Paul Ryan has been selected for the VP position, thus completing the anti-immigrant ticket for the Republican party.
The selection of Paul Ryan, a man who voted against the DREAM Act and has no plan other than deportation for undocumented immigrants, over Marco Rubio, a Latino who was at least working on his own watered-down alternative to the DREAM Act, reaffirms where Romney’s priorities are. Marco had engaged the Latino community and could have been a strong voice within his administration on Latino interests, but was instead passed over for yet another generic, white Republican drafted from a Barbie Dreamhouse.
Paul Ryan has earned an 83% U.S. Border Control rating, and deservedly so: he voted for putting up a border fence between the U.S. and Mexico. While this fence would be about as effective as the one that was climbed, broken through and tunneled under in Penn&Teller Bulls*t, it would be an expensive, useless project, and a symbol the Minutemen would love: an effort at a sealed border policy to keep the “wrong people” out of the country.
As a congressman, Ryan has offered some support to the Minute Men. The Minute Men and similar organizations have made headlines as vigilantes involved in shoot outs to chase people coming across the desert back into the desert. His budget, described as “not Christian” by a large group of nuns following him in protest, is full of deep cuts in services to the poor and will hurt many communities, Latino or otherwise.
On the DREAM Act, Paul Ryan has not only voted no, but also goes so far as to give an elaboration on his website about how we must secure the border and blames an unsecured border for why the DREAM Act can’t be implemented. For Republicans, this secured border will mean more guns and barbed wire on the border, which Amnesty International has been fighting with a recent campaign because of the human rights violations it breeds. For many of the people who were brought to the country as toddlers, this essentially boils down to a “tough on babies” stance: regardless of how hard that baby worked since being brought to the US or how talented, educated, needed by society or innocent that this baby might be, they’re to be sent back to the poverty and violence their parents crossed a desert with them in tow to flee.
Mitt is bringing on another man disconnected from the debate whose immigration policy is to put a military between the U.S. and Mexico and wait until a day when there isn’t a single Mexican walking through the desert to address immigration. This is a transparent farce because that day will never come, and said farce will only box Romney into the corner even more with Latino voters. Romney has shown a willingness to sacrifice the needs of his Latino constituency rhetorically debate after debate, such as calling SB 1070 a model for the nation. Now it is obvious that, rather than broaden his appeal by listening to the needs of our communities, he will bring on someone who will help him energize his base, and hope that, between this and voter suppression, he will give have a fighting chance in Latino-rich states like Florida.
Reposted from my website, DRMCapitolGroup.com
Shameless plug of my new book: Chasing Romney: How Mitt Romney is Losing the Latino Vote