To My Latino Friends

Welcome to being a wedge this year -like the gays with marriage equality, and if you give it in a minute we'll see the old people, the sick people, kids, education, and the kitchen sink all picked up and hurled at the Republicans.  Welcome to the 2012 cycle.  But the next time you hear "Oh, this is election year politics" on the DREAM act - here's why it needs to be election year politics.  


In 2010, when it wasn't election year politics, Republicans had no problem killing their own idea just to sick their finger in Obama's eye.  The DREAM Act sailed through the House on a largely party-line vote, and then couldn't get cloture in the Senate.  If the GOP wanted this to be done through the Congress, like they claim now, they could simply drop their filibuster (which is technically still ongoing), vote for cloture on this bill, and then vote to pass it as presented by the House, and it would be on Obama's desk as a permanent solution by the end of the week.  They do not want that - and no matter what they say now, they do no want this policy at all.  During the primaries, Texas had its own version of a DREAM act that provided for in-state tuition for children who were illegal immigrants through no fault of their own.  It was signed by Rick Perry.  And in the debates, the other candidates piled on him for taking this stand and for defending it.  Mitt Romney took up the issue of educating children of illegal immigrants like a pair of scissors and went after Rick Perry as though he were a gay kid with queer hair.  The media acts as though we haven't heard Romney's long term plan - but we have.  Self-deportation, slam the borders shut, let Mexico die on our doorstep, we don't care.  


For them to get that, first, the President must fail.  They cheer for failure and blame it all on Obama.  Every time there is bad news they set their heads alight and scream "Obama's fault! Obama's fault!" and dance around the media and Fox & Friends.  But we are still in a stalled economy.  We still have major social issues that must be addressed.  Regardless of party, if the President fails, if the Office of the President fails  in its Constitutionally-mandated mission, then by definition the whole works fails.  If two years has taught us nothing, is that these particular Republicans, this Tea Party driven insurgency, are perfectly willing to not just drive us off a cliff, but to put the pedal to the metal.  On Immigration, and yes the timing looks very blatantly political, especially considering the memo was brought to him in February of 2011, the President has actually accomplished something, and they are spinning like mad to make this a bad thing.  "It isn't permanent!" they cry, and they're right, it's not.  If Romney gets elected, or if the GOP retains effective control of the Legislature, it never will be, either.  They are right, this is still not a win.  This is still Democrats having to play politics with the party that started the mess and refuses - quite literally - to stop the filibustering talk and bluster, and actually do things.

They've all got to go, all the way down the ticket.  This is being used in an election year to force Republicans to start answering the question of what do they want.  They have to be called to account for wedging off votes, for breaking up the electorate, then digging in their heels and refusing to do anything or put forward a single idea to accomplish a single goal.  If you'd like to not be a wedge issue ever again, if you'd like to see reform beyond an executive deferment (that Romney could revoke on Day 1), your best chance is to get every single person you know in every state you know them in and get them to go to the polls and vote Democrat, all the way down the ticket, from President to dog catcher.  If you want to keep the laws on the books that break families with immigrants into pieces, reigns terror over school children, and effectively considers non-Whites as second class humans never mind citizens, then stay home or vote for a Republican down-ticket from the President.