Get this info out to others -- Toughness on immigration did NOT cost candidates their election

Nov. 12, 2006

DEAR FRIENDS,

AMERICAN VOTERS DID not TURN AGAINST TOUGHER ENFORCEMENT
OR LOWER IMMIGRATION.

I have some important new statistics that should give you comfort -- and that you may want to share with a lot of others.

Oh, I'm sure you've seen or read discouraging claims from Fred Barnes, Michael Barone, the Wall Street Journal, the L.A. Times, Tamar Jacoby or dozens of ivory tower newspaper editorial writers since the congressional election returns this week.

Their spin is everywhere. According to them, the Republicans' loss of the House of Representatives -- and particularly the loss of Randy Graf and J.D. Hayworth in Arizona -- proves that getting tough on illegal immigration is a political loser.


But consider this:


11.5% of all Republican seats in Congress were lost as Democrats took back control of Congress


But only 6.7% of the Members of Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus lost their seats.
I've seen various open-borders organizations even talk about Tancredo's Caucus being decimated!

It just wasn't true.

Members of the get-tough Caucus fared quite a bit better than Republicans in general.

Caroline Espinosa, our NumbersUSA Media Coordinator, tells me most of the journalists to whom she has spoken understand that Republicans were swept from office because of high voter disgust at Republican scandals and frustration with Pres. Bush and particularly the war -- not because most Republican Members of Congress were the only force that stopped Pres. Bush and the Democrats from passing a massive amnesty.

Unfortunately, many other journalists are not bothering to seek balanced information, do not call us and then rush out with the most ridiculous analysis of the election results.

I hope you will help get the real story out to your friends, colleagues, neighbors and family as the subject comes up -- and to the public through letters to the editor of newspapers and by phoning radio talk shows (both local and national).

Take a look at these additional percentages of Republicans who lost their elections:


Loss of Election by Republicans Based on Their
Immigration-Reduction Grade of This Congress


9.6% with an A grade lost

25.0% with an F grade lost


9.2% with a B grade lost

6.4% with a C grade lost

9.5% with a D grade lost

in this email:
1. WHAT DID ARIZONA REALLY SHOW? Not a victory for the McCain Amnesty

2. ARE THE NEW DEMOCRATS REALLY CONSERVATIVES who will vote our immigration-reduction agenda?

3. WHAT THE HOUSE REPUBLICANS
FAILED TO DO RIGHT

4. OPTIMISM for immigration reduction from a DEMOCRAT

5. FROM A CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE:Optimism for immigration reductions

6. Some final thoughts on VETERANS DAY actions in brief:
The constant re-statement of untruths about this election will become "facts" that media will repeat for years to come if we don't attack them now.

1. Type responses on the internet to any website that pushes the kinds of falsehoods noted in this Alert.

2. Write letters to the editor of newspapers and magazines that try to push false analysis of the elections.

3. Phone radio talk shows to get this analysis out to a larger audience.

4. Refer all friends to the NumbersUSA.com website.

5. Circulate this Alert.


There simply was no evidence that Members lost support because they were tougher on illegal immigration and on importing foreign workers.

Exit polling failed to show any sign that voters disliked the immigration-reduction positions of the Republicans they were turning out of office. Rather, the polling found they were voting primarily on the basis of scandals and the war.


WHAT DID ARIZONA REALLY SHOW?
Not a victory for the McCain Amnesty


A number of commentators said the voting by Arizonans proved the lack of popularity of tough enforcement, even in a state with extreme levels of illegal immigration.

And they say that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was the clear winner as voters showed they preferred his amnesty plan to enforcement-only.

They say that because of the defeats of Republican congressional candidate Randy Graf and incumbent Rep. J.D. Hayworth who campaigned against McCain's amnesty and were beaten by Democrats who said they favored the Republican senator's amnesty (although their ads and public speeches obscured that behind a lot of tough talk about borders).


But here is the counter evidence:


Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) was re-elected easily in the statewide race in which he clearly opposed McCain's amnesty and the (extremely well-funded) Democrat clearly supported McCain's amnesty. Kyl was particularly vulnerable because he has been a loyal supporter of Bush's war effort which Arizonans apparently hate. But voters there apparently gave him a pass on his Bush ties because of his other qualities, one of the most known of which is his law and order approach to immigration.


In another statewide show of support for the immigration-reduction position, Arizona voters overwhelmingly approved ballot referenda that further toughen some already tough state laws against illegal aliens. The approved referenda will deny some state benefits to illegal immigrants, declare English the state's official language and bar illegal aliens from collecting punitive damages in civil lawsuits and from getting out of jail on bail if they commit serious crimes.


Polling of likely voters in Arizona and other battleground states and congressional districts found that large majorities of not only Republicans but of Independents and Democrats in all of them share our NumbersUSA desires for Attrition Through Enforcement on illegal immigration and reduced legal immigration.

So, what happened to Graf and Hayworth?

Some independent commentators say their loss was not due to their taking strong positions against illegal aliens but to their not talking enough about other issues. There was a sense among many voters that the two didn't have a broad enough agenda, the commentators said.

But Graf was also severely damaged by the fact that the retiring Republican Congressman (Kolbe) refused to endorse him and that huge amounts of national Republican money was used to advertise against him in the primary (which he won) as an extremist who had no chance to win. Then, when he won, the national Republicans refused to help him defeat the Democrat.

The treatment of Graf was one of the developments that has caused many people to contact me with their suspicion that the Bush political machine actually wanted House Republicans to lose their majority so he could work with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to push through his amnesty.

It is difficult for me to go that far on a Bush Team conspiracy. But there is no doubt that many of that Team are happy that the Republicans' losses have caused so many in the media to suggest that Bush can now get some cooperation on his amnesty.

Graf and Hayworth have been the most talked about election losers because the extravagantly funded open borders media machine pushed their story as being the one that would explain everything about voters' opinions about immigration.

But my statistics at the top of this Alert show that one could just as easily have focused on the losses of Republicans who support McCain's amnesty.

For example, Sen. DeWine (R-OH) was defeated, a tremendous victory for our side, as he has been one of McCain's chief tools on the Senate Judiciary Committee in pushing the open borders agenda. I will not claim that his horribly anti-Ohio-worker immigration stance was the reason he lost. But the somewhat higher incidence of McCain-type Republicans losing than Tom Tancredo-type Republicans losing ought to put a stop to claims that tough immigration positions were behind the Republicans losses.

We also know that in some races, the tough immigration stance helped stave off the anti-Bush tide and allowed a Republican to win. A key example would be the Roskam (R) & Duckworth (D) race for an open seat in Illinois' 6th District. The two traded aggressive charges on each other over the immigration issue, with Roskam pledging immigration toughness and charging Duckworth with supporting an amnesty. That brought Sen. Obama (D-IL) into the fray, saying that both Duckworth and he oppose an amnesty but support Republican Sen. McCain's "comprehensive" legislation. But McCain's bill was defined well enough in the campaign that most voters understood that it would give permanent residence to some 12 million illegal aliens.

Republican Roskam's immigration toughness approach won.

Democrat Duckworth's McCain amnesty approach lost.

Yet, the Washington Post analysis on immigration in the election states that the get-tough approach failed virtually everywhere.


ARE THE NEW DEMOCRATS REALLY CONSERVATIVES WHO WILL VOTE OUR IMMIGRATION-REDUCTION AGENDA?


There was a lot of press before the election and TV commentary the night of the returns suggesting that many of the Democrats who beat Republicans were really pretty conservative and not that different from the Republicans they are replacing.

Then there was a rush of commentary since the election that the new Democrats in Congress may be pro-guns and anti-gay-marriage but that they are really typical economic liberals.

I still owe you a more detailed look at the new Democratic Members of Congress. But my assessment thus far is that most of these three dozen have indeed taken some conservative positions on hot-button social issues and more liberal positions on helping the working classes. But they aren't so much liberal or conservative as they are populist.

If they have some strong populist streaks, we've got a good shot at helping them truly help the working classes on immigration.

Liberal politics' most venerable magazine, The Nation, seems to have confirmed my optimism with an editorial this week that started with the paradox of Hayworth and Graf's defeats and the passage of the statewide anti-illegal alien referenda and then stated:

"It seems voters rejected anti-immigrant vitriol when it spewed from the mouths of candidates, but when that same rhetoric came in the faceless form of citizen's initiatives that mixed fiscal austerity with xenophobia -- voters swallowed the bait. Why should your tax dollars go to services for illegal immigrants? This was the message that anti-immigrant forces took to Arizonans. It was classic Lou Dobbs, class vs. race, and it worked.

"The apparent appeal of this message is what makes me nervous about the rising blue tide of economic populism in the Democratic Party. Raising the minimum wage and beating back the worst of free-market capitalism are all good things, of course. But Democrats have a long history of pandering to white, working-class 'Reagan Democrats' while cutting and running on racial minorities. Most recently, a raft of Democrats voted to build a fence along the US-Mexico border, including Prez. hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It was a do-nothing, symbolic vote, but it doesn't bode well for what will happen next on the "common ground" Bush and Dems hope to find on immigration issues.

"As Roberto Lovato points out, 'The crop of House and Senate members-elect includes many Democrats whose positions on immigration hardly differ from the border first Republicans they ousted.' "

I wish I could be quite so optimistic, but I think the three dozen new Democrats are closer to Graf's and Hayworth's immigration positions than they are to the presumed new Speaker of the House Pelosi's.

It will be up to all of our activism whether they end up voting on their constituents (and our) behalf or on Pelosi's (and The Nation's).

And I have hope that most of these new Democrats will join up with genuine Democratic populists who already are championing our cause -- Sen. Dorgan (D-ND), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Sen. Byrd (D-WV), Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-TN), as examples.

It is possible that a revved up core of Democratic populists could become what The Nation fears most and avoid racial polarization in favor of helping Americans of all ethnicities who are economically harmed by massive foreign labor flows. And if that happens, these Democrats could actually improve the "political soul" of the Republicans who are solidly on the side of immigration reduction.

It is around this kind of populist morality that we may see a middle-ground meeting of Republicans and Democrats that will show the true bi-partisanship that the media so desperately seems to covet.

It is also possible that the much larger role of Democrats in the still-Republican dominated immigration-reduction coalition will cause the media and many others to stop thinking of our immigration problems and solutions in terms of "conservative" or "liberal," much broadening the appeal of the solutions as being also "mainstream."

In my time on Capitol Hill after the elections, I got strong assurance from people who work regularly with the Blue Dog Democrat Coalition (most of whom vote with us on immigration) that most of the New Democrats should be inclined to join the Blue Dogs -- and that we will fail to get most of the new votes only if we fail to increase our level of activism.


A WORD ABOUT WHAT THE HOUSE REPUBLICANS
FAILED TO DO RIGHT


The media are having a great time wagging their fingers at House Republicans and saying they were fools to think that standing tough against Bush's amnesty would save their majority.

They say that the House Republicans tried to sell the voters a fence when what the voters wanted was "comprehensive" answers to our immigration crisis.

That assessment is both wrong and right.

In fact, the House Republicans (with nearly 40 Democrats) last December passed "comprehensive" legislation (H.R. 4437) that dealt (a) with the border, (b) with workplace enforcement, (c) with interior enforcement, (d) with what to do with the illegal aliens already here (arrest somewhat more of them but mainly make life worse for them to cause them to go home on their own -- ATTRITION THROUGH ENFORCEMENT) and to (e)deal with the labor needs of this country by beginning to REDUCE the annual number of new legal immigrants.

But when the Senate (primarily Democrats, plus McCain and his minority GOP team) and the President indicated they would not budge in September, House Republican leaders timidly forced through only the fence and a couple of other technicalities.

Those of us representing NumbersUSA (and you) on Capitol Hill met in late August and early September with top GOP leadership offices. We warned them that voters would not give Republicans credit -- and would not really trust their sincerity -- if they did not try to force through a substantial part of the workplace enforcement they had passed last December in the comprehensive bill.

We told them that the fence alone would likely not get them any political mileage -- just as the fence alone will not likely do much to deter illegal immigration (especially if we don't have mandatory workplace verification).

And then, Republican national leaders who assembled ads to try to help Republican candidates on the basis of their toughness on immigration tended to miss the powerful populist, pro-worker message.


OPTIMISM FOR IMMIGRATION REDUCTION FROM A DEMOCRAT


Joe Guzzardi ran as a Democrat for Governor of California during the recall election a few years ago. He teaches English to immigrants and writes columns in newspapers and on the internet. You can read his entire column at: http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/061110_chide.htm

Here are a few excerpts:

To all my Republican immigration reform friends and colleagues, I have two words for you—“Chill out!”

During our movement’s moment of greatest triumph—the complete electoral humiliation of President George W. Bush, we should be basking in our glory at our collective victory.

Instead, most of you are wringing your hands and speculating on a worst-case scenario that would include amnesty for illegal aliens and various guest worker programs that will add greatly to the legal immigrant population.

But amnesty ain’t happening today, tomorrow or anytime soon.

Here’s why.

If we mount our typical fierce counter-insurgent assault on Congressional sensibilities by focusing on proving that amnesty would reduce to almost zero most incumbent’s Congressional 2008 re-election chances and therefore (in the broader picture) on retaining Democratic House control, we can cut the traitors off at the pass.

The election was not so much a triumph for the Democrats—remember, I am one—as it was a mandate for responsible, responsive government.

And if the Democrats should decide to ram through an amnesty in either the waning days 109th Congress or anytime during the 110th, they will rue the day.

If Bush bucks GOP sentiment by double-dealing with Pelosi, he can write off Republican support for prospective legislation during his remaining two years.

And if you are fretting about what might happen when the new Congress takes office in January 2007, consider that these Democratic representatives are only just months off the campaign trail—where they got an earful about amnesty—but within a few months of embarking on their re-election tour where voters will be harshly assessing their progress in the illegal immigration wars.

Do you really think that these new Congressmen—many of whom will face their same 2006 opponents—are going to vote for amnesty? Can you think of any surer way to lose in 2008?


FROM A CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE:
OPTIMISM FOR IMMIGRATION REDUCTION


I've quote from the liberal magazine The Nation, the following came from National Review, written by Mark Krikiorian, the head of the Center for Immigration Studies. You can read all of it at: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Zj ... EwMDViM2Q=

Here are some excerpts that I think will add to your understanding of our political situation and hopefully encourage you to be of good cheer and of great engagement in the fight:

Before election night was even over, White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Democratic takeover of the House presented “interesting opportunities,” including a chance to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” — i.e., the president’s plan for an illegal-alien amnesty and enormous increases in legal immigration, which failed only because of House Republican opposition.

At his press conference Wednesday, the president repeated this sentiment ...

Tamar Jacoby, the tireless amnesty supporter at the otherwise conservative Manhattan Institute, in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs eagerly anticipated a Republican defeat ...

In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria shares Jacoby’s cluelessness about Flyover Land: “The great obstacle to immigration reform has been a noisy minority. … Come Tuesday, the party will be over. CNN’s Lou Dobbs and his angry band of xenophobes will continue to rail, but a new Congress, with fewer Republicans and no impending primary elections, would make the climate much less vulnerable to the tyranny of the minority.”

And fellow immigration enthusiast Fred Barnes earlier this week blamed the coming Republican defeat in part on the failure to pass an amnesty and increase legal immigration: “But imagine if Republicans had agreed on a compromise and enacted a ‘comprehensive’ — Mr. Bush’s word — immigration bill, dealing with both legal and illegal immigrants. They’d be justifiably basking in their accomplishment. The American public, except for nativist diehards, would be thrilled.”

“Emerging consensus”? “Nativist diehards”? Jacoby and her fellow-travelers seem to actually believe the results from her hilariously skewed polling questions, and those of the mainstream media, all larded with pro-amnesty codewords like “comprehensive reform” and “earned legalization,” and offering respondents the false choice of mass deportations or amnesty.

More responsible polling employing neutral language (avoiding accurate but potentially provocative terminology like “amnesty” and “illegal alien”) finds something very different. In a recent national survey by Kellyanne Conway, when told the level of immigration, 68 percent of likely voters said it was too high and only 2 percent said it was too low. Also, when offered the full range of choices of what to do about the existing illegal population, voters rejected both the extremes of legalization (“amnesty” to you and me) and mass deportations; instead, they preferred the approach of this year’s House bill, which sought attrition of the illegal population through consistent immigration law enforcement. Finally, three fourths of likely voters agreed that we have an illegal immigration problem because past enforcement efforts have been “grossly inadequate,” as opposed to the open-borders crowd’s contention that illegal immigration is caused by overly restrictive immigration rules.

...

What’s more, if legalizing illegals is so widely supported by the electorate, how come no Democrats campaigned on it? Not all were as tough as Brad Ellsworth, the Indiana sheriff who defeated House Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Hostettler, or John Spratt of South Carolina, whose immigration web pages might as well have been written by Tom Tancredo. But even those nominally committed to “comprehensive” reform stressed enforcement as job one. And the national party’s “Six for 06” rip-off of the Contract with America said not a word about immigration reform, “comprehensive” or otherwise.

The only exception to this “Whatever you do, don’t mention the amnesty” approach appears to have been Jim Pederson, the Democrat who challenged Sen. Jon Kyl (a grade of B) by touting a Bush-McCain-Kennedy-style amnesty and foreign-worker program and even praised the 1986 amnesty, which pretty much everyone now agrees was a catastrophe.

Pederson lost.

Speaker Pelosi has a single mission for the next two years — to get her majority reelected in 2008. She may be a loony leftist (F- on immigration), but she and Rahm Emanuel (F) seem to be serious about trying to create a bigger tent in order to keep power, and adopting the Bush-McCain-Kennedy amnesty would torpedo those efforts. Sure, it’s likely that they’ll try to move piecemeal amnesties like the DREAM Act (HR 5131 in the current Congress), or increase H-1B visas (the indentured-servitude program for low-wage Indian computer programmers). They might also push the AgJobs bill, which is a sizable amnesty limited to illegal-alien farmworkers. None of these measures is a good idea, and Republicans might still be able to delay or kill them, but they aren’t the “comprehensive” disaster the president and the Democrats really want.

Any mass-amnesty and worker-importation scheme would take a while to get started, and its effects would begin showing up in the newspapers and in people’s workplaces right about the time the next election season gets under way. And despite the sophistries of open-borders lobbyists, Nancy Pelosi knows perfectly well that this would be bad news for those who supported it.


SOME FINAL THOUGHTS ON VETERANS DAY


Regardless of your position on the conduct of the war, its rationale or what should happen next, I hope most of you will allow me a few personal comments about all of our (mostly young) men and women who are in uniform today -- and about all the living Veterans who have served during times of danger in the past.

This is not Memorial Day (which honors those who died in service) but Veterans Day, in which we honor ALL Americans living and dead who have donned the uniform and served.

They have answered the call of their elected government to serve their country, many of them to risk giving their lives in service of their country (our national community). I know that those in uniform today have volunteered for this. That does not minimize for me the risk they are taking as part of this assignment. I may or may not agree with the assignment they have been given. It is our job as citizens to influence the assignment. But those in uniform can only accept the assignment. They do it for all of us. And, I think, they deserve our reverence.

In my extended family of siblings, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins and even double-half-second-cousins-once-removed-descending, we have had a really fascinating time of late as we jointly have delved into our family's piece of the World War II history. I have been serializing diaries and letters of my father and other family members. After each day's entry is sent to the far-flung email list, three generations of family email back commentary, questions and things they have found on the internet to illuminate items mentioned in the diary entries from more than 60 years ago. We deal with just small pieces each day, the better to consider and appreciate what these Veterans experienced.

I think Veterans Day was my father's favorite. From his release after WWII through the last holiday of his life two years ago, he always made sure the flags were up on the Webster County (MO) courthouse square, articles were in the Marshfield Mail and that there were assemblies at the schools that made sure nobody could forget this particular part of citizenship.

Neither Dad nor myself ever believed that serving in the military was the only or the most important way a person could perform civic duty to his/her national community. But the potential risks and hardship are so great that it is only right to set aside one day to honor this type of service.

Sometimes it can seem a little self-serving for a Veteran to promote respect for Veterans. My father was part of MacArthur's Occupation of Japan but did not see combat. Neither did I. Perhaps that gives people like us a little more room to promote "our own kind." And that would be a pretty diverse lot. Dad joined up enthusiastically. I was drafted and dragged into the enterprise kicking and screaming.

Here's a salute to all of you who answered the call in one way or the other. (I would be pleased to see short reflections on your military service and the immigration issue.)

-- ROY BECK
(U.S. Army, 1970-72)