I'm sick of this. Immigration is not a priority issue

[deacon]

Our soldiers are in a super crisis, our congress is ridden with scandal.

Is immigration an important Issie? Yes. But it shouldn't be now. This is diversion.


You don't leave people on our streets in an uproar and take a vacation. This GOP led congress has worked overtime for judges, all nite sessions-taking flights in the middle of the nite for a vote on judges-yet leave people on our streets in an uproar and take a vacation. What? They haven't had enough pork already? They need a week to prepare for a pork dinner on Sunday?

This is arrogant, irresponsible, divisive and negligent.

It's criminal in itself to brush off something manufactured and leave a nation hanging...

[silverojo]

1. It is if you live where illegal Mexicans are overrunning your city

[liberal N proud]

2. Which is many places in America - even ones you would not expect

But there are bigger issues in America right now, this has been made "The Issue" at this time for one reason.
Immigration is the wedge issue for 2006, it was not passed in Congress prior to Easter Vacation for that very reason. They will keep it in the news until November.

[MADem]

4. Wedge issue, indeed

...It was a Democratic media consultant's dream. The colors were crisp, the well-behaved crowd was effusive, and the chants were patriotic ("U.S.A., U.S.A."). Members of the nation's fastest growing ethnic voting bloc had gathered to sing the praises of a political party that they had been deserting for a decade. In 2004, George W. Bush pulled off a little-noticed coup among Hispanics, by winning 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, according to exit polls, about twice as much as GOP nominee Bob Dole earned in 1996.

Ever since Bush's 2004 breakthrough, Democratic campaign consultants have been panicked over projections that show that the Hispanic vote will become increasingly decisive in swing states. If Republicans are able to increase their showing by 2 or 3 percentage points nationally, said Joe Garcia, a Democratic consultant at the Hispanic Strategy Center, "the Democrats will not take the White House again in my lifetime." But the coast-to-coast wave of massive street rallies in the last few days has been raising the hopes of the liberal-minded members of the political prognosticating class like Garcia. "This is just like Tammany Hall signing up the Irish as they got off the boat," he said. "The guy who sows this issue well is going to reap a good harvest."

The national protests represent a major setback for the Bush wing of the Republican Party, which has courted immigrant voters with a welcome message of economic opportunity in exchange for hard work. This carefully calibrated Republican appeal may now fall on deaf ears, especially among young voters whose political allegiance is still unformed. "There are voters-in-waiting who may be getting their political consciousness because of this," said Gabriel Escobar, the associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center.

Republican strategists like Karl Rove and party chairman Ken Mehlman have been fighting a losing battle within the Republican Party, hoping to isolate outspoken GOP opponents of Hispanic immigration, like Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, who talks about running for president in 2008 on a protest platform. Arguing on behalf of both the American melting pot and employers who pay migrants low wages, Mehlman told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce last week, "America always has and always will be changed by the immigrants who come to our shores -- changed for the better."
...

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/04/11/immigration/ (free, watch the short ad)

[Iris]

9. where is this happening?

I live in the Atlanta area and there were 50,000 marching yesterday. Yet, on an ordinary day, these people are pratically invisible - they are not "overrunning" our city.

[darkmaestro019]

8. The illegal Mexicans are a symptom and not the problem....

If those who employ them go to jail, period, they'll leave. No demand for work. I know you've heard that before, but I beg of you not to blame the Mexicans themselves. Those are just people trying to feed themselves and their families.

Suppose here you could only make enough money a day to MAYBE feed yourself, and not your family, and not any savings or decent housing or--yeah, I know it's a stretch :sarcasm: but you're watching everyone you love slowly dry up and starve to death, yet there are jobs over the Canadian border that pay enough a day for you to live MUCH BETTER and to send life-saving amounts of money back to your family here. You can "apply" but it'll take money and skills you don't have and YEARS to ever be accepted, if you get lucky enough to be accepted at all.

Or you can sneak over/under the fence and be sending back money in a week. Which would you choose?


It's the fatcat corporate fks hiring them, to the Mexicans own long-term detriment and to YOUR detriment. You have the right to feel however you want about it, but some unstoppable, thing, inside me, makes me ask you to just try to see that they're just men and women like you and me trying to do the best they can.

It's our new feudal lords that are the root of the problem.

Peace : )

EDIT: I gather that it's mostly Mexicans but I meant this to apply really to ANY illegal immigrants.

[Bridget Burke]

13. What city is that, pray tell?

We've got lots of immigrants here in Houston. I'm sure some of them are undocumented. But we're doing OK. And most of our problems are NOT the fault of the immigrants.

Of course, brown faces are more noticeable in some cities. In Houston, we know that some of them were born in Texas. And some are legal immigrants. And some might be neurologists or entrepreneurs from India or Pakistan.

[leftchick]

3. I agree

Imagine for a second the M$M covering the Iraq War, DSM, Leak Scandal, Anti-War protests, or any number of bush LIES the way they are covering this. The over kill in coverage proves it is a distraction.

[monarch]

5. Everybody in Connecticut who can get WTIC am 1080

should be listening to Colin McEnroe. He's the guy who has helped the internet get Lieberman's goat. Anyway, he started his show yesterday with a 1/2hr rant on exactly this topic. He also does a pretty good O'Reilly impression in berating a caller after the caller was has already hung up--so he is well worth listening too listening to even when he is talking about topics other than politics.

[cali]

6. Stating that it's a diversion implies

that someone created or manipulated it. The latter may be true, but the former certainly isn't. Immigration is an issue that's been long simmering. If the repubs thought they could manipulate the issue in their favor, they've massively miscalculated. bushco is being battered by it, and the party is splitting over it. I have no idea what point you're trying to make by pointing out that the Congress left for vacation while the issue was still unresolved, but that isn't unusual. They also left without passing a budget.

[vi5]

7. My mom got mad at me when I called it a diversion...

I wouldn't call her a liberal, but she's not conservative. I guess she's the epitome of a middle of the roader. However she was watching some nightly news show which (as they all do nowadays) started with the protests. She gets very mad at illegal immigration. I said to her I don't doubt it's an issue that needs to get addressed, but why now? What happened that put this issue on the front burner, that caused all these protests, that caused it to get this much coverage? Why did the bill that prompted this uproar need to get introduced/put through/voted on NOW? She got mad at me saying I'm so focused on hating Bush that I see everything as a diversion. She hates Bush as well but as I said she's much more of a middle of the road person.

I then pointed out that if she truly felt it was an important issue that she should be writing her senators and congresspersons about it, and making sure to find out which companies she shops at or frequents have gotten dinged for using illegal immigrants (I know Wal Mart is one and she won't stop shopping there no matter how many bad things I tell her about them). Of course she won't do any of this, but still.

[Caution]

10. 10 million people aren't a priority?

With an additional 300,000 streaming in every month? This is a high priority issue. Just because something is divisive and not an automatic win for Democrats does not mean that it isn't high priority.

[NotGivingUp]

11. Obviously the corporate media wants to make it

the main issue. They are jamming it down our throats incessantly.

[paparush]

12. Ya mean like Gay Marriage...Yer right...its another smokescreen...

[Vinca]

14. So many of our jobs have been outsourced, I'm wondering

why they're coming here for work in the first place. I bought some cookies a while ago: "Made in Mexico." Last week I bought some new underwear: bras "Costa Rica," panties "Guatemala," socks "India." My husband bought some expensive scaffolding on sale "Made in China." You'd think living in near slavery in the United States would be worse than staying home.

[cali]

16. This statement indicates that you haven't a clue.

"You'd think living in near slavery in the United States would be worse than staying home."

People don't risk life and limb to get here because it's worse here than at home. Nor do they march by the hundreds of thousands to stay because it's worse. Clearly they don't consider being here to be living in "near slavery".
 

[Vinca]

23. You respond to me as if I'm the enemy.

I say near slavery because I want these people - as well as Americans - to be paid a decent wage. I'm disgusted that the main selling point for allowing massive immigration is cheap labor . . . bring the brown folks in to clean our toilets and mow our lawns. It's disgraceful and overtly racist. Immigration is fine, but these people need to be treated with respect, not farmed out as corporate - I'm saying it again - slaves. By the way, what the hell is wrong with working at the Fig Newton factory south of the border?

[leftchick]

20. it isn't slavery here yet

but we are certainly heading in that direction. :(

[Minnesota Libra]

15. If the issue is indeed a diversion what do we do, just drop it and......

....let thousands of illegal aliens stream in daily and ignore it all? Just because an issue is a diversion as you claim in not also to say it isn't important.

Instead of beating around the bush about the issue or just automatically declaring all illegal aliens citizens - as both parties do to one extent or another - we need to address the illegal alien issue head on and stop it. Neither party wants to do that though and that is why the illegal alien issue is and will remain a priority issue.

[kurth]

17. Dems have more to lose on this

I predict that many voters, facing a choice between some asshole Republican incumbent who brags about how he voted against amnesty and for border control and a Democratic challenger who goes on and on about Iraq, will pull the lever for the Republican.

Most marchers you see on TV waving Mexican flags are not registered to vote, but the GOP base will show up in force again if Rush Limbaugh et al. keep this up.

[MADem]

21. Many marchers ARE US citizens--the children and grandchildren of

illegals. A lot of those so-called "anchor babies" born to undocumented workers from south of our border are US citizens, adults, and eligible to vote.

[OzarkDem]

18. Agree, its a wedge issue

albeit one that works equally well on Republican voters. Walmart, et al see this as an opportunity to advance their agenda, apparently. There's no crisis, is there?

That said, its a distraction. For now, laws need to be enforced until everyone can sit down and develop a plan after the election.

[bdamomma]

19. I only wish

us Americans would be out in streets like those who have been protesting for immigration to protest against this regime, and get them out, these are madmen ruining our country. Why are we not in the streets for bush's illegal crimes against humanity.

[WinkyDink]

22. EXACTLY! It is Rove's "Mid-Term Diversion", 2006's "Gay Marriage".