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Old 06-29-2007, 10:28 AM
DVaut1 DVaut1 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Ann Arbor, MI
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Default Re: Senate blocks immigration bill

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Maybe so, but what about the notion of BOTH parties representing the will of the people (as they're generally supposed to, being, after all, representatives of the people)? I think most Republicans and Democrats (regular citizens, not Congressmen) favor enforcement of existing immigration laws and tougher controls on immigration.
If both parties' representatives would take a stance of representing the majority wishes of the American people, neither party would suffer relatively to the other party on the issue.

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Well, I don't agree with the notion that a "majority of the people" want tougher controls on immigration. If they did, I'm sure both parties would vote for tougher immigrations controls. But that's not what's happening, so I suspect your assumptions are wrong. Clearly, there are some people are perfectly fine with the status quo.

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I'd like to bring up an ancillary point that disturbs and puzzles me a bit, too: if either party takes a stance against illegal (or legal) immigration, the claim is that it will drive Latino immigrants away from that party. Maybe so. But immigrants are supposed to become Americans, are they not, with their primary new loyalty and allegiance being to America, is that not correct? That's what the immigration process is all about, isn't it? Yet if Latino immigrants tend to place their own ethnicity as a higher allegiance than their allegiance to America, how does that fit in with the ideal of immigration?

Further, Anglos in the USA seem to be bending over backwards to not be racist on such matters, but are Latino immigrants typically more concerned about allegiance to their own race/ethnicity than they are with allegiance to America or becoming Americans? If they are not more concerned with that, then how does the WSJ argument hold any water, that they will be driven away from a party that wants to enforce immigration laws? If on the other hand they are more concerned with allegiance to their own race/ethnicity than with allegiance to America, then the WSJ argument is totally correct, and they will indeed be driven away from the party that is not pro-immigration.

Does becoming an American no longer means having one's primary allegiance switch to America? I'm not saying that is true of most new Latino immigrants (legal or illegal), rather, I'm asking. If it is true, then the WSJ argument succeeds strongly. If it is false, then the WSJ argument suffers from some holes.

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That was quite a long false dichotomy. Respecting your ethnicity != disloyalty to the US. So your "question" is flawed on its face.

Do Saint Patrick's Day parades with Irish flags flying high imply some kind of treachery too, or is it only when brown people feel defensive about to their ancestors and their history that it becomes traitorous?

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Please everybody think this through a while before responding, and please try to respond analytically.

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Alot of your posts contain a bunch of question begging, assumed conclusions, and downright silly logic. Asking people to "think for a while" and "try to be analytical" is a bit preposterous, IMO, because it assumes you were doing the same when you asked the question to begin with. It doesn't look like that's the case.

Your assumption that Hispanic people are alienated from the GOP invariably means that they aren't showing "allegiance" to the US (instead of conceding that, as even conservatives publications like the WSJ concedes, much of the right-wing rhetoric on this issue is littered with coded and subtle racism) prompts me to be a giant [censored] to you here. But I can't quite help feeling you deserve it though, if only a little bit. The entire narrative you put forth here ("red blooded Americans want tighter immigration controls, and any brown person who disagrees is some kind of traitor") strikes me as disgusting. I realize you dress it up in fancy euphemisms like "loyalty" and "allegiance", but that's essentially the message. Saying "thank you for reading" and being generally polite after you're done making non-sensical and xenophobic rants doesn't make it any less disgusting.
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