The UGLY TRUTH about the Immigration DiscussionConversation From the Transcripts of Hardball 10-31-07:
MATTHEWS: Nobody likes ethnic change. It‘s always hard to deal with. You try to be a liberal about it. But when things change in your neighborhood, you have to get used to it and deal with it. Nobody is thrilled by it, because it just happens in our country. People, neighborhoods change. Life changes. But when you hate—when you see the federal government or the state government papering over a problem by giving people documents, driver‘s license, which they can use for all kinds of purposes, especially building a paper trail to establish a fact they should be here legally, it looks like the government has given up. It said, well, we can‘t stop illegal immigration, so we‘ll give everybody a driver‘s license. It strikes me as a death blow, a death knell to government. If you can‘t protect your border, you‘re not really a country, are you?
DONAHUE: Well, you know what is interesting, Chris is I think what you just articulated is where a lot of voters are on the issue. What is ICE doing? Why is this a random process? Why do some people wait two months and others wait ten years to get legal entry into this country? Now, in New Hampshire you have a lot of Canadian people coming in. They don‘t look different. It‘s not a hot button issue up here. It‘s really—they sound and look like Americans. So while we have tons of immigrants, it doesn‘t really show. I think the bigger concern, and the one that, you know, Giuliani and McCain and Clinton would be wise to take this issue on is that there is no national security without an accounting for who‘s in the country. And ICE and the former INS have no idea who is in the country. They have no idea how to get rid of them if they‘re not people who are doing good things. So I think that‘s the bottom line issue. This is a national security issue. And if Hillary Clinton is running in some ways as a national security Democrat, which I believe she is, she should grasp this issue, understand it and own it.
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Republicans DON´T CARE ABOUT LATINO VOTERS:
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MATTHEWS: You know, Roger, it seems to me that the Republican Party, like it did back in the ‘60s on Civil Rights, now has a weird advantage. Since they‘ve blown it with Latino voters, they have an opportunity now to simply go for broke in backing those who don‘t like illegal immigrants, who aren‘t as sensitive to the possible ethnic aspect to opposing illegal immigrants. They can just say, Look, we don‘t have to say phrases like “undocumented workers,” we can say “illegal immigrants” or even “illegal aliens,” because that‘s going to be our politics.
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