For Eddie on St Patrick's Day

Today will mark the fourth St Patrick's day to pass since I first started writing about immigration reform and migrant rights. And as any blogger who's been doing this for any amount of time can tell you, blog years are like dog years, and over three years in blogtopia can seem like a half a lifetime.

Two years ago, in 2006, this day had brought great promise.

The Kennedy-McCain Bill was making its way through the Senate, and the first wave of the great immigration rallies were but only days away. Millions, including Irish and other immigrants from around the world, would take to the streets and demand meaningful reform.

We all thought change would surely come….yet it hasn't.

I'm not Irish, and don't partake in the revelry that marks the day. It usually passed for me rather uneventfully. But once I started blogging about immigration, in some strange way, it's become a milestone that marks the passage of time.

Somewhere today in the mainstream media, or in the blogosphere, there will be a story about what's become an annual rite of spring that takes place every St Patrick's Day.

At a parade in New York, or Boston, or in the halls of Congress in Washington, some political leader will pose with members of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform , or some other advocacy group, and make promises they have no intention of keeping.

Donning their best green ties, and an eagerness to pander on the day when "everyone's Irish," even the most ardent anti-immigration hawk will promise to "look into the Irish immigration situation." ... but of course they won't.

So to mark this day I have chosen not to write the obligatory St Patrick's Day "Politicians Promise" post … instead I offer a story first published in the Boston Globe this past January.

I apologize in advance to the gods of fair use, but Eddie Treacy's story is too compelling, and Kevin Cullen's writing too beautiful to chop it up and place it in those little blockquote boxes … so I present it in its entirety:

A Toast to an Irishman

Eddie Treacy lived in the shadows and died in his bed, the covers pulled up, his lungs full of fluid.

He was 33 years old, and there is no other way to say this: He died too young.

He came to Dorchester eight years ago from Athenry, in County Galway, part of what could be the last great wave of the young Irish to come here.

Boston is still Irish enough for a guy like Eddie Treacy to fit in. There's always enough work, and there are Gaelic games in Canton on the weekends and fresh brown bread every day at Greenhills Bakery in Adams Village.

Eddie was a master carpenter and made a decent living. For a young man, he was old school, using a simple tool called a square.

Eddie only needed one measurement for a job. Others would punch away at calculators, but Eddie would do the calculations in his head, and hand off the wood, cut precisely, like a diamond.

After a day's work, Eddie would make his way to the Eire Pub for a few jars. If the stool next to his great pal, Muldoon, was open, he would take it.

"How's Mul?" Eddie would ask.

"How's Eddie?" Muldoon would ask back.

And then they would silently watch the news on the TV set over the head of Martin Nicholson, the barman. With Eddie, there was no need for long yarns or running commentary.

Eddie was a rare Irishman, in that he was a great listener, not a great talker. If he agreed with you, he would nod, almost imperceptibly. If he thought you were full of it, he would raise an eyebrow, a silent indictment.

Like other illegal immigrants, he wanted to legalize his residency. He would have paid anything, done anything. But there was no way.

He thought about going home, as his brother Michael did, not long after Eddie first came here.

But Eddie liked it here, so he stayed on, kept his head down.

He didn't ask for much. Once, he told Muldoon he would be happy if he died in his own bed and they played "The Fields of Athenry" at his funeral. They both laughed, because young men don't think they will ever die.

Eddie died in his own bed. We will never know if it was stubborn pride or a fear of being deported that kept him from going to a hospital to treat the pneumonia that killed him. Maybe he just didn't realize how sick he was.

Gerry Treacy hadn't seen his brother in eight years, and when he finally did, Eddie was lying in a casket inside the Keaney Funeral Home on Dot Ave.

"He was a quiet lad," Gerry Treacy was saying, as he and Michael prepared to bring their brother home. "He liked the simple pleasures."

Brendan McCann, a senior at BC High, stood near the altar and played "The Fields of Athenry" on his fiddle as they wheeled Eddie Treacy's casket down the aisle of St. Brendan's Church.

All around the church, there were images of another carpenter who died at 33, nearly 2,000 years ago, another carpenter who some people dismissed as a criminal.

After Mass, about 200 people posed on the front steps of the church for a photo to send back to Eddie's mother, Ann, so she would know that Eddie mattered here. Many of the young men standing there had given up a day's wages to pay their respects.

Then everybody went to Sonny's, the pub that sponsored the Father Tom Burke hurling teams Eddie played for and managed.

Muldoon raised a glass to his friend.

"We'll never see the likes of him again," he said.

On Monday night, as President Bush told the nation that we need to find "a sensible and humane way to deal with people here illegally," Eddie Treacy's body was in the cargo hold of Aer Lingus Flight 132, somewhere over the Atlantic, heading home.

Eddie Treacy was buried today, where he wanted to be, in the fields of Athenry.


Boston Globe, Jan 31, 2008

So to Patrick Joseph Buchanan, William James O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and all the others whose tribal worldviews and reptilian brains have so poisoned this debate with the worst kind of bigotry and divisiveness - I wish you a happy St Patrick's Day.

But, I leave you with this thought as you revel in your immigrant past and enjoy your native foods and rituals:

Immigrants really do come in all colors of the rainbow from the deepest black to the whitest white. And whether it's Eddie Treacy shipped back in a box in the cargo hold of an Aer Lingus flight, or Edith Rodreguez losing her infant son to the desert heat, or Antonio Torres Jimenez perishing as he tried to return to his family, or Jesus Abran Buenrostro frantically trying to lead rescuers to his already dead mother in the Arizona desert …. all their blood is on your hands ... all their suffering should be on your conscience.

So have a happy St Patrick's Day, and as you do, just remember that each and every day, another immigrant dies in the shadows because of you.

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When the Extreme becomes Mainstream

There are probably no two people in the media who are more associated with the immigration issue than CNN's Lou Dobbs and NBC's Pat Buchanan. Both have revitalized their careers by becoming self-proclaimed experts, and have probably logged more media face-time discussing the issue than any two people in American. Recently, they met on Dobbs' show to discuss their common concerns:

Video Link

Yet if one were to compare some of the rhetoric used in the segment:

DOBBS: And congratulations on the new book, a best seller doing great.

Let me turn to the very first thing. The first chapter, declaring that the American century is over. I would like to share this with our viewers. "America is indeed coming apart, decomposing, and that the likelihood of our survival as one nation through mid century is improbable and impossible if America continues on her current course. For we are on a path to national suicide." My God, I don't think you could be more pessimistic.

BUCHANAN: Well that is where we are headed, Lou. As I write in the last chapter, we can still have a second American century. But look what is happening. You've got 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in the country, 38 million immigrants. The melting pot that turned our grandfathers and great grandfathers into Americans is cracked, broken and rejected as an instrument of cultural genocide. You have that going on in the country at the same time that the dollar is going down, the manufacturing base is being exported, you're overextended abroad with a smaller army than we had in 1939. All of these things are hitting at once and I don't get the awareness of the gravity of the crises comes at us.

…

DOBBS: We're back with Pat Buchanan, author of the important new book, which I highly recommend, "Day of Reckoning." Let's deal with an issue on the minds of Americans. That is the issue of illegal immigration. What has to be done?

BUCHANAN: Well first thing, you've got to secure the border. If we don't do it, it won't exist anymore in ten years. You've got to crack down on businesses that hire illegals. You've got to cut off the magnets by ending social welfare benefits as they voted to do Arizona. You've got to end this absurd practice that if someone comes to the United States and has a baby the next day it is automatically a citizen for life and entitled to a whole lifetime of benefits. I think you need a time-out on legal immigration of about 250,000 a year. This is the sea into which illegals move. We need another time out to get the melting pot up and running again.

DOBBS: What about the 12 to 20 million illegals in this country?

BUCHANAN: Start the deportations with gang members, felons, scofflaws and you start with felons and people who are drunk drivers and others. Then you start the process by cracking down on business, removing the magnets, they'll go home. What draws them here is free education, welfare, good jobs, good paying jobs much better than in Mexico. Basically business and the welfare, the social safety net draws them here.
CNN

With these quotes from hate groups complied back in the spring of 2001 by the Southern Poverty Law Center:

"America's culture, customs and language are under assault from foreigners who come to live here and, instead of learning the American way of life, choose to impose their own alien cultures, languages, and institutions upon us... . [E]thnic cleansing ... may seem a harsh term to apply here in America, but it accurately describes the expulsion of Americans from their communities by illegal aliens."
— AMERICAN IMMIGRATION CONTROL FOUNDATION

"[S]ince that time [about 1950], Western culture faces a growing and potentially fatal crisis: the widespread folly of believing that Hmong and Haitians can carry that culture forward as meaningfully as Europeans."
— AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

"These men [ranchers who capture illegal border-crossers at gunpoint] are the true heroes of our troubled times! Every illegal alien they halt is one less that will go on our welfare rolls, overcrowd our schools, bring in more drugs to poison our kids, or rob, rape and murder another innocent American citizen."
— CALIFORNIA COALITION FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM

"[T]he meaning of this massive increase in non-white and non-Western populations groups within U.S. borders is that the United States is not only ceasing to be a majority white nation but also is ceasing to be a nation that is culturally part of Western civilization."
— COUNCIL OF CONSERVATIVE CITIZENS

"America becomes darker — racially darker — every year, and that is the direct result of our government's immigration policy. ... We White people, we descendants of the European immigrants who built America, will be a minority in our own country. ... [M]alicious aliens [European Jews] came into our land and ... spread spiritual poison among our people, so that our spirits became corrupted and our minds became confused."
— NATIONAL ALLIANCE

"Unless stopped now, massive illegal immigration from the Third World will surely make America more like the Third World than the nation of our forefathers. ... Forced integration and unrestrained immigration destroy schools, neighborhoods, cities and ultimately nations."
— NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF WHITE PEOPLE

"[T]he very underpinnings of America are being gnawed away by hordes of aliens who are transforming America into a land where we, the descendants of the men and women who founded America, will walk as strangers... . Unless we act now ... we will be helpless to halt the accelerating dispossession of our folk."
— NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR EUROPEAN AMERICAN RIGHTS

"America is not just a geographical entity. It is a nation with certain values. I'd go beyond the proposal of a zero immigration moratorium and say we should begin deportation. Deportation now!"
— THE SOCIAL CONTRACT PRESS

"The Mexican culture is based on deceit. Chicanos and Mexicanos lie as a means of survival. Fabricating false IDs is just another extension of that culture ... [which] condones everything from the most lowly misdemeanor to murder in the highest levels of government."
— VOICES OF CITIZENS TOGETHER

"[Even] beyond immigration, legal or illegal, the very numbers of non-Whites already here, and their high birth rate, are enough to plunge North America into a banana republic status within two decades or less. ... [After America is split up into racial mini-states, if] an area like Florida wanted to accept the dregs of the Caribbean, let them, with the understanding that the second this mud flood oozed into the sovereign state of Georgia, it would be 'lock and load' time."
— WHITE ARYAN RESISTANCE

compliled spring, 2001 by SPLC

It becomes obvious that ideas that were once relegated to the vilest fringes of the extreme far-right have become mainstream. Note just how many of the sentiments expressed in these statements by hate groups can now be heard almost daily coming from both the media and politicians. Republican politicians, the right-wing noised machine, and now the main stream media, have managed to shift the whole national debate, and possibly the nation itself, to a point where this kind of eliminationist rhetoric is now the accepted norm.

This shift can be seen quite clearly in this segment from the O'Rielly Factor, where Sen. John McCain, discussing comprehensive immigration reform legislation, allows O'Rielly to lecture him unchallenged about the supposed "liberal plan" to "change the complexion" of America by breaking down "the white, Christian, male power structure".

Video Link

Back in March, 2006 The Nation examined this shift to the far right through the eyes of former grand wizard of the KKK, David Duke.
.

Relaxing in the Hyatt lobby, (David) Duke reminisced about his glory days. "I was the first candidate who ran against affirmative action. And I predated Clinton on welfare reform," Duke told me. He rehashed his controversial term as a Louisiana state representative and his losing 1990 Republican gubernatorial candidacy, in which he captured more than 60 percent of the white vote. He happily recalled his 1977 Klan Border Watch, when he and seven other Klansmen drove a few sedans in circles along the California-Mexico border, waving a shotgun in the moonlight while dozens of reporters in tow tried not to crash their cars into one another.

Back in those good old times, in 1982, explaining the Klan's anti-immigrant advocacy, Duke said, "Every new immigrant adds to our crime problems, our welfare rolls and unemployment of American citizens.... We are being invaded in the southwest as if a foreign army were coming over the border.... They're going to take more and more hard-earned money from the productive middle class in the form of taxes and social programs." And Duke called for the deportation of all undocumented immigrants and harsh penalties for businesses that employ them. "I'd make the Mexican-American border almost like a Maginot line," he said, referring to the militarized barrier France constructed between itself, Italy and Germany after World War I.

At the time, Duke was widely dismissed as little more than a turbo-charged version of the paranoid style--"the Klan's answer to Robert Redford," as reporter Patty Sims described him in 1978. But today his anti-immigration rhetoric sounds not so remote from one of top-rated CNN host Lou Dobbs's fulminations during his daily "Broken Borders" segment. Duke's Klan Border Watch, meanwhile, served as the forerunner and inspiration of the Dobbs-touted Minutemen groups that have proliferated from the Mexico border to Herndon, Virginia, the city that hosted the American Renaissance conference, where disgruntled locals hold regular protests outside a day-labor center. Under pressure from Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo, chair of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, and with sponsorship from House Judiciary Committee chair James Sensenbrenner (tough-talking heir to the Kotex fortune), the Republican-dominated House has approved a bill that makes it a felony to be in the United States illegally, mandates punishment for providing aid or shelter to undocumented immigrants and allocates millions for the construction of an iron wall between the United States and Mexico. Duke may have fallen short on the national stage, but his old notions have gained a new life through new political figures.

The Nation, 3/23/2006

In the 20 months since The Nation first published this article things have only gotten worse. As every Republican presidential candidate falls over themselves trying to race further and further to the right, David Duke must be grinning ear to ear.

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The disingenuous benevolence of nativist rhetoric

This past Sunday, as is my usual weekend routine, I sat through the weekly carnival of double-talk and spin that make up the Sunday morning TV gab-fest.

At the top of the list of this week's topics was the compromise immigration reform measure announced last Thursday.

Demonstrating the fact that opinions really are like buttholes – and everybody's got one, I watched as one pundit or politician after the next took a whack at reducing this complex issue down to a 15 second sound bite.

But what was most revealing about these gaseous exchanges was not what they exposed about the speakers limited knowledge of the intricacies of the issue or detialed facts, but rather how willing they were to play fast and loose with them to make a point.

Perhaps nowhere was art of obfuscation brought to such a masterful level then during the rants of America's favorite crotchety old racist, Pat Buchanan, during his weekly stint of on John McLauglin's shouting match.

Buchanan has never failed to demonstrate why he's been a national embarrassment for over forty years. Yet, given a forum to discuss his views on the non-white population under the guise of the immigration reform was like listening to a barrage of off-color, racists jokes from a drunken relative at a wedding …you can't believe this stuff is coming out of his mouth and you just wish he'd pass out already.

MR. BUCHANAN: -- a complete sellout of working America. The vast majority of these 12 million folks are uneducated and unschooled. They compete directly against African-Americans, single moms, people who didn't get out of high school….

…snip…

MR. ZUCKERMAN: High school graduates do not want to take these menial jobs. We have a shortage of employees at the low end of the employment spectrum and at the high end. And this bill is going to help us in both areas. It's exactly what we need.

MR. BUCHANAN: All right, let me tell you --

MR. ZUCKERMAN: It's the first rational bill we have, instead of pandering to all the people who just want to condemn immigration, which has been the DNA of this country.

MR. BUCHANAN: You made your point. You made your point, Mort. Half the African-Americans in this country and half the Mexican- Americans don't graduate from high school. And the ones that do have got eighth-grade educations. You're taking their jobs away and you're bringing in millions of workers to compete with them. You're betraying these people.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Also, to add to what Pat's saying, teenage unemployment is at its highest level ever. Do we really need to bring in unskilled workers to take the jobs right out of the hands of those teenagers?

McLaughlin
Group

Before we look at what Pat was really saying during his little tirade, lets look at some facts:

First off, half of all Black and Hispanic kids are not high school dropouts. While dropout rates are higher for minority students…it's far from 50%.

Black and Hispanic youth are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to drop out of high school. In 2004, 7 percent of non-Hispanic whites ages 16 to 24 were not enrolled in school and had not completed high school, compared with 12 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Hispanics. The high rate for Hispanics is in part the result of the high proportion of immigrants in this age group who never attended school in the U.S. Asian youth, with a dropout rate of 4 percent, had the lowest dropout rate among all racial and ethnic groups in 2004.
link

Secondly, the most recent study on the effects of immigrant labor on the wages of native workers with lower educational levels shows it to be negligible.

Using individual data on the task intensity of occupations across US states from 1960-2000, however, we find that foreign and native-born workers with low levels of education supply very different occupational skills. Immigrants specialize in manual tasks such as cleaning, cooking, and building. Native-born workers — who have a better understanding of local networks, rules, customs, and language — respond to immigration by specializing in interactive tasks such as coordinating, organizing, and communicating. This increased specialization in tasks complementary to those performed by immigrants implied that wages paid to native workers — even those with little formal education — experienced little decline both in the aggregate and in states with large immigration.
…snip…

Since native-born workers respond to inflows of immigrant labor by specializing in interactive tasks, wage losses associated with immigration are minimal. Immigration caused wages paid to native-born workers with less than a high school degree to drop by just 0.7% between 1990 and 2000.

Comparative Advantages and Gains from Immigration Giovanni Peri (University of California, Davis and NBER), Chad Sparber (Colgate University)
April, 2007

So basically, Pat was only doing what he's been doing for the past forty years …talking out of an orifice not located on his head.


But that's really neither here nor there, because he wasn't really talking about immigration, job loss or his ideas on protecting US workers.

What he was talking about was his belief that people of color are inherently inferior and unable to perform educationally, so they need his protection in order to keep the social status quo.

If in fact the majority of minority children weren't graduating from high school, and those that did only mastered the skills of an eight grader, as Pat believes, why wouldn’t he be outraged by that? Instead he's trying to make sure they have menial, dead end jobs awaiting them.

If 50% of white children failed to graduate from high school rather than the current 7%, Pat would be calling it a national crisis and demand the heads of the educators and government leaders who had failed to do their job.

Yet, in Pat's world, due to their obvious inferiority, people of color cannot be expected to excel academically and it's best off if they just stick to jobs more suited their limited intellects. The jobs he believes that "12 million uneducated and unschooled" immigrants are threatening to steal.

It’s amazing to see the confluence of all of Pat's warped visions about race come together in one neat little package.

And let's not forget McLaughlin's final remark on teenage unemployment. Because if the uneducable Blacks and Latinos don't want those menial jobs meant for them, surely some white children would be capable of doing them... at least after school or during the summer.

Jeez

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Why Tancredo stepped down as Immigration Caucus leader

Eight years after founding the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus as the vanguard of his anti-immigration movement, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has stepped down as chairman, passing the reins to former Federation for American Immigration Reform lobbyist Brian Bilbray (R-CA). Tancredo, who has set his sights on the White House, appears to be shifting tactics in his quest to move his nativist agenda forward.

In a statement released from Bilbray's office Tancredo said, “Congressman Bilbray was asked to lead the IRC because of his pragmatic approach to the illegal immigration issue. Brian has held the line against amnesty, fought for border security and will be a terrific leader of the Immigration Reform Caucus.”

But the change of leadership might say more about Tancredo's future ambitions than Bilbray's ability to lead the caucus.

In the shakeup that followed the November defeat of the Republican majority, it's been a mixed bag for the anti-immigration crowd.

In January, immigration hardliners managed to score a victory when they stripped comprehensive reform sponsor, Arizona Republican Representative Jeff Flake of his coveted seat on the Judiciary Committee.

Flake says it's because of his stand against party lines on immigration reform.

Flake says committee members know there's an immigration package coming with his name on it, and they don't like what it says.

Flake says the official party line will be that House Republicans are losing committee seats because of the GOP's loss of the majority in the fall elections.

But, he says six Republicans with less seniority than Flake remain on the committee, including Arizona Representative Trent Franks.
KOLD-13

Yet, a few days later, despite their best efforts they couldn't keep Bush ally and comprehensive reform advocate, Mel Martinez (R-FL), from taking over leadership of the RNC.

For Tancredo this new political landscape has presented some challenges.

Immediately after the election he announced that "We will now be looking at the strong potential for some sort of guest worker-amnesty program that cannot be stopped." Although he said he would fight to "gin up as much opposition" to it.

He also shunned any idea at running for a leadership position stating that he wasn't interested.

Tancredo, however, said he is once again mulling over a run for the presidency to push the immigration issue. He will wait for a few other questions to be resolved - including whether Allard runs again - before deciding to form an exploratory committee.

Denver Post

However, as it turned out Allard's decision played no role in Tancredo's decision to run for the White House. He had ruled out a Senate run long before Allard's announcement not to seek another term.

Tancredo claimed that if and when he was to make a Presidential bid it would be "for all the marbles"… but perhaps his plan is much more far reaching than it appears.

The conventional wisdom dictates that as an undeniable long-shot in the race, Tancredo's run is more about forcing his issue into the mainstream debate in hopes of moving his party further the right on immigration. Like his mentor, Pat Buchanan, he is hoping to replicate Buchanan's 1992 successes in the early primaries and garner enough clout to force immigration to the forefront of the election with talk about of new "war … for the soul of America."… A war against an "invading horde of immigrants" he believes are changing the very fabric of the nation.

But conventional wisdom may be wrong this time around. Perhaps it is a different Buchanan Presidential run that now interests Tancredo ... the 2000 third party run.

His lack of interest in vying Allard's Senate seat (which admittedly would be a long-shot for him to win given the current climate) coupled with his unwillingness to seek a greater leadership position, and even give up the power he already had in the House by passing his IRC leadership on to Bilbray, could be viewed as the acts of a man whose not making plans to run for his parties nomination but rather to jump ship.

Certainly his recent hires seem to reveal a willingness to go outside the usual party structure when looking for people to run his Presidential campaign .

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., has hired a former Christian Coalition leader to run his New Hampshire presidential campaign.

The Littleton Republican announced today that Shelly Uscinski, the 2000 New Hampshire campaign director for Pat Buchanan, would head his operations in the Granite State. Uscinski also was a Buchanan delegate to the 1996 Republican convention and once headed the New Hampshire branch of the Christian Coalition.
Denver Post

Tancredo also tapped another ex-Buchananite, Ken C McAlpin to be his campaigns treasurer.

Rep. Tom Tancredo has tapped an official from the now-defunct Virginia Freedom Party to be treasurer of his presidential exploratory committee, but that does not mean he's pondering a third-party candidacy, a spokesman said Monday
….

McAlpin, also known as "K.C.," is prominent in the immigration-reform movement that has made Tancredo famous. He has served as a deputy director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and is executive director of the group ProEnglish, which advocates making English the official language of the U.S.
Rocky Mountian News

In both cases Tancredo spokesmen were quick to point out that he has no intention of launching a third party run.

"From the beginning, we've had no intention to run as a third-party candidate, ever, and we'll never consider that because he's a Republican, period," said T.Q. Houlton, spokesman for the newly formed Tancredo for a Secure America Exploratory Committee.
Rocky Mountian News

Yet, there is one more key player in Tancredo world that might have a different opinion on the whole third party issue ... Pat's sister and former campaign manager Bay.

As a founding member of Team America PAC along with Tancredo, Bay has been grooming the Colorado Congressman for quite some time to be a national candidate. "Tancredo for a Secure America", his current Presidential campaign committee is a direct spin off of "Secure America Now," the campaign launched by Buchanan and Tancredo's Team America PAC to support anti-immigration candidates during the last election cycle.

One of the main candidates "Secure America Now" worked with was Minuteman Randy Graf… who could be viewed as Franco's Spain in the Buchanan's coming campaign …a place to test the blitzkrieg before the real battle begins.

Michael D. Bryan at Blogs for Arizona pointed out a over year ago the power of the Buchanan campaign machine while first covering Graf's congressional run in Arizona's 8th district.

"Secure America Now" is the road show for Team America, a Political Action Committee dedicated to border issues founded by Tom and Bay. Only by understanding the significance of the SAN tour and the history of the Buchanans in American politics does the full significance of the tour's stop in Tucson really have a useful context. Randy Graf is only a small part of the story.

The SAN tour is not just mutual support by ideologically allied politicians. This is something much larger, and more crass. This is anti-immigrant sentiment becoming the new centerpiece of the extreme right agenda. This is Tom Tancredo's shake-down run for his Presidential campaign - one in which he may be positioning to take Buchanan's traditional place to right of everyone else, and Pat's campaign manager, Bay, as well.

The campaigns run by Bay are not traditional campaigns. Strategically they have a lot in common with Ralph Nader's campaigns - they seek to pressure the moderates to deal with ideas the fringes find compelling. Logistically they are pigeons to the Party nominee's Air Force One - lean and mean, they can keep going with minimal financial support. Monetarily they are as different from a major party campaign as could be. Where losing candidates often retire from the field with millions in debts to retire, Buchanan's campaigns end heavily in the black with millions in tax-payer dollars in the bank and valuable assets, such as supporter databases, which can be used to support a permanent state of campaigning. With Bay at the helm of Tancredo's tour two things are sure: it will be a very efficiently run campaign, and it will be a very profitable one, even more so now that grassroots organizing and fund raising via the Internet has come of age.

Bay Buchanan is an experienced and canny political organizer and a revolutionary fund-raiser. Many people looked at the Dean campaign's tremendous success in raising large amounts of funding from small donations as something Sui Generis in Presidential politics. It isn't. Pat Buchanan's campaigns have been doing the same thing from the early 90s using the direct mail wizardry of Bay Buchanan. The Buchanan's were able to raise millions in the campaigns from small dollar donors, and capture federal matching funds much more efficiently that their more electorally successful competitors. Bay and Pat have garnered as much as 40 million in federal matching funds this way. For a complete account of the political fund raising and media empire which Pat and Bay have built I strongly recommend a the very insightful and well-researched article by Monte Paulsen.

... snip ...

This campaign will be much like Pat Buchanan's prior runs, self-promotional, very remunerative, and influential among the far right. I will predict now that Pat's next book will be about immigration with a forward by Tancredo: or maybe the other way around. Bay and Tom, by founding a PAC have added a new ability to the Buchanan campaign template; the power to reward allies who give them credibility and to give credibility to allies who give them power

Blogs for Arizona"Graf, Tancredo, and Buchanan: Tres Banditos en Tucson", January 21, 2006

It looks like more predictions than the one about Pat Buchanan's next-book will end up to be on the mark before the 08 election cycle comes to a close.


tags: immigration, Tancredo 08 , third party

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Buchanan in his own words

Back on September 28, Pat Buchanan appeared on KQED radio in San Francisco as part of his book tour to pitch his latest tome: "State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America." Unlike many of the hit and run spots Buchanan did over the period on TV and radio to pitch his book, KQED devoted the entire hour to Pat. This long-form interview done by "Forum" host Dave Iverson, with additional caller questions, allowed Buchanan the time to fully explain his positions and expand on his thesis about the effects of immigration on American culture, and just what Pat thinks that American culture should look like.

The first ten or fifteen minutes were devoted to Mr. Buchanan's views on the Iraq war and the Bush administration. The remainder of the interview dealt with issues at the heart of Buchanan's philosophy and world view. He touches on immigration, race, ethnicity and his preference to keep the country White, European and Christian. Unbridled by the constraints of the 5 min book plug format, Buchanan allows us a unique opportunity to really see into the mind and more importantly, the soul of the man.


tags: immigration, Pat Buchanan , racism


rac.ism  [rey-siz-uhm]
–noun 1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.


Once Mr. Buchanan gets into the swing of things, rarely a sentence passes that doesn't contain the word, "race" "culture" (preceded by "European", "Hispanic", "Christian" or "foreign")" or "ethnicity." His entire thought process is dominated by the notion of race. He sees certain races and cultures as far superior to others, and advocates that America should remain as racially pure as possible. He further states that all immigration should be based upon a "point system" of desirable and undesirable traits.

According to Buchanan:

A nation is united by blood and soil, history, heritage and most importantly language and culture

Bonds of American culture are exclusively western European…American began as an English nation and became a European nation in terms of our ancestry and culture…now we are inviting balkanization and the breakup of nation

Ethnic core of the country is European and Christian, if we become a conglomerate of all the religions and cultures of the world we will cease to exist.

We should set preferences with a point system for those we let in - they should be speak English, be educated, from a similar western culture and Christian.

We should favor those with PhD's or specialties like the German scientists we brought in after WWII

'Illegals' are bringing in diseases

Latin American children, even in the second and third generation, like blacks, don't do well in school. And will, later in life rely on welfare and social services Why bring in folks who contribute less to society, we have to pick and chose the 'best'

We are overloading the counties ability to adapt and recoup ...we need time out from all immigration.

Assimilation is not taking place; we will soon be a nation of two languages and cultures like Palestine, Cyprus, and Kosovo-Serbia

Extracted quotes can't really do this interview service. For all those interested in immigration and immigration reform, the hour long interview is well worth a listen. Without the constraints of time or a MSM moderator to keep him from going too far off the deep end, Buchanan is free to show his true colors. Iverson gives him plenty of rope and Pat does a fine job of hanging himself.


No MP3 is available for this interview due to the inclusion of copyright-protected material. You can hear the entire interview by going to the KQED website for "Immigration in Focus" and scrolling down to the Sept, 28, 2006 edition of "Forum"

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Study proves Pat Buchanan full of crap: Immigrants do assimilate.

Maybe it was all those years he spent writing the lies that came out of Nixon's mouth, or perhaps he learned to vocalize out of an orifice other than his mouth while sugarcoating Reagan's policies for mass consumption, or maybe he just has a "genetic pre-disposition" to sling blarney. But no matter what the reason for his inability to tell the truth, a new study has unequivocally proven that Pat Buchanan is simply full of crap when it comes to the "death of the west … third world invasion" philosophy in his new book, State of Emergency.

Buchanan has made a career recently out of telling the American people that their "White-European" nation is under attack from an invading horde of "Hispanics and Asians … from continents and countries whose peoples have never been assimilated fully into any Western country," that these new immigrants "are not interested in linguistic or cultural assimilation" and many are here only to engage in the re-conquest the Southwest. But a newly released report proves Mr. Buchanan wrong; today's new immigrants assimilate at the same rate as previous generations.



tags: immigration, Pat Buchanan , Population and Developement Reveiw , assimilation, linguistic study, English language

A new report published by the non-profit Population Council found that, just like all previous immigrant groups, today's new immigrants lose their ability to speak their mother tongue over the course of a few generations and their children end up fully assimilate into American culture.

The report, "Linguistic Life Expectancies: Immigrant Language Retention in Southern California" by Frank D. Bean and Rubén G. Rumbaut of University of California, Irvine and Douglas S. Massey of Princeton, looks at data from two recent surveys—the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles survey, and the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study in San Diego, to determine the average number of generations an immigrants mother tongue can be expected to survive in the United States after arrival.

The report looked at not only Hispanic immigrants, but also those from Asia and those classified as "white European" using two different criteria; those who "speak a foreign language at home" and those "who speak it well" and found that for all immigrant groups studied, the ability to speak in the mother tongue generally disappears by the third generation (those with American-born parents, but with three or four foreign-born grandparents).

Although the life expectancy of Spanish is found to be greater among Mexicans in Southern California compared to other groups, its ultimate demise nonetheless seems assured by the third generation. English has never been seriously threatened as the dominant language of the United States, and it is not threatened today—not even in Southern California. What is endangered instead is the survivability of the non-English languages that immigrants bring with them to the United States.

PDR abstract

The report takes aim in particular at Buchanan's more erudite doppelganger, Samuel Huntington and his book, Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity. The researchers vehemently attack Huntington's thesis that "the arrival of Latin American Immigrants in large numbers during the last three decades of the twentieth century threatens the core of American identity and culture… (that) Latin American immigrants are much less likely to speak English than earlier generations of European immigrants because they speak a common language; they are regionally concentrated and residentially segregated within Spanish-speaking enclaves; they are less interested in linguistic and cultural assimilation; and they are encouraged in this lack of interest by activists who foment identity politics."

The authors argue back that their study proves that "Spanish in no way constitutes a threat to the continued predominance of English within the United States." and that "those who worry about linguistic balkanization because of heavy immigration from Spanish-speaking countries have nothing to fear."

They point out that using data from the Southern California surveys allows them to analyze the most extreme case scenario in the nation, noting that no other area has been as greatly effected by immigration.

The surveys used were conducted in Southern California, a region adjacent to the Mexican border that was not only the country's largest net receiver of immigrants during the period 1970-2005, but one that also contained more Spanish-speakers and persons of Mexican origin than any other megalopolitan area…one in every five immigrants in the United States reside in the regions six contiguous counties (San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino), including the largest communities of Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Koreans, Iranians, and Cambodians outside the countries of origin.
Linguistic Life Expectancies: Immigrant Language Retention in Southern California(PDF)

Even under these extreme circumstances, their findings directly contradict Huntington's assertions. As is the case with the economic studies on immigration done by those like David Card, the United States has an uncanny ability to absorb large numbers of new immigrants and not only incorporate them economically but also culturally.

The United States has aptly been described as a "graveyard" for languages because of its historical ability to absorb immigrants by the millions and extinguish their mother tongues within a few generations, and Spanish appears to offer no threat to this reputation …Like taxes and biological death, linguistic death seems to be a sure thing in the United States even for Mexicans living in Los Angeles, a city with one of the largest Spanish-speaking urban populations in the world"

Link (PDF)

Certainly these findings differ greatly from the rhetoric spewed out regularly by Buchanan and his cohorts.

All across the U.S., hordes of immigrants – legal and illegal – are chattering away in their native language and have no intention of learning English, the all-but-official language of the United States where they now live.

Can you blame them? They are being enabled by all those diversity fanatics to defy the age-old custom of immigrants to our shores who made it one of their first priorities to learn to speak English and to teach their offspring to do likewise. It was a case of sink or swim. If you couldn’t speak English you couldn’t get by, go to school, get a job, or become a citizen and vote. Nowadays we kowtow to demands that everything from ballots to official documents be presented in many native languages as well as in English.

-snip-
What holds the country together is the commonality of language. … are they learning our language, are they assimilating into our culture? … the answer is a resounding “NO.” Tragically, the answer to the question of English surviving the immigrant invasion is probably “no.” The English language is on its death bed, a victim of the enablers.

Michael Reagan writing on Buchanan.org

But what must always be kept in mind is that Buchanan has always had a problem with the truth. He had it when he worked for Nixon, he had it when he worked for Reagan, and he certainly has it now. He has always been a master manipulator of facts and opinion…. if the facts don't back up his opinion …he just manipulates them. He's been doing it since he first started working for Nixon in 1965 and he'll continue to do it as long as he has an audience ready and willing to listen to his racist drivel and buy his books.

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Immigration: Sometimes it all comes down to race

As the issue of immigration reform and border security heats up, we continue to hear from those demanding tighter controls at the border and more punitive laws to deal with illegal immigration that he issue is not one of race, but rather security and economics. Whenever, Tancredo, Hayworth, Sensenbrenner, Dobbs, Buchanan, or the myriad of other proponents of closed borders are asked about the racial overtones of their proposals, they vehemently deny any malevolent motivations whatsoever. They claim that the closing of the borders and the expulsion of all undocumented immigrants are the only way to ensure our national security and protect American workers from unfair competition.

We’ve all heard the claims:
* Undocumented workers, working for less, causing native-born Americans to lose valuable jobs.

* Undocumented immigrants put undo strains on our social services.

* Terrorists use our weak border security to enter the country
Etc,etc.

But they never, ever, mention the two-ton elephant in the room … race.

Or do they?
more below the fold
Tag: immigration

Demographic crisis of the GOP
by Patrick J. Buchanan
The American Cause
January 11, 2006

-snip-

Rove and Bush correctly perceived that, due to immigration, the Nixon-Reagan coalition, composed almost entirely of white voters, was shrinking in relative terms. Where, in 1960, European-Americans were nearly 90 percent of the population and an even higher share of the voters, today, they are less than 70 percent of the population.

Today, a Republican can sweep the white vote 55 percent to 45 percent, and still lose. And as President Clinton merrily predicted a few years ago, white folks will be just another minority in 2050, as they are already in California and Texas.

… The Bush-Rove solution to the looming demographic disaster is to go all-out to court the nation's fastest growing minority, Hispanics, who now number 40 million and 13 percent of the U.S. population. But, in seeking to win the Hispanic vote, the inherent defects of the Bush-Rove strategy have become manifestly clear.

First, Hispanics have never voted Republican in any presidential election. … . In national elections, the Hispanic vote ranges between 56 percent and 75 percent Democratic. Thus, the more Hispanic America becomes, the more Democratic America becomes.

California, which Nixon carried on five tickets and Ronald Reagan never lost, is a harbinger of what is to come. With a fifth of the electoral votes needed to win the presidency, California has moved beyond the reach of a conservative Republican.

Reason: Though many Hispanics may be social conservatives, they believe in Big Government. Understandably so. For, as lower-income voters, they pay far less in income taxes than the average American, while benefiting far more from the welfare state: free education for their kids, food stamps, welfare checks, housing supplements, Medicaid, subsidized day care, student loans and grants, affirmative action, and earned income tax credits. At the local, state and federal level, Hispanics vote for the party of government.

-snip-

In short, there is an inherent contradiction between being the party of small government and being the party of Hispanics, and that contradiction is tearing the Bush-Rove coalition apart at the seams.

Now, an irreconcilable conflict looms. In a House vote before the Christmas-New Year's break, Republicans endorsed a 700-mile security fence on the U.S.-Mexican border and tough sanctions on corporations that hire illegal aliens. No issue more fires up the populist base and white working-class Democrats than the issue of unprotected borders and the flooding of our cities and towns by some 12 million illegal aliens and counting.

For five years, President Bush has refused to deal with the crisis on the border, denouncing the Minutemen who went there to serve as spotters for a beleaguered Border Patrol as "vigilantes." For Bush and Rove believe that taking a tough line on illegal immigration will do to the national GOP what they think Gov. Pete Wilson's hard line on illegal immigration did to the California GOP.

But now that immigration has become the hot domestic issue and Republicans are taking a tougher line, repudiating Bush's guest-worker plan as amnesty, Bush is being compelled to come down harder himself against illegal immigration – or become irrelevant.

The question Bush and Rove face is this: Can the GOP be both the party that secures the border against Hispanic invaders and sanctions employers who hire them, and still be the party Hispanics will vote for? In the old imagery, if Bush reaches for the bird in the bush, the Hispanic vote, by favoring open borders and amnesty, he may lose the bird in the hand, the support of the white working and middle class that is the heart of the Republican coalition.

-snip-

Either Bush and Rove secure the border now, or we can kiss the GOP goodbye.

Now, I realize that most will say … come on, it’s Buchanan …he doesn’t represent any “mainstream” political philosophy. … He’s on the fringe, and always has been.

I believe it would be folly to underestimate the power of his message or his political savvy. Twice before he has pushed his party further to the right with unsuccessful presidential bids. Each time he has forced them to consolidate some of his views into party dogma. He is about to again.

As outlined in an excellent article from Blog for Arizona , the Buchanan juggernaut is just beginning. He and his sister, Bay, along with their friend Tom Tancredo, are raising big money, formulating a widespread network of contacts and laying the groundwork for a major anti-immigration campaign on a national scale. This time it will be Tancredo playing Buchanan’s traditional role as the spoiler.

As this debate heats up even further, the racist undertones will come ever closer to the surface. If Pat Buchanan has anything to do with it.

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Graf, Tancredo, and Buchanan: Tres Banditos en Tucson

This is an excellent article about Tom Tancredo’s and Bat Buchanan’s Team America Pac and it’s activities in the Arizona 8th Congressional race. Even more importantly, it touches on the ramifications of just how this anti-immigrant movement could effect politics on a national scale as they gain more power and influence. This article should serve as a wake-up call for all those concerned about fair and humane immigration reform. This is no longer an issue limited to the fringes of right-wing politics. If Tancredo and Buchanan have their way, they will force it to the front of the political agenda.

Reprinted with permission from Blog for Arizona
more below the fold
Tag: immigration

Graf, Tancredo, and Buchanan: Tres Banditos en Tucson
By Michael D. Bryan, Blog for Arizona



Tom Tancredo (R - CO) and Bay Buchanan (sister of Pat Buchanan, director of the American Cause, and the manager of Pat's Presidential campaigns) came to Tucson on Friday in support of Randy Graf's unending campaign for Congress in CD8. The Bay and Tom show isn't just a one-off for Graf's benefit though, it is a national tour called the "Secure America Now" tour. Sound familiar? It should. It taps into the same issues and supporters that Arizona's "Protect Arizona Now" initiative did. At the breakfast one could find many of the same people who worked on PAN, not the least of which was Randy Graf himself.

"Secure America Now" is the road show for Team America, a Political Action Committee dedicated to border issues founded by Tom and Bay. Only by understanding the significance of the SAN tour and the history of the Buchanans in American politics does the full significance of the tour's stop in Tucson really have a useful context. Randy Graf is only a small part of the story.

The SAN tour is not just mutual support by ideologically allied politicians. This is something much larger, and more crass. This is anti-immigrant sentiment becoming the new centerpiece of the extreme right agenda. This is Tom Tancredo's shake-down run for his Presidential campaign - one in which he may be positioning to take Buchanan's traditional place to right of everyone else, and Pat's campaign manager, Bay, as well.

The campaigns run by Bay are not traditional campaigns. Strategically they have a lot in common with Ralph Nader's campaigns - they seek to pressure the moderates to deal with ideas the fringes find compelling. Logistically they are pigeons to the Party nominee's Air Force One - lean and mean, they can keep going with minimal financial support. Monetarily they are as different from a major party campaign as could be. Where losing candidates oftenretire from the field with millions in debts to retire, Buchanan's campaigns end heavily in the black with millions in tax-payer dollars in the bank and valuable assets, such as supporter databases, which can be used to support a permanent state of campaigning. With Bay at the helm of Tancredo's tour two things are sure: it will be a very efficiently run campaign, and it will be a very profitable one, even more so now that grassroots organizing and fund raising via the Internet has come of age.

Bay Buchanan is an experienced and canny political organizer and a revolutionary fund-raiser. Many people looked at the Dean campaign's tremendous success in raising large amounts of funding from small donations as something Sui Generis in Presidential politics. It isn't. Pat Buchanan's campaigns have been doing the same thing from the early 90s using the direct mail wizardry of Bay Buchanan. The Buchanan's were able to raise millions in the campaigns from small dollar donors, and capture federal matching funds much more efficiently that their more electorally successful competitors. Bay and Pat have garnered as much as 40 million in federal matching funds this way. For a complete account of the political fund raising and media empire which Pat and Bay have built I strongly recommend the very insightful and well-researched article by Monte Paulsen. Possibly even more profitable than the campaigns hemselves has been the direct mail issue-oriented fund raising that Bay's American Cause has done between campaigns using the tremendously valuable conservative mailing lists that the Buchanan's campaigns have generated. Nor has Bay been shy about selling those lists to commercial and political interests who want to use them. A word of warning: don't give your personal information at conservative event associated with the Buchanansunless you don't mind junk mail.

Tancredo is a dark-horse and he knows it. He is a single issue candidate focused on immigration. As such, he has no chance and no intent of capturing his party's nomination. But to make his run successful, he doesn't have to win. Obscure little Dennis Kucinich showed all of Washington that was paying attention how to parlay a Presidential run while sitting in Congress into a platform for strengthening your name recognition, focusing public attention on your issues, gaining a national following, and vastly increasing your fund raising power and influence among your peers. Dennis even got to stand on the stage with the bug guns during the primaries and deliver his message. Those benefits are looking good to Tancredo, and it looks like Bay is willing to help him do it.

This campaign will be much like Pat Buchanan's prior runs, self-promotional, very remunerative, and influential among the far right. I will predict now that Pat's next book will be about immigration with a forward by Tancredo: or maybe the other way around. Bay and Tom, by founding a PAC have added a new ability to the Buchanan campaign template; the power to reward allies who give them credibility and to give credibility to allies who give them power. Thus Tom and Bay's visit with Congressman Trent Franks in Phoenix, and their assistance to Randy Graf's attempt to hold CD8 for the GOP in Tucson. Team America splashed out over 25K in independent expenditures on behalf of Graf when he ran against Kolbe. They also spent over $2200 on Verizon Wireless in Tucson from 6/04 to 11/04 which I have to wonder if the Graf campaign benefitted from. Look for Team America to make an even bigger splash with independent campaign expenditures on behalf of Randy Graf as the GOP primary heats up, and yet more activity during the general.

So far Graf's campaign has raised somewhat more than 75K; a poor fraction of what he needs. Yet Graf's staff seemed awfully sure that somehow Graf would raise 500K for the primary. I don't know for sure, but I would guess that much of that confidence comes from knowing that Tom and Bay are putting the list generated by the SAN tour and Bay's direct mail wizardry and lists from her brother's Presidential runs at Graf's disposal. What could be better for Tom Tancredo than having another like-minded Republican in Congress to help him formulate a final solution for the illegal immigration problem?

There are some who will let folks like Tancredo, Buchanan, and Graf off the hook, calling them nationalists, or law and order types, rather than what they really are: racists. To those people I present the evidence. If a politician were only concerned with border security, because of terrorism, drugs, slavery, etc., his policies would target only border security. These folks are concerned about security at the border, but they also vehemently oppose amnesty and assimilation of immigrants who originally came here illegally, even threatening to discipline GOP members who support any sort of amnesty. They want to somehow deport 12 million people: and they only talk about illegal immigrants as Hispanics, except when they are terrorists - unless they speak of them as both.

These folks are constantly penning screeds about how Hispanics are overrunning 'our culture', 'our language', 'our values', and, most importantly. 'our ballot boxes'. They show clear signs of xenophobic panic, racial and cultural intolerance, and a desire to eliminate the 'contamination'. If they were only concerned about the 'criminal element' among illegal aliens (which I would submit is no greater than among any randomly selected group of 12 million people) then they would look to consequence only criminals; instead they define them all as criminals based on their status no matter how much they contribute to their new society.

And then there are the 'Reconquista' myths and conspiracy theories. QED. These folks are just racists.

These folks mind-set is plain in everything they do. When I was at the breakfast, there were a group of people from the Pima County Interfaith Council and other politically opposed groups who infiltrated the meeting. At one point several stood up with signs reading "Real Solutions for Real People". Those signs where violently ripped away and the the protesters assaulted in escorting them from the venue. But that's not what is so revelatory. One of the volunteer staff who was holding a camera came up behind a PCIC member named Petra who had no sign and had not stood up to chant and he angrily indicated to a security person to eject her from the venue. What had she done? Listened to Tancredo while Hispanic. Graf's staffer ejected Petra simply for being Hispanic. Petra was racially profiled. These people are just racists camouflaging themselves as nationalists.

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