{"id":974,"date":"2006-03-26T10:08:20","date_gmt":"2006-03-26T15:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=974"},"modified":"2006-03-26T10:08:20","modified_gmt":"2006-03-26T15:08:20","slug":"immigration-scapegoat-politics-is-failing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=974","title":{"rendered":"Immigration: scapegoat politics is failing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Immigrants are the latest in a long series of minority scapegoats to bear the brunt of Republican party &#8220;divide and rule&#8221; electioneering.  Thankfully, it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20060326\/ap_on_re_us\/immigration_rallies;_ylt=AuGxBPjRE9P2Z4uj4Wg_hSis0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--\">failing<\/a>. A vast crowd in LA, and big crowds in Denver, Phoenix and Milwaukee gathered to protest a new bill that proposes making illegal immigration a felony and building a wall on the Mexican border.<br \/>\nIn the last election, Republicans made headway in hispanic communities; that seems less likely this time around.  Hopefully the bad bill won&#8217;t go anywhere, and Republicans will be harmed by outraging Hispanic Americans more than they are helped by energizing the white bigot vote.<br \/>\nThe scapegoat gambit is an old tactic for the Republican party. Willie Horton and welfare queens worked 20 years ago, but apparently demonization of black folk doesn&#8217;t go over anymore.   In the last cycle, the Republicans picked on gays, but tolerance is on the rise, so immigrants came up in the next draw of the scapegoat card.<br \/>\nAre changes to immigration policy needed? Its troubling to see workers with low wages and no protection. But making immigrants felons and building a wall isn&#8217;t the solution. Running against the &#8220;brown hordes&#8221; is a transparent appeal to the bigot vote, and I&#8217;m glad to see it not working.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Immigrants are the latest in a long series of minority scapegoats to bear the brunt of Republican party &#8220;divide and rule&#8221; electioneering. Thankfully, it&#8217;s failing. A vast crowd in LA, and big crowds in Denver, Phoenix and Milwaukee gathered to protest a new bill that proposes making illegal immigration a felony and building a wall &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=974\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Immigration: scapegoat politics is failing&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prDRq-fI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}