Tag Archives: illegal immigrants

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More than a handshake, please, Mr. President

This is making my head hurt, but Texas Gov. Rick Perry is, umm, correct in asking for more than an airport tarmac handshake with Barack Obama when the president arrives in Austin this week.

Perry wants more than handshake with Obama during Texas visit

Perry wants to meet privately with Obama to discuss the border crisis, created by the influx of thousands of illegal immigrants — from Central America — into Texas. The immigrants are young people fleeing repression; they have become commodities of human traffickers and drug lords. It’s a disgraceful development.

I must agree wholeheartedly with the governor on his request for a substantive meeting with the president.

The president reportedly has no plans to visit the border region while he’s in Texas to raise money for Democratic candidates. He should change his mind on that one, too.

As for meeting with Perry, Obama would have to set aside the idiotic statements from the governor, who said over the weekend he believes the White House may have “wanted” the crisis to erupt on the border. To what end is anyone’s guess. Perry hasn’t yet described what possible motive the president and/or the White House would have in fomenting this crisis.

The two men are adults. They’re seasoned pols. They know how to talk “frankly” with each other. I would hope the president could find time to meet with the governor of a significant state that is under siege at the moment by illegal immigrants.

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Perry says Obama 'wanted' border crisis to occur

Politics is a cynical business.

It results in politicians saying some pretty outrageous things — often about themselves but usually about their opponents.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has added another chapter to the Book of Cynical Commentary.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/07/perry-obama-administration-inept-or-has-ulterior-motive-191578.html?hp=l10

He said over the weekend that President Barack Obama might have wanted the crisis along the Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California borders with Mexico to occur.

“I have to believe when you do not respond in any way, you are either inept or have some ulterior motive that you are functioning from,” the lame-duck Republican governor said on ABC’s “This Week.” Moderator Martha Raddatz had challenged him about earlier comments he made that implied the president might have helped Central American immigrants enter the United States illegally.

I’d go with the competence issue before I’d ever consider some kind of plot to create a crisis where none need exist. This kind of nonsense falls in line with the idiocy spouted recently by former Vice President Dick Cheney that the president is deliberately trying to weaken the United States.

We now have the Texas governor — another loose rhetorical cannon — suggesting the president might have wanted the young people to flood into this country to create a hideous border patrol nightmare. Why? For what purpose does the president of the United States of America deliberately allow such chaos?

I suppose one can chalk it up to another salvo in Perry’s increasingly likely run for the presidency. He’ll leave the Texas governor’s office in January; then he’ll probably start prepping for another run at the GOP nomination for the White House.

Gov. Perry will have to do better than what he demonstrated over the weekend.

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In-state tuition becomes key GOP flashpoint

It is no surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly that I am not a fan of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

I dislike his policies, his approach, his style and his mean streak.

However, when it comes to one key issue — whether to grant in-state tuition privileges to Texans who were brought here illegally by their parents — he is spot on. He favors granting those privileges to those who want to attend Texas’s many fine public colleges and universities.

Many in his Republican Party, though, do not. They oppose granting individuals who’ve grown up as Texans and who are here only because they were forced to come here by their parents those privileges.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/05/08/easy-resolution-state-tuition-gop-dream/

It’s going to become a flashpoint on a couple of levels.

First, Republicans running for office in Texas don’t want to alienate the far-right wing of the party’s base, which is where the opposition is coming from. Even though Perry isn’t on the ballot this year, his support of in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants well could become a key issue among candidates running for statewide office or the Legislature.

Second is Perry’s own political future. He is sounding and acting like someone who wants to run for president in 2016. He tried it in 2012 and fell flat on his face. Perry reportedly is in the midst of an extreme political makeover to create a new brand for himself.

Here’s how the Texas Tribune portrays the political split in Texas on this issue:

“Texans’ attitudes on in-state tuition are closely divided, though polarized along party lines. In the February 2014 University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, 40 percent of registered voters said that illegal immigrants who graduated from a public high school in Texas and lived in Texas for at least a year should pay the lower in-state tuition; 47 percent thought they should pay the out-of-state rate. A slight majority of Democrats, 55 percent, opted for in-state tuition while a majority of Republicans, 61 percent, opted for out-of-state tuition. Maybe not surprisingly, 54 percent of Anglos supported out-of-state tuition, compared with only 34 percent supporting in-state tuition. Hispanics displayed the opposite attitude, with 31 percent supporting out-of-state rates and 51 percent supporting in-state rates.”

If Perry runs for president in two years, will the hard-liners in his party beat him bloody over what I believe is a common-sense, compassionate view of how to assimilate immigrants into Texas society?

I see no problem with granting these privileges to young Texans who know nothing other than life in the Lone Star State. Many — if not most — of them have assimilated already. They sound like Americans. They act like Americans. They have allegiance to this country and this state. Why not let them continue their education at a price they can afford?

Perry has taken the correct course on this issue. I hope he has the courage to stick with it if he enters the ’16 presidential race and starts taking body blows from those who disagree.