Bashing Hispanics is Dumb Politics
Posted on August 26, 2015
"Us-mexico-border" by User Larsinio on en.wikipedia - Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is (was) here 19:00, 11 April 2006 Larsinio 1152x862 (189,587 bytes) (from http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/print.asp?URL=/cross-border/nafta-rules/new-mexrule.htm). Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.
Bashing Hispanics is dumb politics.
It’s dumb politics because when you bash Hispanics, you bash all immigrants.
And when you bash all immigrants you seal your fate politically.
Donald Trump says he loves Mexicans and then says he wants to kick them all out of the country.
Kicking every illegal immigrant out of the country would destroy the American economy.
Who would pick the crops, pluck the chickens, build the roads, tend to the children, bus the tables in restaurants and otherwise do all the dirty work that nobody wants to do?
The racism of some on the hard right is unsustainable, stupid and counterproductive.
Hispanics are up for grabs politically (or should be).
Some on the left are trying to build a coalition of “People of Color” (POC) to try to counter supposedly monochromatic white conservative America.
But there are plenty of tensions within this POC coalition.
The interests of Hispanics would not be best served by the socialism proffered by the Left, but by the free-market capitalism of the GOP.
The Hispanic community is pro-family, pro-work, pro-small business, pro-free-enterprise. They are socially conservative and they don’t buy into the Brave New World of left-wing theorists.
By and large Hispanics would be happy to keep government out of their lives. They have seen government corruption in their homelands and they came to America to build a better life for their families.
Ann Coulter, that paragon of reason and virtue, has claimed that Democrats have a secret plot to import millions of Hispanics and other immigrants so that they can have achieve political dominance in America.
That is complete and total non-sense. Immigrants come to America so that they can build a better life for their families. And it has always been thus.
America is a great place to live and it is getting better because of immigrants.
That is especially the case if you compare it to the rest of the world. Would you rather live in China than America? Japan? Africa? South America? Russia?
The quality of life is why people come here.
And the Republican Party, at its best, offers the best chance for immigrants to achieve the American dream.
But the party that now embraces the rhetoric of Donald Trump closes off all hopes of getting these immigrants to actually vote Republican.
Does Ann Coulter seriously believe that immigrants, whether they be illegal or otherwise, come to this country because of our generous welfare benefits?
That’s just ridiculous.
America doesn’t actually stack up that well when it comes to welfare. Europe is far more generous. So is Canada. So is Mexico.
But you can find work in America if you want to work hard. And that’s the real reason people come here.
The white base of the Republican Party is angry at immigrants. They are angry because of crime. They are angry because of lost jobs. They are angry because they see their beloved country being lost.
But that anger is misplaced.
It’s not immigrants who commit most of the crimes in this country. Every serious academic study shows that immigrants (especially illegal immigrants) commit crimes at a far lower rate than other ethnic groups. Sure, there are terrible examples of crimes being committed by some of the undocumented and there are notorious stories that have captured the attention of the Presidential campaigns. But those are the exceptions that prove the rule.
When it comes to lost jobs white America, by and large, is not threatened by Hispanic immigration. I suppose you could make the case that some engineers in Silicon Valley lose out to Asian engineers, but that’s not what is roiling the waters in Alabama and South Carolina. Indeed, Hispanic immigration keeps American companies in America and without those immigrants, those jobs would go somewhere else. White people don’t want and don’t do those jobs. And that is why Hispanics get them.
When it comes to losing America, that too is complete non-sense. Hispanics share the same Christian religious heritage of the vast majority of the American people. They aren’t going to turn America into some Caliphate. And they share the same values of most Americans. To say that Hispanic immigration will somehow utterly change the character of the American people is just total horseshit.
Donald Trump is a bozo. His immigration plan is idiotic. His rhetoric is needlessly incendiary.
Bashing Hispanics is stupid politics. Just damn stupid.