LatinaLista — It’s now been a couple of months since the editors at the promigrant site The Sanctuary submitted a questionnaire about immigration reform and issues of importance to Latinos to both the presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain.
While Barack Obama answered the questionnaire in a timely fashion, the editors held out hope till the very end that the McCain campaign was sincere in wanting to address Latino concerns. Unfortunately, his (in)action and the (in)actions of his campaign are not just disappointing but warrant serious questioning by Latino voters as to what kind of role Latinos would play in a McCain-Palin administration.
It also begs the question to be asked how the concerns of the Latino constituency would be dealt with in a McCain-Palin administration if a simple request to fill out a questionnaire is so readily dismissed without the courtesy of a formal decline.
Without McCain’s responses, a true comparison of the candidates’ stands on the issues is not possible but we do have the opportunity to see how Obama feels on these issues.
Barack Obama’s responses can be found on The Sanctuary website.
McCain refuses to answer questionnaire on immigration reform
Comment(6)
laura
McCain has no reason to answer the questions of defenders of immigrants. His party’s new 2008 platform is so much more drastically directed against immigrants than that of 2004 that he could only lose more votes of pro-migrant voters if he explained it more.
In 2004, the Republican platform called for humane immigration reform and a path to citizenship for out-of status workers. In 2008, the platform says:
” The rule of law means guaranteeing to law enforcement the tools and coordination to deport criminal aliens without delay – and correcting court decisions that have made deportation so difficult. It means enforcing the law against those who overstay their visas, rather than letting millions flout the generosity that gave them temporary entry. It means imposing maximum penalties on those who smuggle illegal aliens into the U.S., both for their lawbreaking and for their cruel exploitation. It means requiring cooperation among federal, state and local law enforcement and real consequences, including the denial of federal funds, for self-described sanctuary cities, which stand in open defiance of the federal and state statutes that expressly prohibit such sanctuary policies, and which endanger the lives of U.S. citizens. It does not mean driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, nor does it mean that states should be allowed to flout the federal law barring them from giving in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens, nor does it mean that illegal aliens should receive social security benefits, or other public benefits, except as provided by federal law.
We oppose amnesty.”
This quote is from the Republican Party’s website at http://www.gop.com/2008Platform/NationalSecurity.htm#Def5
Explaining this in more detail would only lose McCain more Latina/o votes.
Irma, do you still plan to write in Hillary Clinton on your vote for president? Is anyone else still up for helping McCain/Palin win?
And by the way, Irma, remember how McCain pushed Bush’s plan for turning Social Security into private investment accounts? But maybe there’s nothing wrong with that, since the stocks in those accounts would be fine – as McCain said this past Monday, “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” …. The fact that stocks are wiping out is just “in our minds,” as his economic adviser Phil Gramm said. To complain about being broke in retirement is another symptom of Americans being “a nation of whiners” as the same gentleman, McCain’s friend Gramm, said.
Why bring this up in a post about answers to an immigration questionnaire? Because it is clear how contempt for immigrant workers (they call “illegal aliens”) is just another side of contempt for all workers – especially American workers.
Irma
yes,, I still plan to write in Hilary Clinton. Obama has yet to stay anything that would make me change my mind. Indeed, I was offended by the
Dos Caras ad. Does Obama have to resort to LIES just like the other side? I wont support a liar even if they are a Democrat. I will vote for
a Democratic Congress. The economic
disaster of this year is seriously jeopardizing future domestic spending in ALL areas. Neither candidate has provided a satsifactory explanation how they will pay for all of these proposed programs to promote education, health care , bridges etc without
raising taxes. There will be little or no money for all the things that both sides are promising. I thought John Kerry was an idiot – I didnt think it could get worse. It has.
laura
Irma, my friend, I am not suggesting you vote for Obama because he is a saint, or because he never lies. I don’t know the ad, but I won’t be surprised if I find out it contains lies. If he were a saint or if he never lied he would not be a candidate for president of the United States. Who have you voted for in the past that didn’t lie, Irma?
I am suggesting you vote for Obama, and ask all your family and friends and neighbors and colleagues to vote for Obama, so that we do nat have a McCain/Palin disaster. Unless you want everything thst is going wrong now, to get worse, your rational decision would be to vote for Obama.
Do you know what McCain writes about his plan for health care reform in the September/October edition of a magazine called “Contigencies”? He writes:
“Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”
In his view, banking over the past decade provides a successful example of what health insurance should be. I guess he wrote this some time up to and including this past Monday, when he said “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” On Tuesday, he had changed his mind about that. But for the past decade before this Tuesday, he was for deregulation of everything, including banks and health care.
Look into his health care plan. You will be amazed. It is like his Social Security plan – private accounts. Deregulation.
Getting back to the lies: this time around, McCain is the clear liar champion. Even Fox News says so. McCain, like Bush before him, has managed to make big minorities of Americans believe the lies he spreads, simply by repeating them often enough. Lies such as that Obama would raise taxes on most Americans (he would lower them,and raise taxes only on incomes above $250,000). Or that Palin declined millions for the “bridge to nowhere,” when she actually took them.
Speaking of her – would you welcome a Palin presidency?
laura
For the Republican vision for the life of poor Americans, we can again look at New Orleans – not 2005 but 2008. This is the Bush/Chertoff/McCain/Palin vision, as described by the New York Times in their editorial about the evacuation for Hurricane Gustav:
“People with their own cars were directed to shelters run by parishes, churches and the Red Cross. People with medical problems not requiring hospitalization were taken to special shelters. Sex offenders had a shelter to themselves.
All those without a car or a ride were taken on state buses to four state-run warehouses. It was in these shelters, including two abandoned stores, a Wal-Mart and a Sam’s Club, that thousands of working-poor New Orleanians got a sickening reminder of Katrina.
Evacuees said they had had no idea where they were going; bus drivers would not tell them. When they arrived, there were not enough portable toilets, and no showers. For five days there was no way to bathe, except with bottled water in filthy outdoor toilets. Privacy in the vast open space — 1,000 people to a warehouse, shoulder-to-shoulder on cots — was nonexistent. The mood among evacuees was grim, surrounded as they were by police officers and the National Guard, with no visitors or reporters allowed.
“We didn’t want to evacuate into a prison,†Lethia Brooks told the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, an organization that accompanied the evacuees, inspected the shelters and collected hundreds of stories into a report sharply critical of the state’s response. ”
What I am saying is: this is what they do to Americans who don’t belong to McCain’s definition of middle class (=$5 million or below).
Since they put Americans in concentration camps during a natural disaster, why would they hesitate to abuse or kill immigrants? That is what they are saying they will do in their platform, once you strip it of beautiful language like “rule of law.” They will scale up the abuse and killing of immigrants that is going on now, under Bush/Chertoff, in their “dentention centers.”
That is why McCain doesn’t bother to reply to questions of people who are trying to defend immigrants.
laura
Irma, I have been thinking about the reason you cite for not voting for Obama: an ad about McCain.
Two questions: the ad attacks McCain for showing a different face to Latinos than to non-Spanish speaking Americans. Do you think McCain is saying the same things to Latina/os as to all other Americans?
Does Obama have to resort to lies? No, the truth about McCain is awful enough.
Have you happily voted for a liar? Did you vote for Bill Clinton?
Please consider the following. This is not a time to be picky. Bush has run the country into the ground. There is a possibility to pick up the pieces to put them back together – that’s Obama/Biden. There is another possibility to finish turning the United States into a bigger Russia – that’s McCain/Palin.
You do not have the luxury this year of not voting for the Democrat. He’s black – get over it. He’s not a saint – neither are you and I. What he is is very smart, analytical, and with his heart in the right place. That is going to have to be good enough for our votes against Four More Years.
Evelyn
Very interisting video on all the lies McShame has been telling.
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