A NYT editorial has it right. Both candidates need to talk more on immigration reform. Here is everything you need to know about where Obama stands on immigration.
NYT: Mr. McCain lied first, in a Spanish-language ad that accused Mr. Obama of helping to kill immigration reform last year, by voting for amendments that supposedly doomed a bipartisan bill. The ad lamented the result: “No guest worker program. No path to citizenship. No secure borders. No reform. Is that being on our side?”This is the context Rush gives to those quotes:
That is a jaw-dropping distortion. The bill wasn’t killed by any amendments. It was killed by a firestorm of talk-radio rage and a Republican-led filibuster. The very bill that Mr. McCain now mourns is the one he sidled away from as his own party weakened and killed it. It’s the one he says he would now vote against.
For Mr. McCain to suggest that Mr. Obama opposes the “path to citizenship” and “guest worker program” compounds his dishonesty. Mr. Obama supports the three pillars of comprehensive reform — tougher enforcement, expanded legal immigration and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here.
Mr. McCain was an architect of just such a comprehensive bill. But he is also leading a party whose members rabidly oppose the path to citizenship. So, in deference to them, Mr. McCain now emphasizes border security as the utmost priority. Except when he’s pandering in Spanish.
Mr. Obama’s retaliatory ad, also in Spanish, was just as fraudulent. It slimed Mr. McCain as a friend and full-bore ally of restrictionists like Rush Limbaugh, even though Mr. Limbaugh has long attacked Mr. McCain’s immigration moderation. It quotes Mr. Limbaugh as calling all Mexicans stupid and ordering them to “shut your mouth or get out,” which he never did.
Here's the context:He still calls them stupid and unskilled Mexicans and tries to argue he was making a larger point.
"If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south. Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine 'cause those are the kinds of jobs Nafta is going to create. If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do -- let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."
Frankly, Limbaugh has no credibility and as far as McCain being Rush's ally. Well, it was Rush and his kind who pushed for Palin and didn't McCain flip on immigration?
Anyway, the point of the NYT editorial is we need to reform immigration and it needs to be done in a grownup way. Getting it done in a grownup way is difficult because there is racism involved, which causes anti-immigration groups to behave irrationally.
Many people who are against immigration aren't against immigration of Irish folks, they're against Mexicans. It's racism. They don't like having the option of selecting Spanish at their bank teller machines. That is an outrage to them. They don't like to see Spanish signage. They don't like Mexicans.
The only way to accomplish immigration reform is to remove the element of racism.
Go after the companies that hire undocumented workers, not the workers themselves. Raise the fines so that it's clearly a penalty on business, a fine so hefty it could put them out of business, and have tough oversight, and in an instant, the problem would be solved.
But business wants cheap labor, so business breaks the rules, hires illegal workers through subcontractors or off the street, and government looks the other way, or more recently, raids factories and arrests and deports workers, separating families. Moreover, treating humans in a deplorable manner.
Why are we going after the immigrants? They just come here to work and they do it for dirt pay and are often treated like dirt.
If we're going to allow business to hire cheap labor, then at the very least, immigrant workers need work permits and they need to have the same rights as American workers.
Why are we going after the immigrants? They just come here to work and they do it for dirt pay and are often treated like dirt.
If we're going to allow business to hire cheap labor, then at the very least, immigrant workers need work permits and they need to have the same rights as American workers.
