The border mess of 50,000
children and families escaping violence in Central America is a matter of
shame. Clear and simple: they should be treated as refugees as the
current law requires,, whether they have been trafficked by Coyotes or
motivated to flee to the US by misinformation and lack of understanding of our
laws.
Shame on GOP politicians
pandering to their anti immigrant constituents to take advantage of a crisis to bolster their
core support instead of offering their own plans to solve a problem , all the
while blocking any constructive solutions.
It is shameful that young children
are spit at by hate faced demonstrators waiving American flags. That sets
a terrible example to the rest of the world
of how to deal with their own ethnic and religious conflicts and refugee crises.
75% of Colorado’s 480 thousand registered Latinos that voted for Pres. Obama in 2012 and, 70%
nationwide, swung key states blue. (source: a Pew poll October 1 2012) They understood that the real culprit is the
GOP and a Republican dominated House of Representatives which has refused to pass any proposed comprehensive legislation that would have
funded more border patrols and border security in return for a plan to deal
with the 11 million undocumented already in our country.
Should the President visit
the border? Did he just commit a Bush Katrina error? Maybe. The GOP is making
much of his non visit, but it is a diversion tactic from their own lack of
action or sympathy with the plight of the child refugees. Action, though, is
more important than photo ops and the GOP as usual is stonewalling action once
again.
Those few Hispanics and Democrats
who are criticizing the President for not doing more or too much should
be careful not to promote a plague on
both houses mentality resulting in many sitting out elections. Election of more anti immigrant GOP members to
Congress or the election of a Republican president would just put comprehensive
immigration on ice for years or even result
in more harmful measures.
Now the GOP is concocting reasons
to oppose the President’s proposal of $3.7 billion to address the crisis
by quibbling over money, dragging their
feet while decrying an immediate crisis ,
or advocating putting refugees
on the next plane back home ,
depriving them of due process. The purpose of the President’s request:
to add more border agents to process and patrol, to provide humanitarian detention of the
influx and to launch a public campaign to educate Central American parents that
their children will not qualify for citizenship and will face deportation. Dare
Congress to vote no on this one; the
“party of do nothing, stonewall all with Obama’s name attached”,
will add to increasing evidence of the GOP’s dereliction of duty to govern.
The GOP stance on immigration
reform is a sham, if not a shame:”
secure the borders first and then we
might discuss some way to send
immigrants back from whence they
or their parents came, just so any plan does not include a path to citizenship.” Whatever is done to secure the borders could
never be sufficient because there is no definition of when enough is enough. It is much like the
old joke: “Mother, may I go swimming? Of course you may, my daughter, but do
not go near the water.”
Data source:
§ 484,000 Hispanic eligible voters in Colorado—the ninth largest Hispanic eligible voter population nationally. California ranks first with 5.9 million.
Some 14% of Colorado eligible voters are Hispanic
