Can Francis Wilkinson really say the following with such confidence?
The 2016 Republican nominee for president will almost certainly not make a fuss about deportation policy, regardless of past positions. In all likelihood, facing a difficult road with Hispanic and Asian voters, he will support legalization of long-settled undocumented immigrants. Citizenship remains an unsettled question. But the era of deportation is coming to an end.
Admittedly, once a Republican has secured the nomination of their party, they won’t see much upside to going around the country infuriating Asians and Latinos, but they’ll have done plenty of that before they secure the nomination. Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush may avoid embracing the id of the Republican base on brown people and still somehow miraculously win the nomination, but we’ll have to see if they can do so with relatively clean hands.
For the others, it’s one thing to avoid making a fuss about something and it’s quite another to do an about-face and adopt a position 180 degrees away from the position that won you the support of your most ardent and committed supporters. They may not want to talk about deporting immigrants in the general election, but that doesn’t mean that they will suddenly support legalization of millions of undocumented people.
Remember when Barack Obama was all for renegotiating NAFTA during the primary and then had little to say about it afterwards? That’s the familiar kind of dishonest pandering that most successful politicians feel compelled to engage in from time to time. But he didn’t accept the nomination in Denver and go out on the campaign trail the next day talking about how great NAFTA was. He was at least rhetorically locked into his position for the remainder of the campaign because to flip-flop would have caused more pain than to be consistent.
As Mitt Romney discovered, what you say in the primary sticks with you and the eventual Republican nominee can make a fuss or not make a fuss but they’ll have no easy pivot.
a kid in broad daylight in SF, CA, you want to rescind deportations?
It’s beyond comprehension, really. Sanctuary cities refuse to cooperate with ICE, and release 5-time felons into the general populace to murder kids in broad daylight. This is beyond disgusting. This is the Democratic Party committing suicide.
Of course, every democratic is having fainting spells over the occasional court clerk who is having objections to issuing gay marriage certificates. “You have to obey the law. If you are an elected official, you must do you duty.” BLAH BLAH BLAH,
Until of course that duty involves the Sheriff of SF cooperating with ICE. In that case, the democrats are on the side of John Calhoun, and fully invested in nullification.
If you are not in full accord with deportation of criminals, and with the rule of law, fuck you totally. I am so tired of this selective enforcement bullshit. We need to deport criminals, and criminals are people break the law. If you are an illegal with a busted tail-light, you are out of here.
How do we deport the Dylann Roofs that with intention and malice kill nine people in a church?
Absent the full story on all the arrests and deportations of the alleged SF murderer, it’s far too soon to point a finger at the SF Sanctuary policy and the SF Sheriff. Why did ICE release him to SF on a 20 year old MJ warrant? Why after five previous deportations didn’t ICE get a deportation warrant before releasing him to SF? Then there’s the issue of a federal law enforcement officer that had a personal gun in his/her automobile and had it stolen. Finally, it’s likely that the alleged murderer didn’t intend to shoot any person.
No, bullshit on that. It’s time to blame the Sheriff and all the sanctuary city morons. Sanctuary city policies are responsible for the release of countless felons. Why countless? Because they continue this absolute and total bullshit about how we cannot control the illegals and their criminal behavior. We can and must. It’s really easy – eVerify for jobs, housing and all financial transactions over $250. It’s “papers please”.
Sure, enforcement can be improved, but that really has nothing to do with the millions of indocumentados who are living and working peacefully in this country. You totally miss the point that Marie was trying to make, which is that you’re the one who’s being selective here by only focusing on crimes committed. It’s almost as if you’re going out of your way to find excuses to hate them.
Bingo! Democratic party troll. Also known as “Nick Danger”.
Can you please stop accusing dataguy of being Nick Danger?
“Democratic Party committing suicide”
Probably not but it’s definitely an emotional issue for many.
What’s the point of immigration laws if we’re repeating the amnesty/legalization cycle? Are we for open borders now?
I think that’s the general idea.
What’s the alternative? I don’t see white folks or even natural born citizens of color in this country clamoring for field work or the grungiest and poorest paying manual labor jobs. When they occasionally show up for such work, they suck at the jobs.
From a review of Anthony Bourdain — Kitchen Confidential — (Bourdain is fittingly appreciative of the Hispanic kitchen workers without whom most of New York City would be eating out of cans.) . That’s an understatement of what he says on that issue in the book.
Efforts to replace immigrant workers in Alabama fields coming up short. (Reports were the same from farmers in other states with the undocumented migrant worker crackdown.)
I loathe the fact that so many people have to work so hard for a pittance. Also loathe the fact that the issue/problem of migrant farm labor isn’t new. Other than Caesar Chavez (do recommend the movie), the people and politicians in this country never deal with this much less propose any authentic solutions. Better to have high unemployment (particularly youth unemployment) and look the other way when undocumented workers pick and gather our food.
This comment basically demonstrates that you understand nothing about illegals. “Field work” is just one of about 20. We need a specific visa for this category, like the old bracero system.
Illegals have taken hundreds of thousands of construction jobs. Men in this country who did not go to college used to fill those jobs. Now they are all illegals. In NYC and other big cities, training programs could work with unemployed and they could have good jobs. Instead, there are illegals filling the jobs.
About 4M of the reputed 11m are visa overstays. These take high-tech jobs. These are definitely jobs Americans want to do. But with illegals, there are far fewer jobs.
Jobs for the lower end of our society (hotel maids, clerks, restaurant workers) used to be done by the lower end of our economic base. Now we have millions of illegals doing them. In Ferguson and many other places, there would be far less rioting and problems if people were working.
Enough with the “Americans won’t pick crops”. That’s 5% of the illegals.
At least I know enough not to refer to undocumented workers as “illegals” and that the Bracero program is nothing to praise.
btw — guest worker program laborers are here legally. Clote to slavery guestworker programs in the United States.
Stop blaming workers for US employers’ appetite for cheap labor. A continuing saga in this land for almost four hundred years. Excluding native Americans, not many of us can claim that our ancestors didn’t come here for work/income/wealth opportunities and satisfied some legal entry requirement beyond showing up here.
I don’t do the PC bullshit. They are illegals.
I can say, for all the ancestors I know about, that they satisfied the immigration rules at the time. I have the Ellis Island records on my Mom’s side. And my Dad’s side came in the 1600s when there were no rules.
Today, there are rules. Full stop. No one in my father’s side got a driver’s license when they arrived. That’s because the license was created later. So this notion that these people did not follow the rules is 100% absolute garbage. The rules of the time are what matters. And in the age before the airplane, it was absolutely physically impossible for Europeans to illegally immigrate. You had to take a week-long ship trip, and docking of the ships was rigidly controlled. So enough with the “we are all criminals” garbage. We are not all criminals.
Can’t really disagree with you there. They are undocumented because they have migrated here illegally. Indeed, they are not the first ones to do so but there are laws governing immigration and some are being violated and others are not enforced. This isn’t sustainable.
100% correct. IMHO, the laws should be changed, but I agree with dataguy that state and local governments shouldn’t flout federal law. My God, we just got through roasting the South for flying the Confederate flag that represents defiance to federal law. So we pick and choose the laws that we obey? Like that Roof guy?
Saying “illegal” rather than “illegal immigrant” is rather like saying “Jap” instead of “Japanese”. If that’s what you intended, so be it.
I too have have been gravely hurt by the influx of Indian and Chinese indentured workers. But I don’t blame the people, who are doing what I would do if I were them. I blame the greedy companies that exploit them (and us) and the crooked/venal politicians that allow it.
Regarding the work, you have a valid point and so does Marie3. I personally would not like to work with concrete nor do exhausting landscape work. But maybe others do. I do know that before the heavy Mexican immigration that followed the collapse of Mexican agriculture resulting from NAFTA, I never saw more than a few landscaping services and they charged a mint. I’ve got a regular guy now. When I was on vacation, my wife had to just call him and ask him to mow the lawn while we were gone. $20 a pop and he waited until I got back for payment. I paid him in cash because (wink wink nod nod) he’s going to report it to the IRS like a good
citizenresident. He was doing some heavy digging and brickwork in my yard yesterday and we were talking. He’s from Southern Mexico on the Pacific side. We were looking in a flower bed with weeds and he pointed to a weed and he said that people back home eat that and proceeded to demonstrate. I tried it and it tasted good! We can all learn from each other. In my turn I answer his questions about fruit tree care which is a hobby of mine. When I first met him he had very little English. Now he speaks English better and has a few employees including a young man from Nicaragua who is very pleasant and works like a beaver. Is he legal? Is his boss? How about the guy who did my driveway and sidewalk? He used to be an agricultural worker picking peaches in California and Michigan. Then he got into concrete work, learned the business, then formed a company. Was he legal? Should I care? Am I a cop?just to add: the landscape guy and the guy who did your driveway would typically be the parents of DREAMER kids
I only commented to mean that the general consensus on this blog is “Yes, we want open borders.” I made no agreement or disagreement or value judgement. You reacted to what you think is my value judgement, which, I concede, may not be far off the mark. Or maybe it is.
That murder happened in the same place I was about 20 hours earlier. I still don’t want to deport millions of people.
U.S. deportations of immigrants reach record high in 2013
Yes, GWB ratcheded up deportations 2003-2008 after getting Latino votes in 2000. But so too did Obama.
Wilkinson seems to believe the immigrant community will trust the GOP not to deport uncle Shawn or cousin Maria or brother Chen, or nephew Ali, after they get the presidency. The Donald may make trust of the GOP impossible. The only GOP candidate that appears to stand up to The Donald is the senator for the Bars and Strips state of SC.
Yes, and now he wants us to trust him on TPP.
or maybe the TPP is the renegotiation he promised, when it’s released during the comment period I’ll be interested in seeing what it says
There is no comment period. It’s on Fast Track.
you don’t understand what fast track means, it’s not what everyone with their hair on fire seems to think it means
It means no changes, vote up or down and there is enough in it for big business that it is going to be voted up. Our only chance was to get the worst things removed. But Obama won’t even condemn Indonesian slavery.
And another issue is rents. Rents are rising all over the country. Why do prices rise? Supply and demand.
You take 11M illegals and get them out, rents will fall. Rents are supported and increased by the pressure of millions of illegals.
How do we get them out? Simple. eVerify for all jobs. eVerify for all rental and property transactions. eVerify for all transactions over $250.
Good lord, reading these comments, it’s like the 1920’s all over again. The historian Camille Guerin-Gonzales said that in the early 20th century migrant workers from Mexico found “that if they were willing to work harder than Anglo-Americans, to have a standard of living lower than Anglo-Americans, and to not challenge the political, social, or economic standing of Anglo-Americans, they could survive in the U.S.” And so it stands the same today.
Not so unfamiliar to women of a certain age when allowed into jobs that up until then had been exclusively male:
Some managed to tailor the bargain if they had unique of special assets.