Debates Define Their Demagoguery

It's not that the question hasn't been asked. In fact, in this presidential campaign season, we hear it more than ever. Yet until now, the leading Republican candidates had refused to answer it.

In countless GOP presidential debates, where the issue of immigration has been discussed this year, most of the candidates had managed to avoid explaining precisely what they would do with the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the country.

Except for Rep. Michelle Bachman, who came out for deporting all 11 million (at a cost of $135 billion), two weeks ago. The other candidates have been very vague about the most crucial part of the immigration question.

The standard cop-out answer was for them to explain that they refused to deal with immigration reform until the U.S.-Mexico border is "secured." While pandering to conservative extremists on their way to the Republican primaries, they obviously felt they couldn't even talk about what they would do with 11 million people after the border is shut. Any talk of comprehensive immigration reform that included a path to legalization, any mention of "compassion" or "amnesty" would be considered a sign of weakness by the GOPs conservative base.

Perhaps they thought they could ride out the entire primary season without defining their position on the undocumented immigrants already living here. Perhaps they were giving themselves some leeway, so they could hypocritically run back to the middle, pretend to be moderates and try to appeal to Latino voters in time for the general election.

Bottom line: Getting them to define exactly what they would do with 11 million people has been as difficult as securing the border!

Amazingly, it wasn't until Saturday's ABC Iowa debate that we finally learned what some of the leading GOP candidates intend to do with undocumented immigrants. And it happened only because moderator Diane Sawyer clearly wanted the candidates to go beyond their "secure the border" demagoguery.

"And can we just do one thing for the interest of time?" Sawyer asked. "Can we stipulate that every single person on this stage tonight has said the No. 1 thing to do is secure the borders, secure the borders, secure the borders, secure the borders ... We stipulate that, that's what you all want to do first. I'd like to turn, now, the question, (to) the 11 million undocumented people in this country."

As a result, Newt Gingrich was forced to acknowledge that the legalization plan he proposed in another debate would only apply to a small percentage of undocumented immigrants, and Mitt Romney finally explained that he expects all undocumented immigrants to register with the government, "settle their affairs" here and return to their homelands to stand "at the back of the line with everybody else that wants to come here."

What Romney still hasn't explained is how he expects to convince 11 million people — most of whom have planted deep roots here — to self deport.

Apparently, he expects to crack down on immigrants and make their lives so miserable that they would have to seek refuge back home.

"I do not want to do something which encourages another wave of illegal immigration," Romney said. "So, from my viewpoint, the key measure is this: No favoritism for permanent residency or citizenship for those that have come here illegally."

Pandering to the right is essential in these GOP debates, and these candidates are not about to stop now.

When Sawyer tried to find out if there was any flexibility in Gingrich's plan to grant legalization to immigrants who have been here illegally for more than 25 years, the new GOP front-runner made sure that everyone understood that his generosity toward undocumented immigrants is very limited.

When Sawyer asked whether his threshold could be five years, because it would obviously benefit millions more and when she told him that at least 3.5 million people could benefit if the threshold was 15 years, Gingrich stuck rigidly to his 25-year cutoff. "I don't think there's 3.5 million people who've been here 25 years ... you used a number that doesn't relate to my proposal."

In other words, no one knows how many people this proposal would affect. But given all the other hurdles Gingrich would require them to jump, it probably applies to less than a million people, leaving us with 10 million undocumented immigrants and an unsolved problem.

While Romney wants to make life miserable for 11 million undocumented immigrants, until they are forced to self-deport, Gingrich's plan would only affect 10 million people. Isn't that nice?

The Gingrich proposal is a farce! He thinks it gives him a hook to compete with President Barack Obama for the Hispanic vote in November. And yet his proposal is so limited and his xenophobia politics so obvious, that Latinos would have to be masochists to vote for him.

Just in case his ridiculous proposal could be construed as some kind of amnesty by right-wing extremists, Gingrich threw them a little more red meat Saturday: "I think most of the workers who are here, who have no ties to us should go home immediately," he said. "I think we should make deportation dramatically easier. I think, frankly, we oughta make English the official language of government. And we oughta have an effective guest worker program with very severe penalties for those employers who hire people illegally."

You have to wonder how either Gingrich or Romney could campaign with a straight face in Hispanic neighborhoods during the next year. But surely, they will, and their hypocrisy will be on display!

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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