New York Times (Editorial)
August 25, 2015
Jeb
Bush went to the border town of McAllen, Tex., on Monday to raise money
and to talk about immigration, in English and fluent Spanish. Because
the Republican
presidential campaign has been so fixated on border security and the
immigrant peril — thank you, Donald Trump — it was a chance to see how
the supposed expert on this fraught subject handled it.
Short version: He was awful.
In
less than 15 minutes, Mr. Bush managed to step on his message, to give
Mr. Trump a boost, and to offend Asian-Americans, a growing population
that is every
bit as important as Latinos in winning presidential elections. And he
failed to give Latino voters any persuasive evidence that he had
anything better to offer them than his opponents in a revoltingly
xenophobic Republican campaign.
It
may be time to offer this forlorn candidate some free advice. Although
if he really is the smarter Bush, he knows these things already:
1.)
He should never let himself say the words “anchor babies” ever again.
He got in trouble for using that derogatory reference to the children of
unauthorized
immigrants in passing, in an interview, then dug himself a hole by
defending his use of it. On Monday, he dug deeper. He tried to explain
that he had been talking about “Asian people” who arrive on tourist
visas through organized schemes to give birth to American
babies on American soil.
Though
the phenomenon is real, Mr. Bush was blasted by Asian-American groups
for repeating the slur. And, astoundingly, he handed Mr. Trump the
opportunity
to send out tweets like this: In a clumsy move to get out of his
“anchor babies” dilemma, where he signed that he would not use the term
and now uses it, he blamed ASIANS.
It
was such an unnecessary battle to wade into – maternity tourism is not
what Mr. Trump and his enablers on the restrictionist right are talking
about. When
they say “anchor babies,” they are talking about the browning of
America, with its growing Latino population, and recasting it as a
sinister plot by child-rearing Mexicans. They want to upend the 14th
Amendment, and the country’s family-based immigration laws,
to keep the population as white as can be. Maternity tourism by
middle-class foreigners is a separate, much smaller issue; changing the
Constitution to stop it, as one immigrant rights advocate once put it,
is like killing a fly with an Uzi.
2.)
He should lighten up. Mr. Bush probably wants to come across as a happy
warrior, but he’s a testy and peevish one, and pedantic, to boot. “If
he’s interested
in a more comprehensive approach” to immigration, Mr. Bush said of Mr.
Trump, “he might want to read my book.” As reporters kept baiting him
with he-said-this-what-do-you-say questions, his exasperation
overflowed. Hence the Asian quagmire.
3.)
His campaign should get better at stage-managing press events. This
one, at a Mexican restaurant, was weirdly free form, with kids yelling
and assorted
invitees mumbling at the microphone. The grim, adobe-and-stucco
backdrop was like a Spanish colonial dungeon; it looked as if the
grim-faced Mr. Bush had come to announce the arrest of Zorro.
4.)
When he does choose to tell the truth, he should find a more persuasive
way to do it. On Monday, he attacked the Trump immigration plan, which
centers
on building a Great Wall of Mexico and forcing millions of people to
the other side of it. “It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars,”
Mr. Bush said, as well as “violate people’s civil liberties” and “create
friction with our third-largest trading partner.”
That is a fair reading of what Mr. Trump wants. But to win the
nomination, Mr. Bush has to win over a fair chunk of the aggrieved,
frightened Trump voters, who probably don’t care about trade friction
with rapist-killer exporting countries, or the cost of
a border wall. Mr. Bush may have better ideas, but they have to cut
through the fog of Trump.
It’s
commonly believed that Republicans are sealing their general-election
doom with all this hating on immigrants. If anyone could avoid that
fate, it should
be someone like Jeb Bush, born in Midland, Tex., and reared in Houston,
with a Latina wife, Latino children and flawless command of Spanish.
Even as Mr. Trump rages and bellows, there should be room for a
Republican to send a message that most American voters,
who are moderate on immigration, will hear. But for all his paper
qualifications, Mr. Bush has been angering to many, boring to many
others, inspiring to none. And then he goes and gets lectured on ethnic
sensitivity by Donald Trump.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment