As it looks like Obama will at least take a stab at immigration reform in 2010, we Conservatives should get our policy and rhetoric ducks in a row – Warner Todd Huston over at Nevada News and Views offers some ideas:
…to be seen as the anti-Hispanic party will destroy the GOPs electoral future … Americans of Hispanic origin are a wildly growing part of the electorate. If we are seen as their enemy we are doomed to minority status. We need a logical and legitimate way to win them over.
To my personal experience, I have seen many sons and daughters of immigrants — both legal and illegal — and these kids don’t want to be Mexicans, or Guatemalans, or what have you. They might not mind visiting the country of their parent’s birth but they generally would rather stay here and they think of themselves as natural born Americans.
But I will have to agree with Nadler that if these young people grow up thinking that the GOP is filled with people that hate them, then these new voters will reflexively vote Democrat in huge numbers. Folks like Nadler are right that we could be committing electoral suicide if we allow this perception to grow.
Huston goes on to list pretty much what I feel is the best form of immigration policy for conservatives: increased border security coupled with a rational and merciful policy towards those already in country. In contrast to this, Obama and his Democrats will try to put out some eyewash on border security and shove as many current illegals on to the voter rolls as swiftly as possible. For Democrats, it is only about votes and power – but couched in a “we care” rhetoric coupled with kickbacks to hispanic “leaders” who will toe the Democrat line, this could work.
We need to counter it – and demanding deportation of 12 million people won’t do it, fellow conservatives. No matter how correct it is in matter of law, the fact remains that we – as a people – essentially invited these illegals to come here. You can shout till you’re blue in the face that you’ve been calling for deportation and border security for 20 years and it won’t matter in the least. In a democratically governed republic, you’re responsible for what government does even when you vigorously opposed it. The fact is that they are here, now, and we called them in over the past 25 years.
An additional thing to keep in mind here is that the Democrats are desperate to tag us as racists in 2010 and beyond. Their most recent efforts have fallen completely flat – the first time the race card has been played and failed. Lets not hand them a new deck of race cards by being out there in the streets like a bunch of nativist yahoos, ok?
Hispanic immigrants are little Republicans in larval form – they are Catholic. They are socially conservative. They are hard working and tend to want to start a business and get ahead (yes, I know that some of them come here and immediately drop on to the welfare rolls – those can be dealt with, but the broad mass are typified by those guys I see standing out in front of Star Nursery day in and day out, willing to do any work – no matter how hard – just to make a few bucks).
As they are poor they also would like some help – especially in health care, education and housing. That is what Democrats are counting on – getting them on the liberal welfare plantation and then keeping them there. We need to appeal to the Catholic, socially conservative, hard working elements – but this means we can’t ignore the welfare aspects.
If we make it clear that we are going to welcome those who have been here for a substantial time who have stayed out of trouble while also securing the border as a means of protecting innocent people who are victimized by the criminal element (the border is a little shop of horrors on that level), then we can make a credible case for hispanic support for the GOP. This is not to say that we’ll immediately roll up majorities – but we can pull in 35-40% on a regular basis and build on that as hispanic immigrants become more integrated in to American society. Go about it any other way, and we’ll just have yet another constituency giving 90% of their votes to Democrats – and when hispanics eventually make up 25 of the electorate, that will be devastating to us.
We do this right, and we win a generation of power for ourselves while securing for America another version of, say, the Italian or Polish immigrants of the past. We do this wrong, and we wreck ourselves and our country.
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