Felicia Persaud
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. July 13, 2012: Who would have thought it? A Bush admitting that President Obama’s immigration move has outflanked Republicans and Mitt Romney?
But it has happened! George P. Bush, 36, the son of former Governor, Jeb Bush, of Florida and his Mexican-born wife, admitted this week that, “Governor Romney had an opportunity to get in front of the president on the issue (of immigration) but the president clearly has taken the initiative on it.”
The White House announced a policy last month that would clear the way for young undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows, work legally and obtain driver’s licenses. The temporary reprieve could benefit at least a million young people.
Bush, who was on a trip to Washington to promote his political action committee called MavPAC, told reporters that Republicans needed to find an “honest solution to the immigration problem.”
Maybe it’s Mr. Bush’s Latin blood showing up, thanks to his mom, Columbo Bush, but he agreed, like his uncle, President George W. Bush and his dad, that both parties should commit to a bipartisan plan that recognized a “need for labor in our country and the need of enforcing, for purposes of national security, our immigration laws.”
Yet we had that plan under President George W. with the Ted Kennedy/John McCain bill and yet it failed to pass!
But young Mr. Bush still is holding out hope that Mitt Romney would still “formulate a plan — a more comprehensive plan” on immigration.
Well don’t hold your breath George P! So far Romney’s flip-flopping on the issue has not helped him at all or the party’s sudden hope to capture minority votes.
He has gone from promoting self-deportation and building a fence between Mexico and the U.S. to saying he’s for a long-term solution to the issue of young people living in the country illegally. Yet, he has refrained from saying what that long term solution is. Little wonder that the Latino rep he hired to help him whip up support with that voting bloc could not say for sure what his policies on the hot button issue are.
Romney’s further alienation of the Latino base occurred this week. His failure to attend the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights group’s annual meeting – the National Council of La Raza’s annual meeting held in Las Vegas this week and instead his decision to send a video in his place was simply put in one word – stupid!
Especially since the video did sound more like a generic campaign infomercial than an attempt to woo Latino voters, with nada said about immigration, unemployment or other issues that might resonate with this demographic.
What a lost opportunity but then President Obama didn’t attend the NCLR meeting either so what does that say about taking the Latino and immigrant voting bloc for granted?
Still at the end of the day, Obama’s June 15th policy decision, whether an election year ploy or not, is what immigrant voters will remember come November 6th. As George P himself agrees, Mitt has been outflanked by Obama and no amount of Spanish-language advertisements can help him right now, especially with no real solutions.
The writer is founder of NewsAmericasNow, CaribPR Wire and Hard Beat Communications.
