Henry Cisneros, who was Secretary of HUD under President Clinton, (and was pardoned by him)thinks the GOP should be “careful.”

Cisneros: GOP stand on immigration risky
Democrats could benefit from Hispanic voters’ anger, he says
Dallas Morning News

November 13, 2007

By ROBERT T. GARRETT

AUSTIN – While many GOP presidential hopefuls are quick to deplore illegal immigration, they should be careful, former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros warned Monday.

They risk driving Hispanic voters into Democrats’ arms for years to come, he said.

Mr. Cisneros, in an interview before he spoke to the Hispanic Scholarship Consortium in Austin, said that though the Republicans use immigration to fire up their base, they may wind up deeply angering Hispanics.

“Those who have simply focused on security at the border and not on the other humane aspects” of the immigration issue offend Hispanics, he said.

Of course, Hispanic voters generally vote Democrat already, and it’s hard to imagine that his “advice” is sincerely meant. If it were, it was given in the wrong place, I don’t imagine he’ll find too many Young Republicans among the Hispanic Scholars.

The Royce Carlton speakers bureau calls Cisneros “A living testament to American diversity and leadership, “ but Allan Wall called him part of the American Treason Lobby. Allan Wall wrote on VDARE.com this description of a “Binacional“ meeting that took place in Mexico City in 2004:

[T]he podium was turned over to American Citizen Henry Cisneros, 4-time mayor of San Antonio, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary, and former president of Univision, U.S.

Cisneros is also an unabashed booster of what he has called "the Hispanization of America—It’s already happening and it is inescapable."

Cisneros’ discourse was entitled "El Futuro de las Relaciones entre México y la Comunidad Mexicano-Americana" [The Future of Relations Between Mexico and The Mexican-American Community].

Cisneros spoke of the 25 million people in the U.S. "with Mexican blood", and he attacked "laws that separate and destroy families" by which he means U.S. immigration law.

Cisneros says new laws are needed to protect Mexicans.

Once again, we have a U.S. citizen in Mexico, speaking as a de facto agent of the Mexican government.

If Cisneros were a citizen of a nation whose leaders valued its sovereignty, he might be in real trouble.

Cisneros boasted: "Somos la realidad de un nuevo mestizaje en Estados Unidos; donde somos el grupo minoritario más grande y el que crece más rápido…" [We are the reality of a new mestizaje in the United States, where we are the largest minority group and the fastest-growing one].

He went on to gloat over the Hispanic birth rate being higher than that of whites, blacks or Asians.

And, of course, he bragged to the assembled about the "hispanización de Estados Unidos."

[Dificil llegar a un acuerdo migratorio Mexico-EU : Henry Cisneros April 28th, 2004]

That may be George Bush’s idea of a Republican Strategist, but it isn’t mine.

From NewsBusters:

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: The polls are showing your husband is trailing Hillary by 46% to 37% in the African-American community. What’s going on here?

MICHELLE OBAMA: First of all, I think that that’s not going to hold. I’m completely confident: black America will wake up, and get [it]. But what we’re dealing with in the black community is just the natural fear of possibility. You know, when I look at my life, the stuff that we’re seeing in these polls has played out my whole life. You know, always been told by somebody that I’m not ready, that I can’t do something, my scores weren’t high enough. You know, there’s always that doubt in the back of the minds of people of color. People who’ve been oppressed and haven’t been given real opportunities. That you never really believe. That you believe that somehow, someone is better than you. You know, deep down inside, you doubt whether you can do it, because that’s all you’ve been told, is “no, wait.” That’s all you hear, and you hear it from people who love you. Not because they don’t care about you, but because they’re afraid. They’re afraid that something might happen.

BRZEZINSKI: It’s interesting that you say that, excuse me. Because a stewardess yesterday, a 52-year old African-American, and I asked her if she was interested in Barack Obama, if she would vote for him. And she said, like this, she said: “I don’t think so, because he probably can’t win, because he’s black.”

OBAMA: That’s right. That’s the psyschology that’s going on in our heads, in our souls, and I understand it. I know where it comes from, and I think that it’s one of the horrible legacies of racism and discrimination and oppression.

Now, how hard would it have been for Mrs. Obama to say something like, “This race isn’t about race. Mrs. Clinton’s the front-runner and my husband’s the underdog. Everybody knows that. But I believe that as voters start paying more attention to the issues, my husband will be moving up in the polls among all Democrats”?

But, maybe it really is all about race with Mrs. Obama and with Sen. Obama’s spiritual adviser for the last two decades, the Rev. Jeremiah T. Wright. And it certainly was all about race with Obama himself when he wrote his autobiography in 1995, which he aptly subtitled A Story of Race and Inheritance because there’s nothing in his memoir about anything else.

I hope he started to get over it when he was humiliatingly rejected by black voters in 2000 and did some soul searching for the year afterwards. I hope that he learned just to be himself (the preppie from paradise) rather than constantly obsessing over whether he was black enough as he did throughout his autobiography. But nobody has had the courage to ask him about it.

Sen. Grassley and the Wall Street Journal had an interesting debate earlier this month. The imbroglio erupted soon after Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) tried to amend the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill with a $3,500 visa fee increase for H-1B visas. [Senate Bill Could Triple H-1B Visa Fees Paid By Employers October 24, 2007 ]The Wall Street Journal strongly criticized the two senators, and even went as far as calling them “liberal protectionists.”[The Grassley Visa Tax, WSJ, November 2, 2007;]

Grassley didn’t take the WSJ attack lying down. He fired back at the WSJ with a letter to the editor six days later. In it, he said that the WSJ’s cavalier attitude was a “smack in the face to the American worker.” Grassley’s letter was quite unprecedented and it was quite a shock that the WSJ published it. [Investing in America, Making Things Worse, WSJ, November 8, 2007]

The $3,500 fee was to be used to fund a scholarship program for U.S. students pursuing tech and science-related degrees. However well intentioned, the senators were trying to solve a problem that never existed in the first place. The two senators are stuck in the paradigm that there is a shortage of science and technology students when we are actually producing more graduates than the market is creating jobs. Having said that, I still enjoyed seeing the amendment because it stuck a finger in the eyes of the cheap labor lobby. A fee of $3,500 is nothing compared to the wages employers save by hiring H-1Bs, but that didn’t stop the corporate shills at the WSJ from screaming bloody murder. They would probably complain if the visa fee was raised by one cent.

This story could have been an epic confrontation but instead had an anti-climatic ending. Soon after Grassley’s op-ed was published the Senate axed the amendment,[Congress Axes Amendment To Triple H-1B Visa Fees , Informationweek.com, November 7, 2007 ] and the controversy died It’s Business as usual in the Journal and in the Senate!

If the WSJ subscriber links don’t work for you, check out my newsletter archive, here.

Laura Carlsen writes at Americas Program, Center for International Policy:

The concentration of power and wealth has led to Mexico’s status as one of the most unequal nations on earth. NAFTA is not working for Mexicans—not as a development model, or even an economic model that can be sustained into the near future.

To enter into an agreement that failed to take into account the needs of vulnerable sectors of the Mexican economy and then wash our hands of the consequences is not only unfair, it entails consequences for the United States as well. Uncontrollable immigration is one of them. Although immigration is an integral component of globalization, it violates human rights when people no longer have the option of staying home and are deemed criminals in the receiving country.
…..
Much of the U.S. debate on immigration has reflected a stinging backlash against Mexicans that deepens animosity and conflict. But common problems and shared responsibilities require working together and seeing the whole picture—not as an “us-against-them” scenario but as a complex and highly integrated region of persons with equal rights and similar aspirations. [NAFTA, Inequality and Immigration, November 6, 2007]

Every transfer of a green card is the granting of something with an economic value of $225,000 or more. If such grants are not accompanied by benefits to the existing US citizenry–or motivated by a clear moral mandate they share, such grants will be perceived and treated as theft and crime.

I agree NAFTA has been largely bad for Mexico’s poor. I also would suggest NAFTA and the resulting immigration have been bad for America’s poor-and economic inequality has also been growing in the US. We need to look at a range of solutions that solve problems in both countries.

Saying that illegal immigrants have no option to stay in Mexico is a bit hyperbolic. Mexico is an average country compared to the rest of the world. Most Mexicans never come to the US or attempt to do so. Where I think illegal immigration is politically important is that it has provided a way for Mexican elites to get their most ambitious and least content citizens out of their country–and force a wealthier neighbor to deal with them. We have a lot of armchair leftists in the US–but Mexico has a real and recent history of revolutions. If Mexican elites didn’t have the “safety valve” of illegal immigration, they would be facing serious problems at home–and frankly they largely have themselves to blame.

We need solutions here that contain economic inequality in both the US and Mexico–and for the US that means containing immigration has to be part of the package. I also think this will also be much easier if we create a rapidly expanding, technically competitive economy in the US. If we can get that, I sincerely hope we in the US can be cooperative with a Mexican government or political movements that are aspiring for something compatible.

Well, there’s leadership for you. On September 9th, the Democrats held a bilingual Panderfest hosted by Univision. Now, nearly all the Republican candidates have cravenly agreed to do the same.

Yes, that’s right, according to the Miami Herald and Washington Times, 7 candidates–Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul have agreed to further balkanize our country by pandering to Univision, on December 9th.

Shame on all 7 of them.

Tom Tancredo, however, refuses to participate. Good for Tom. At least one candidate understands what’s going on.