What would Reagan do? Immigration reform is the most Republican of causes.

 

By Frank Keating

November 11, 2013

LA TImes

 

Like many Republicans — what's more, like many Americans — I regard Ronald Reagan as my political hero and inspiration. For conservatives who came of age in the 1960s and '70s, President Reagan offered a principled and compassionate argument for individual freedom and an equally compelling case for personal responsibility.

In 1989, Reagan described his view of America "as a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here."

Unfortunately, too many conservatives — though they aspire to walk in Reagan's footsteps — have forgotten that immigration reform is the most Republican of causes. We cannot support open borders for trade but not for people. We cannot support the unfettered exchange of goods and ideas while building razor-wired walls that separate children from their parents. We cannot make America stronger and more prosperous by excluding tomorrow's talent and industry.

From my perspective as a Reagan Republican — indeed, as a senior official in the Reagan administration during the last major immigration reform process — I am convinced that we stand on the precipice of opportunity.

In numbers that we haven't seen since the early 20th century, immigrants have been coming here to work and to build a better future for their families. Just as immigrants helped fuel the engine of America's emerging industrial economy 100 years ago, today they are filling two critical job gaps: high-skilled professions in science, technology and advanced manufacturing, and low-skill service and industrial jobs in fast-growing regions. We need immigrants of all skill levels to help build the 21st century economy.

Offering opportunities to new Americans doesn't take jobs from citizens. The economy is not zero-sum. It's dynamic, and bringing new talent to American jobs will enlarge the economy for everyone. In June, a Congressional Budget Office report estimated that the Senate's bipartisan immigration reform bill would boost economic growth by 5.4% after 20 years and reduce the deficit by $900 billion over that period.
Immigration would also help address a critical long-term gap in funding for America's two signature entitlement programs: Social Security and Medicare.

In 1950, there were about 16 workers for every retiree. Today, there are only about three. But according to Social Security's chief actuary, immigrants, who tend to come to the United States at the start of their careers, would enrich the Social Security trust fund by $500 billion over the next 25 years, and by an impressive $4 trillion by the end of the century. That's a game-changer.

These numbers underscore an important point. Immigrants are coming here to work, not to become dependent on the state. People don't make perilous journeys and risk their life savings and sometimes their lives for the goal of getting a welfare check, a food-stamp card or a housing voucher. And welfare reform has made America even less attractive for those who would go on the dole.

But the considerable economic benefits aren't the main reason we should reform immigration. America was the world's first nation to be based on principles, not ethnicity. Citizenship is at once narrow and broad — available to those who share our principles, regardless of race or national origin. It is unconscionable to leave a class of neighbors who share our values in perpetual second-class status.

The promise of citizenship has always drawn pioneers who have made America the strong country it is today. Immigration reform fulfills the promise of the American dream for new generations who will make our country even stronger.

The Senate bill also protects the rule of law by securing the border and ensuring that only law-abiding immigrants receive legal status. Border security is the indispensable lintel that shoulders the load. Without it, the entire structure would be in jeopardy. President Obama can help calm concerns by pledging not to use delays or waivers to weaken the bill.

Future Americans with will, resolve and heart are waiting. As Ronald Reagan might have put it, it's time to open the doors.

Frank Keating, a former Republican governor of Oklahoma, is president and chief executive of the American Bankers Assn.

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

RACE SCARES THE U.S. RIGHT!

The Shrinking White Base of the GOP Cannot Accept the Country In Which It Now Lives

 

 

 

 Written by Gary Younge

 

GUEST WORDS-In the early 1980s veteran pollster Stan Greenberg, conducted a focus group in Macomb County, a Detroit suburb, of former Democrats who had switched allegiance to the Republican Ronald Reagan. After he read a statement by Robert Kennedy about racial inequality, one participant interjected: "No wonder they killed him." 

"That stopped me and led to a whole new analysis of Reagan Democrats," wrote Greenberg in a recent report, Inside the GOP.  "I realized that in trying to reach this group of people race is everything," he told me.

While conducting a focus group with Republicans over the summer he had a similar revelation, although it came not from a sole outburst but almost throwaway comments, often left on cards after the session. As one man left his handout he half-joked: "It's probably digital, so you can check it on the NSA files."

Another asked: "Now you're going to guarantee that what we put down here, we won't be getting a call from the IRS about an audit or anything like that?" Alongside this sense of being spied upon was relief that, in these Republican-only groups, they had found kindred spirits. "I'm not alone in the way I view things for the most part," wrote one on a postcard. "Not by myself in thought process," confided another.

Those seeking to understand what drove the Republican party to shut down the government this month in a strategically disastrous move that laid bare its deep internal divisions – and ultimately led to humiliating defeat – could do worse than start here. The report reveals a sense of ideological, demographic and cultural siege, on the American right, from which there is no obvious escape.

Unable to comprehend or process last year's election defeat, they feel the nation has become unmoored from its founding principles and is on a full-scale, unrelenting descent into chaos. Obama has been victorious in implementing socialism and the party they identify with has proved incapable of halting the decline, leaving them alienated not only from the country at large but one another. If it appears as though they are howling at the moon, it's because they feel all earthly options have been exhausted.

Describing Ireland's economic and cultural transformation in his book The Deportees, Roddy Doyle wrote: "I went to bed in one country and woke up in a different one." Many Republicans have precisely the same feeling.

Central to this deep-seated sense of angst is race. In 2012, 92% of the Republican vote came from white people who, within 30 years, will no longer be in the majority. "They are acutely racially conscious," says Greenberg. "They are very aware that they are 'white' in a country that is becoming increasingly 'minority'."

Growing increasingly dependent on an ever-shrinking base, they see their electoral fortunes waning but are resistant to adapting their message to broaden their appeal beyond their narrow racial confines. Race is less the explicit target of their anxiety (issues such as affirmative action and civil rights no longer dominate) than the primary (if not exclusive) prism through which their political consciousness is being filtered. "Race," writes Greenberg, "is central to their worldview."

There are three main ways in which this has been a factor in the recent government shutdown and Republican schisms. First is gerrymandering. Since race is one of the best predictors of voting behavior, House congressional seats have been manipulated largely on racial grounds. Politicians at state level carve constituencies into odd and unlikely shapes, shuffling around various racial groups to protect incumbents.

Both parties do this when they have the chance but Republicans, who run more state houses, have had more chance and have undertaken the task with much zeal and guile.

As a result, in 2012 the Democrats won more votes nationally for Congress but still got fewer seats, giving the Republicans who shut down the government a fragile mandate. It also means incumbents need not fear losing their seats, leaving them able to act out.

Second is the perceived beneficiaries of government spending. Republicans are more likely to regard intervention as being to support minorities rather than to support the poor. This goes not only for food stamps and welfare but also for Obamacare – which was the issue that initially sparked the shutdown.

"Obamacare is a racial flashpoint for many evangelical and Tea Party voters," writes Greenberg.
Their despair is largely rooted in the assumption that by championing programs that disproportionately help minorities, Obama is effectively buying votes and securing a growing tranche of the electorate who will for evermore be dependent on government.

One participant, echoing the views of many, said: "Every minority group wants to say they have the right to something, and they don't. It's life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It doesn't say happiness. You get to be alive and you get to be free. The rest of it's just a pursuit … you're not guaranteed happiness. You have to work for it."

Finally, there is Obama – the black son of an African immigrant and white mother – who stands as an emblem for all this unease, personifying, in their minds, not only their political impotence today but their demographic irrelevance tomorrow. The word they're most likely to use to describe him is "liar". But their hostility goes beyond his policies and pronouncements to a deeply rooted suspicion of his authenticity.

"[There] is a sense of him being foreign, non-Christian, Muslim – and they wonder what really are his motives for the changes he is advancing." As he moves into his second term, there is now an elision in the Republican mind between what they think he is (an immigrant, a fraudster, a non-American) and what they think he does (assist immigrants and fraudsters in contravention of American ideals).

Their inability to craft a credible strategic response to these insecurities only serves to reinforce them.
"You don't like a particular policy or a particular president?" taunted Obama last week. "Go out there and win an election." The trouble is Republicans can't because their racially charged rhetoric alienates minorities, leaving them more electorally isolated, prompting defeat – which leaves them ever more divided.

Meanwhile, their reckless obstruction in Congress, which nearly triggered a default, makes the nation's descent into chaos more likely. Unable to come to terms with the country in which they live, they are complicit in creating the very future they most fear.

(Gary Younge is a Guardian columnist and feature writer based in the US. This column was posted first by The Guardian/UK and most recently by the excellent CommonDreams.org)

It's Labor Day...but where are all the American Jobs?

I will start today's blog with a quote from President Reagan back in 1981,"...government isn't the solution, government is the problem!"


As America waits for the President to give his long awaited jobs plan speech this Thursday, we got to think for a moment and say is this really America? The August employment report came out and the number of new jobs created: ZERO. The unemployment rate, as of today, remains at 9.1%. The number of fellow Americans who are unemployed today is officially 14 million people. A CNN poll that just came out last week, stated that 8 out 10 Americans think we are still in a recession. The situation is dire.

In a recent interview with Ken Rogoff, a professor at Harvard University said, "Well, clearly we're stagnating. I mean, the employment numbers have been getting weaker and weaker for a while. I think what it really underscores is that the recession never ended. We have not got back to where we started on output. We're not close on employment. We're still very much crawling our way out of the recession. And right now...nothing."

The editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore says, "There is a BIG difference between the two parties and it may lead to gridlock." I think that train has unfortunately already passed us. "But I don't think either party has anything that they've proposed that will get us out of this because I think they're missing the fundamental point. And that this economy does not appear to be capable anymore of creating enough jobs to put enough decent jobs on the table."

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO and a member of the President's Council of Jobs and Competitiveness, also has some interesting things to say about America's current economic situation. Trumka states, "We have bad trade laws, we have tax laws that reward people for moving jobs overseas. If we'd focus on manufacturing here and all of us coming together, labor, government and business, and business and labor all working together, we can compete with anybody in the world. Because if you don't compete, if you don't manufacture things, you can't compete in the global economy!"

So where do we turn? Who has our best interest? What are some solutions?Here are some possible solutions being put on the table from both the business and labor sectors:

1) Eliminate the number of government regulations that are killing job creation.

2) Lower taxes on individuals and corporations (maybe even a possible flat tax?)

3) Target specific communities throughout America for job creation.

4) Regulate Wall Street.



We must remember economics 101....demand drives up business and hiring. From CNN's Your Money show, the host Ali Velshi says to the President:

"And finally, go big Mr. President. Americans are not spending money because they're frightened about their economic prospects....you have to tell America how it can be great again. Extract yourself from the embarrassing quagmire that Washington has become. America has reason to be proud and hopeful. This is a tall order, but lay out the road map on Thursday. Tell us how you think we'll get there. Maybe you will be right, maybe you won't be, but we'll have something to talk about other than politics as usual."