no offense intended but as a neocon granting orderly amnesty is the best route. Bush tried and he had the right idea. politically it’s a thorn. but i will tell you one thing, if you really want the Latino vote you need to understand that it is the one issue they really care about. from a position of pure economics, it also makes the most sense: folks are already here and working, the government might as well capture the revenue. fact is the border with mexico is porous. there is a balance to be made between border enforcement and creating a wider path to citizenship. Obama is so weak on this issue it’s not even funny. latinos are turned off by myriad qualities, namely religion and his bs protectionist talk that is all for the unions. wait for the AFL CIO to endorse, then put the issue on the table. one last point, if the economy continues to slide, the flow of illegals will continue to subside. cross border remittances from the US to Mexico are already off 15% year on year which is a glaring indication that the issue is directly tied to job demand/availability in the US, not just border policy. Obama needs to be called on his populist rhetoric and immigration is a huge one. you can’t claim the mighty gauntlet of representative to the minority masses if you can’t mobilize latinos and asians. they don’t identify with him and that is an advantage for McCain.

I am surprised Obama isn’t grabbing this issue and running with it hard. He is going to have a hard enough time getting the hispanic vote in places like LA where there is a lot of tension between the latin and black communities. He is going to need to something to really sway those voters because as it stands right now, at least in the larger California cities, McCain has consistently had a position that is acceptable to those communities and sadly, many hispanic voters out West would rather vote for a white guy than a black guy (unlike the latin communities in the East where there is a larger black hispanic population).

For whatever gains he may make with Hispanics, McCain will lose much more support with Republicans and actual Conservative voters over his stance related to this issue.

A Republican or Conservative candidate will never take a majority of the Hispanic vote. It just won’t happen. It should, but it won’t.

McCain would be wise to learn from what just happened to Chris Cannon in Utah yesterday.

Cannon was a long-term incumbent Republican heavily in favor of the CPoS (Comprehensive Piece of S***) which was put forward, shoved into our throats, and projectile vomited right back into the laps of Congress in 2006.

Cannon, who had served for six terms, lost by a margin of roughly 60-40.

The American People, by and large, are sick of illegal immigration as an issue. We want the problem solved and over with. This business of putting on a band-aid only to have to come back later and do it again is getting old.

Secure. The. Borders. FIRST.

Then we’ll figure out what we need to do with the ones who crept through the basement window by dead of night.

Right now the house is on fire and we’re worried about what color to paint the living room.

Anyone with common sense can see that illegal immigration is eating us alive. It is negatively affecting our public assistance programs, our hospitals, our schools, our court system and on and on and on.

This is modern day slavery. It is going on right now, in 2008, and relatively few people want to step up and do what is needed to resolve it. Instead, the same arguments used to continue the slavery of blacks are used to defend the use of, and the subsequent maltreatment of, illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigration an open wound and no one is remotely interested in getting it sewn up.

Between the oil drilling issue and the immigration issue, McCain could energize the base and ride a wave right into the White House in Nov. If he would just do it.

Fit fit,

I didn’t know you lived in SC.

I was thinking you were up north somewhere, I don’t know why.