Art credit: libertymusings.com
Two participants in
a panel on immigration at CPAC today expressed confidence in their closing
statements that Hispanic immigrants will be a source of future votes
for the Republican party. “Latino voters are the Reagan Democrats of today,”
said Alfonso Aguilar, the executive director of the Latino Partnership for
Conservative Principles. “I believe that the majority of them can actually be
members of CPAC in the future,” concurred the Reverend
Luis Cortés Jr.
The panel was
supposed to answer the question: “Can there be meaningful immigration reform
without citizenship?”
Derrick Morgan,
vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, was the only one
of four panelists to basically reject the premise of the question, saying that
he wasn’t the best person to say whether legalization should include a path to
citizenship since he didn’t think that Republicans should be pursuing a policy
of comprehensive immigration reform at all right now: “I respectfully disagree
with the policy of legalization with or without citizenship,” he said, instead
favoring a piecemeal approach, beginning with enforcement. He noted that the
current laws are not being enforced so “why would you trust this current
administration” to implement a deal?
Aguilar vehemently
disagreed: “Conservatives need to address immigration, and they need to do it
now,” he said, adding that “our conservative base wants us to lead and
legislate” on the issue. Alfonso said that in addition to immigrants
doing the “jobs that Americans don’t want,” immigration “creates good-paying
jobs for working-class Americans.”
Eagle
Forum president and conservative author Phyllis Schlafly condemned GOP
leadership efforts to compromise with Democrats on immigration, telling her
audience that Republicans are “fools” to back any kind of deal that includes
citizenship for illegal immigrants.
“Republicans
are fools to to support any kind of amnesty, or to import foreigners who will
support big government and big spending,” she said during a blunt speech at The
National Security Action in Washington, D.C. “Why is anyone surprised that
three fourths of Hispanics and Asians voted for Obama during the 2012 election?
… Sixty-nine percent of immigrants support Obamacare.”
Schlafly cited
a battery of polls that drew stark contrasts between Americans and naturalized
immigrants — which didn’t include recent legal or illegal immigrants. While 67
percent of native-born Americans cited the Constitution as a higher legal
authority than international law, only one third of naturalized citizens
believed the same, a Harris poll found.
“They’re
not for amnesty,” she said. “They’re for the goody handouts of Democratic
party… [A]mnesty is suicide for the conservative movement and the Republican
party.”
Efforts
to grant millions of illegal immigrants citizenship will dilute the pool of
labor and drive down wages, hurting recent immigrants and Americans alike,
Schlafly said.
“Bringing in
more cheap labor is a direct attack on the people they’re amnestying and
bringing in,” she said. “Amnesty is a complete betrayal of the people we let in
the last few years.”
But
Schlafly saved her most scathing remarks for Republican supporters of
immigration reform: “Everything they’re saying is just a complete lie.”
Requiring
illegals to repay back taxes is “the laugh of the day — a complete farce.”
“Of
course the aliens will never learn English before they get amnesty,” while
their background checks will be as thorough “as the Boston bombers,’” she added
heatedly.
“The
immigration bill is a disaster for unemployed, a disaster for people with low
wages,” she said. “It’s a disaster that the people coming in will not vote the
way we want them to vote, to cut overspending.”
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