January 16, 2007

Mexican citizens helping Kennedy, McCain, Flake, Berman set immigration policy

In September of last year, the "Independent Task Force on Immigration and America's Future" - "convened by the Migration Policy Institute in partnership with Manhattan Institute and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars" - released their report called "Immigration and America's Future: A New Chapter".

Two members of the "task force" are former elected officials (Spencer Abraham and Lee Hamilton), but four of them are currently supposedly working for us: Howard Berman, Jeff Flake, Edward Kennedy, and John McCain.

Another member is Fernando Garcia, executive director of the El Paso-based Border Network for Human Rights. He's also a Mexican citizen with a green card. The article "D.C. hears El Pasoan's ideas about reforms" by Louie Gilot has a profile of him and his work, which includes organizing pro-illegal immigration marches in El Paso. Most of his organization's funding comes from a $375,000 grant from the Ford Foundation.

Two other Mexican officials were involved in this report: Geronimo Gutierrez and Carlos de Icaza, their ambassador to the U.S.

The MPI is a private organization, and it's not completely questionable that former elected officials might want to seek out foreign input. However, when current elected officials do it, and they have views more to the open borders side of things than not, it seems quite unseemly. One wonders exactly how many minutes McCain, Kennedy, Flake, and Berman have spent seeking out the opinion of pro-borders Americans versus the time they've spent hobnobbing with open-borders Mexicans.

Even the MPI seems to have realized this whole scheme is borderline, offering this footnote on their page:

Because of their legislative roles, currently serving members of Congress were not asked to endorse the Task Force recommendations.

A full list of those involved in the "task force" reads like the cast of a horror movie with the U.S. as the unlucky teen campers. It includes Doris Meissner, Thomas J. Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tamar Jacoby, Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza, and Frank Sharry of the National Immigration Forum among many others.

Posted to Immigration2007a at January 16, 2007 05:55 AM

Comments