The headline on the AP story below is wrong–rather than “Ad Targets Illegal Migrants” it should say “Ad Targets Giuliani’s Pro-Illegal Policy.”

This is what people failed to get about the Willie Horton ad–it didn’t target Horton, who was already back in prison, and who wasn’t running for President. It targeted Dukakis for letting him out.

But here’s a question from Mickey Kaus:

Buried Lede: Why is Mitt Romney attacking Giuliani on the relatively complicated issue of whether New York is a “sanctuary” city, when he could attack Giuliani straight up for proposing a McCain-like semi-amnesty that would give citizenship to illegals? Isn’t support for amnesty sort of a death sentence in the Republican presidential primary? …. 4:44 P.M.

And the answer is…I don’t know. I suspect that Romney wants to keep some amnesty options open, but maybe I’m just being suspicious.

New Romney Ad Targets Illegal Migrants

Aug 21 10:58 AM
By PHILIP ELLIOTT
Associated Press Writer

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney criticizes “sanctuary cities” for illegal immigrants—and by implication Republican rival Rudy Giuliani—in a new radio ad.

“Immigration laws don’t work if they’re ignored. That’s the problem with cities like Newark, San Francisco and New York City that adopt sanctuary policies,” an announcer says in the ad, which runs in New Hampshire and Iowa. “Sanctuary cities become magnets that encourage illegal immigration and undermine secure borders.”

Romney and Giuliani have jabbed over illegal immigration in recent weeks. The former Massachusetts governor says Giuliani promoted New York as a haven for illegal immigrants when he was mayor. Giuliani aggressively denies it, insisting he cracked down on lawlessness of every kind.

“Legal immigration is great,” Romney says in the new ad. “But illegal immigration, that we’ve got to end. And amnesty is not the way to do it.”

In so-called sanctuary cities, government employees are not required to report illegal immigrants to federal authorities. Some, such as San Francisco, have declared themselves sanctuaries or refuges. Others, like New York, have never adopted the name.

Colby Cosh notes that

more and more African politicians and educators are calling for an honest appraisal of Africa’s role in making the intercontinental slave trade possible. In some cases this has involved a strange twist on “white guilt”: i.e., contemporary Africans from poor countries apologizing for crimes against the ancestors of present-day middle-class American citizens

He quotes Sheldon Stern of the History News Network:

In 2000, at an observance attended by delegates from several European countries and the United States, officials from Benin publicized President Mathieu Kerekou’s apology for his country’s role in “selling fellow Africans by the millions to white slave traders.” “We cry for forgiveness and reconciliation,” said Luc Gnacadja, Benin’s minister of environment and housing. Cyrille Oguin, Benin’s ambassador to the United States, acknowledged, “We share in the responsibility for this terrible human tragedy.”It’s Time to Face the Whole Truth About the Atlantic Slave Trade HNN.us, By Sheldon M. Stern, August 13, 2007

While large parts of America once had slavery, it’s not essentially an American idea, it’s an African idea. It still goes on in Africa, and America is where a Civil War was fought to stop it. American slave traders bought slaves in Africa not because they either liked or disliked Africans, but because it was the only place in the world people were for sale.

Of course, they’re apologizing to other Africans here–don’t expect apologies to the United States anytime soon, although the analogy with drug pushers is pretty obvious. Also, remember, while the Atlantic Slave Trade and the horrors of the Middle Passage are what every American learns about in school, it wasn’t the only slave trade, and they weren’t the only horrors.

Long before Columbus discovered America, Africans were selling other Africans to Arab slave traders in the North of Africa, and marching them north through deserts where many of them died.

Perhaps the Beninese could apologize for that? In the meantime, while whites are apologizing all over the place for their distant ancestors’ role in African slavery, (Clinton apologized, George W. Bush apologized, the next President will probably apologize) slavery still goes on in Africa, including Benin.

Child Slave Trade in Africa Highlighted by Arrests
New York Times, 10 August, 1997

LAGOS, Nigeria — Three recent arrests have cast a spotlight on what authorities say is a growing slave trade in children in this region of West Africa.

In neighboring Benin, police said that in July they had rescued more than 100 children who were being transported to Nigeria, on their way to central Africa to be sold.

Police in Porto-Novo, Benin’s capital, said they had been alerted that three men were trying to find buses to take a group of 90 children to Lagos, Nigeria’s main port city. They said they had arrested the three men, two of them from Benin and one from Nigeria.

A few days earlier, Benin’s government-owned daily newspaper, La Nation, reported that a group of 42 children had been rescued by police in similar circumstances in another Benin city, Cotonou.

Trading in children is a common practice in both Benin and Nigeria.

In his Aug. 15 online “Change of Subject” feature, Eric Zorn [Email]asked that the federal government leave the now-deported Elvira Arellano alone because it had a whole year to boot her back to Mexico but didn’t.

Game over. She won. Move on, he wrote.

Five days later, however, Zorn just couldn’t let go of the woman who came to symbolize the arrogance and disrespect illegal aliens have for our immigration laws and sovereignty, a spineless federal government unwilling to enforce same laws, equally gutless members of Congress who care far more about remaining in office than the future of this country, and a mainstream media painfully short of the skills needed to provide balanced coverage of this issue, Change of Subject, Vote: Four key questions about Elvira Arellano’s arrest, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 20, 2007:

Should Elvira Arellano have been arrested for breaking U.S. immigration law?

Should a church building provide sanctuary from the law?

Arellano’s 8-year-old son is a U.S. citizen. Should that make a difference in how her deportation case is handled?

Regardless of your personal feelings, do you think Arellano’s case will generate so much sympathy and passion among her supporters that she’ll become the Rosa Parks of the immigrant rights movement?

Memo to Zorn: Game over. Arellano lost. Move on.

I have gotten letters from readers questioning my statements comparing the recent immigration records of Paul and Tancredo on the area of H-1b visas.

The specific Actions that were used by Americans for Better Immigration can be found here for Ron Paul. and here for Tom Tancredo.

In a nutshell, Tancredo voted for both the measures that Paul did and either voted or consponsored several measures that would have decrease guest worker visas, but also in 2005 allegedly cosponsored H.R. 3938 which was according to the ABI going to:

“increase the annual cap on employment-based visas by 120,000 to a total of 260,000. In addition, it would double from 10,000 to 20,000 the number of legal, permanent, resident visas for unskilled workers.”

Rob Sanchez had some additional criticisms of Tancredo’s record.

Sanchez’s Newsletter also had some rather sad quotes from Paul in a Lou Dobbs interview:

DOBBS: The idea that the United States, as Bill Tucker reported tonight, H1B visas being used under the rubric of bringing in bright foreign workers into this country, in point of fact, as our research has demonstrated, more than half of those for low-skilled jobs. What would be your position there?

PAUL: That I would not have as much concern about. But I think it needs monitoring. My big concern are the illegals, I’m concerned about all the enticements we give for the illegals, automatic citizenship by being born here. And then just be here for a while and you get in front of the line. Free medical care, free education. No wonder they bring their families. So I would get rid of all the benefits to the illegals and deal with that and the legal entry, then it needs more monitoring, and looking into these H1B and different categories that we have.

Now, I think both Paul and Tancredo are far more concerned about the issue of Guest worker Visas than Giuliani, Romney, McCain or Fred Thompson. I don’t think their stands are perfect, but at the same time, they are operating in a situation where there is a real lack of credible economic analysis dealing with this topic. Sadly, much of what economic literature exists has been written by folks affiliated with interests like the Fed that have stake in looser immigration policy that has nothing to do with the welfare of the average American–or for that matter Mexican.

Now are the stands of Tancredo or Paul good enough to do more than slow down damage? I doubt it. However, if Paul or Tancredo get enough votes to require a prime time speech during the Republican National Convention, that is still big news. If either of them do well enough in the early primaries and caucuses to threaten the big money candidates, that will also send a real signal and this year there is enough competition for the nomination, we just might see some of those candidates forced to at least think about immigration issues. The big money candidates have the kinds of resources to get some serious analysis done on this topic that is simply outside the reach of either Paul, Tancredo or the folks at the major immigration think tanks. What the big money candidates lack is motivation or a feeling that immigration is an important and political viable issue-and that is what Paul or Tancredo can change.