{"id":282992,"date":"2010-02-05T10:24:28","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T15:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.southernstudies.org,2010:\/\/5.12129"},"modified":"2010-02-10T11:11:45","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T16:11:45","slug":"tea-party-dabbles-in-immigration-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/282992","title":{"rendered":"Tea Party dabbles in immigration politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tea-party-dhs-sign.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>By Marcelo Ballv\u00e9, New America Media<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

The Tea Party movement has energized activism against President Obama’s vision for immigration reform.<\/p>\n

The link between Tea Partiers and immigration politics developed last
\nsummer, when the impact of illegal immigration on the health care
\nsystem became a prominent side issue in town hall debates.<\/p>\n

Since then, illegal immigration has steadily gained ground on the Tea Party agenda.<\/p>\n

Immigration “is one of our main issues in the state of North Carolina,”
\nsaid David DeGerolamo, co-founder of Tea Party group NC Freedom, in a
\nphone interview. “And what it comes down to is that the United States
\nis a republic based on the rule of law. What part of illegal is right?”<\/p>\n

DeGerolamo is scheduled to give a talk today on “How to Unite State Tea
\nParty Groups” at the National Tea Party Convention, which began
\nyesterday in Nashville.<\/p>\n

The Nashville event has devoted a good share of its spotlight to
\nactivists devoted to promoting get-tough policies against illegal
\nimmigrants and blocking White House plans to offer a path to legal
\nstatus for the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n

These activists label such legislation as amnesty, and they helped
\nderail a similar effort in 2007 that had the backing of then-President
\nGeorge W. Bush.<\/p>\n

Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado congressman whose signature issue was
\nillegal immigration, was yesterday’s kick-off speaker at the Nashville
\nconvention, which is headlined by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.<\/p>\n

Tancredo served 10 years in the House beginning in 1999, but gained
\nwidespread notoriety in 2002 when he called for the deportation of an
\nundocumented honors student after a newspaper wrote about his inability
\nto gain in-state tuition for college.<\/p>\n

Also leading a session at the convention is NumbersUSA, a Washington,
\nD.C. organization that advocates for lower immigration levels.<\/p>\n

In the Tea Parties, groups like NumbersUSA discovered a new opportunity
\nto spread and amplify their message, said Devin Burghart, who tracks
\nthe Tea Party movement from Seattle for the Institute for Research and
\nEducation on Human Rights.<\/p>\n

“It has become far more common for Tea Party groups to discuss the
\ntopic of undocumented immigrants at events and on their websites,” he
\nsaid. “In terms of their long-term planning it is clearly becoming a
\npart of their agenda.”<\/p>\n

Of course, the links between hardline immigration activists and Tea
\nPartiers don’t necessarily add up to a united front on immigration.<\/p>\n

With a movement as fractured, fast changing and diffuse as the Tea
\nParties, it’s difficult to establish a clear idea of activists’ views
\non a single issue.<\/p>\n

“Immigration is not a part of the movement’s ‘platform,'” Keli
\nCarender, a prominent Tea Party blogger and speaker at the Nashville
\nconvention, wrote in e-mail to New America Media. “I’m sure every
\nperson involved in the movement has their own personal views on
\nimmigration, and though they may be espoused from time to time, they …
\nmay not be representative of anyone else in the movement.”<\/p>\n

Individual candidates linked to the Tea Party movement, however, have embraced the illegal immigration issue.<\/p>\n

Judge Roy Moore, who is running as a conservative in Alabama’s 2010
\ngovernor’s race and will speak in Nashville, has made immigration one
\nof the five topics covered in his platform. <\/p>\n

Moore is known for his refusal as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme
\nCourt to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the state
\ncourthouse.<\/p>\n

“Definitely, he’s against illegal immigration,” said Moore spokesman
\nJohn Wahl. “There are a lot of things that can be done. There’s things
\nlike making the official language [in Alabama] English. That’s just
\ncommon sense when you think about it.” Moore also supports state laws
\nto penalize undocumented immigrant workers.<\/p>\n

Moore’s support for establishing English as an official language in
\nAlabama is part of a wave of similar “English first” proposals that
\nhave caught on in state houses and city council chambers, in part
\nthanks to the efforts of anti-illegal immigration activists. The issue
\nhas caught on with Tea Partiers, too.<\/p>\n

For example, “official English” made a strong showing in the “Contract
\nfrom America,” a document being prepared online with input from Tea
\nPartiers nationwide. The contract will signal the Tea Party movement’s
\npolicy priorities ahead of the 2010 midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Of the various immigration policy proposals submitted, “An Official
\nLanguage of the United States” won the most votes. And it ranked eighth
\noverall — higher than interstate health insurance competition and just
\nbelow a proposal to end lifetime salary and benefits for members of
\nCongress. <\/p>\n

The contract, which will be finalized this spring, has won praise from
\nformer House majority leader Dick Armey who heads FreedomWorks, the
\nWashington, D.C.-based conservative group that has promoted Tea Party
\nactivism.<\/p>\n

In the Florida Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat, Tea
\nParty-fueled upstart conservative Marco Rubio has been pressed to take
\na more vocal stance against illegal immigration as he tries to steal
\nthe primary away from sitting Governor Charlie Crist, a moderate.<\/p>\n

Javier Manjarres, 37, a Colombian-American conservative activist in
\nSouth Florida, uploaded a video on YouTube Jan. 26 in which he grills
\nRubio on immigration and reminds the candidate of his opposition to “any form of amnesty for immigrants who have broken federal law and
\nstayed in our country illegally.”<\/p>\n

The video was meant to showcase Rubio’s views on illegal immigration
\nafter conservatives who accused him of being soft on the issue had
\nheckled the candidate at a forum in Broward County, Manjarres said. “I
\nthink he just had to become more vocal. I think he’s always had these
\nviews. He just never really had to defend them.”<\/p>\n

“Immigration is huge” with the Florida Tea Partiers, said Manjarres,
\nwho heads his own Ft. Lauderdale-based organization, Conservative
\nRepublican Alliance and moves in conservative and Tea Party circles. “Everyone knows what’s at stake there. The immigration issue will be as
\nbig as health care.”<\/p>\n

Manjarres’s organization was among the first to endorse Rubio’s candidacy.<\/p>\n

In Martin County, Fla., north of Palm Beach, the Martin 9-12 Tea Party
\nCommittee lists “enforcement of immigration laws,” along with limited
\ngovernment and lower taxes, as one of its conditions for candidate
\nendorsements. <\/p>\n

The Tea Partiers’ connection to immigration was forged last summer and
\nfall, when the health care and immigration debates fused at Tea Party
\nevents and protests. One such event was an August town hall event in
\nRaleigh, N.C. organized by DeGerolamo, NC Freedom’s co-founder. <\/p>\n

Two of the four invited speakers were prominent immigration
\nrestrictionists: William Gheen, head of Americans for Legal Immigration
\nPolitical Action Committee (ALIPAC) and John Armor, a lawyer associated
\nwith the American Civil Rights Union.<\/p>\n

On YouTube videos of the event, Gheen warns the Tea Partiers about
\nObama’s “massive amnesty” plan to legalize undocumented immigrants, and
\nboth Gheen and Armor described the problem of “anchor babies.”<\/p>\n

Immigration restrictionists have long alleged immigrant mothers enter
\nthe country illegally to give birth on U.S. soil so that their children
\nwill have citizenship and eventually, through family reunification
\nvisas, be able to pass legal status to the rest of the family.<\/p>\n

At the same Aug. 26 town hall, Ada Fisher, Republican National
\nCommiteewoman for North Carolina, earned a loud round of applause for
\nthis statement criticizing federal laws requiring multilingual medical
\ninterpreters: “You cannot be one nation under God when everyone’s
\nspeaking something different.”<\/p>\n

Not everyone agrees that Tea Party organizing has begun exerting a
\nsignificant influence on the immigration debate at a national level.<\/p>\n

Tamar Jacoby, a conservative who heads ImmigrationWorks USA, a
\npro-immigration business group, agrees that Tea Partiers may take up
\nimmigration in earnest in the future.<\/p>\n

But for the time being, she sees the Tea Partiers still in a very early
\nstage of organizing and far more zeroed-in on limited government and
\nfiscal issues.<\/p>\n

And the Tea Party movement’s allies in the political establishment,
\nRepublicans like Armey of FreedomWorks and former Alaska Governor Sarah
\nPalin, still have a chance to influence the course Tea Party activism
\nwill take on issues such as immigration, Jacoby said. “Leadership will
\nmatter. What Palin and Armey say will be very important.”<\/p>\n

Palin and Armey are hardly firebrands on the immigration issue.<\/p>\n

Armey, as Jacoby pointed out, is an “old friend” of immigration reform.
\nArmey has spoken out about making the system “more orderly” but “not
\nmore restrictive.”<\/p>\n

Palin’s position on immigration is still hazy. In a recent interview on
\nthe Glenn Beck program she said, “I think Republicans, conservatives
\nare at fault when we allow the other side to capture this immigration
\nissue and try to turn this issue into something negative for
\nRepublicans,” she said, according to a Fox News transcript.<\/p>\n

Palin stressed immigration laws should be followed, but added, “We need to continue to be so welcoming.”<\/p>\n

Whatever the ultimate Tea Party effect is on immigration politics,
\ncandidates and elected officials often come to recognize there is a
\npolitical cost to taking hard-line stances, said Stephen Fotopulos of
\nthe Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.<\/p>\n

Fotopulos cited the example of Harold Ford, Jr. who ran “sensationalist
\nads about being tough on illegal immigrants” when he ran for office in
\nTennessee. Now, Ford is campaigning for U.S. Senate in New York, where
\nthe immigrant vote is powerful. <\/p>\n

“We will see those ads again, used against him,” said Fotopulos.<\/p>\n

(Photo of Tea Party protest by Sage Ross via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/i><\/font> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marcelo Ballv\u00e9, New America Media The Tea Party movement has energized activism against President Obama’s vision for immigration reform. The link between Tea Partiers and immigration politics developed last summer, when the impact of illegal immigration on the health care system became a prominent side issue in town hall debates. Since then, illegal immigration […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}