Ordie
01-10-2008, 06:49 PM
The politics of immigration
McCain win puts Latino vote back into play
Roberto Lovato
Thursday, January 10, 2008
(01-10) 04:00 PST New York -- As results from the New Hampshire primaries rolled in, I called my father Ramon, a prideful 85-year-old Democrata por vida (Democrat for life). I asked what John McCain's presence in the general election might mean for the fast-growing and ever-fluid Latino vote.
"My main candidate is Clinton," he affirmed in that defensive tone I know all too well, the tone that says, "Leave my opinions alone." But I persisted. I asked him who would get his vote if Clinton conceded before he and the rest of California cast their votes.
"Obama," he answered in that deep, sometimes forbidding voice. But before I could let out a deep familial sigh of political relief, he interjected, "But I could vote for McCain, too."
McCain's entree into the general election could put the Latino vote in play far more than any other GOP candidate. The Arizona senator is one of the few who could erect a Latino barrier to the Democrats' wave of inevitability.
How my father and the 9 percent of the electorate that is Latino choose to vote should be of paramount concern to electoral strategists, especially as the primaries move to the Latino-packed West. My father and other Latinos' fluid vote is neither indecisiveness nor anti-black racism. The flux of the Latino voter reflects how history, culture and the candidates' equivocations around immigration politics continue to influence the protean Latino electorate. Either an Obama-McCain or a Clinton-McCain race would highlight how the votes of racially ambiguous Latinos bounce between red and blue in American politics.
Unlike the black vote, which is consistently among the most reliably liberal - especially black youth, who polls find are the most progressive voters in the country - the Latino vote has proven to be more fluid. Their voting goes hand in hand with both their interests and their culture. During the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush's Spanish-language appeals and promises of immigration reform won him somewhere between 37 to 44 percent of the Latino vote, a major increase from what he got in 2000. Latino voters like my father had never had their vote courted as it was in 2004.
McCain's unique challenge to Democrats for the Latino vote comes down to simple math: his GOP rivals' zeal to win white votes with anti-immigrant appeals is perceived by my father ("I'll be below the earth before voting for any of them") and other Latinos, as severely anti-immigrant and anti-Latino, if not racist.
McCain's calls to treat immigrants "humanely" during the Spanish-language GOP debate contrasted strikingly with the smiley "get tough" talk of his shrill opponents.
My father and other voters heard the mantra of McCain alongside the hallowed Kennedy name during daily Spanish-language media reports about reforma migratoria (immigration reform) for nearly two years. That still echoes in the Latino electorate. McCain's recent about-face on immigration and his new "border security first" approach will only guarantee that my father embraces his inclination to vote for a Democrat. He also wants to vote to overcome the divisive legacy of racism.
For my father, the appeal of Obama and Clinton is rooted in memories of the civil rights era, which the telegenic Illinois senator so eloquently invokes. When Obama waxes, Martin Luther King-like, about the inequities of our racial past or when Clinton marches with black leaders, I see my father, a former union shop steward, remembering when he had to listen to white union representatives at Southern Pacific Railroad begin meetings by greeting workers in the audience with: "Ladies and gentlemen - and you colored folks, too." Obama's youthful message of moral clarity about the past, his political poetry of "reconciliation," reverberates as loudly with my father as do the echoes of the Clinton years.
But when Democrats are evasive - as in Clinton's driver's license flip-flop or when Obama vacillated after being asked by Univision anchors about his vote for the border fence - I see the moral and political opening exploited by Bush in 2004, and McCain before 2008. My father and most Latinos reject the wall as a muro de la muerte (wall of death). That the immigration debate merits neither Clinton's attention nor Obama's abundant rhetorical powers explains Latinos' frustration (documented in the recent Pew Hispanic poll) and leaves many of us outside the wave of Obama-mania.
Obama and Clinton's Latino aspirations are further complicated by some of the more negative reports in Spanish-language media of what my father and other, mostly immigrant, Latinos perceive as anti-Latino racism and violence among some African Americans and whites. Failure to denounce the racial divisiveness proffered by Republicans - and many Democrats - creates not confusion, but apathy for Democratic-leaning Latinos like my father.
As the primary wagon heads to Latino-heavy states such as Florida and California, and the Southwest, the nuances and quirks of Latino voters will take on unprecedented import. Al fin de todo (In the end), reflects my father as he awaits his turn to vote, puede que sea la misma cosa los dos partidos. Vamos a ver. (It may be that both parties are the same thing. We'll see.)
In fairness to the opposing point of view here's another Op-ed
The politics of immigration
Supporters of open borders have lost on that issue
Victor Davis Hanson, Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
With the war in Iraq politically on the back burner, illegal immigration is heating up as a campaign issue. The public wants action, and the candidates are scrambling to react.
Sen. Hillary Clinton's sure nomination was first questioned when she flubbed an easy debate question about driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.
Sen. John McCain's recovery took off when he backed away from his support of immigration reform that did not first ensure the closure of the border.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani is no longer for "sanctuary cities" that shield illegal immigrants from arrest. Like former Gov. Mike Huckabee, he's now a born-again opponent of illegal immigration.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney assures us that some illegal immigrants can be deported within 90 days after he's elected.
Sen. Barack Obama may talk of "change," but his relative fuzziness about illegal immigration can't last forever, and at some point he will have to offer more specific proposals.
Some time ago, supporters of open borders lost the debate. The majority of Americans want them closed - now! They ignore the tired slurs like "anti-immigrant," "racist," "protectionist" and "nativist." And noisy May Day parades with Mexican flags and heated rhetoric from the National Council of La Raza ("The Race") only turn more people off.
It doesn't do any good, either, for a Mexico City functionary to cry about how mean we are to want a secure border with Mexico. Most Americans also tuned that out long ago.
They know instead that Mexico cares mostly about sending north those it won't or can't feed and house - so it can skim off from them billions in remittances once immigrants arrive in the United States.
Mexico City, of course, could reform the country's laws and economy whenever it wants. But it changes only enough to draw in tourists or Americans looking to buy vacation homes, not to better the lives of millions of its mestizo poor in the heartland.
The spin masters may think illegal immigration is an issue that pits conservative Republicans against liberal Democrats. But it doesn't always.
Nowadays, worry about illegal immigration is just as likely to mean that African Americans are terrified of racist gangs in Los Angeles. Asian Americans are frustrated that their relatives with college degrees wait years to emigrate legally, while thousands without high-school diplomas to the south simply break the law to enter the United States.
And many Mexican Americans are probably tired of being expected to defend the indefensible of foreign nationals breaking immigration laws simply because they may share an ethnic heritage with illegal immigrants.
To the extent Democratic candidates ignore illegal immigration, or demonize those who worry over hundreds of thousands of new illegal immigrants each year, or talk of guest workers and amnesty before they mention closing the borders, it is a losing issue that could alienate millions of voters.
Democratic candidates can't really claim that redneck racists are rushing to the border to clash with poor campesinos just crossing to better their lives, because many poor Democrats also resent how illegal labor drives down their own wages. It is mostly the American poor and middle class who worry about the sudden influx of thousands who don't speak English and often need public assistance.
But the Republican candidates have to watch it, too. If blanket amnesty is a losing issue, so also is mass deportation - the practicality and morality of which are rarely considered by those rightly calling for an end to illegal immigration. Busing every illegal immigrant back to Mexico right now might resemble the past messy partition of India and Pakistan, and reopen the issue in a way that Democrats can legitimately exploit.
What then might an astute candidate advocate?
Close the border now through fencing, more agents, employer sanctions, enforcement of the law and verifiable identification. Restore faith in the melting pot by insisting that new legal arrivals learn English and the customs and protocols of the United States.
Explain to the Mexican and Central American governments that using the United States to avoid addressing internal problems - while making easy dollars off the backs of their own expatriate laborers - is over.
Finally, deport immigrants who have broken the law, are not working or have just arrived. Some illegal immigrants will not like the new atmosphere of tough enforcement and will voluntarily go back home. Others may have criminal records or no history of employment and should leave as well.
But many millions of law-abiding, employed illegal immigrants of long residence will wish to stay. We should allow these to remain in the United States while they apply for citizenship - if they are willing to learn promptly our language and customs.
Republican candidates must risk angering their base by ruling out mass deportation. Democrats should support closing the border tightly and quickly - and not cave in to open-borders pressure groups.
Making these tough choices now is what most voters want. The candidates of both parties in the next few months will either adjust accordingly or lose elections.
Source:http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/
McCain win puts Latino vote back into play
Roberto Lovato
Thursday, January 10, 2008
(01-10) 04:00 PST New York -- As results from the New Hampshire primaries rolled in, I called my father Ramon, a prideful 85-year-old Democrata por vida (Democrat for life). I asked what John McCain's presence in the general election might mean for the fast-growing and ever-fluid Latino vote.
"My main candidate is Clinton," he affirmed in that defensive tone I know all too well, the tone that says, "Leave my opinions alone." But I persisted. I asked him who would get his vote if Clinton conceded before he and the rest of California cast their votes.
"Obama," he answered in that deep, sometimes forbidding voice. But before I could let out a deep familial sigh of political relief, he interjected, "But I could vote for McCain, too."
McCain's entree into the general election could put the Latino vote in play far more than any other GOP candidate. The Arizona senator is one of the few who could erect a Latino barrier to the Democrats' wave of inevitability.
How my father and the 9 percent of the electorate that is Latino choose to vote should be of paramount concern to electoral strategists, especially as the primaries move to the Latino-packed West. My father and other Latinos' fluid vote is neither indecisiveness nor anti-black racism. The flux of the Latino voter reflects how history, culture and the candidates' equivocations around immigration politics continue to influence the protean Latino electorate. Either an Obama-McCain or a Clinton-McCain race would highlight how the votes of racially ambiguous Latinos bounce between red and blue in American politics.
Unlike the black vote, which is consistently among the most reliably liberal - especially black youth, who polls find are the most progressive voters in the country - the Latino vote has proven to be more fluid. Their voting goes hand in hand with both their interests and their culture. During the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush's Spanish-language appeals and promises of immigration reform won him somewhere between 37 to 44 percent of the Latino vote, a major increase from what he got in 2000. Latino voters like my father had never had their vote courted as it was in 2004.
McCain's unique challenge to Democrats for the Latino vote comes down to simple math: his GOP rivals' zeal to win white votes with anti-immigrant appeals is perceived by my father ("I'll be below the earth before voting for any of them") and other Latinos, as severely anti-immigrant and anti-Latino, if not racist.
McCain's calls to treat immigrants "humanely" during the Spanish-language GOP debate contrasted strikingly with the smiley "get tough" talk of his shrill opponents.
My father and other voters heard the mantra of McCain alongside the hallowed Kennedy name during daily Spanish-language media reports about reforma migratoria (immigration reform) for nearly two years. That still echoes in the Latino electorate. McCain's recent about-face on immigration and his new "border security first" approach will only guarantee that my father embraces his inclination to vote for a Democrat. He also wants to vote to overcome the divisive legacy of racism.
For my father, the appeal of Obama and Clinton is rooted in memories of the civil rights era, which the telegenic Illinois senator so eloquently invokes. When Obama waxes, Martin Luther King-like, about the inequities of our racial past or when Clinton marches with black leaders, I see my father, a former union shop steward, remembering when he had to listen to white union representatives at Southern Pacific Railroad begin meetings by greeting workers in the audience with: "Ladies and gentlemen - and you colored folks, too." Obama's youthful message of moral clarity about the past, his political poetry of "reconciliation," reverberates as loudly with my father as do the echoes of the Clinton years.
But when Democrats are evasive - as in Clinton's driver's license flip-flop or when Obama vacillated after being asked by Univision anchors about his vote for the border fence - I see the moral and political opening exploited by Bush in 2004, and McCain before 2008. My father and most Latinos reject the wall as a muro de la muerte (wall of death). That the immigration debate merits neither Clinton's attention nor Obama's abundant rhetorical powers explains Latinos' frustration (documented in the recent Pew Hispanic poll) and leaves many of us outside the wave of Obama-mania.
Obama and Clinton's Latino aspirations are further complicated by some of the more negative reports in Spanish-language media of what my father and other, mostly immigrant, Latinos perceive as anti-Latino racism and violence among some African Americans and whites. Failure to denounce the racial divisiveness proffered by Republicans - and many Democrats - creates not confusion, but apathy for Democratic-leaning Latinos like my father.
As the primary wagon heads to Latino-heavy states such as Florida and California, and the Southwest, the nuances and quirks of Latino voters will take on unprecedented import. Al fin de todo (In the end), reflects my father as he awaits his turn to vote, puede que sea la misma cosa los dos partidos. Vamos a ver. (It may be that both parties are the same thing. We'll see.)
In fairness to the opposing point of view here's another Op-ed
The politics of immigration
Supporters of open borders have lost on that issue
Victor Davis Hanson, Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
With the war in Iraq politically on the back burner, illegal immigration is heating up as a campaign issue. The public wants action, and the candidates are scrambling to react.
Sen. Hillary Clinton's sure nomination was first questioned when she flubbed an easy debate question about driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.
Sen. John McCain's recovery took off when he backed away from his support of immigration reform that did not first ensure the closure of the border.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani is no longer for "sanctuary cities" that shield illegal immigrants from arrest. Like former Gov. Mike Huckabee, he's now a born-again opponent of illegal immigration.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney assures us that some illegal immigrants can be deported within 90 days after he's elected.
Sen. Barack Obama may talk of "change," but his relative fuzziness about illegal immigration can't last forever, and at some point he will have to offer more specific proposals.
Some time ago, supporters of open borders lost the debate. The majority of Americans want them closed - now! They ignore the tired slurs like "anti-immigrant," "racist," "protectionist" and "nativist." And noisy May Day parades with Mexican flags and heated rhetoric from the National Council of La Raza ("The Race") only turn more people off.
It doesn't do any good, either, for a Mexico City functionary to cry about how mean we are to want a secure border with Mexico. Most Americans also tuned that out long ago.
They know instead that Mexico cares mostly about sending north those it won't or can't feed and house - so it can skim off from them billions in remittances once immigrants arrive in the United States.
Mexico City, of course, could reform the country's laws and economy whenever it wants. But it changes only enough to draw in tourists or Americans looking to buy vacation homes, not to better the lives of millions of its mestizo poor in the heartland.
The spin masters may think illegal immigration is an issue that pits conservative Republicans against liberal Democrats. But it doesn't always.
Nowadays, worry about illegal immigration is just as likely to mean that African Americans are terrified of racist gangs in Los Angeles. Asian Americans are frustrated that their relatives with college degrees wait years to emigrate legally, while thousands without high-school diplomas to the south simply break the law to enter the United States.
And many Mexican Americans are probably tired of being expected to defend the indefensible of foreign nationals breaking immigration laws simply because they may share an ethnic heritage with illegal immigrants.
To the extent Democratic candidates ignore illegal immigration, or demonize those who worry over hundreds of thousands of new illegal immigrants each year, or talk of guest workers and amnesty before they mention closing the borders, it is a losing issue that could alienate millions of voters.
Democratic candidates can't really claim that redneck racists are rushing to the border to clash with poor campesinos just crossing to better their lives, because many poor Democrats also resent how illegal labor drives down their own wages. It is mostly the American poor and middle class who worry about the sudden influx of thousands who don't speak English and often need public assistance.
But the Republican candidates have to watch it, too. If blanket amnesty is a losing issue, so also is mass deportation - the practicality and morality of which are rarely considered by those rightly calling for an end to illegal immigration. Busing every illegal immigrant back to Mexico right now might resemble the past messy partition of India and Pakistan, and reopen the issue in a way that Democrats can legitimately exploit.
What then might an astute candidate advocate?
Close the border now through fencing, more agents, employer sanctions, enforcement of the law and verifiable identification. Restore faith in the melting pot by insisting that new legal arrivals learn English and the customs and protocols of the United States.
Explain to the Mexican and Central American governments that using the United States to avoid addressing internal problems - while making easy dollars off the backs of their own expatriate laborers - is over.
Finally, deport immigrants who have broken the law, are not working or have just arrived. Some illegal immigrants will not like the new atmosphere of tough enforcement and will voluntarily go back home. Others may have criminal records or no history of employment and should leave as well.
But many millions of law-abiding, employed illegal immigrants of long residence will wish to stay. We should allow these to remain in the United States while they apply for citizenship - if they are willing to learn promptly our language and customs.
Republican candidates must risk angering their base by ruling out mass deportation. Democrats should support closing the border tightly and quickly - and not cave in to open-borders pressure groups.
Making these tough choices now is what most voters want. The candidates of both parties in the next few months will either adjust accordingly or lose elections.
Source:http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/