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.
2) Unless Congress and the executive branch agree to give every last legal and illegal Hispanic immmigrant a million bucks apiece, the Republican Party is never going to get many of their votes (and then they'd only get it once). Hispanics come from countries that teach them socialist doctrine from infancy -- but could never actually deliver all the benefits of a workers' paradise. So they come here for the opportunity, but bring unsound habits of mind with them, in particular, an expectation that the government will take care of them. I am a 10th generation native Californian who has lived in Texas as well. Bush's success with Hispanics in Texas was a fluke. I am not saying that Republicans should snub Hispanics and the issues they are interested in, but neither should they pander to the point of betraying their own ideals, either.
3) Finally, both Democrats and Republicans don't want a dirty little immigration secret to get out, and that is that middle class and working families pay taxes that are used to subsidize the cheap labor that immigrants provide, in the form of Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, low income housing and countless other programs. They also drive up the cost of providing elementary education, because of the activists' demands that it be provided in Spanish as well as English. These taxpayer subsidies make possible corporate and corporate farming profits that would be otherwise impossible if the workers were paid a higher wage. Unfortunately, the high levels of immigration that pervert Morris is advocating continue to drive down wages at the bottom of the ladder.
Let me turn that around. At 6%+ unemployment, why are immigrants doing jobs that Americans won't?
And you go on to gloat about Buchannan's percentage? You do see that he was completely locked out of the election by the "liars", right? I have no doubt that if he had been able to state his case to the American people, he would have done significantly better.
So, does that make you and your ilk Neo-Nazis or Neo-Confederates?
Furthermore, haven't you read every poll in regards to illegal immigration, amnesty and the like? Everyone is against it. Taking that stand alone is enough to make the Republican Party pick up hardy political gains.
Thank you. Was just going to ask what was going to happen to the legal provisions for citizenship.
I see, Americans don't want to work in the construction industry anymore, right?
All I see from Prop 187 was a wedge the Dems used to lock up serious Hispanic votes.
If we set something up like Morris has proposed, we can outflank the Left, and then sell other parts, like making English the official language of the U.S., among other things. This is not the right issue to fight. The official language part is. Stuff like the bilingual eduation that Ron Unz pushed through works well, too. But this one is a loser.
HaHaHa hahahahahahaha!
Thanks, good one.
Succombing to illegal immigration is going to give the left what they want anyway, and it's a no-win for Conservatives, so why are you assuming that everything is going to go the way you think it will? What does history tell us? What do elections tell us? What does the history of Mexico tell us? What does the past history of anti-illegal measures reveal to us about the support of such policies among Americans? What does history reveal to us about multiculturalism? My goodness, we've got all the answers we need, not to mention that it is against the law. I can't believe that there's an actual debate on this subject. This is quite sad.
Sounds like you have a problem with the employers in your area.
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