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What is the Republican Word for An Acceptable Illegal Immigrant?

By Larry Johnson on January 27, 2008 at 1:13 PM in Current Affairs

Cubans. Oops. Oh yes, and let’s not forget the special category, landscapers (if you’re Romney).

Most of the Republican candidates for President are hilarious on dealing with illegal immigrants. I mean laugh-out-loud, fart yourself funny. Mitt Romney and Mike Hucabee lead the hate pack in calling for illegal immigrants to be rounded up and sent home. Get those law breaking border jumpers and send their collective asses back home. That is their mantra.

Except when it comes to Cubans. Those illegals? They be alright. Did you hear what Huckabee said the other day in Florida, while pandering for the Cuban vote?

“We have a very distinct policy when it relates to Cuba one that I think we should continue, and that is if you get a foot on dry soil you should be able to come here,” said Huckabee. “I wouldn’t do anything to change that policy one iota. My policy on Cuba has been absolutely crystal clear, and we wouldn’t change that.”

Of course, if you are black and Haitian, forget you. Dry foot or not, back on the boat and get the hell out. But Cuban? Sea bienvenido (that’s Spanish for “welcome”).

  • TeakWoodKite

    Cheap.

  • Donovan Fraser

    I never understood the Demonization of immigrants.the SAME people that want all the brown people sent home are the ones who couldn’t afford the price of food after they left . I paid almost 5 dollars for 1 bunch of asparagus and that is solely due to the rising price of fuel. Just imagine if people were getting $15 dollars an hour picking crops how much our food would cost.
    hers’ a silly movie that illustrates my point
    It called ” a day without a mexican”

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=4OLjHmpezCU&feature=RecentlyWatched&page=1&t=t&f=b

    Pandering to xenophobia doesn’t do any of us any good and besides everyone BUT the American Indian is an Immigrant .

  • Fred C. Dobbs

    The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, signed by LBJ, makes, “wet foot-dry-foot,” the law of the land. Its repeal would be a step to silence the cries of Racism on the part of Haitian boat people, but the ensuing 43 years of consolidation of political power in Fluba (SE Florida) make that extremely unlikely.

    Ironic, isn’t it, that a Democratic president would enact legislation that establishes a permanent Republican majority in the population center in the fourth most populous state?

    Cubans don’t do a lot of agricultural work in the US, unless you count farm managers in offices and pickup trucks and, of course, the Fanjuls.

    see: http://opensecrets.org/pubs/cashingin_sugar/sugar08.html

    • Ron Cowin

      The Cubans have a lot of pull with the Congress and Administration that the Mexicans and others lack. That is a big reason for their special status. Being refugees from Communism still counts in a lot of places. Unlike the poor Haitians who are “economic” refugees. Nothing like having a cruel dictator who was rumored to turn his enemies into zombies to help your cause.

      • Fred C. Dobbs

        Yes, the desire to not live under Communism/Socialism in the Pearl of the Antilles means that, upon arrival, a Cuban refugee family of four is eligible to receive a stipend from US taxpayers of $2200+ per month for 24 months to help them resettle.

        Nothing quite like throwing off that yoke of collectivism and getting one’s snout into the US government trough, is there?

        Or, as we used to say when I lived there:

        “Will the last American to leave Miami please bring the flag?”

  • Fred C. Dobbs

    More Fun with the Fanjuls:

    Click this URL: http://www.flo-sun.com/

    And remember – at LEAST $65,000,000 if your tax dollars subsidizes this privately-held company.

    Looks like a Lockheed/Lee Iacocca wet dream, doesn’t it?

  • justsomeone

    Donovan, Ceasar Chevez, The leader of the United Farm Workers Union, opposed illegal immigration, for whatever that’s worth. Slavery is outlawed in this country. Paying farm workers a decent wage would probably only increase the cost of your asparagus by 10-12cents. Just because the price of fuel is skyrocketing is no reason to shaft the pickers. We used to have alot of smaller family farms but they’re being squeezed out by the large agrifarms, chemicals & questionable growing practices & forign grown produce. Do you know most apples consumed in the U.S. are now grown in China? Does that make any sense to you? Do you have a farmer’s market near by? If so, if you partner with a few neighbors, you can get some really good deals on produce. Alot of hi-end restaurants buy from them. McCain is right about farm workers, most Americans couldn’t last the season, not working 15 hr days, 6 & 7 days a week, no matter what it paid. The construction industry & agri work alot of migrants like dogs. After they all become legal & the worker’s comp claims & permanent disability claims come flooding in your taxes are gonna make that asparagus of yours look cheap. We should demand safe working conditions, humane hours etc for ALL workers & control the flow of food that many times is being dumped on our markets with the express purpose of doing in American farmers.

    • TeakWoodKite

      In California, workers comp claims are filed by illegal’s who promptly return south of the border.

      I agree with your points. It is a hard topic because it pits human rights against the “we are a nation of laws” (now enforce them.) Corporate interests in CA have gone out of there way to cater to this market, in many cases in violation of state and federal banking laws. Believe me when I tell you it is not about the illegal immigrants well being.

    • Donovan Fraser

      your missing my point TeakWoodKite ( or i did a bad job of making it, which is more probable) ,
      I am totally pro farm worker. I grew up in Southwest Florida and have worked side by side with many farm workers who started out picking (due to no localized skill sets) then they learned English and went into construction trade, kicked ass and made an excellent living for themselves. I HAVE NEVER MET HARDER WORKERS, BAR NONE…I have NOTHING but good things to say about them as workers and people. And your right, A fair wage is indeed what i would want for them. I am just pointing out that Americans ( who live here already) wouldn’t do the work EVEN if they made $15 dollars an hour doing it, they are just too soft or think their entitled to more glamorous work…
      I was that it is stupid to want to deport these hard working good people and Tried to point out what would happen ( with the silly movie plug) if all of a sudden the anti-immigrant folks dreams of an immigrant free America came to pass..
      Just ask ANY American farmer if they could exist without these hard working people and the answer is a resounding…no

  • justsomeone

    Maybe if so much of our farm land hadn’t been turned into subdivisions in the couple of decades people in the cities wouldn’t have to pay an arm & a leg for agri-transport. But ever since NAFTA it’s been the real estate market that has kept this economy afloat. Keep suckin up to globalists & see where it gets you.

  • Ron Cowin

    Republican acceptable terms for illegals: indentured servant, slave, cheap laborer, farm worker. Come election time: a drain on the treasury, a danger to security. I must have forgotten how many Latinos were involved on 9-11. The biggest threat to the Republic since Valley Forge! The nastier the better. They forgot about the people on the Mayflower. Who validated their application? It must have been the Native Americans who were dead from exposure to European diseases. The ones kidnapped and brought here in chains as slaves were the most illegal of all.

  • bob h

    However, a McCain-Huckabee ticket would take some of the antagonism out of Republican-Hispanic relations. It would endanger some of the gains Dems have made with Spanish speakers.

    • Fred C. Dobbs

      It may be fallacious to assume that all US Spanish speakers are in favor of amnesty or easy immigration for more Spanish speakers.

      Also, even though they cross the US-Mexico border, many of the illegal aliens are nationals of OTHER countries than Mexico – El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

      They may look the same to a Anglo, but they can certainly tell one another apart. And, they are not all filled with the milk of human kindness for each other.

  • CK

    Ah Mariel.
    125,000 wanted out, Castro left the go.
    Not a bad deal for either side.
    The USA received several interesting movies.
    Cuba saved tons of money it would have had to squander on internal security.
    Basic win win situation.
    Republicans captured a solid voting bloc in south florida.

    • Fred C. Dobbs

      Anyone who lived in SE Florida after 1960 who can watch the movie, “The Perez Family,” without falling on the floor laughing is just too unaware to justify the oxygen they use.

  • Sometime-CIA-Defender

    Rather reminds me of their phoniness on free market too. They’re all for it unless it’s a business they have an interest in, then it’s up to the Middle Class taxpayers to bail it out.

  • Independent

    Democrap or Repubican there will be amnesty for all illegals after the election. Anyone who believe’s crap like, “they will have to go back for a while” is living in lala land.

    It’s what Big Biz wants. If you think this election is about You then you just turned eighteen and will believe anything.

  • Montag

    On the other hand, Cuban-Americans are discriminated against by the law that mandates they have to wait THREE YEARS between visits to family members back in “The Old Country.” This means they have to ration their visits to elderly relatives in order to be able to visit them when they’re sick or dying. It’s truly horrific, since the old law only mandated a ONE YEAR time period between visits. Just before the new law went into effect there was a FLOOD of Cubanos at airports in an attempt to get in a visit under the wire. And they weren’t happy with Mr. Bush!

    • Fred C. Dobbs

      Several of my Cuban friends (yes, I do like them, even when they are full of crap) opted for Dual Citizenship with countries that offer it. They then travel to Mexico City or Toronto or Madrid, switch passports and fly to La Habana.

      This requires a bit more gelt than the average Jose or Hector in Myammuh driving a bus, teaching school or painting houses has to hand, but works out OK for those with the cash/credit.

      I went to Cuba in 1988 with a group of zoologists and icthyologists to study various fresh water species there. We got permission from State and the Cuban gov’t to do so. Had to leave our GringoBucks at home, although we all carried Loonies (Canadian ducats).

      Of COURSE the whole thing was a borderline scam to get a real, down-home fishin’ trip in over Christmas break.

      Man, they got bass and snook down there that’ll make you sass your grandma. PLEASE end the Embargo, so I can go back and catch my share!

  • Vanessa

    I believe that “illegal alien” is also a derogatory term used to describe a group of people. The term “illegal alien” makes immigrants seem as if they are literally criminals from another planet, when we are forgetting that they are people just like us, who are looking for a way to improve their lives. The term is especially demeaning because it refers to a vast group of human beings as being “illegal”. The first question that appears in my head when an individual is referred to as “illegal” is: how can a human being be “illegal”? This question may seem like it has an obvious answer, but if given some thought, it would be hard to discover why someone could ever be illegal. Don’t we all have a right to better our lives? To improve our education and raise our financial status? Many people do it, so why is it that we are pinning a specific group of individuals as the enemy, and referring to them as illegal aliens? History has shown us that name-calling can be very harmful to how groups of people are perceived.
    In America, there has always been a name chosen to describe a group of people, for example, the term “niggers” was very commonly used by whites to refer to blacks. This word, however, carried an extremely negative meaning, and demeaned and oppressed blacks. The term was widely used by whites and today African-Americans themselves also use it. Perhaps the fact that African-Americans have started using “nigger” to refer to themselves means that the word has lost its meaning. Even if this is the case, certain words, or terms, should not be used, because even if it has been hundreds of years and racism is practically nonexistent, it could never be erased or forgotten that these words were used to oppress an entire group of people.
    Furthermore, immigrants and blacks are not the only people that have had to deal with slurs or demeaning terms. White southern laborers have also had their share of terms to deal with. For example, over time Americans developed the term “redneck” to describe the white laborers down in the south. The word redneck described the red necks the laborers got from working long days out in the field under the hot sun. Though the term did not carry such a negative energy as “nigger” did, it was still used to demean the poor laborers who had no choice but to work long days and hours under an excruciating sun if they wanted to be able to make money, support their families, and ultimately survive. The “illegal aliens” and “rednecks” actually have a lot in common in the sense that these were typically low-income people, who were forced to accept low-paying jobs under bad conditions, as well as be mistreated, all for the common goal of bettering their lives and the lives of their loved ones. In the end, no one is illegal and they certainly are not aliens, because when we see this word we usually think of big, scary monsters, with big, green heads. Why not use a more friendly term such as out-of town people, or a term that does not make people seem like big, scary, green monsters?