Brian Howey has a column entitled Will GOP become Whigs of the 21st Century? The premise of the question is that Republicans might be stumbling down the road to political extinction due to their position on immigration. Their rhetoric on illegal immigration is alienating Hispanics who are here legally.
I do have to comment that Sen. Delph’s rhetoric comes across a little better than it has in the past. Reports earlier in the season basically had Sen. Delph saying “rule of law” like a mantra.
The senator points to a recent case in Hendricks County where 20 people were found stuffed in a van “like cattle.” He charges that El Indy Latino is profiting from such people. He understands the opposition from the Latino community, but asks, “If you’ve got a better solution, I’m all ears. The community as a whole cannot be accomplices to law breaking because they create racial tensions and suspicions over legal citizens.”
The effect of illegal immigrants on Hispanics here legally might be a compelling angle from which to debate the subject. Of course, that limits your ability to credibly put forward solutions that will disproportionately burden those citizens.
Whatever the intent of individual GOP lawmakers, they have a particular problem because of one of their constituencies. I don’t think I’m assuming too much by suggesting that white men who are unhappy that their traditional position in our society has been eroded by the advancement of women and minorities cast a non-trivial number of Republican votes. That makes it easier for Republican lawmakers to appear hostile or at least unsympathetic to minorities.
And that’s a political problem as the demographics of the United States change:
Pew Research released a report recently that shows the American population will increase from 296 million in 2005 to 438 million in 2050. “Of the 117 million people added … 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50 million will be their U.S.-born children or grandchildren. And 29 percent of the U.S. population in 2050 will be Latino, compared to the current 15 percent. Factor in African-Americans, Asians, and others nationalities, Caucasian Americans are predicted to become a minority population.
Now here’s where my 21st Century Whig comment comes into play. The Pew Hispanic Center notes that 57 percent of registered Latino voters now call themselves Democrats, while just 23 percent call themselves Republicans. There is now a 34-percent gap in partisan affiliation among Latinos and it’s growing. That’s going to be a Grand Old Problem.
Are we assuming here that the people who are screaming about getting rid of illegals actually care about them being illegal? Mostly, I think they are just being bigots.
If the problem was with English-speaking white Canadians, somehow I don’t think people would be reacting the same.
Going about it as they are is not only going to alienate legal immigrants, it’s also going to alienate some of their non-bigoted party members and even non-white party members. (Are you allowed to be non-white in the Republican party? I’ll have to look into that.)
FWIW, I believe that Sen. Delph himself is not a bigot and is motivated solely by the fact that the illegals are here illegally. And I’m sure that there are other individuals supporting immigration reform who feel likewise. Further, it’s probably true that a very large number of people, including hispanics, would support the general and abstract principle that, ideally, the US should have control of its borders.
However, it is undeniably true that a large number of “immigration reform” advocates are simply racist nativist types who would feel equally at home in Indiana’s KKK in the 20’s. I would include in this group people who belong to anti-immigration hate groups like IFire or FAIR, as well as garden variety racists and nativists who don’t like seeing dark people or hearing people speaking other languages in their presence.
So of course latinos are afraid of the GOP, and as long as the GOP continues to push these kind of issues, more and more latinos will desert the GOP. The best way of attracting hispanics is not by making thinly-veiled attacks on hispanics, hispanic culture, or the use of spanish in public.
Never can get these WordPress tags right… supposed to be re: “Are you allowed to be non-white in the Republican party? I’ll have to look into that”
Check out the article “Why Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican”.
“If you’ve got a better solution, I’m all ears. The community as a whole cannot be accomplices to law breaking because they create racial tensions and suspicions over legal citizens.â€
I second that motion.
It seems to me that the Socialist Insecurity Administration knows who is working here illegally. You can’t work on the books and not have a SS number. They know who has bogus SS numbers. It shouldn’t be too hard to set up a system where a VALLID SS number is needed to work on the books.
This won’t stop the day laborer phenomenon, of course. Might even make it worse.