Thread: Immigration fight is not best issue for governor

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-e ... rrtte.html


Whenever they're faced with increased criticism and waning public support, Republicans in California tend to play the illegal immigration card.

That's when a politician tries to shift attention away from his own struggles by focusing on a phenomenon that has plagued California since 1848, when gold was first pulled from the American River and waves of uninvited and undocumented immigrants – mainly settlers from the Midwest and East – flooded into what was then Mexican territory.

The tactic is shameful, low-grade politics. But it's also a pretty effective way to change the subject, as California Republicans have learned from experience.

Take what happened 12 years ago. In 1993, I was hosting a radio show in Los Angeles and all the callers wanted to talk about was illegal immigration.

Part of the reason was Gov. Pete Wilson, whose popularity was plummeting and who seemed headed for defeat at the hands of Democrat Kathleen Brown. But then Wilson figured out that, for all the jobs that illegal immigrants perform, there is one role they fill exceptionally well: scapegoat. He jumped on the bandwagon of the campaign to approve Proposition 187, a ballot initiative that sought to deny education and other services to illegal immigrants.

Wilson made the initiative, later struck down by a federal judge, a cornerstone of his 1994 re-election effort with insulting Willie Horton-like campaign ads that showed illegal immigrants rushing the Mexico-California border.

It worked. Wilson won and his political career was resurrected. But there was a negative side effect: a majority of Latinos in the state have voted Democratic ever since. In a state that is one-third Latino, that's an unearned blessing for Democrats and a recipe for extinction for Republicans.

Now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is whipping up a new batch of resentment. During a radio interview last week, Schwarzenegger made the mistake of praising the Arizona Minutemen. Those are the lawn-chair vigilantes who spent a few weeks monitoring a 40-mile stretch of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border and who now plan to launch similar efforts in New Mexico, Texas and California. To hear Schwarzenegger tell it, the Minutemen did a "terrific" job in reducing border crossings. And such private efforts are necessary, he said, because the federal government is "not doing their job."

Democratic Latino activists quickly branded the governor's comments as "nothing short of base racism."

I won't go that far. But, given that Schwarzenegger's job approval rating has fallen below 50 percent and that it probably wouldn't hurt him to solidify his Republican base, I do smell the familiar odor of opportunism. After all, some of the very same staffers who worked for Pete Wilson now work for Schwarzenegger.

The governor is certainly entitled to his opinion, even if he's wrong – as is the case here. Schwarzenegger is correct that securing the border is the duty of the federal government, but what he doesn't seem to understand is the idea of collective responsibility.

If illegal immigration represents a failure to secure the border, then it's a failure that belongs to all Americans. Until we take seriously the infractions of the lawbreakers on this side of the border who hire illegal immigrants, we shouldn't be surprised that people in other countries don't take seriously our immigration laws.

If ordinary Americans want to have a hand in solving this problem, then they should leave the lawn chairs in the garage and pressure their representatives in Congress to crack down on employers and shut down the job magnet that draws illegal immigrants here in the first place. They should protest outside the headquarters of companies that have a record of hiring illegal immigrants, and boycott their products. And they should pressure city councils to pass ordinances that levy stiff fines on the casual user, those motorists who pull over to the curb to hire day laborers waiting on street corners.

Granted, none of this is as sexy as storming up and down the border in fatigues and carrying night scopes and walkie-talkies. But it's bound to pay bigger returns.

Schwarzenegger could say all that and still be tough on illegal immigration. It may not go over well with the business interests that support the Republican Party. But at least it wouldn't look like this actor-turned-politician is reading from someone else's script.

Now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is whipping up a new batch of resentment. During a radio interview last week, Schwarzenegger made the mistake of praising the Arizona Minutemen. Those are the lawn-chair vigilantes who spent a few weeks monitoring a 40-mile stretch of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border and who now plan to launch similar efforts in New Mexico, Texas and California. To hear Schwarzenegger tell it, the Minutemen did a "terrific" job in reducing border crossings. And such private efforts are necessary, he said, because the federal government is "not doing their job."


Truer words were never spoken.

It's more than 33% Latino here by far;closer to the other way around.This is a population that literally grows by the hour that we're talking about.