Union not putting words in their mouths ... lets GOP speak for themselves.

Latinos and other immigrants control the long-term fate of the Republican Party

One ad shared with POLITICO shows Texas Rep. Lamar Smith calling the popular DREAM Act “a nightmare for the American people” and quotes Georgia Rep. Paul Broun saying undocumented immigrants are “criminals and they need to be treated as such.”

Iowa Rep. Steve King makes an appearance in one clip, referring to illegal immigrants “hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

And in multiple commercials, the AFL-CIO highlights Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks’s statement that he would do “anything short of shooting” undocumented workers in order to crack down in illegal immigration.

Immigration as a serious concern impacting millions of innocent American citizens.

This is primarily a propaganda effort akin to the Gingrich imagery prior to welfare reform in the 1990's that fed off citizen's imagination of welfare queens, lazy single mothers and deadbeat dads lurking on welfare rolls all over the country.

It was in fact a republican attempt to capitalize on the knee-jerk reaction back then when someone ahead of them in the check-out line started waving food assistance coupons (the easily discernible funny looking money) at the cashier.

No lie was bigger than the myth of massive welfare fraud that needed to be cleaned up. The reality was something more manageable: a reformation of a government system of handouts that enabled apathy and discouraged initiative on the part of welfare recipients.

The welfare budget impact on national GNP and federal budget has always been essentially less than the a small percentage of actual spending on military hardware and the more than 700 American military installations worldwide that politicians are extremely loathe to try and  justify.

But, needing fodder on which to tread with their upwardly mobile inflammatory jack boots, grandstanding pork-barrel politicians taught us all to belittle and disrespect the poor single welfare mothers (or less frequently, fathers.)

We were told to be indignant. The stampede was set off. ("of course MY child could never be one of those welfare addicts. How could that child ever humiliate ME? Of course I'm for Welfare Reform!)

For immigrants today we are left with the bad seed of an idea that because of the flow of illegal immigrants into this country, we are on the verge of economic and political collapse because we don't have a Berlin wall on our borders keeping the pestilence out.

For every Berlin wall-advocate I'd like to see an acknowledgement not of the criminality of businesses that hire illegals, but the political criminality of demonizing workers with families who pay taxes off their fake SS cards (thereby possibly benefiting some unaware American citizen who is getting credit for those tax payments.) At the same time these "outraged" alien fighters include in their spending priorities that tax revenue (much of which will never leak back to the workers in the form of refunds since there is reluctance to file a return.)

So we see flamboyant clowns masquerading as patriots advocating building a wall to keep the revenue source out ... they're fools and want us to join them in the fools club.

If one's political thinking never evolves to the kind of depth and complexity that the issue merits, one remains a political partisan making a fragile no-substance mountain out of a molehill of a problem.

The recent Latino protests in reality could have been proclaimed as a protest against political exaggeration and insult to an American electorate.

From my own career experience in the state public assistance office I spent more time dealing with lazy native-born gringo/jingo Americans that whine about not being able to find a job because the Mexicans took them all.

You know, them there lazy citiznes act like certain political role models who claim one false thing to pursue another more dreadful false thing ... personal access to government money 

As a gringo myself who pays attention to demographics and the Hispanic culture in which I have family, part of me looks forward to the day when Hispanics outnumber jingoes - er, gringos.

Why?

Because for Hispanics, Asians and other American sub-cultures in which which more and more citizens are being born, there remains ample substance of CULTURE and a consistent value system that reflects cultural mores of behavior, responsibility and respect (especially respect for parents and senior citizens.)

Such is exemplary of a social value system that has been been rapidly fading for years from the consumption-prioritized American populace that stops, looks and listens every time a nursing home advertises how easy it would be to buy your way out of taking care of your elders.

Another example of grandstand jingoism disgracing a nation is the notion that those who come here must speak English or die. In my experience, I've seen impending deaths of elderly immigrants and the children of immigrants averted only because they sought and found someone who could speak their language and listen to them talk about their child's or parent's health problem before it was too late.

There is nothing dumber than the statement that "My immigrant ancestors had to learn English and these are no better." No they didn't. The majority of the earliest never did. But they worked hard and they paid taxes - neither of which require the ability to speak English. And I don't think they expected the sort of jingoistic nonsense dribbling out the mouths of the noisiest of their descendants.

We don't have a mountain of a problem with immigration in this country. We have a mountain of a problem from the sons and daughters - both elected and unelected - who are descendants from immigrants.

And as AFL-CIO strategist Tom Snyder declared:

“This is just a beginning. This is a down payment. The Republican Party may control the immediate fate of immigration reform, but Latinos and other immigrants control the long-term fate of the Republican Party.”