I agree with fiolola about identifying Hispanics as a voting bloc (their euphemism for mob?) They are made up of individuals and having grown up with them in Junior High, High School and early college, many of them were my friends. My sister married an Aguilar. I think I'll ask him about this drivers license thing. My niece and nephew are part Hispanic from a previous marriage.
I, perosnally, don't worry about the uninsured, because we carry uninsured auto insurance. Okay, so having to get a passport to travel to Canada only puts a little inconvenience and $65 (or whatever it costs now) for a passport. Maybe I'm missing something here, and I'm waiting to hear the reasons why my thinking on this is wrong.
Fealola -- I tend to drone on about the subject of illegal immigration because I've found out a lot about it, first living in NJ and helping a Guatemalan family obtain legal status, and then living in Texas where chances are the guy you hire to do land work is illegal if he's Mexican. Being bilingual means one gets more of an insider's view of the situation, too...
The reason for all the brouhaha and apparent inefficiency boils down to the fact that small and big business owners around the country RELY on illegals to do work in general and seasonal work in particular. Not just bringing in crops, but doing seasonal work in hotels and motels and (many!) B&B's and tourist restaurants (certainly in my area this is true in spades). Many, if not all of the owners of these businesses, are devout Republicans and the last thing they want is some righteous types in their party going off half-cocked and instituting a strict no-illegals policy. So for years the powers that be, pressured by these Chambers of Commerce and ranching associations, have talked one line and followed another. I don't think it's likely to change, not even with "terrorism" scares. The answer is, of course, to create a guest worker program -- temporary visas that would include social security payments, ability to get a license and insurance. Everyone would, I think, be happy.
Most Mexican illegals are relatively young and have wives and babies at home. Some that I've known go back to Mexico between at Christmas and stay till about the end of February, then return for tourism and agricultural work. Many have drivers' licenses AND insurance (don't know quite how), live in groups, send most of their money home, work hard, are far more competent at land jobs (setting fences and gates, doing agricultural work) than anyone found here at laborer level.
Tartar, I live in Northern California, and most service workers in our area are Mexicans or Hispanics. They are hard workers; I know, because we've worked with them on farms when we were children harvesting fruits in the Sacramento Valley during the summer months. Your point about creating a guest worker program is excelent; but that's the fed's responsibility, and I doubt they are smart enough to figure that out. The question is, should illegals be given legal benefits in this country? Here's a link to the Sacramento Bee that speaks to this issue:
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/ca/story/7363518p-8307303c.html
I'm aware of the situation Tartarin. But Davis didn't create a guest worker program or hand out visas to make everything on the up and up. He's allowing foreign nationals to get a license. A work/visa program hasn't been put in place yet that will accomodate these people, so allowing a license seems premature. It seems strange to me.
One step at a time, please? Maybe? But quickly. Yeah right. Everybody's talking, but in reality they're all ducking the issue. Too complicated.
I guess on the whole I have found illegals to be enormously beneficial, socially, culturally, and economically. Recognizing that I'm coming from a different direction here as a Spanish-speaker, as someone who is familiar with and enjoys/respects their values and culture...
My feeling is that they are adding greatly to our country, taking out only the modest pay they send to their families (providing us with valuable political points in Mexico as well). So I'd tend to glance away from the license issue, and (though agreeing that it makes no sense bureaucratically) am not taken aback by its illogic. It's one of those things conservative talk show hosts make a big deal out of, but it's so much less of an issue than the huge examples of illogic we deal with daily emanating from the current administration, our voting and educational systems, our "social safety net," etc. etc.
Here's the global picture from my point of view: Grey Davis signed this legislation now to win the Hispanic vote for his recall, because he has previously vetoed this same legislation in the past. The illegal immigrant will be required to have a social security number or other identification from another country in order to register for a driver's license. The DMV cannot report illegal immigrants from their records to the INS. Will that be a problem with our security? Are there more positives than negatives? Was it okay for Grey Davis to sign this legislation?
I think the kind of guys who want to make real trouble -- blow up huge buildings, for example -- are for the most part members of a sophisticated network which is prepared (and has the means) to circumvent the fairly basic requirements of visitor, resident, and other permits. I don't know what the status of international drivers' permits is these days, but as a resident alien in Spain I drove with one for fifteen years until a change in law required that we get Spanish drivers' licenses.
Tartar, But wasn't that more than two year's ago?
CI -- What does a foreign tourist do for a driver's license in this country now, in 2003? Anyone know? Is it still the ol' gray international permit?
Thank you. Reading and thinking.
Compassion seems to be the only argument for all of this at this point and it's a good one, but where I'm coming from is being frustrated with the way things are in California right now. The overcrowding is too much for our schools and medical facilities, and budget. They dike has burst and I think it's beyond repair. Our own citizens and future are suffering greatly for this and for past administration's shortcomings.
The dream (an impossible dream) is fix what we have before letting more people come in haphazardly.
First, fealola - earlier I was not trying to guilt you. I was only referring to those that harbor that opinion. I knew from your writings that you were striving to obtain knowledge.
I believe that Bush wants illegals because one of his prime objectives to to bring down the cost of labor. Illegals bring in a group to America that are and do work for very low wages. I have a great deal of respect for these people in that the live under America's high cost of living and still send home enough money to support a family - while holding some of the lowest paid jobs.
"First, fealola - earlier I was not trying to guilt you. I was only referring to those that harbor that opinion. I knew from your writings that you were striving to obtain knowledge."
It's okay, I got that, Bill!
And I agree.
It's all about exploitation.
Excellent way to express it - exploitation, thanks!
I can well understand your misgivings, Fealola (?como fea, nena?). Same problems in Texas, of course.
What we have to do is a) make those who profit from illegal labor more responsible for the needed social services through a guest-worker program or similar, and b) work through the moral dilemma that it was okay for us to immigrate into the US but maybe we'd better close the door behind us... !There are real issues here, as you point out. I'm well aware that neither a) nor b) are welcome solutions for those on the right. That's why they've supported a kind of clandestine immigration program for years and years: they get the labor without really paying for it. The left has gone along with it because the laborers, once they get citizenship, have tended to vote Democratic.
A quagmire of dishonesty.
Say all you want about Davis -- he is a saavy career politician and he managed to knock Reardon out of the race. For all we know, he's contributing to McClintock's campaign.
So perhaps doing things like issuing DL's will bring this all to a head and we can start to deal with it.
This was a big topic Two Democratic debates back. Alot of talk about future of NAFTA re: wages paid and working conditions in our factories in other countries. I think solving that, could be the key. This is so deep and so complicated. Local and worldwide implications.
And me, I'm not very well versed on the issue just like most Americans. We tend to simplify, like getting paranoid over drivers licenses. But I still have my concerns on how California will deal with it's mess. (schools etc.)
A quagmire of dishonesty. That's where shortsightedness and greed have gotten us.
(
Thanks to you, Tartarin, I've just realized what my screen name means in Spanish!!
)
I believe most foreign tourists to the US can use their own driver's license for a specified period. I think most countries honor US driver's license to drive in their country. Sort of a tit for tat.
A Conservative's Stubborn Stand Worries GOP
washingtonpost.com
A Conservative's Stubborn Stand Worries GOP
McClintock Stays in Calif. Recall Fight Despite Fears He'll Cost Schwarzenegger Votes
By William Booth - Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2003; Page A06
SACRAMENTO, Sept. 11 -- One of his earliest memories in life was attending a rally for Dwight D. Eisenhower. Tom McClintock was 3 years old. By the time he was 14, the boy was writing letters to the editor of his local newspaper in suburban Los Angeles, trashing the antiwar movement. In college, he organized for Richard Nixon's reelection. At 26, he was elected to the state Assembly. The man is almost genetically Republican.
It is a heady time to be McClintock, the state senator and conservative budget hawk who now holds in his hands, many analysts in both parties agree, the future of the California GOP. In the race to replace Gov. Gray Davis (D) if he is ousted in California's recall election in 26 days, all eyes are now on the feisty 47-year-old from Thousand Oaks, who can reel off budget numbers like a bookie handicapping the Kentucky Derby.
McClintock is polling in the double-digits, not enough to win but enough to act as the potential spoiler for Republicans by denying actor Arnold Schwarzenegger the votes he needs to defeat the most prominent Democrat in the race, Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante.
This does not bother McClintock, who reiterated his vow this week to stay in the recall race "until the finish line." He is only too happy to deconstruct Schwarzenegger, whom he describes as a mushy Republican who has surrounded himself with Democrats such as billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett and environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "That's not good company to keep," McClintock said.
"I keep reading about how the pressure on me is growing, so I must be gaining," McClintock said in an interview at his Senate offices in the Capitol. "I'm not going anywhere."
This is torturing many Republicans here.
Many of the party's conservative wing know and admire McClintock. He is one of them. He thinks illegal immigrants are overrunning the state and should be denied driver's licenses; he is against gun control and abortion and gay marriage. He was the author of the state's lethal-injection death penalty statute. And on the fiscal front, McClintock is relentless in his attacks against taxes and bureaucrats.
"But no one thinks he is going to get above 18 percent," a senior Republican lawmaker here said. "It's just killing us."
The nonpartisan California Field Poll showed Bustamante with 30 percent, Schwarzenegger with 25 percent and McClintock with 13 percent. With McClintock out, the poll had Schwarzenegger narrowly leading Bustamante, 33 percent to 31 percent, a statistical dead heat.
"It's the great conservative dilemma," said Shawn Steel, a former chairman of the state GOP. "Do we go with our hearts or our heads?"
McClintock's ideological soul mate, businessman Bill Simon, bowed out of the race a few weeks ago. Earlier this week, the more socially moderate but fiscally conservative Peter Ueberroth, a former Major League Baseball commissioner, pulled the plug on his sputtering campaign.
So that leaves McClintock as the party's conservative standard-bearer in a state where conservatives dominate the party hierarchy, but find it difficult to win statewide elections, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 10 percentage points and where McClintock's stand on social issues differs greatly from that of the state electorate.
Many Republican insiders say nobody knows state government better than McClintock. But he has been a lackluster fundraiser; he was crushed by 12 percentage points in a 1992 run for Congress, and he lost statewide in a bid for controller in 1994. He also has a reputation for being mule-headed -- McClintock blames his Scottish ancestry -- and that kind of stubborn stand for principles vs. pragmatism has haunted the California GOP in recent years. Democrats now hold every statewide office, both Senate seats and the majority of the congressional delegation; they control both houses of state government.
"He's a very solid conservative. But Tom is an iconoclast. Tom cares about ideas, not about building consensus or team-building," Michael Schroeder, another former chairman of the state GOP, said. "I don't believe Tom McClintock will step out of this race. He is not someone who feels an obligation to the greater good of the party. He feels the ideas are more important than the party."
Asked how important it is for Republicans to take back the governor's office, McClintock's eyes narrowed and he said, "What is important is to fundamentally change this state's policies, by reining in the taxes and regulations and out-of-control bureaucracy that are choking our economy."
This weekend, the state GOP will gather for its party convention in Los Angeles. Schwarzenegger will address the gathering at lunch, McClintock at dinner. McClintock keeps taunting Schwarzenegger, pushing him for a debate, saying the Hollywood movie star cannot compete in unscripted forums against a tough opponent.
But the pressure on McClintock is only going to build. On Wednesday, he said a conservative midwestern congressman, whom he would not name, called him on behalf of the Schwarzenegger camp, urging him to withdraw.
But McClintock waves away talk of being a spoiler. He says that the election is still almost a month away and that he has raised more than $1 million. John Stoos, his deputy campaign director, said the campaign is running 60-second radio spots around the state and 60-second television ads in the Central Valley, and soon in San Diego -- markets that cover McClintock's conservative base.
"He's articulated a coherent conservative message that resonates well with the people who are likely to vote," said Sal Russo, who was Simon's chief political strategist. "He pretty much calls them like he sees them. He's certainly been proven right in a number of cases. . . . He's been warning about overspending for years."
McClintock says that he does not need to drop out because if he is still trailing Schwarzenegger in the preelection polls, "my supporters will do the right thing" -- cross over to the man most likely to win.
Many state Republicans think that is a rosy scenario, and they suggest it is going to take a call from the White House, maybe even from President Bush, to push McClintock into an endorsement of Schwarzenegger.
"Unless McClintock drops out or Schwarzenegger moves to the right," Schroeder said, "Bustamante is going to win."
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Special correspondent Kimberly Edds contributed to this report from Los Angeles.
