Republicans and Immigration - Take Note John McCain

Stop ignoring pro-immigrant Republicans! We got you this far, if you put fringe xenophobes ahead of the American people, you will have done more damage to your party than Tom Tancredo could have ever done on his own. Take a look at this Washington Post / ABC News Survey

16. (ASKED OF LEANED REPUBLICANS) Regardless of who you may support, who do you trust
most to handle (ITEM)?
Immigration issues
McCain    27
Giuliani  17       
Huckabee  15

Romney    11
Thompson   9   
If I were to rank the candidates on their views on immigraiton in terms of
rationality & unwillingness to succumb to immigrant bashing it would go as follows:

McCain
Giuliani
Huckabee
Romney
Thompson

See a trend?
If you were to listen to the media or some of the republican candidates  you would
come away thinking republicans are xenophobic bigots who hate all "foreigners".
This assumption is derogatory and the fact that some republican candidates think they
need to pander to a very small xenophobic segment of their electorate is disturbing
and insulting to the Republican party as a whole.

Get to Know an Immigrant

The NPR/Kaiser/Kennedy School Immigration Survey found that the more contact a native born American had with immigrants, the more positively they viewed immigration.

This isn't surprising, congressional districts with high populations of undocumented immigrants tend to favor more rationale immigration policies. You would think the more "overrun " with immigrants a district is the more likely the citizens of the district would vote for a immigration restrictionist but the opposite is true. They love their immigrants.

Click here for a link regarding Tom Tancredo's district, what a shocker there are very few immigrants. For those of you who don't know, Tom Tancredo is the self appointed #1 anti-immigration crusader in congress.

Thanks to the American Humanity Blog for pointing out that Volunteermatch.org has a feature that allows you to search for volunteer opportunities specifically regarding Immigrants and Refugees. Go out, befriend an immigrant while helping your community at the same time.

Honesty in the Media

Instead of trying to name every one of the thousands of false statements made about immigration on television. I'm going to try to give kudos to those that report the correct information.


1)Juan Williams on FOX News Sunday for pointing out how Romney's harsh immigration stance hurt him in the Florida GOP primary.

2) The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer -For pointing out that California Republicans agree with McCain's more reasonable immigraiton stance more than Romney's by a large margin.
If you know of anyone else please feel free to add.

Leader of Extremist Group Explains Election Results

Roy Beck
Foes of illegal immigration were left scratching their heads over an issue that a month ago looked like the focal point of the nomination fight.

"The older Republicans who are still very angry at Bush about the amnesty issue have lost sight of the integral role McCain had in all of that," said Roy Beck, head of the immigration-limitation group NumbersUSA, who has waged war on McCain for his efforts to grant illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship. "For a lot of people, they just like McCain - maverick in chief, the Straight Talk Express. They want to be convinced."

That's right. Despite Romney's constant efforts to remind Republican voters that immigration is a wedge issue that is supposed to drive them crazy, Florida voters just forgot that John McCain is the author of a comprehensive immigration reform bill with Ted Kennedy in the Senate. Could it be that Beck's favorite wedge issue isn't so powerful after all?

But that still doesn't explain why the Washington Post is consulting Beck in the first place. He served for years as Washington Editor for The Social Contract, which is published by John Tanton, and has a history of proudly publishing works with white supremacist content, such as the wildly racist novel The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. Now Beck runs NumbersUSA, another anti-immigration group founded by Tanton, who, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is also a funder.

Taken from www.wecanstopthehate.org

Florida GOP Primaries -Harsh Immigration Stance A Liability

The ImmigrationProf Blog has an interesting post on this topic. Check it out.

Border State Republicans

Los Angeles Times / CNN / Politico -see Pg. 8

Asked of California Republicans
Regardless of your choice for president, which candidate do you think would be best at handling the
Immigration issues
McCain    32
Giuliani  18      
Huckabee  13

Romney    21


Romney's hardliner stance is  actually hurting him with republicans in California but
every time I turn on the TV there is some pundit saying the opposite. I think it's time people
stop living in lala land and look at the truth. Our immigration system is broken but we can't
fix it if we keep using immigrants as scapegoats for everything wrong with the country.
The American people realize it, so why can't the media and more specifically some of the candidates?

Independents and democrats tend to lean towards McCain and Giuliani's approaches to
handling immigration more so than even republicans so these numbers are actually skewed in Romney's
direction to begin with.

If you would like to know who national republicans think has the best approach to handle immigration
click here.
  

Public Interest in Immigration

Click here for a link to the popularity of the search term "immigration" on Google Trends.

Notice anything? When you take away the sharp peaks, you notice interest in the issue has actually held steady since 2004 when immigration was still considered somewhat of a "non-issue".

The sharp peaks correspond to legislation surrounding the issue being discussed in 2006 and 2007. Notice the sharp drop in interest from the 2006 senate immigration bill that passed to the 2007 senate bill that was supposedly brought down due to an "overwhelming public outrage". According to this, it seems as though Americans got bored and let the extremists control the debate in 2007.

Migrants Opposing Migrants

Click here for full story

"Sean Noble, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., said his office has polled constituents who call to complain about immigration and found that 95 percent are people who relocated to Arizona.

"Those of us who are native Arizonans have grown up with immigrants all of our lives — for generations — and for us to have an influx of people from Mexico is not a challenge," Noble said at the immigration forum. "People who have not grown up here don't understand how that dynamic works."

The bias against immigrants seems to occur whether they enter the country legally or not.

Noble said that when Shadegg introduced a bill in 2006 to expand the number of H-1B visas given to highly educated foreigners — would-be legal immigrants — his office received 11,000 letters, faxes, e-mails and phone calls, most in opposition to the bill."

A Town Against the Wall

Click Here for the Story

Border communities have been fighting for years in an effort to keep walls from closing in and economically and socially isolating them. Like the majority of the American public they realize a wall doesn't prevent further immigration. Other than being a massive waste of money the wall is now threatening to uproot families that have been there since the 1700s.

Before anyone gets the wrong impression, let me clarify. The borders do need to be secure but it has to be done sensibly and at the same time we need a rational immigration policy. You can't have one without the other. A wall will only push the traffic to another location unless immigration polices are also changed.

Here are some interesting quotes from the article.

Many border residents still can't believe that a fence they ridiculed as a politician's pipe dream is about to become reality. They're stunned that the wild river that served as the playground of their youth will soon look like a military zone.

Most here don't believe illegal immigration is becoming worse, or was ever bad. Gloria Garza fondly recalled that her mother used to leave aromatic plates of tacos on her porch at night -- a token of Tejano hospitality for the migrants trudging north.

If anything, the clannish Granjeno folk -- who shift easily between Spanish and English, often midsentence -- seem more leery of newcomers such as the Border Patrol and the Minutemen than they are of illegal immigrants and drug-runners.

Thank you to the anonymous reader who forwarded me this article.