Tea Partier Joyce Kaufman: Hang Illegal Immigrants Who Commit Crimes - BV Black Spin

Tea Partier Joyce Kaufman: Hang Illegal Immigrants Who Commit Crimes - BV Black Spin

Conservative radio show host Joyce Kaufman will serve as chief of staff to West, a Tea Party-backed political insurgent from Florida's southern coast.

Kaufman is a local staple on Sunshine State airwaves, talking politics from 12pm-3pm on WFTL as part of a lineup that includes heavyweights such as Lou Dobbs and Michael Savage. According to the WFTL website, she'll be retaining a correspondent position while she carries out her Capitol Hill duties for the West camp, a setup that a House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct believes could be "potentially problematic," according to ThinkProgress.

Perhaps more problematic than her employment future, however, is her rhetorical history. As if a blend of her two commentator colleagues, Kaufman is herself known for lobbing partisan firebombs that often focus on issues such as illegal immigration and, more broadly, Democratic leadership.

From the Florida Independent's rundown of a few of her most combative statements:

* In August 2007, when discussing illegal immigrants, she said on her show, "If you commit a crime while you're here, we should hang you and send your body back to where you came from, and your family should pay for it."

* She became infuriated at illegal immigration after she called Comcast and the recording said, "Press 2 for Spanish."

* She said at a rally, with West standing by, "Calling illegal immigrants 'undocumented workers' is like calling a drug dealer a pharmacist without a license." She was furious that children of illegal immigrants were educated in public schools and received health care at emergency rooms. "There are people who want to change your way of life, and some of them may be your gardeners," she said.

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Hispanics worry about discrimination - Simmi Aujla - POLITICO.com

Hispanics worry about discrimination - Simmi Aujla - POLITICO.com

Hispanics are growing increasingly worried about being discriminated against by those fearful of illegal immigrants, according to a national survey of Hispanics released Thursday.

The Pew Hispanic Center released the poll, finding that 60 percent of Hispanics believe discrimination is a “major problem,” up from 54 percent in 2007.

And 36 percent of those responding said their immigration status was the biggest cause of discrimination, up from 23 percent in 2007.

The center released its findings amid a number of campaign ads that paint unflattering pictures of Hispanics.

In Nevada, for instance, Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle is running an ad that takes aim at illegal immigrants allegedly using benefits they don’t pay for, while contrasting images of white students with tough-looking Hispanic men.

In Louisiana, Republican Sen. David Vitter, who's seeking reelection, ran an ad hitting Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) for being too welcoming of illegal immigrants that rankled both local and national immigration advocates.

And in California, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is running a Spanish-language ad saying that she’s strongly against the Arizona law giving police broad powers to inquire about a person’s immigration status. In the primary, she barely protested it.

In the Pew poll, 79 percent of those surveyed disapproved of the new Arizona law that is being challenged in the federal courts.

It’s unclear, though, just how many Hispanics will turn out to vote in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Some analysts suggest the turnout might be light because many Hispanics are disappointed by lack of comprehensive immigration reform. On the other hand, Hispanics who feel threatened by the tenor of national debate on illegal immigration might want to be sure their voices are heard.

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News Analysis - Citizenship From Birth Is Challenged on the Right - NYTimes.com

News Analysis - Citizenship From Birth Is Challenged on the Right - NYTimes.com

At a breakfast on Thursday in Washington, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, tried to tamp down a controversy that started when Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, questioned the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which grants the right to citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

“I am not aware of anybody who has come out in favor of altering the 14th Amendment,” Mr. McConnell said.

But Mr. Graham, speaking on Fox News last week, said it was “a mistake” to allow American-born children of illegal immigrants to become citizens automatically, a practice known as birthright citizenship. He said that along with a plan to grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, he would also amend the 14th Amendment as a way of discouraging future unauthorized immigration.

Throughout the week Mr. Graham stood firm on his proposal. “We can’t just have people swimming across the river having children here — that’s chaos,” he said Wednesday in another interview with Fox News.

The proposal caught Republican and Democratic lawmakers by surprise, not least because it came from Mr. Graham, who earlier this year was the leading — and almost the only — Republican negotiating with Democrats to create an immigration overhaul bill. Mr. Graham gave new prominence to an issue that has long been a favorite of conservatives advocating reduced immigration, but has been peripheral to the immigration debate in Congress.

Mr. McConnell said Republicans were calling only for hearings on the issue. The debate centers on the first sentence of what is known as the citizenship clause: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” The amendment was adopted in 1868 to ensure the citizenship of the American-born children of freed slaves.

Opponents of birthright citizenship contend that illegal immigrants are not under United States jurisdiction, therefore their American-born children should not automatically be citizens. They say the amendment could not apply to those immigrants because there was no illegal immigration when it was adopted.

“If you are an illegal immigrant, we clearly have not given you permission to reside here,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, a group that favors decreased immigration. “You are still subject to the jurisdiction of your own country.”

But giving citizenship to everyone born in the United States has been the practice since the 1860s, and was upheld by the Supreme Court on the few occasions when it was tested there, immigration lawyers said. A change to the law to disallow the children of illegal immigrants would vastly increase the undocumented population, lawyers said, rather than reducing it. Babies born to Mexican mothers here illegally, for example, would become illegal Mexican immigrants from the moment of birth.

“You would be perpetuating a large undocumented population, with all these children growing up very much living in the shadows,” said Hiroshi Motomura, an immigration law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Mr. Graham’s proposal revived a popular misunderstanding: In the often heated debate over birthright citizenship, pundits refer to the problem of “anchor babies,” and talk show callers express frustration that pregnant women could cross the border from Mexico illegally, then rely on their American citizen newborns to put them immediately on a path to citizenship.

In fact, under immigration law American citizen children must wait until they are 21 years old to apply for legal residency for their parents. Also, most of the illegal immigrants who have children who are American citizens have not recently arrived.

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These are dark days in America with both anti-immigrant sentiment and Islamophobia on the rise.  Republican politicians are both exploiting and feeding this climate of hate.

John H. Armwood

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