Tuning Into Immigration Anger

[MountainLaurel]

For those of you who aren't familiar with the steaming pile of shit that is Tom Tancredo.

The first time Rep. Tom Tancredo got really angry about immigration, the year was 1975, and he was a junior high school social studies teacher in Denver. The state had recently passed the nation's first bilingual education law, and Hispanic kids were taken from his class to study in Spanish.

That idea made zero sense to Tancredo, the grandson of Italian immigrants. He believed that newcomers should be assimilated into the country, as they had been for generations. The image of America as a beacon for people from all over the world uniting under one flag and one language was threatened, he contended, if the country started adapting to immigrants, instead of the other way around.

A year later, Tancredo launched a political career animated by his obsession to stem the tide of immigration from Mexico and Central America that he feared would change the character and security of the country. Today, the four-term Republican House member stands at the center of a national debate over how best to deal with the nearly 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Tancredo helped the House pass a bill in December that would impose criminal sanctions on illegal immigrants and those who employ them and that would erect a wall along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border to keep others out.

That legislation has triggered massive protests throughout the country and prompted a Senate committee this week to pass an alternative measure with a guest-worker program that would help many illegal immigrants eventually win permanent residency or even U.S. citizenship.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/30/AR2006033001837.html

And here's a transcript of him in a WP discussion forum yesterday:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/03/29/DI2006032901468.html

[sallyseven]

1. I saw a person named Wright on Tweety

last night. He says most republicans are against immigration because they do not want a dirty bomb coming across the boarder. They are for security. Talk about scare tactics. Completely off the wall. That is what the repugs will try to do to the population. We have to counteract it. A dirty bomb is not coming because if it were it would have happened by now. They want a better life. I don't have the solution but a start would be identify them. Give them working cards and the minute that they get out of line they are forced to go back to their country and wait 5 years to come again. ( drugs, felony behavior) If they do not do that then they forfeit any chance of getting citizenship. That goes for every one of them. Next make it a big problem for the companies that hire them. They are creating a problem and making buco bucks on the situation. Big fines and collect them.
I say fear mongers like Mr. Wright should be put in jail. It is wrong to spew hate and lies. Amy Goodman looked like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Even Tweety looked shaken.

[sui generis]

2. if a dirty bomb could come across the border it already would have

dirty bombs aren't nearly as profitable for smugglers to smuggle as cocaine and heroin and marijuana and people.

I imagine a "dirty bomb" has to get through "street customs" first, and it's not likely to do that.

[megatherium]

3. if you think 'fear mongers' need to be put in jail,

you need a nice refresher course in the first amendment.

[classysassy]

5. Your solution

would have been wonderful in 1492.

[katty]

4. same old power play of the ages: Divide the people and Conquer