GOP Platform: Immigration Hot and Cold

Tim Cavanaugh | September 2, 2008

The Republican Party platform (PDF) uses Latin to show the importance of English:

One sign of our unity is our English language. For newcomers, it has always been the fastest route to prosperity in America. English empowers. We support English as the official language in our nation, while welcoming the ethnic diversity in the United States and the territories, including language. Immigrants should be encouraged to learn English. English is the accepted language of business, commerce, and legal proceedings, and it is essential as a unifying cultural force. It is also important, as part of cultural integration, that our schools provide better education in U.S. history and civics for all children, thereby fostering a commitment to our national motto, E Pluribus Unum.

It's probably a sign that John McCain, as he likes to say, has "heard the American people on this issue" that immigration is grouped under the National Security rubric in the platform. The section is loaded with enforcement-only stuff, but not unduly so: no driver's licenses, no public benefits, punishment for sanctuary cities, harder penalties for people-smuggling, and "correcting court decisions that have made deportation so difficult." There's a paragraph on workplace enforcement that, as Mike Flynn noted, calls for reauthorization of E-Verify.

There's some sunnier stuff as well, on "embracing immigrant communities." And one sign that Republicans are mindful of the cockamamie legal immigration bureaucracy, or at least reading about it in reason: "It is a national disgrace that the first experience most new Americans have is with a dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy defined by delay and confusion; we will no longer tolerate those failures."

No luck, though, if your home country happens to be one where they execute people with unusual sexual alignments: "We oppose, however, the granting of refugee status on the basis of lifestyle or other non-political factors."

Comments

Dagny T.|9.2.08 @ 2:17PM|#

For newcomers, it has always been the fastest route to prosperity in America. English empowers. ...Immigrants should be encouraged to learn English.

I guess there's no point in asking why, if English is such an obvious advantage, it needs to be "encouraged" by the federal gov't.

See the language police in Quebec, Canada for a creepy example of where "encouragement" can lead.

|9.2.08 @ 2:22PM|#

It is a national disgrace that the first experience most new Americans have is with a dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy defined by delay and confusion; we will no longer tolerate those failures.

Man, I'd like to believe that. But I don't.

nicole|9.2.08 @ 2:58PM|#

"We oppose, however, the granting of refugee status on the basis of lifestyle or other non-political factors."

So that includes religious persecution too, right?

|9.2.08 @ 3:21PM|#

"So that includes religious persecution too, right?"

And race - wouldn't want to protect people who are only being killed over their race. If they're not working with the CIA against their home government, they're not worth protecting. Of course, if they are working with the CIA, we don't want to let them retire in such a way that they can no longer help us.

Frenchie|9.2.08 @ 3:31PM|#

See the language police in Quebec, Canada for a creepy example of where "encouragement" can lead.

Maybe the best way to avoid that is to discourage the creation of another Quebec in the first place?

Nah! Couldn't be!

|9.2.08 @ 3:55PM|#

Maybe the best way to avoid that is to discourage the creation of another Quebec in the first place?

I don't get it. You're against Quebec seceding?

|9.2.08 @ 4:29PM|#

Man, I'd like to believe that. But I don't.

I have the feeling you could cut 'n' paste that for every plank of either platform that offers the slightest glimmer of libertarian hope 'n' change.

See the language police in Quebec, Canada for a creepy example of where "encouragement" can lead.

Am I the only one finds it amusing that "encouragement" is an English word adopted from the French?

Rhywun|9.2.08 @ 5:28PM|#

"We oppose, however, the granting of refugee status on the basis of lifestyle or other non-political factors."

Fucking fuckers. Of course, there's no such provision now (right?), and it's unlikely Democrats will rush out and pass one.

Elf M. Sternberg|9.2.08 @ 5:33PM|#

Remember Sarah Palin's answer to how she felt about "under God" being in the Pledge of Allegiance? She answered, "If it was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it was good enough for me." This is idiocy reaching to that level.

E pluribus unum was never the national motto of the United States. The motto was approved for use on the Great Seal, but was never ratified as an official motto of the nation. It was treated as the de facto motto for a long time, but it was never the motto by law.

The only motto the United States has ever had signed into law is "In God We Trust," ratified in 1956, shortly after "Under God" was added to the pledge.

Rhywun|9.2.08 @ 5:55PM|#

So that includes religious persecution too, right?

No. The party core know what "lifestyle" means.

|9.2.08 @ 7:58PM|#

"We oppose, however, the granting of refugee status on the basis of lifestyle or other non-political factors."

So that includes religious persecution too, right?

An reader proficient in the English language but ignorant of the GOP would assume so. We know better.