Republicans Divided Over How To Handle Undocumented Immigration

The Republican Party currently faces a crucible over how to deal with immigration in the coming Congress and for the foreseeable future. They are pulled in two, by a Tea Party that at best, has shown an almost militaristic disdain of undocumented immigrants and Moderates and the old guard of the Republican party who see no reason to further antagonize an important voting bloc in 2012.

While NDN, has often reported on some of the more outrageous GOP legislative proposals, no one here is under any delusion that the Hispanic community is only strengthened by having both political parties vie for their vote. Which is why the current internal debate within the GOP is so important. No party should ever feel like they have ownership of any constituencies vote.

Having said that, the GOP have a ways to go in healing their caustic stance on some of the most important issues facing Hispanic's.

The dichotomy of the GOP's current stance has never been more on display then over the events of last week.  While former Governor Jeb Bush held  a conference in Florida, to plan a way for the GOP to move forward with outreach to the Hispanic community,  Congressional Republicans planned to wage war with the White House over their opposition to Arizona's anti immigration law SB1070.

Albert R. Blunt of Bloomberg has the full story here:

Thus the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, plans to assail Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. over his opposition to Arizona’s anti-immigration measure and push to enact more punitive laws....  Over the weekend, former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and former Senator Norm Coleman  of Minnesota held a conference to plan more effective Republican outreach to Latino voters. This coincides with plans by new Republican majorities in more than a dozen state capitals for Arizona-type legislation to crack down on undocumented workers.

It certainly seems like one step forward and two steps back for the GOP and Hispanics. The Democratic party is only too happy to point out that while the GOP is taking some perfunctory steps towards healing their relationship with Hispanic's they have a long way to go. Congressman Xavier Becerra for one was not buying it, putting out a press release which listed all of the ways in which Republican's have gone out of their way to alienated the Hispanic community, the full release is here:

• They destroyed the dreams of educated young Latinos ready to serve in the military or attend college when they blocked the DREAM Act in the Senate.

• Their political operatives told Latinos “Don’t Vote” in the last election, claiming that was in their best interest.

• They authored and pushed SB 1070 in Arizona that required racial profiling of Latinos.

•  They are proposing a law to eliminate birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment for the children of Latino immigrants, chaining them to permanent second-class status.

• Despite President Obama’s and Democrats’ overtures for a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform, they blocked and rejected these efforts to fix our broken immigration system.

• In the first month of Barack Obama’s presidency, they firmly opposed the extension of health care for millions of legal immigrant children through the SCHIP program.