Interesting........very interesting.......
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Posted on 05/16/2002 12:24:37 PM PDT by hchutch
For its political survival, the Republican Party must court the Hispanic vote. Totally shut out among black voters and badly defeated among Hispanics, the GOP is having a hard time finding enough white voters to overcome the deficit. With blacks and Hispanics casting one vote in four, a Republican must win two-thirds of the white vote to have a shot at 51 percent in the average election.
And the situation will only get worse for the Republican Party. The Hispanic population, which swelled from 7 percent to 12 percent of the U.S. population in the past 10 years, is forecast to grow to 18 percent by the end of the decade. If they continue to vote Democrat, the GOP will run out of white people — and face death as a political party.
Only by taking the bold and dramatic step of providing amnesty to illegal Mexican immigrants can the GOP, at a stroke, become competitive among Hispanic voters. This legislation, the equivalent for Hispanics of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for blacks, holds the potential to reposition an entire slice of the electorate and move Hispanics to the Republican Party.
But, at the same time, the Republican Party needs to hang on to its base of angry white men who largely oppose immigration — and illegal immigration most of all. They are the base that insisted on English-only initiatives in the 1980s and 1990s, battled to cutoff aid to illegal aliens, and demanded a halt to bilingual education.
How are Republicans to reach out to Hispanics while appeasing their truculent base?
President Bush has already taken the lead in pulling the Republican Party back from the issue precipices on which it was dancing. By stopping Republicans from opposing bilingual education or affirmative action, and by demoting English-only initiatives to the bottom of the party’s agenda, he has moved mightily to strengthen GOP outreach to Hispanics.
But it is his amnesty proposal for illegal Mexican immigrants that holds the real hope for his party to avert demographic extinction.
The key to resolving the Republican dilemma of having to choose between outreach to Hispanics and alienating its Anglo political base is to condition amnesty with good citizenship requirements.
Republicans should offer conditional amnesty to Mexican illegal immigrants. Here’s the deal: If you want to stay in the United States, you must enroll in a good-citizen program. The immigrant has to agree to become functionally literate in English within two years, work for six of the next eight quarters and pay taxes to FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) for each of these quarters — no off-the-books work — and avoid arrest for 24 months.
At the end of the two-year period, those who meet the requirements would become citizens in good standing, eligible to vote and participate in civic life. Those who refuse to enroll or who fail the meet the requirements would face deportation. If the program works, it can be expanded to other categories of illegal immigrants.
Polling shows that most voters, even among the GOP base, are willing to forgive the illegality of their arrival if these Mexican immigrants show a willingness to earn their legal status in America. The compromise has the contractual opportunity/responsibility formula that sold so many of Clinton’s programs and that lies at the core of the highly successful welfare reform program. By asking something in return for giving something, the resulting transaction acquires a moral impetus that it sorely needs to win national support.
At the same time as the Republicans offer the olive branch to illegal Hispanic immigrants, they must use this year’s review of immigration statutes to close down immigration from nations that sponsor or harbor terrorists — including even such so-called allies as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. By closing one spigot as they open the other, Republicans can master the political hat trick of reaching out to Hispanics while appeasing their political base.
Otherwise, the GOP will go the way of the Liberal Party in Great Britain, to the political grave.
I'd throw in a couple more items - amending Article XIV and making proof of legal residency (citizenship if it were up to me) a pre-requisite to receiving any kind of taxpayer funded benefit. Problem solved.
All very do-able, if our elected leaders had the stones.
This is the law - I want them to enforce it. The Gov't is conducting sweeps on airports & finding many illegals. The INS conducts raids as part of their job. If the penalties to employers were severe enough to cause disruption to business then not many sweeps would need to be conducted before businesses would begin to quit hiring illegals.
As far as deporting other illegals, law enforcement agencies currently do NOT hold or turn over to INS the illegals they stop in routine traffic stops or other arrests. If I'm stopped, yes I produce a valid drivers license, not a Mexican ID. When I get a job I produce a valid Social Security number.
The illegals need to be sent back & after meeting a means test, legally apply for entry to OUR country on THEIR side of the border.
So what are you saying here hutch? Are you saying that it is better to pander to these people for the sake of the republican party? I could care less about any political party.
What I care about is seeing the laws and the Constitution upheld by the people that are sworn to uphold them.
I don't cut any deals with anybody that is willing to change the culture of the United States or barter away our sovereignty for a lousy vote.
Adios El Rey Jorge!!
You don't need a PLAN!! Simply enforce the laws that are already on the books. What is so hard to understand about that?
Package this with a tough reform plan and more funding for enforcement of it, and we have a chance. Otherwise, we get a political Phyrric victory. We barely won with Dems getting 90% of the black vote. Now we want to push 75% of the Hispanic vote into their corner, too? Brilliant. We lose EVERYTHING that way.
I suggest we work to stop more from entering the country through better border management. At the same time we need to integrate the people that are here now into the culture. The risk is that they are not integrated and become disenfranchised and hence are multi-generational welfare recipients. Morris’s idea is a decent step in the right direction.
You must not be listening or reading. Several posts, including mine, have said you do not have to round up all 10M illegals. You need to impose severe penalties on employers & begin conducting raids. After some highly publicized raids & convictions of employers, the practice of hiring illegals will not be worth the risk. Without the attraction of employment or opportunity, illegals will be less likely to cross the border.
In addition to this, deport the illegals that are already in hand - those stopped by police & those incarcerated. It is estimated that 25& of CA prisoners are illegals. This would be a good start.
America has risen to any challenge set before it. We didn't quit when Pearl Harbor was bombed.
Besides I am not the least bit concerned about the logistical challenges. I am concerned about our country being overrun by illegal aliens that our government is sworn to detain and deport.
Our laws do not say that if you violate federal law you will be rewarded with citizenship, welfare, foodstamps, medicare, medicaid, etc. They says just the opposite.
No politician that puts me in a position that I have to play second fiddle to an illegal alien will ever get my vote. Let them pander to the Mexicans all they want to.
The pubbies are going to lose big time because they have lost my vote and the vote of many like me. And if you think they are going to get the Hispanic vote, you are wrong, wrong, wrong!!
No argument here! It's taken California ten or fifteen years, but it's on its way. I don't see a difference in Bush or Clinton's attitude about illegal immigration.
Now that the Republican party has adopted such tactics, it is indistinguishable from Democrats (kind of like the pigs and farmers in Animal Farm).
The problem of course is that the U.S. has gone over the precipice from a constitutional republic in which only a minority were allowed to vote to a social democracy in which practically everybody is allowed to vote. Thus, whoever can throw the most money at competing interest groups wins. In this regard, Bush is turning out to be a fine social democrat.
Unfortunately, the women, blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asians, et al. whom the national GOP pathetically chase prefer a real Democrat rather than a bogus one. And the libertarians, paleo-conservatives, and blue collar workers (all of whom are predominantly white males) who gave Ronald Reagan two landslides either register a protest vote or, more commonly, don't even bother.
It's not the failure to get the Hispanic vote that will doom the Republicans; it's the failure to get the white male vote.
Thanks for the ping FF. Its always interesting to see people take an immoral opportunist like Dick Morris seriously.
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