strict adherence to the law is often not the best course. I certainly find it hard to blame people who see jobs and opportunity over here, and little of it in their own country. I say that the people who take the initiative to come here are people who have the American "Can do, don't take no for an answer" spirit that I appreciate.

There are a lot of heroes in American movies and literature who behave exactly that way, flouting scores of rules, and we still root for them. I don't see illegals as any different from that.

I had a recent stay in a hospital, and if the bill I saw was any indication, we have a lot more trouble there than getting rid of illegals could possibly solve. What I saw was enormous bills for care that achieved virtually nothing. I think that if the overuse of hospital resources by illegals could cause them to tighten procedures and lower costs, that would be good for all of us.

I might add that I live in the Pittsburgh, PA area, where there are vanishingly few illegals or even non-whites. Doesn't make a difference. Hospital costs are so high that bills look like parodies. Obviously there's something that's going on here that doesn't have much to do with illegals.

Which is the point I always try to make to you guys. We bring this on ourselves by running bad institutions that don't work. They could work a lot better, and even treat illegals without breaking a sweat, if they were well run.

I think that because many of you focus on this problem to the exclusion of all others, the bureaucrats who run the hospitals and the schools just think this is a way they can get conservatives off their backs. Conservatives SHOULD be on their backs, because the services are very poor value for taxpayer (and private) dollars. But instead so many of us are just assuming oh, illegals are the problem and we go away.

To me, in order to be an invader, you have to have hostile intent. In order to deserve all the opproborium I see thrust on illegals, I would have to see genuine, hostile intent.

I don't see it.

D

"If illegals don't vote, or at least mostly do not vote, and legal immigrants support Proposition 187, why did it kill the Republican party in California for over a decade? "

I don't pretend to be a specialist on California politics, but there are often many factors that influence issues.
There was a serious effort to fight the defeat of Bob Dornan in California as many people had solid reasons to believe illegals helped put his Hispanic Democrat liberal opponent in office.

It would seem to me that the liberal establishment is well-entrenched in California.

"I have to assume that legal immigrants have empathy for their people not yet here "

I disagree. If I paid whatever I had to pay, get on a waiting list, and fill out all the paperwork and do things by the book, why should I support some line-jumper? I don't think Americans of any ethnic group can be so easily pigeonholed on most issues, including illegal invaders.

"I have to admit, I have my own moral compass, which says that strict adherence to the law is often not the best course. I certainly find it hard to blame people who see jobs and opportunity over here, and little of it in their own country. I say that the people who take the initiative to come here are people who have the American "Can do, don't take no for an answer" spirit that I appreciate. "

If you don't like the law, you change it, you don;t break it, unless its an inherently immoral law. Protecting national borders and national identity is not immoral.

Some of the illegals fit the description you proposed - they come here to better themselves. Some do not. But I'm more interested in the best interests of American than the best interests of people with problems from other countries. If we used that criteria for allowing people in here the whole world would invade America.

"There are a lot of heroes in American movies and literature who behave exactly that way, flouting scores of rules, and we still root for them. I don't see illegals as any different from that."

I don't what heroes you are alluding to. But I don't see anything heroic about cultural and national suicide, which is where we are going if we don't control our borders.

"I might add that I live in the Pittsburgh, PA area, where there are vanishingly few illegals or even non-whites. Doesn't make a difference. "

I don't know how the laws in Pennsylvania work about indigent health care. If they function as they do in most states, you are paying medical coverage for illegals getting treatment in Philadelphia and other areas where they are more [prevalent. The money paid to hospitals to offset these costs come from tax dollars. Also, many hospitals are parts of systems - your hospital may be part of a system which has branches which DO serve a large illegal community.

"I think that because many of you focus on this problem to the exclusion of all others, the bureaucrats who run the hospitals and the schools just think this is a way they can get conservatives off their backs."

I don't think you can compare hospitals with schools. Schools are run by anti-American left-wing establishments which produce a poor product at a high cost.

Hospitals and medical care are driven by increasing costs of ever more sophisticated treatments and medications, and the costs of illegal aliens. Non-profit hospitals have been hit very badly by this. But despite all the problems, the American health coverage system is still the best in the world. Nobody goes to Honduras or Canada for medical treatment.

"To me, in order to be an invader, you have to have hostile intent. In order to deserve all the opproborium I see thrust on illegals, I would have to see genuine, hostile intent. "

The Goths had no hostile intent in invading Rome. They just wanted a piece of the action. I don't think hostile intent is necessary. A crime is a crime, regardless of intent. If you are driving intoxicated and kill someone, that may not have been your intent, but the results are the same.

Illegal aliens are straining our social support system, driving down American salaries, creating large ghettos of unassimilable individuals, demanding we and our government communicate with them in their language, and in other ways subverting American culture, and destroying the system which has so successfully assimilated so many legal immigrants in the past and in the present.

If you don't like the law, and you have no reasonable probability of changing it, then you're in trouble. I have no reasonable probability of changing the speed limits in my area, even though the nominal speed limits are about 1/3 or more lower than the real world speeds everyone drives at.

Thing is, if the cops don't like the law, and nobody in your area likes the law, then the law is not enforced and it pretty much vaporizes off the books.

That's what happened with the speed limits around here. They are on the books, but are not enforced. If they were, I think there would be a lot of mad people, and the city council would have to fire the police chief over it. Nobody wants to do that, and so the police chief doesn't enforce the law.

What's kinda funny is that it seems like the same thing is happening to immigration laws in California, and that's what makes you guys so angry. I like the illegals, so I had no problem with the law not being enforced while I lived in California. But you don't and that's probably why there is so much anger over this issue.

Am I right?

One thing that does intrigue me is that illegal aliens are much less resented (and receive far fewer government services) in Texas than in California. That seems to be a cultural difference between the two states that, frankly, favors Texas.

D

"What's kinda funny is that it seems like the same thing is happening to immigration laws in California, and that's what makes you guys so angry."

I understand what you are saying about speeders and agree - police are selective in enforcing the laws. In some cases this is due to personal feelings, and in other cases due to popular opinion, or in other cases, as in some northeastern states that there are SO MANY laws on the books that they have to prioritize.

Some of this may impact the enforcement of laws against illegal invaders.

However, where I and many of the posters on this fourm disagree with you is that inllegal invaders constitute a serious menace to our security, health, economics, law and order, and identity as a nation - which is a far worse a crime than somebody going over the speed limits, smoking some pot, or getting sex from a prostitute. Those are all crimes involving individuals and have limited ramifications.

The total meltdown on our borders and the deliberate policy of this President and his Attorny General to enforce the immigration and border laws have placed the entire nation at risk. Not to mention, contributed to the debacle at the polls recently.

"I like the illegals, so I had no problem with the law not being enforced while I lived in California."

There is no reason you should like illegals unless you are involved in a business venture which profits from their presence. They steal your tax dollars whne then use the social network you pay for and they don't, they can bring in alien diseases of a horrific nature, they feed the underground economy which further erodes your income, they bring crime with them, and they constitute a presence here which is not supportive of traditional American values.

"That seems to be a cultural difference between the two states that, frankly, favors Texas. "

You said it.

I haven't lived in California for a long time. One of the things I miss the most in California is the fact that there is a dynamic society, there are people coming in who want to make a new life for themselves.

Here in Pennsylvania things are static, the state is losing residents, taxes are sky-high (worse than in California) because infrastructure has to be maintained that was scaled to support a population that is no longer here.

I am in no way convinced that illegals are doing anything all that bad. They help keep a lot of jobs in California that are NOT held by illegals.

When I was in California, I worked for a mid-sized manufacturing company. They employed Hispanics in the factory and Americans in the sales and administrative departments. I don't know the legal status of the hispanic workforce, but I have to assume much of it was illegal.

I don't think the company could have been competitive in the hyper-competitive industry it was in without illegals.

So do you eliminate all these administrative and support jobs - most of which pay quite well, thank you - because the illegals supposedly are bad for us?

I met many of them and found them to be very hard-working and good people. Frankly, most of them are far harder working than the American citizens I've seen working similar jobs.

I think that if you get rid of illegals, you leech the dynamism out of our economy and hurt it enormously.

I happen to think the best society is a growing, dynamic one, and so I like illegal aliens and don't see what all the negativity is all about.

Maybe that's partially because I actively dislike the institutions that are mentioned as being hurt by them. Our schools were lousy before illegals. Our hospitals were overpriced before illegals. Far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed. We just have a scapegoat to blame for the problems. Get rid of the scapegoat, and I guarantee you our hospitals won't get any cheaper, and our schools won't get any better.

D

"Maybe that's partially because I actively dislike the institutions that are mentioned as being hurt by them. Our schools were lousy before illegals. Our hospitals were overpriced before illegals. Far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed. We just have a scapegoat to blame for the problems. Get rid of the scapegoat, and I guarantee you our hospitals won't get any cheaper, and our schools won't get any better."

How old are you? I'm 60, and I know we had problems before the illegals, but they have clearly aggravated the situation.

If we need more workers, as I have said before, you raise the quotas of LEGAL immigrants, you DON'T reward people, either the invaders, or those who employ them, by allowing them to continue to break the law.

A nation can't survive if its government can not or will not provide the most basic function of any government in history - secure its borders against invaders/
It would be a very easy thing, and one of the easiest routes to follow, if some Arabs learned Spanish, dressed like Mexicans, and moved nuclear material across our southern border to build a bomb to annihilate one of our cities. The Mexican border is the easiest place to do it.

And by the way, Pennsylvania and the northeast have their own problems with illegal invaders - they are everywhere now, thanks mainly to the current administration and its Attorney General.

The Islamists are more likely to choose the Canadian border than the Mexican. It's been quite easy for them to get citizenship and the active support of the Canadian government, even as they train in Al Queda camps.

I'm 44. I have not been alive during a time when the US has not had substandard schools and absurdly expensive healthcare. It seems like this anti-illegal crusade started maybe three years ago and got really intense in about the last year and a half.

One problem is that the typical guy on the street has no real prospect for changing the law. For instance, I'd like to see speed limits raised on my local streets. What chance do I have over the auto insurance nazis, Ralph Nader's people and all the other groups arrayed against me?

In order to raise the speed limits, I would have to find a whole bunch of like-minded people, lobby my local representatives and senators, and raise huge amounts just to get a hearing.

If you look at the medium sized company I was working for, I don't see it having much of a chance at gaining a greater quota of workers. It would probably go bust without illegals, or have to do the manufacturing in China. I think that would be a sad moment indeed.

So you can see that I'm a person who doesn't like government and doesn't trust bureaucracy. The immigration system is, of course, a big government bureaucracy that by most accounts does a terrible job.

So gee, why not let the free market solve this problem instead of some distant governmental organization? That solution is illegals. They are attracted by the market and the market pays them.

Really, the market is a more democratic system than bureaucracy. If I want to hire illegals, I do. If I don't want to hire illegals, I can. People can do whatever their individual philosophy dictates, instead of taking a single policy dictated from Washington, that we have little to no control over.

I think you can see why the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the like are pro-illegal. They're thinking like I do, as they do on most issues. Illegals are the free market. The INS is government.

Now, where I am on your side is that once they're in, and break the law, this should be sternly dealt with. This is especially true in cases of criminal gang activity and the like. That is a legitimate problem, but I would solve it by changing the behavior of law enforcement, not by trying to prevent illegals from coming.

Likewise, for terrorism, you would get far more mileage out of hiring task forces to deal directly with terrorism than building a huge multi billion dollar fence, which is highly unlikely to prevent any terrorists from visiting.

I think that on the whole, the anti-illegal crowd wildly overestimates the costs and underestimates the benefits of having illegals around. I believe their research is tailored to match conclusions already made. If you can find some impartial research I'd certainly look at it.

But there is a highly emotional argument too. This is a country of immigrants. They came from all over. They settled here to find a better life. Now, you're suggesting that we change from an open-handed, amiable philosophy, which matches my own, to a close-hearted "kick the bums out" philosophy I find most unappealing.

I liked the old America a great deal more than the new.

D

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