Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler is not the only Newsmax writer to have issued a wildly inaccurate prediction of how the presidential election would go.
Immigrant-basher James Walsh devoted an Oct. 26 column to insisting that President Obama "has never made any attempt to keep his six years of promises to the Hispanic community of Comprehensive Immigration Reform" and as a result, "President Obama may have a November surprise."
Well, not so much. Despite Walsh's insistence that "the myth that the news media and politicians have created about a monolithic Hispanic voting bloc is just a myth" and that "about 57 percent of the Hispanic voters are favoring Obama, down from his 2008 number of 76 percent," Obama received 71 percent of the Hispanic vote and Mitt Romney only 27 percent, the lowest total for a Republican candidate since Bob Dole in 1996.
Thus, Walsh's Nov. 12 column in which he acknowledged this, though not his erroneous prediction. Instead, Walsh examined "Romney’s problem with Hispanic voters," which he immediately blames on the Obama campaign,which along with the media "described GOP failures in detail to the Hispanic community — descriptions that went unchallenged by Romney." Walsh continued:
Where do Republican leaders go from here? Realizing that, with a divided Congress, a comprehensive immigration reform package will not pass both House and Senate, House Republicans need to pass targeted pieces of immigration reform legislation.
They can start with an improved version of the Bracero program (1942-1964), a flawed guest-worker program terminated by President John Kennedy. An updated Bracero program could relieve the illegal-alien problem perplexing the president and Congress.
A 21st century Bracero program could provide guest workers with good housing, safe working conditions, income guarantees, and legal entry and exit papers. Such a program could protect national security concerns while providing the nation with a valued workforce, who would no longer need to pay “coyotes” (illegal alien smugglers) for high-risk entry to the United States.
Why would anyone want an "improved" version of a flawed, decades-old program? Walsh doesn't explain that, nor does he explain why it was flawed in the first place.
The bracero program mostly covered migrant farm workers from Mexico, who tended to be exploited by farmers. One federal official called the program "legalized slavery."
Nevertheless, Walsh insists that "Immigration advocates, farm labor unions, and agricultural interests would welcome such legislation as a new beginning and a 21st Century legislative accomplishment." We're not sure how.
