Oppenheimer: GOP may be saying 'adios' to Hispanic voters(Open-Borders Rant)

The Salt Lake Tribune ^ | December 19, 2005 | Andres Oppenheimer

[Serenissima Venezia]

And while I will continue to remain registered Republican so that I can return postage free RNC envelopes stuffed with RINO pesos...

Good idea - I'll do the same. BTW, love your tagline!

[TheLion]

Most people want the borders closed. Too bad the GOP doesn't seem to get the message clearly. They could have run with this issue.

[BillyBoy]

>> Judging from the xenophobic measures proposed…many Latino voters will think twice before casting a vote … The massive anti-immigration package presented to Congress late last week by House Judiciary committee chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Homeland Security committee chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., contained some of the most radical anti-immigration measures ever, including depriving babies of undocumented workers of their right to U.S. citizenship… While that proposal didn't fly, the House on Friday approved other draconian GOP-sponsored measures, such as a proposal to turn undocumented migrants into criminals - which would allow the police to ask both illegal aliens and U.S. citizens for proof of citizenship at any time - and a plan to build new fences in several areas along the U.S.-Mexico border. Besides representing a monumental waste of money (more about this later), the proposed measures are likely to erode part of the recent gains made by Republicans among Hispanics…. isolationist Republicans are playing with fire.Their crusade is likely to trigger an angry response from Hispanics, much like what happened when former California Gov. Pete Wilson lashed out against illegal immigrants in the mid-1990s. My conclusion: The Republican-sponsored anti-immigration bill is a waste of money... If Republicans come across as the party that wants to turn Spanish-speaking people into criminal suspects who can be stopped at any corner by police demanding proof of citizenship, they can say adios to a significant portion of the Hispanic vote.

I see BayouRINO has been keeping busy since being banned from FreeRepublic. Evidentially he writes under the pen name "Andres Oppenheimer" now. The article is a classic BayouRINO, except he forgot to accuse all anti-ILLEGAL immigration Republicans of being "Buchananites" and asking rhetorically if Cindy Sheehan "speaks for them".

[Zrob]

I am a conservative American - not a Republican. Because the Republicans tend to represent my views more consistently than Democrats, I generally side with them. However, if the Republicans favor the same c*() that the Democrats do only by using a different name "guest worker" vs. "amnesty", they can both go to H&*^.

[springing interest]

True conservatives understand that this is about market forces, and big-government solutions won't make a whit of difference. So long as their is a demand for low-wage workers in the U.S. coupled with an oversupply of such workers in Mexico, the immigration rate will correspond with that economic reality, regardless of what our immigration quotas say.

If you don't want illegal immigration, you'd better find a lot more U.S. citizens who want to pick produce for a living or reduce the quantity of produce being raised on U.S. farms. It's as simple as that.

[rock58seg]

Most of the citizen hispanics would like to not have the criminal aliens here, inasmuch as they take the jobs the citizen hispanics want. Closing the borders would boost the GOP popularity.

[SC33]

But that is not not necessarily true. I like the idea of a TEMPORARY guest worker program, but only after we start enforcing our current laws. Secondly, I am only opposed to a guestworker plan that equates to amnesty, such as McKennedy, but I support a plan that allows people to come here and work but does not offer a path to citizenship. I'm still not sure where the Bush plan fits in here.

[springing interest]

Sounds reasonable. I'm not an expert on the various plans out there. I know the farmers in my state are big into some kind of plan that will get their crops picked!