Immigration Policy: No Longer a Matter of Decency

The polls are saying that Guiliani is ahead of the other GOP presidential candidates at the moment. How could anyone vote for a man that has changed from someone who says he is concerned with "decency" to a position that demonizes an entire population? Are people that afraid of undocumented immigrants that they will let pass what would be the indication of a deep character flaw? Remember we already did that in 2000 and 2004, why do it again?
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Editorial

A Flip That's Flopped
Rudy Giuliani used to get immigration. Not anymore.
Washington Post
Monday, November 12, 2007; A20

AS MAYOR of New York in the 1990s, when undocumented immigrants were pouring into the city, Rudolph W. Giuliani extolled their contributions to the Big Apple's burgeoning economy, forbade city workers from denying them social services and benefits, bent over backward to help them navigate the path toward citizenship, and grasped the plain fact that they would never be deported en masse. As the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Giuliani has gradually purged such ideas from his campaign rhetoric, stressing instead his plans to erect a "technological fence" to secure the nation's borders, end illegal immigration, and monitor the comings and goings of "every noncitizen" in the country by means of tamper-proof, biometrically savvy ID cards.

He has gradually deemphasized all discussion of eventual citizenship for the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country to such a degree that when he mentions it at all, it's practically an afterthought, expressed obliquely. And he whispers not a word about the fact that the nation's employers and economic growth have come to depend on an annual influx of 500,000 or so workers, who, owing to a political impasse in Washington, are denied any legal means of entering the country.

Mr. Giuliani, himself the grandson of Italian immigrants, clearly understands the value of newcomers to this country in more than boilerplate terms. Until shortly before the immigration debate crested last spring, he spoke reasonably of the conditions by which the undocumented population might eventually be granted legal status -- paying a penalty, going to the back of the line, paying back taxes, mastering English and grasping American history. Setting the question in moral terms, he often said that fair treatment for illegal immigrants was a matter of decency...

For complete article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/11/AR2007111101197_pf.html


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