Think Progress

Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio slams Ronald Reagan’s immigration policy.

The Palm Beach Post reports that former Florida House Speaker and Republican senatorial candidate Marco Rubio took issue with President Ronald Reagan’s immigration platform at a Martin County Republican Womens Federated meeting today. The Post reports that Rubio “delivered a six-minute discourse on immigration policy” in which he slammed Reagan’s support of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), which put undocumented immigrants on a path to legalization and made it illegal to knowingly hire unauthorized workers:

In 1986 Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million people. You know what happened, in addition to becoming 11 million a decade later? There were people trying to enter the country legally, who had done the paperwork, who were here legally, who were going through the process, who claimed, all of a sudden, ‘No, no no no , I’m illegal.’ Because it was easier to do the amnesty program than it was to do the legal process. [...]

Only after you deal with illegal immigration in a serious way — seal the border and the visa problem — can you then create a legal immigration system that works.

Rubio later conceded that “he [Reagan] did it for the right reasons, but I think it ended up working the wrong way.” Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is staunchly opposed to any effort to fix the immigration status of undocumented immigrants and proposes solving the problem “dramatically by attrition.” The Miami New Times points out that he was 15 years-old when IRCA was signed into law.

SPLC president tells Bill O’Reilly to pay up $10,000 Dobbs bet.

Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) President J. Richard Cohen appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show this past summer and called on CNN to fire Lou Dobbs over his inaccurate immigration reporting. O’Reilly advised Cohen to stop wasting his time. O’Reilly was so sure Dobbs would never be fired from CNN that he seemed willing to bet Cohen $10,000:

O’REILLY: CNN is never going to fire him, you know that…

COHEN: I’m not quite as cynical as you are Bill. I think that if enough people speak out, CNN will listen and be more responsible in the future.

O’REILLY: You wanna bet?…I’ve got ten grand for Habitat for Humanity on the table if you wanna bet me.

COHEN: How about ten grand for the Southern Poverty Law Center?

O’REILLY: But I’m not going to take your money. There’s no real bet there — he’s not going to get fired.

Watch it:

In an open letter addressed to O’Reilly that was posted yesterday, Cohen states “You lost the bet. Time to pay up!” Granted, O’Reilly’s commitment to the bet was tepid, at best — but Cohen points out that “in the court of public opinion, you lose.” In an interview with Dobbs on his show last night, O’Reilly suggested that Dobbs’ departure had nothing to do with responsible journalism, and more to do with CNN not wanting to offend the President. O’Reilly also urged Dobbs to “come back on a semi-regular basis.”

Interloper tricks anti-immigration Tea Party audience, begins chants of ‘Columbus go home!’ (UPDATED)

UPDATE: In another video of the event showing a different angle, it shows that the people joining in Erickson’s chant weren’t the Tea Party protesters, but pro-reform protesters. The Tea Party protesters seemed to have caught onto Erickson’s stunt by this time.

On Saturday, a few dozen anti-immigration activists gathered on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol for a Tea Party, part of the nationwide effort by Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC). But somehow, one of the counter-protesters, a “concerned citizen from Minneapolis” named “Robert Erickson,” manged to get on the speaking list. His address started with the standard anti-immigrant rhetoric, but then revealed that he was talking about European immigrants. By this time, however, the crowd was in a frenzy and joined him in his chants of “Columbus go home!” and “Europeans out!”:

Let’s send these European immigrants back where they came from! I don’t care if they are Polish, Irish, English, Italian, or Norwegian! European immigrants are responsible for the most violent and heinous crimes in the history of the world, including genocide and slavery! Its time to restore the sovereignty of people native to this land! I want more workplace raids, starting with the big banks downtown.

Christopher Day at DailyKos notes, “The Tea-Baggers seem pretty clueless, and for the most part don’t even seem to realize they have been punk’d.”

Anti-immigration Tea Party activists attempt to distance themselves from neo-Nazis.

On Saturday, approximately 200 people showed up to the anti-immigration “No Amnesty” tea party rally organized by American Citizens United in Phoenix. Many people were holding signs that had phrases such as “America not Amexico.” At one point there was a “tussle” when neo-Nazis showed up and tried to join the event, holding a Hitler banner and waving a Confederate flag with the “Don’t Tread on Me” Tea Party symbol. When a Tea Party activist confronted the group, one of the neo-Nazis pushed him to the ground. “If you assault me, you get assaulted back,” he said as police intervened. Watch it:

The Phoenix rally appeared to be part of a larger nationwide effort by Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), which organized anti-immigration Tea Parties on Saturday to stop the effort to “destroy America through mass illegal immigration and amnesty.” As Andrea Nill explains in today’s Progress Report, “Right-wing nativists continue to confuse sensible immigration reform with ‘amnesty’ and anti-immigrant groups are exploiting the anger of the right-wing Tea Party movement in an effort to recruit more supporters to join their hateful cause.” Despite American Citizens United’s attempts to distance itself from the neo-Nazis, the Phoenix New Times’ Stephen Lemons says “there’s plenty of overlap between the two groups, whether it be in rhetoric or, occasionally, membership.” (HT: Dawn Teo)

Napolitano on Sheriff Arpaio: ‘He was unwilling to accept there were standards that needed to be met.’

One of the more controversial steps the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has recently taken is the revision and standardization of its 287(g) immigration-enforcement agreements with state and local police as part of DHS’ efforts to prioritize the removal of dangerous undocumented immigrants. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio made national headlines last month when he belligerently stated that DHS had unfairly singled him out and took away his authority to make a political example out of him. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano sat down with ThinkProgress today to explain what drove DHS’ decision to limit some of Arpaio’s authority amidst rampant allegations of racial profiling against the Sheriff’s Office:

It was time to build some standards into 287(g) and to put some organization into this. … And he [Arpaio] was unwilling to accept that there were standards that needed to be met. He wanted to go off on his own. And so that’s where we had a parting of ways.

Watch it:

During an event at the Center for American Progress today, Napolitano openly opposed Arpaio’s blind immigration raids, stating that she doesn’t believe that they are the best way to ensure public safety. The event featured Napolitano’s first detailed discussion on comprehensive immigration reform and what DHS is doing to prepare for it. Napolitano announced that there’s a desperate need for immigration reform that consists of a “commitment to serious and effective enforcement, improved legal flows for families and workers, and a firm but fair way to deal with those who are already here.” Though significant improvements have been made, “the laws themselves need to be reformed,” she said. More coverage at the Wonk Room.

Lou Dobbs to announce departure from CNN tonight.

The New York Times reports that CNN anchor Lou Dobbs plans to announce on his show tonight that he is leaving the network, effective immediately. Dobbs has been the target of pro-immigration activists who launched two campaigns, Drop Dobbs and Basta Dobbs, aimed at pressuring CNN to “hold Mr. Dobbs to journalistic standards” or dump him altogether. Dobbs had become “a publicity nightmare” for CNN in recent months. His next stop could be the Fox Business network. Dobbs met with Fox chief Roger Ailes to discuss a potential position a couple of months ago.

CNN’s Jane Velez-Mitchell goes after discriminatory hotel owner: Would you make me change my name too? »

New Mexico hotel owner Larry Whitten is currently facing national criticism for demanding that his Hispanic employees change their names and stop speaking Spanish in his presence. Today on CNN, HLN host Jane Velez-Mitchell sharply went after Whitten, introducing herself as “Jane Velez-Mitchell. I hope you don’t mind if I keep using the word ‘Velez’ in my name.” She then went after him for asking his “Spanish” employees to anglicize their names:

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Did you, or did you not, tell someone who’s name is Martin (Mar-TEEN) to say that his name was “Martin,” or similar changes? [...]

WHITTEN: Yes, I asked Martin (Mar-TEEN) to change it to “Martin” to better understand it over the telephone.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: You can’t understand Mar-TEEN? Do you know that the vast majority of people in the community where you have your hotel are Latino? So your customers, to a large extent, are going to be Latino. Now how do you treat the customers when they come in? Do you them also to change their names? Like if I came in, would Jane Velez-Mitchell — so you could better understand my name — would you ask me to change it?

WHITTEN: No, ma’am — [...]

VELEZ-MITCHELL: So the idea that you’re presupposing that people cannot understand Mar-TEEN, but they can understand Martin, really says a lot more about you, sir, than it does about your customers or anybody else.

Throughout the interview, as Velez-Mitchell pointed out, Whitten insisted on calling the employee by the anglicized pronunciation of “Martin.” Watch it:

Transcript: More »« Less

Hotel owner tells ‘Spanish’ employees to change their names and ‘speak only English.’

The AP reports that in Taos, NM, hotel owner Larry Whitten is under fire for his treatment of his Hispanic employees:

After he arrived, Whitten met with the employees. He says he immediately noticed that they were hostile to his management style and worried they might start talking about him in Spanish.

“Because of that, I asked the people in my presence to speak only English because I do not understand Spanish,” Whitten says. “I’ve been working 24 years in Texas and we have a lot of Spanish people there. I’ve never had to ask anyone to speak only English in front of me because I’ve never had a reason to.” [...]

Then Whitten told some employees he was changing their Spanish first names. Whitten says it’s a routine practice at his hotels to change first names of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce.

“It has nothing to do with racism. I’m not doing it for any reason other than for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don’t know the Spanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything,” Whitten says.

Whitten eventually fired many Hispanic several employees for being “hostile and insubordinate.” He further angered the local community when he referred to people in the town as “mountain people” and “potheads who escaped society” during interviews with the press. Watch a video of an August protest against Whitten (which includes one employee named Marcos revealing that he was fired when he refused to change his name to “Mark” or “Bill”):