The pro-amnesty folks are crowing at the defeat of Arizona state senator Russell Pearce, a leading immigration hawk. Soros-funded America’s Voice says “The tide is beginning to turn,” while the immigration coalition set up by the Alinskyite Center for Community Change writes that “anti-immigrant legislators will now have to think twice before pursuing anti-immigrant policies in our states.”
Accuse me of whistling past the graveyard, if you like, but I don’t think so. Yes, he lost fair and square, but there was a perfect storm of factors leading to that result that just aren’t relevant elsewhere. First, the recall vote was an open election, meaning there was no primary, so it featured two Republicans running against each other in a race that Democrats could vote in. Which is why the SEIU pulled out all the stops to get out the vote for Pearce’s opponent, Jerry Lewis.
Also, it seems certain that the Mormon church basically put out a political contract on Pearce. The church has embraced amnesty and open borders in an aggressively political fashion and having a Mormon be such a high-profile hawk was something they weren’t going to tolerate, especially in a heavily Mormon district where they could find another Mormon Republican who adhered to the official church position.
What’s more, Pearce supporters engaged in amateurish moves, like putting a phony Hispanic candidate on the ballot to draw away Democratic votes, the controversy over which consumed the whole first month of the recall campaign.
And finally, and I think most important, Pearce is an angry guy, and that wore thin with lots of voters. I met him once and he’s a genuine patriot and he’s not a hater. But he really is angry, and here the open-borders crowd has a point — people only have so much tolerance for an angry politician. Good-natured geniality is, for instance, a big part of Herman Cain’s appeal — not to mention Reagan’s. And if that’s important when discussing taxes and spending, imagine how much more important it is in the immigration issue, where people’s real concerns over our nation’s sovereignty run up against nostalgia about your grandma from Palermo, where concern about wage suppression and welfare use run up against the delightful Rodriguez family down the street.
This is why my Center for Immigration Studies has always tried to articulate a pro-immigrant policy of low immigration, and why Numbers USA has had at the top of its homepage, from the very beginning, “No to immigrant bashing.” And it’s not a pose. But even if you didn’t believe it, it would be the politically smart thing to do.
Unfortunately, too many politicians don’t get this, either giving vent to their anger over the very real disaster that is mass immigration or, conversely, parroting the agenda of La Raza in order to show that they don’t hate foreigners. Pearce never found a way to thread that needle, and he’s paid a price for it. But that doesn’t mean much will change in Arizona in any case — Lewis, despite his support for amnesty (which is irrelevant at the state level), supports SB 1070, Arizona’s tough immigration law.
Mark, that's a really serious charge--that the LDS church "put out a political contract" on Pearce. I've seen lots of speculation that local Mormons voted along religious lines, but no evidence that the official church leadership played any role in the campaign or election. What is your source for the charge?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Mormon Church-owned, Salt Lake City-based Deseret News has published 3 articles (links below) since Tuesday harping Pearce's defeat. That's a heck of a lot of coverage for a state senator who isn't even from Utah. This isn't just dancing on his political grave, it's more like going to his grave and hosting a rave with copious quantities of cocaine and meth.
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Meanwhile, they still can't be bothered to mention the immigration status of the hit-and-run driver, Jose Luis Garza Flores, who killed two Mormon missionaries on Tuesday (see link below), and don't dare question his immigration status in the comments section of the related articles. The Deseret News censors won't let it through.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDid you actually read the articles you linked to? The second article starts out: "Immigration advocates have been crowing since Arizona Republican Sen. Russell Pearce, author of the state's controversial anti-illegal immigration law, was ousted from the legislature Tuesday. But, political experts say, his defeat was less about immigration than it was about civility."
Describing immigration advocates as "crowing" hardly supports your claim of "dancing on [Pearce's] political grave."
And even if the Deseret News were showing a bias in its reporting, that is not in any way an explanation of Krikorian's outrageous (and completely unsupported) claim that the Mormon Church put out a political contract on Pearce.
Krikorian does some valuable work on the illegal immigration front, but I fear that his fanaticism has led him to swallow unfounded rumors without any skepticism. It appears that his association with Ronald W. Mortensen, a disgruntled Mormon, has tainted his perception of the Mormon Church to the point that he can make such a scurrilous charge.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYet the Church-owned KSL TV news had a story last night that pointed out Jose Luis Garza Flores's immigration status.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSure the Deseret News covered it--but that doesn't answer my question. Why wouldn't they cover it, when all the Arizona papers have been covering it heavily, with particular emphasis on the "Mormon v. Mormon" angle? Mark's accusation was that the LDS church directly intervened in an election. Newspaper coverage of the results is not the same thing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe 1st and 3rd Deseret News links seem more like one columnist (Cortez) trying to overstate the influence of the Utah compact on the AZ election, while the 2nd refutes the other two. Not that it will sway you from your "IT'S A GIANT LDS CONSPIRACY!!!!" mentality, but maybe you should pin this one on Ms. Cortez and not the whole religion.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePeople objected to the way Pearce wants the government to treat people *inside* the United States. How is that an "open borders" position? You can seal the borders tight, there will still be illegal immigrants in the United States (and people who's skin color makes Arizona law enforcement suspect they are).
This was not about borders, borders are a federal issue. This was about how the state of Arizona treats people who are in Arizona.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason, are you suggesting that it is feasible or realistic to "secure the border" without interior enforcement, as though no one ever visits this country and a high wall is all you need?
Tens of millions of people visit this country every single year. That is a good thing. Some of them decide to stay here without permission. That is a bad thing. To "secure the border" against such people you need interior enforcement. You need the help of the states. In the age of the 747, *every state* is a border state.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDid it seem like I was suggesting that? Read my comment again.
it is definitely possible to secure our southern border without the ridiculous Arizona law.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYour comment is "ridiculous" not Arizona's common sense against illegal immigration -- which is still supported by the vast majority of Arizona voters and the rest of America.
Even Lewis realizes this, although you can bet he would oppose it if he could get away with it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseObviously you didn't read SB1070, it prevents Police from using race or ethnicity (skin color) to detain suspeced illegal aliens. I guess you got your talking points from the deceitful La Raza traitors.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason,
The United States is clearly running an Open Borders policy by failing to detect and remove people who have either entered illegally or who have over stayed their visa.
It is highly disingenuous of you to suggest otherwise.
I happy for people to support the current federal government policies as long as they are prepared to admit that the government is running on Open Borders Policy.
And it is a fair question, how many of the worlds 7 Billion people do you want in the United States?
And for the opponents of build the fence on the Southern border they need to admit that their are plenty of fences being built in the US, but instead of border fences, they are fences around gated communities.
Denying that the US is running an Open Borders Policy only upsets people who believe that an important and urgent debate on this policy is required in this country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor Romney supporters that care about national sovereignty, please read the C.I.S. link. Having witnessed first-hand the wreckage and corruption of Mormon open border governance (yes, Utah is a theocracy), I am afraid he will be forever compromised on this issue. The only issue that matters.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere is a significant number of LDS legislators who support enforcement-first. Also, there are many people in state and local government who are of another faith or no faith--perhaps even a majority.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI echo your comments. Once the Mormon bishop passed his edict and those in Utah followed his commands on illegal immigrants I immediately wrote Romney and Huntsman off my list of viable candidates.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Also, it seems certain that the Mormon church basically put out a political contract on Pearce. The church has embraced amnesty and open borders in an aggressively political fashion..."
The Mormon Church-owned Deseret News has retained an aggressively anti-enforcement agenda through multiple changes in editors and publishers, which suggests that it is the Church itself pushing the open borders agenda. It still continues to cowardly mask its open borders stance beneath layers and layers of dissembling verbiage suggesting it wants enforcement, while failing to find any new enforcement measures acceptable, giving it the distinction (for a church anyway) of being aggressively open borders behind the scenes ("for God," of course) while the Church itself remains cowardly and dishonest on God's behalf.
Tuesday saw two news stories related to Mormons and illegal immigration. The first was Pearce's defeat. Here in Utah the Deseret News has danced on his grave ever since, publishing three articles harping is defeat in Tuesday's election.
The other occurred in Donna, Texas, where two young Mormon missionaries were killed and another injured by a driver, who then fled the car with his two passengers. That driver's name was Jose Luis Garza Flores, a Mexican national residing in Weslaco, Texas. While the Deseret News has published multiple articles about the dead missionaries, they have only mentioned Garza's name once, on Wednesday, and have refused to reference him as a Mexican national or mention the questions surrounding his immigration status. Even the comments censor has barred commenters from raising the issue.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLooks like the Deseret News joins the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal in open borders idiocy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI really appreciate when immigration hawks take the time to articulate a message that does not attack immigrants or the idea of immigration itself. I followed the link to Numbers USA, hoping to warm my heart with such a message, but the quote from Roy Beck, "The task before the nation in setting a fair level of immigration " is really undercut when he's credited alongside the title of his book:, "The Case Against Immigration."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Amazon page for Roy Beck's book used to have a note from Roy saying that the title wasn't what he'd wanted. I see that's no longer there. But, anyway, his background includes being one of the early (perhaps the earliest) environmental-beat reporters in the country so that, in the late 1980s, he realized that what Congress was doing in passing environmental laws it was also UN-doing by actually increasing legal immigration and failing to insure that the laws against illegal immigration were being enforced.
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We can infer from what Bmore Liberal wrote that he or she sees immigration as a free-standing good idea. Some acquaintance with what it's actually doing to the country might dispel that hazy optimism. Before I fled southern California, where I'd resided from 1996 to 2005, I distilled the following list of impacts from my direct observations and just reading the news:
1. The flood of immigrants drives wages and living conditions in our central cities toward those of the Third World.
2. The influx imposes both sprawl and gridlock on our metropolitan areas.
3. Immigrant families needing services overwhelm our schools, taxpayer-funded healthcare facilities, and other public agencies.
4. Those requiring services don’t assimilate and, instead, expect to be served in their native languages.
5. American civic culture frays as each ethnic group establishes its own grievance lobby and pushes for preferences.
6. Illegal aliens bring us fearsome diseases such as tuberculosis (new, drug-resistant strains) and Chagas.
7. Shortages of water and other resources loom, especially in immigration-blitzed California.
There's a bottom line here: The purpose of the United States and its immigration laws is to benefit its citizens, just as it says in the Constitution's preamble (".. secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity .."). For most Americans (the exceptions being the employers of cheap labor and the ethnic grievance hustlers) there's no benefit to the continuing immigration here, just costs, crowding, and increasing balkanization/ethnic friction.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLEGAL immigration is WAY too high, this administration has moved 4 million Muslim Africans into America in the last few years, ALL with massive finacial support from YOUR taxt dollars. Not to mention half a million Palistinians, can any one tell me WHY we are importing African muslims and palistinians at break neck speeds? LEGALY?
We are being culturaly diluted/balkinized purposfuly.
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