Posted on 09/06/2007 2:15:33 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Many GOP leaders likely breathed a sigh of relief when the Senate immigration reform bill collapsed a couple months ago – offering political cover from proposals that threatened to shatter their party's unity. And at a time when campaigning for the presidential primary was ramping up.
But while Congress has taken a hiatus from active immigration reform, GOP legislators who supported the Senate bill are still being assailed by constituents, and state-level anti-immigration legislation has been popping up across the country since the bill failed. Many observers think John McCain's advocacy of the bill is significantly responsible for his plummet in national polls. And other GOP contenders are using the immigration issue against each other: Mitt Romney charging Rudy Giuliani with being soft on illegal immigration, for example.
The backlash underscores how chronic a problem immigration is for the GOP – one that is likely to gnaw at the party throughout the primaries. Misunderstanding its seriousness could have far-reaching consequences, so GOP supporters should look carefully at California. What's happening on the national level may very well have been foretold here.
Nearly a decade of state polling reveals the current round of concern over immigration, especially among the GOP, began to stir in California in October 2003, and has become more intense over the past three-and-a-half years.
In 18 Statewide Surveys conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California between January 2000 and October 2003, the share of Californians who identified immigration as the state's most important issue never reached 5 percent among Democrats or 8 percent among Republicans. But by the beginning of 2004, the percentage of Republicans who were calling immigration the most important issue had climbed to 12 percent.
At the same time, Democratic interest barely budged. Throughout 2004 and 2005, an average of 4 percent of Democrats identified immigration as California's most important problem, compared with 14 percent of Republicans. By the end of 2005, over a fifth (22 percent) of the state's Republicans considered immigration to be the state's most important issue.
What changed for Republicans in October 2003? Renewed interest among Republicans coincided with the recall of then-Gov. Gray Davis. In September 2003, the recall battle was climaxing – and Davis sought to save his position by reversing his longtime opposition to granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. The issue of immigration suddenly gained new focus, especially among Republicans. The issue ricocheted around the state even after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a proposal that would have granted driver licenses to illegal immigrants.
In December 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Sensenbrenner bill, considered by many to be the most Draconian anti-immigration bill in nearly a century, and pro-immigrant rallies sprang up across the nation.
By this time, PPIC surveys revealed a clear trend: Growing numbers of non-Hispanic white Republican Californians believed immigration to be the state's most important issue. By April 2006, more than 44 percent of California's Republicans concurred, compared with only 23 percent of non-Hispanic white Democrats.
During the heated struggle over the recent Senate bill, 33 percent of California's non-Hispanic white Republicans said immigration was the state's most important issue, compared with just 11 percent of non-Hispanic white Democrats. And since the Senate bill's demise, pressure hasn't lessened, but grown on the leading contenders for the party's presidential nomination to adopt the views of the GOP base.
The question is can a Republican contender, so hemmed in, appeal to a national electorate without lethally undermining support from the base? Immigration is a corrosive wedge issue among Republicans – while Democrats' disagreements are quibbles in comparison. This is a dangerous conundrum for Republican leaders as a national election looms.
Immigration, whether legal or illegal is a Federal issue. The Federal government should never have allowed it to get this way. We have, in California, voted to get rid of the illegals and won, but there are judges out there that are hell bent to bring them into our country. These judges strike down every law put on the books. A single evil person has the authority to dictate how we are going to live. The rest of the country is just now getting a taste of it. There has got to be a way of getting rid of rogue judges.
The Mainstream Media has always promoted the poor illegal immigrants and ignored our cries for help. Until Now. Now we have the internet. No longer will our letter’s to the Editor get dropped in the waste basket. I subscribe to newspapers and quit reading them. I throw them in the trash. The last time I ordered the newspaper it was for only $27 a year. That year is up and they keep sending me the paper because they have lost all their readership. As the speed of Streaming Videos get faster, Network News will also die.
I believe a Hunter/Tancredo or Tancredo/Hunter ticket would be so formidable that it would be all but ignored by MSM and that is precisely why it will not be promoted (by the GOP or others) without the same grassroots effort that ripped the last amnesty proposal to shreds.
The very last thing required at this juncture is homegrown pawns of corrupt third world leadership. Their foisted, scamming refuse REEK of their abominable arrogance by association and unhalting allegiance.
To other locales unfamiliar, you'll know it when you can smell it ... and I don't mean tortillas.
And when illegals retreat to sanctuary cities?
If illegal workers lose their jobs, how will we keep them off welfare if they refuse to go home? After all, they have fake identities that provide access to our hard earned tax dollars.
What a great solution! I would prefer to spend money on this effort rather than allocating public services at the tax payer’s expense. A fence with an increased border agent presence should seal the deal. In addition, if the parents are forced to go home, the children born on American soil should go with them and be allowed to return only when they reach the age of 18.
Cut off the federal money; let the locals pay for thier own welfare, schools, and medical care.
“I can’t think of any legal way to get rid of bad judges.”
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
That’s your legal way according to our Founding Fathers.
Here’s it’s justification.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
In the same clause there's a reference to "law" in a totally different matter, so it's pretty obvious that initially the Congress didn't have the power to regulate immigration through law.
What folks point to as the centerpiece of immigration today is the 15th Amendment. A series of Court decisions and laws have worked to give de facto if not de jure authority to Congress to rule on immigration matters.
It's probably time to take some of the judges who have ruled contrary to the Constitution outback behind the woodshed and have to, of course, but a more effective method would be to force a Constitutional Convention to address the issue.
I have no doubt a Constitutional Convention would NOT come up with amnesty!
Appears these are "safe houses" being run by these gangs. A stopoff for criminal trying to elude the law.
The two machete killers were supposedly on their way back to Mexico ---- to staging areas to get transported back to home countries.
No doubt, they planned to acesss their money (money stolen from US taxpayers with fake ID's and SS #'s), then return to the US to steal more money (and to kill again).
The judge should be impeached. Post the dumbo's name here---then stand back.
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