Mitt Romney ineffectively panders to Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

Mitt Romney will be speaking to the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce later today and will pander and do so ineffectively. It'd be a smart move for him to have some kind of a Sista Souljah moment with that group, challenging them on their race-based support for illegal activity. It'd be smart for him to actually oppose Barack Obama and the Democrats on immigration and show why their ideas are wrong.

Instead, as usual, Romney will be validating Obama's position on immigration. Excerpts of his remarks released before the speech include this:

"Candidate Obama said that one of his highest priorities would be to fix immigration in his first year in office. Despite his party having majorities in both houses of Congress, the president never even offered up a bill... Like so many issues confronting our nation, when it comes to immigration, politics has been put ahead of people for too long."

That statement validates the concept of comprehensive immigration reform and it validates the immigration positions of Obama and the Democrats. Romney is chiding Obama for not pushing something that Romney should oppose. Instead of doing that, Romney should show why Obama's immigration position is bad for the U.S.

The excerpts also include this:

"No one is exempt from the pain of this economy, but the Hispanic community has been particularly hard-hit... While national unemployment is 8.1 percent, Hispanic unemployment is over 10 percent. Over 2 million more Hispanics are living in poverty today than the day President Obama took office."

A good part of that is due to their leaders' quest for race-based power: more Hispanics means more power for Hispanic leaders, even if it also means a larger labor pool and thus greater unemployment. Yet, Romney won't be pointing that out; he won't be pointing out that Obama's amnesty will mostly harm Democratic workers.

Please take a moment and contact Romney's advisors with your thoughts.

UPDATE: Still more prepared remarks:

"Americans may disagree about how to fix our immigration system, but I think we can all agree that it is broken.

...I will work with Republicans and Democrats to permanently fix our immigration system.

We will never achieve a legal immigration system that is fair and efficient if we do not first get control of our borders. I believe we can all agree that what we need are fair and enforceable immigration laws that will stem the flow of illegal immigration, while strengthening legal immigration.

...America is a nation of immigrants, and immigration is essential to our economic growth and prosperity."

The first paragraph is the system is broken canard that an endless array of hacks have used to mislead. That includes Romney on at least one prior occasion, Paul Ryan, and many others; see the link. Sometimes that canard includes the false claim that everyone agrees. For instance, back in 2005 a worker at the leftwing Immigrant Legal Resource Center said, "Everyone agrees immigration is broken and needs fixing". In 2007, Ed Morrissey said, "Everyone agrees that the system is broken; in fact, that's about the only agreement to be found."

"Bipartisan" immigration solutions tend to boil down to amnesty of some kind, such as Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

In the third paragraph, Romney is using yet more stock boilerplate; see secure the border (he means it in the "first" sense described at the link).

In the same paragraph, Romney pretends that our current immigration laws aren't "enforceable", which is false. The actual problem is that those who have a financial or electoral stake in illegal immigration work to keep those laws from being enforced. Instead of calling out such corruption, Romney would make things easier for the corrupt.

What exact form of legal immigration Romney promotes in the third paragraph isn't clear, but it's probably skilled immigration; see that link.

And, in the last paragraph, Romney uses yet another canard: nation of immigrants.

Please contact Romney's representatives using the link above.