Thread: An Unlikely Hero in the Illegal Immigrant Wars

From the NYTimes.com...


A Battle Against Illegal Workers, With an Unlikely Driving Force



By TIMOTHY EGAN
Published: May 30, 2005

CALDWELL, Idaho - To hear people who call into Idaho's leading conservative talk radio station, Robert Vasquez is a hero: one of the few politicians to tell it straight.

Mr. Vasquez, 55, a Republican county commissioner and Mexican-American in a region where Latinos are ascendant, has been on a crusade against illegal immigration, what he calls "an imminent invasion" from south of the border.

Mr. Vasquez has tried to have Canyon County declared a disaster area because of the strain from illegal immigrants. He has also sent a bill to the Mexican government for more than $2 million; that is the cost, he said, of Mexicans who are in the county illegally.

Mr. Vasquez says the newcomers overwhelm public services, bring gang violence and drugs, spread diseases like tuberculosis and insist on rights that should not be granted to noncitizens.

His latest salvo, a plan to sue employers who hire illegal immigrants, has angered the solidly Republican business community and many of the senior political leaders in this heavily Republican state. The plan would make Canyon County the only local government in the country to use federal racketeering statutes against people who employ illegal immigrants, said Howard Foster, a Chicago lawyer advising the county.

As a result, Mr. Vasquez has forced a sharp fight on an issue that poses difficulties for Republicans, pitting people and business owners who rely on illegal immigrants for labor against people who see them as a threat to jobs and security.

The struggle here is contained to Canyon County, west of Boise with a population of 151,000. But it is part of a broader clash taking place across the country in the Republican Party; President Bush is pushing a guest worker program for illegal immigrants, while other Republicans are supporting private efforts to patrol the border and calling for additional muscle to seal it off.

Mr. Vasquez says it is a fight the party needs to have. "Some people say I'm a racist, that I'm a traitor to my heritage," he said. "There is nothing racial about this. The only color involved is green - for money."

Such talk has brought many people to the commissioner's side. "We talk a lot about Mr. Vasquez on the air, and most of our listeners are on his side," said Paul Schneider, a morning host of KBOI News Talk, Idaho's leading talk radio station. "But he's a real thorn in the side of the mainstream business Republicans."

With both parties trying to court Hispanic voters, politicians who have jumped into the immigration debate, like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, have found the issue to be perilous. Mr. Schwarzenegger was criticized by many Latinos after he praised a group of citizens patrolling the border.

Many farmers and construction contractors here say they could not survive without the pool of workers from Mexico. They have lined up behind a proposal by the state's senior senator, Larry E. Craig, a Republican, to allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country under certain conditions, a variation of a similar plan offered by President Bush.

While promoting his bill this year, Mr. Craig said that 72 percent to 78 percent of the agricultural work force was here illegally and that without these workers "we could literally collapse American agriculture."

Farmers and contractors also accuse Mr. Vasquez of painting an overly harsh picture of Mexican workers.

"If he wasn't a Mexican-American himself, he would be labeled a racist and no one would listen to him," said Keith Esplin, executive director of the Potato Growers of Idaho. "He's attacking good people, good workers. You've got to have that population, because they're doing the jobs that no one else wants."

In response, Mr. Vasquez says the wing of the Republican Party represented by Mr. Craig has sold out on the immigration issue to business interests. Mr. Vasquez is exploring a run for governor or Congress next year, with this issue as his central theme.

Whether Mr. Vasquez can make headway in a statewide election is an open question. Many of the agricultural interests are big Republican donors, and Mr. Vasquez said he was likely to have trouble raising money from them. He is also likely to face stiff resistance from the Latino community, which is small but fast growing.



Scarecrow says: Mr. Vasquez deserves a senate seat. Perhaps the buffoons in Washington would listen to an Hispanic with some brains and some guts, but I doubt it.

Right on, Scarecrow! These illegals are bringing down EVERYBODY'S standard of living so I don't understand why the NY Times calls this man "Unlikely"--typical media racism. After all ALL AMERICAN HISPANICS SUPPORT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION!!

Many Chicanos, like myself, are waiting in the wings to support politicians like Vasquez.

Somehow we need to make it popular and easier for Mexican Americans (Chicanos) like him to mount more visible public pressure to counter the pro-illegal factions within the Latino ( Hispanic or Chicano) communities.

As he and others have pointed out, it is NOT a matter of race but of greed and our addiction to cheap labor that is producing weighty problems (crime, health, blight, wages, housing, pollution, etc) for everyone ... especially the lower classes who can't compete with illegals.

YA BASTA!

Right Patriotchicano! I get so tired of PC racism. It is RAMPANT in the media. Could you imagine anyone at the NY Times saying "white people think this way" or "that way?" No--they wouldn't dream of it. As if Michael Moore and George Bush both think the same things becuase they are both white!! So why do these media clowns assume all hispanics hold the same views? This is RACISM. You'd think in the year 2005 we'd be beyond this crap

Give him a call and say thanks.


Robert Vasquez
Commissioners Office
208-454-7507