Illegal Immigration Again An Issue After Newark Murders
August 21, 2007 | Permalink
After the brutal execution of three Newark citizens allegedly involving an illegal immigrant free on bail on rape charges, illegal immigration is back at the top of the news cycle. And Romney has come out swinging, against Giuliani:
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney criticizes “sanctuary cities” for illegal immigrants - and by implication Republican rival Rudy Giuliani - in a new radio ad.
“Immigration laws don’t work if they’re ignored. That’s the problem with cities like Newark, San Francisco and New York City that adopt sanctuary policies,” an announcer says in the ad, which runs in New Hampshire and Iowa. “Sanctuary cities become magnets that encourage illegal immigration and undermine secure borders.”
Romney and Giuliani have jabbed over illegal immigration in recent weeks. The former Massachusetts governor says Giuliani promoted New York as a haven for illegal immigrants when he was mayor. Giuliani aggressively denies it, insisting he cracked down on lawlessness of every kind.
“Legal immigration is great,” Romney says in the new ad. “But illegal immigration, that we’ve got to end. And amnesty is not the way to do it.”
In so-called sanctuary cities, government employees are not required to report illegal immigrants to federal authorities. Some, such as San Francisco, have declared themselves sanctuaries or refuges. Others, like New York, have never adopted the name.
New York’s policy, begun by Democratic Mayor Ed Koch in 1988, is intended to make illegal immigrants feel that they can report crimes, send their children to school or seek medical treatment without fear of being reported. An estimated half-million illegal immigrants live in New York, and only a fraction are deported each year.
Here’s the ad:
This comes in response to Rudy Giuliani launching an ad on immigration in South Carolina last week; his was about a fence. Here is audio, courtesy the Giuliani campaign:
Both of these ads are really about the obvious for the Republican campaign. Romney says “Legal immigration is great” and Giuliani talks about throwing convicted drug dealers out of the country. I can’t imagine either of these positions is really going to ruffle many feathers out on the trail (although to be fair to Giuliani, it’s clearly ot the policy in place in New Jersey; and to be fair to Romney, Tancredo wants a ‘pause’ on legal immigration).
While they’re battling each other, though (and Giuliani did issue a press release reaffirming what he did in NYC after Romney’s ad surfaced, as referenced in the above article), Tom Tancredo is going further.
He held a press conference yesterday in Newark, NJ advising the families of the victims to sue the city for failing to take action to deport the illegal immigrant involved should he be found guilty:
“If the suspects are found guilty, Newark and its political leadership share a degree of responsibility,” Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, said on the steps of the gold-domed City Hall, surrounded by a dozen supporters and slightly more protesters who rallied against him. “I encourage the family of the victims to pursue a lawsuit against the city.”
What this indicates is the that the swelling against ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ earlier this summer was not just a fad but will be a solid issue this election year. That’s probably bad news for John McCain, who is trying to make a comeback despite being the rallying point against reform on many of these issues.
Sphere: Related Content
Congress is in recess, the illegal immigration issue is unresolved and the Bush administration is moving again towards evil with its announced “crackdown,” while presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani try to “out-immigrant” each other in the same way politicians in the Jim Crow south once boasted their hostility to blacks.
The Bush administration evil is a sudden urge to crack down on phony Social Security numbers – an urge suppressed for almost seven years, but now politically convenient.
Since most illegal immigrant workers have phony Social Security numbers, this is a nod to the “deport-em-all!” crowd in the dwindling Bush political base. It’s also a lousy policy move, with racist overtones. Which clearly doesn’t stop Romney and Giuliani from seeking to gain political capital by saying they’re for “legal” immigration, but that we need to get tougher on the 12-15 million who are already here. They just get vague on how that might actually be done.
Instead of demonizing both employees and employers to make cheap political points, we should be treating the “illegal” immigration problem for what it is, a foreign policy and economics problem.
Americans need the labor and Mexicans need the jobs. Roughly half of the illegal immigrants are employed by homeowners and renters, so spare us the shouts that “it all benefits big business!” One of those homeowner, by some reports, is named Mitt Romney.
The Bush administration and those anxious to succeed it should stop playing to the neo-con bleachers and start playing hardball with Mexico. Fifteen-plus percent of Mexico’s labor force is in the U.S. and Mexico reaps the benefits, both in social stability and plain old cash, about $20-$25 billion a year. We get the cheap labor that keeps many prices low, but also the bills for health care, education and law enforcement. Not to mention the serious issues of taxes and Social Security. Simply deporting or persecuting for dubious political benefit doesn’t address the issues.
If a share of the benefits are heading to Mexico City, so should a share of the bills. We need a plan, not a pogrom.
I wrote a book, “Opening the Borders, Level 4 Press 2007) suggesting one plan that brings relief without opening a path to citizenship. There are certainly others. But what we need to do is think, plan and act at the federal level.
Since we haven’t done that much lately, from Katrina, to the Iraq occupation, to mine safety and other issue, it’s probably a vain hope. But it would certainly be welcome to see some candidate fro president abandon the barely veiled demagoguery and deal with issues.
Larry Blasko
Summit, NJ