In my book, The Golden Years...The Florida Legislature, '70s and '80s, I remind readers that anything said by an office holder is public record. However, my experience is that voters will forgive almost anything said in public, or even done, including declaring bankruptcy, enduring adultery, and an occassional ill advised vote. But, public behavior that generally WILL NOT be tolerated, include:
1. Stealing from the public treasury.
2. Breaking your word.
3. A hypocrite--do what I say, not what I do.
4. Voting wrong on incendiary issues, like abortion, pay raises, and immigration.
The disrespectful outburst by South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson (R., S.C.) during President Obama's address to the Congress and the nation on health care Wednesday night, in my opinion, germanated, not from the health care issue, but from immigration. Little has surfaced recently on the thorny issue, which was aggressively addressed unsuccessfully in the past by Republican leaders like President George W. Bush, and Senator John McCain (R., AZ). But, make no mistake, it is a 'radioactive' issue that is a growing political cancer across the country, and specifically in California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Florida, among other states.
Immigration will join abortion as the most divisive issues to face this country in the next elections, and it will air its' ugly head in the form of discussions of health care, the census (and therefore, the 2012 reapportionment), labor disputes, employment data, federal appropriations, welfare, international trade, and even religious debates.
Neither party seems willing to address the issue now, but the Congressman's rude outburst probably reflects the pent up vitriol surrounding the issue of immigration in this country.
(Originally promoted by Mike, who proudly works for the SEIU, which is taking up the cause of this graduate of Miami-Dade Honors College in Florida - promoted by Florida Politics)
Sometimes, you come across stories that make such a dramatic point, that you can't help but be astonished at the inhumanity of our broken immigration and citizenship laws.
Walter Lara's tale is one of those stories.
When he was only 3 years old, Walter and his family moved to the United States. He worked hard at his studies; he earned a 4.7 GPA in high school, went on to graduate from Miami-Dade Honors College in Florida, and is now pursuing a career in computer technology.
Make that /trying/ to pursue. You see, Walter's an undocumented immigrant, through no fault of his own; remember, he was only 3 years old when he came to America. And right after we celebrate America's 233rd birthday this weekend, Walter will be deported back to Argentina - a country he's never really known.
Securing the votes in Congress to pass real immigration solutions into law isn’t going to be easy. The next President – no matter who wins – will need to lead his own party first to get it done.
As our economy continues to stagger and gasp along with record market failures-- and the failure of our paralytic government to do a single thing about it-- a lot of people are searching for explanations.
Take, for example, Michelle Malkin and Mark Krikorian. Yes, they're searching-- one might even say they are grasping at straws.
Malkin's subtle theory is that the whole thing is a natural consequence of letting too many Mexicans across the border:
The Mother of All Bailouts has many fathers...But there's one giant paternal elephant in the room that has slipped notice: how illegal immigration, crime-enabling banks, and open-borders Bush policies fueled the mortgage crisis.
Yes, I wish I was satirizing poor Michelle-- but her feeble little brain actually did come up with that statement in all apparent seriousness.
Did you know that immigrants are to blame for Global Warming? That's the conclusion of a recent "study" released by the anti-immigrant "think" tank - the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which has a history of publishing less-than-credible research.
After a careful review of "Immigration to the United States and World-Wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions," we produced this video to tell it like it is: a bunch of… well… watch the video.
I've been working with a great new advocacy group called America's Voice.
In my first diary talking about them here, I addressed the nuances of their name, described the heinous opposition, and shared how I think it all bears upon Florida politics.
These folks are churning out incredible ads at a mighty clip. This barnstormer's less than a minute long, but it manages to eviscerate the doddering captain of the Straight Talk Express for his, well, fake talk:
I've been posting over at Daily Kos and MyDD about an issue that strongly pertains to the politics of Florida.
Here's the gist: there's a group I'm working with called America's Voice. We're about moving this country forward with a sensible, progressive immigration policy that actually works:
This is tricky, because back in the 90's, the term "America's Voice" was the catch-phrase for a crazy right-wing TV network called NET, which eventually folded.
Not often in agreement with our former governor, I found myself nodding positively through Beth Reinhard’s column in the Saturday Miami Herald. The other day I was mentally arguing against “Big Ed” Schultz on normally reliable Air America, WINZ AM940, as he raved against letting undocumented immigrants have licenses.
Schultz’ argument was that immigrants “take jobs” from American workers (Evidence, Ed?) and “drive down” wages (Maybe true), and so “80 percent” of Americans are against letting such immigrants have licenses. Ed, I’d like to hear what wording was used in the survey to get that overwhelming result. Maybe this: Should illegal aliens be given driver’s licenses so they can run down your grandmother?
Because I also have heard that Americans in general feel that immigrants should get a path to legalization and eventual citizenship, and it would seem contradictory that they not also get a driver’s license along the way.
My life experience includes living overseas a lot, and I’ve had driver’s licenses from Israel, Britain, Japan and Germany – as a legal resident, of course. Seems pretty routine to me – you live somewhere, you get a driver’s license there. If you get stopped it’s one less problem. It’s also part of living openly.
Reinhard’s column recalls that three years ago Jeb Bush supported a bill by a fellow Republican, Sen. Rudy Garcia of Hialeah, requiring background checks before granting such licenses. It failed utterly with other Republicans and did not become Florida law.
Now it’s a fuss in New York with Gov. Elliot Spitzer’s proposal and with Hillary Clinton’s wavering responses in this week’s Democratic presidential debate.
From neo-con paradise (The Hoover Institute) emerges a quote from Jeb: “Politicians use this as a wedge issue – it’s a loser.”
Again, I agree with Jeb on this. Thanks to Beth Reinhard for laying it out. Click here for a link to her column.
Here’s the lead headline in Thursday’s New York Times (as seen in Florida, anyway): “Sharp Rise Seen in Applications for Citizenship.” First subhead: “A Sign of Hispanic Unease.” If this sounds familiar, check back to a June 22 post about articles in the Los Angeles Times and Miami Herald about the flood of people taking the oath of citizenship at ceremonies in Miami Beach.
The NY Times piece has a related drift, focusing on a big jump in the numbers of people applying for citizenship. In May 115,175 applied, almost double the 65,782 last December.
What we’ve been doing in Miami-Dade County is to give vigorous help to the non-partisan groups that register new citizens to vote. Thousands of people concentrate in one place to attend these ceremonies, and all we have to do is be there afterward with a clipboard, smile and sign them up. Recently the ratio has strongly favored Democratic registration, sometimes more than 2 ½ to 1 over Republican signups – without overt persuasion.
The Times story adds detail to help explain this bonanza for our D side. It quotes a Californian who hadn’t considered becoming a U.S. citizen until he felt it was time to get politically active because his people were “not getting enough support.” Another said the same thing: “Now if I don’t like the way things are going, I can let the government know my opinion.”
This seems to be a new wrinkle in our country’s long history of immigration. Haven’t most new immigrants concentrated on work and family and kept quiet politically in the past? The NY Times report seems to find budding political activists among the newest citizens – people not willing to wait for the next generation of the U.S.-born to be active in politics.
So if someone stands up at the next county party meeting and urges that we redouble our efforts to register new citizens to vote, I’ll second that motion.
Beyond that, the NY Times story mentioned an initiative financed by the Illinois state government to help immigrants learn English and prepare for the citizenship test. It’s called the New Americans Initiative. Do we have something like that in immigrant-rich Florida?
(Cross posted on www.miami-dade-dems.blogspot.com)
While going thru the news this morning I came across an article entitled RNC fires phone solicitors from the Washington Times. This was the quote that caught my attention:
There has been a sharp decline in contributions from RNC phone solicitations, another fired staffer said, reporting that many former donors flatly refuse to give more money to the national party if Mr. Bush and the Senate Republicans insist on supporting what these angry contributors call "amnesty" for illegal aliens.
"Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue," said the former employee.
If we want to work at splitting the RPOF or in isolating right wing Republicans, maybe this is the issue we need to focus on in the upcoming congressional races.
Not surprisingly, Feeney (CD 24), trumpets his views with a Letterman-like Top Ten Reasons to hate the reform bill.
The other Republican incumbents from the central Florida races that have been targeted by the DCCC, Keller (CD 8), Young (CD 10), and Weldon (CD 15) don't list immigration as an "issue" on their congressional site.
Today, the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform announced a new phase in their campaign to get comprehensive immigration reform passed this year. The coalition, joined by representatives from the Campaign for Community Change, Democracia Ahora and SEIU Florida Healthcare Union, unveiled its plans for a media campaign urging Senator Mel Martinez to lead and not retreat on immigration reform. As the Chairman of the Republican Party, the group expects Martinez to lead his party and break the gridlock in Congress.
The opening salvo of the national ad campaign will start in Florida ...
Rebellion is brewing among conservatives on the Republican National Committee over President's Bush's attempt to "impose" Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida as "general chairman" of the party, who favors "amnesty" for illegal aliens.
"I will be voting against Senator Martinez if he is nominated for any chairmanship of the RNC," Tina Benkiser, Texas Republican Party chairman, told The Washington Times yesterday. The website StopMartinez.com says:
"Mel Martinez is Spanish for Harriet Miers." This writer (TampaBay Democrat) supports amnesty but does not support the guest worker program sponsored by Senator Martinez for reasons explained by Robert J. Samuelson in the WaPo last spring. Give amnesty to those who are here. Stop the fence. Adopt a sensible immigration policy. However, the Nativist wing of the Republican party frames Mel's miserable bill in such a way as to be generating much protest. A coalition of the creepy has banded together to stop him:
Jim Boulet, Jr., English First
Paul Weyrich, Coalitions for America
Richard Falkner, Maryland Taxpayers Association
Sandra Crosnoe, Associated Conservatives of America
Edward Nelson, U.S. Border Control
William Greene, Right March
Cathie Adams, Texas Eagle Forum
Carolee Adams, Eagle Forum of New Jersey
Collin Hanna, We Need a Fence.com
It's always good when Florida makes it to the national news. Oh wait, no it isn't, it pretty much always sucks. There are a lot of great things about Florida, but it is stuff like this (and the Dollars and Jessica Lunsford) that make the news:
As I drove into work this morning, I was able to see the "Day Without Immigrants" first hand.
I work for a small firm which is located in a brand new building in a small complex of about 16 similar, one story office buildings housing law firms, medical and dental practices, etc. Our section of the complex is still under construction, with all of the buildings around our buildings in various states of "unfinished."
Consequently there are always construction workers, landscapers, roofers, masons, etc. present in large numbers around the office complex, working their asses off in the hot Florida sun.
Although I would like to think that the well established construction firm responsible for the building of the development, along with their competent subcontractors, are paying a fair wage to legal taxpaying American construction workers, I have observed that in addition to the few caucasian (albeit VERY tan) and African-American workers on the site (usually tradesmen like plumbers and bricklayers), the vast majority of the workers seem to be (totally based on visual profiling, I admit) of Latin American origin.
Not today. Today I saw two white plumbers (I know they were plumbers because of their truck) arguing. Other than that, and the white collar types that work in the completed structures, it was a complete ghosttown.
There has not been a day since we moved into our offices in January that there have not been several crews of workers laying pipe, building walls, laying drywall, putting on a roof, laying brick, hanging glass, mixing cement, laying sod, planting trees....
But today was a day without an immigrant...
and everything stopped.
I wonder if our RPOF friends have noticed? After all, their party is funded largely by the construction, agricultural, hospitality, restaurant, etc. industries who rely on relatively cheap immigrant labor for their profit margins...
I recently posted on my blog Florida Public Policy about the growing immigration issue in Florida. Its worth a peek, especially if you're helping out a candidate for the legislature or even Congress, if you're a candidate yourself, or just a concerned citizen who wants to know what's goin' on in our crazy state.
The campaign web sites of select candidates; click on "FB" to check them out on FaceBook, "T" to follow them on twitter, and "$" to donate. These are not paid ads.
- At "After All, He Is Black", we look at the inability of Florida "conservatives" to deal with racial issues.
- "Take this job ..." is a compendium of some of the things Florida employers are permitted to do to their employees.
Please leave comments or e-mail us with additional material for these projects.
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