Republicans On Immigration

Tonight the Republican presidential candidates are going to be arguing over immigration in a debate sponsored by Univision.

Republican presidential candidates will try to woo one of their most disenchanted voting blocs Sunday in a debate that will be translated simultaneously into the language of persuasion: Spanish.

Broadcast live from the University of Miami by the Univision network, the debate marks the first time the Republican field will participate in a televised forum directed at a Spanish-speaking audience.

It will be interesting to see how the candidates walk their way through the long and winding minefield. At the same time, they will have to acknowledge the increasingly unforgiving mood of the general public towards illegal immigration, the apparent divergence between non-Hispanics and Hispanics on this issue, and the fact that (for most candidates) their current positions on illegal immigration seem at odds with positions taken just a few months ago.

This debate may be almost as fun to watch as the Patriots-Steelers game that precedes it.

Comments

[MDT]

This says it all without watching another debate-

http://www.betterimmigration.com/candidates/2006/prez08_gop1.html

[Peter Schaeffer]

The Center for Immigration Studies published detailed polling data on the Senate immigration bill of 2006. The data is broken down by sex, race, and religion. Looking at the data the Hispanic community divided evenly (roughly) over immigration. The rest of the country is not. Born-again Protestants are consistently the most restrictionist group.

The data can be found at “New Poll: Americans Prefer House
Approach on Immigration” (http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/2006poll.html)

[Peter Schaeffer]

Professor Borjas,

In a prior post, you decried the fierce indoctrination and climate of intolerance you found in Cuba’s schools as a child. You mentioned, that in Florida “the entire school day was instead spent talking about the upcoming football game”. I note your comment

“This debate may be almost as fun to watch as the Patriots-Steelers game that precedes it.”

Perhaps our version is just more subtle?

[Coyote99]

What was the purpose of having this debate telecast in Spanish? If the targeted debate audience was U.S. Hispanic citizens, why telecast in Spanish? After all, to become a U.S. citizen, the foreign applicant must demonstrate English proficiency. And as the MSM is always telling us, Hispanic immigrants WANT to assimilate and become good Americans, right? So why are we broadcasting to them in Spanish? Only U.S. citizens are (legally) eligible to vote in U.S. presidential elections, so surely this broadcast was not aimed at any Hispanic population living illegally in the U.S. or planning to vote illegally in our elections, right?

So what's next? Are there going to be presidential debates aimed at Chinese-Americans telecast in Mandarin? Or debates targeted at Arab-Americans telecast in Arabic? Hard to imagine, isn't it? But we seem to have a very different standard when it comes to Hispanics.

I'm beginning to think Tom Tancredo had the right idea when he boycotted the Spanish-language debate. There simply is no justification for it.

[MDT]

Enjoy this one
http://teamtancredo.typepad.com/team_tancredo/2007/12/new-tancredo-we.html#comments