Free Republic

In politics, the surest path to irrelevance and powerlessness is to be taken for granted by one party and written off by another. That's the road Latinos are on, thanks to major blunders by the Republicans campaigning for president. In June, all but California's Duncan Hunter blew off an invitation to address the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. In September, a debate on Spanish-language television had to be postponed after all but Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to commit. After taking criticism for the snub, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney have committed to taking part...

MEXICO CITY President Felipe Calderon decried Wednesday what he called "the growing harassment" of Mexicans in the United States and said his government will work to counter it by funding a media campaign to show migrant success stories. Mexican officials have expressed concern over a recent wave of immigration raids and a U.S. political climate perceived as anti-migrant. Calderon said U.S. presidential candidates were using migrants as "symbolic hostages" on the immigration issue. "I am especially worried about the growing harassment and frank persecution of Mexicans in the United States in recent days," Calderon said at a meeting of the...

<p>The rapid escalation of the U.S. anti-immigration hysteria fueled by ratings-hungry cable-television hotheads and leading Republican presidential hopefuls is a dangerous trend: It may lead to a Hispanic intifada that may rock this nation in the not-so-distant future.</p>

October 2007 may turn out to be the month that immigration became a key issue in presidential politics. It hasn't been, at least in my lifetime. The Immigration Act of 1965, which turned out to open up America to mass immigration after four decades of restrictive laws, wasn't one of the Great Society issues Lyndon Johnson emphasized in 1964. The Immigration Act of 1986, which legalized millions of illegal immigrants but whose border and workplace provisions have never been effectively enforced, was a bipartisan measure unmentioned in the debates between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. There was no perceptible difference...

The big news on Fred Thompson's site is the endorsement of Tom McClintock, a popular and conservative state senator. Nothing on Hillary's comment in the debates last night, although his immigration and border security plan is still high on the front page. I think this is another example of Thompson's strategy of choosing to not do the things the media think he should be doing. Romney and Giuliani were quick out of the box to jump on Hillary's statement and denounce driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. Today, that'll show up in every story; the dominant story of the day is...

Senator John McCain of Arizona said today he is "guardedly optimistic" that the Senate's controversial immigration reform plan will pass Congress, but said he has been stunned by the personal attacks on him from conservatives angry about the bill. "I'm still hopeful we can get it done," McCain said in a wide-ranging interview with reporters and editors at the The Boston Globe. McCain, who acknowledges that his outspoken support for immigration reform is complicating his presidential campaign, relayed a story about attending a recent fund-raiser where protesters were standing outside holding signs that declared: "McCain -- traitor." "I'm a pretty...