Showing posts with label Latino Vote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Latino Vote. Show all posts

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Dreaming


“So my dad never had the money or time to get a college degree. Without a college degree, became head of a big car company and ultimately a governor. And believed in America, believed in the opportunity in this country, never doubted for a moment that he could achieve his dreams. And Ann's dad, my wife's dad, was born in Wales. His dad was a coal miner. This coal miner got injured in a coal mining accident; realizing that there was no future there for him or his four children, he came to Detroit and worked in the auto factories until he could save enough money to bring his kids over, which he did. And then they got together as a family and said, you know, to be successful in America, you've got to get an education. And they couldn't afford an education. And the kids and the parents said you know, if we all work, and we all save, we could afford to send one of us to college. And they, they sent my wife's dad.”
Mitt Romney said the above statement during a fundraising event in Boca Raton, Florida in May 2012 and which was secretly videotaped.
I find it amusing and repulsive that this man is against immigrants unless they have specialized skills. George W. Romney was born in Mexico and his family moved back to the U.S. during the Mexican revolution. As a child he worked the fields and helped his father in construction. G.W. Romney’s family was on welfare for many years to make ends meet. G.W. Romney was not a good student, went to many universities and never graduated from any of them. In high school, he was not exemplary actually he was far from it. Those humble beginnings is what made G.W. Romney a more compassionate man, much more than his son will ever be. 
Ann (Davies) Romney’s parents were immigrants too. Ann’s father was Edward R. Davies and he came to the United States after his father, David Davis, a coal miner who had acquired black lung disease and who had been injured in a mining accident had migrated to the United States in 1929 and after working at a Ford plant he sent for his wife and son, Ann’s father, shortly after. Edward R. Davies was an avowed atheist until the day he died, he despised religion and never changed his mind about it. However, not even a year had passed after his death (September 8, 1992) when Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann ignored the essence of the man and baptized him post-mortem. In my opinion this is just one more example of how disrespectful and selfish these two individuals are, they can’t even honor the wishes of a dead man.
Both their own families came to this country in search of a better life for themselves and their family. Neither one of these families were wealthy when they got here or possessed any extraordinary skills: one a carpenter the other a sick coal miner. Yet, the desire for a better life drove them here and this country welcomed them, allowed them to work and to prosper. 
They were just the previous generation of Mitt and Ann Romney, not their great-grand fathers, not 3 or 4 generations ago. These people were their own parents. How can they now show so much disdain for the immigrants that come to this country in search of the same thing their parents came here for? Mitt Romney keeps repeating that he wants to bring people from other countries but only if they have special skills, I wonder what skills he is thinking off, will he accept carpenters, injured miners, wheat, potato and sugar beet field workers, or would any of those “skills” not be special enough for him? 
Mitt Romney has promised to veto the “Dream Act” which is allowing those that were brought to these shores as children by their parents and who are undocumented by no fault of their own. He will not think twice about it. He will destroy the dreams of these young men and women who are studying, trying to get ahead in life, serving our country and defending this country as their own – after all, they know of no other country – he will deny them the same opportunity his own father and his father-in-law had to succeed. What’s more, he will follow Arizona’s immigration law deporting more immigrants just because they come from South of the border and came here with no “special skills” but the ardent desire to provide their families a better life, to earn a decent living with the sweat of their brow, the work of their two hands and the strength of their heart… all to provide their children a better future than they had. 
That is what Gaskell Romney and David Davies did and no one kicked them out of this country. 
For Romney all of the above doesn’t matter, the opportunities his family had and he had were well deserved and they “earned” it… Perhaps, they “earned” it because they were white and spoke English, and the undocumented immigrants are brown and speak Spanish, and then he wants the Latino vote, in his dreams!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Romney and the Cuban Connection


The overwhelming win of “Hispanic votes” in this past Florida elections are by no means a true reflection of the Hispanic vote nationwide, actually is far from it. The majority of Hispanic voters in South Florida, Cubans to be precise, are not affected by the immigration laws, as it is the case with the rest of the Hispanic population in Florida or anywhere else in the U.S.

Cubans have been the envy of many Hispanics that pursue a residency in United States; Cubans for decades have been privileged and have enjoyed a preferential treatment, thanks I should add to a Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, if Cubans touch American land they are welcomed to stay, period. So the radical deportation laws supported by Mitt Romney do not affect them and it looks like they couldn’t care less what happens to the others that are seeking the American dream just like they did. The Cubans that fled to this country for the last 30 to 50 years are in their vast majority Republicans. If you ask them why, it has to do with John F.Kennedy and Bay of Pigs, they felt betrayed by a Democratic president and they will never trust another Democrat. It doesn’t matter that you try to explain the reasons JFK had to back down on his offer to back the Cuban invasion in Bay of Pigs, it doesn’t matter that not two individuals are the same regardless of party affiliation, Cubans are like elephants (they chose the right party, at least the right mascot) they never forget. However, the younger generation of Cubans is seeing things differently and is abandoning in great numbers the views of their progenitors.

I am sure that the fact that Romney can claim that he has family in Mexico and that his father is Mexican born who came to this country as an immigrant is enough to make these older Cubans vote for Romney and not for Gingrich. I am also sure that most of these Cubans don’t know that Romney has never visited Mexico – his claimed roots – that he doesn’t personally know his Mexican family and that his Spanish is worse than any other American that learned Spanish in second grade and never practiced it since. They will not look for these facts and even if told, they will think of it as irrelevant. For Cubans in South Florida all it matters is that he has the support of the strongest life-long political Cuban figures in Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, who probably coached him about what to say, after all, they’re experts at milking the Cuban cause for their gain… It is easy for any politician to win the old school Cuban votes, it will suffice to say the same bullshit that has been said for the last 50 years: “Down with Castro’s policies”, “tighten the embargo”, “end the Communist regime in Cuba”; Cubans are either so naïve, so stupid or both that after hearing the same shit for half a century they still believe that anything will be done by an American politician – doesn’t matter which party they belong to! They have yet to realize that is not “good business” for the Cuban sharks, I mean politicians, comfortably sitting in Washington to end that which ails Cuba but that is great to maintain their lifestyle and fill up their pocketbooks, they would be out of business if it did and that works against their benefit, hence they will never do what is necessary to change the current situation in Cuba and they will continue doing what it has been repeatedly proven to be ineffective – the embargo – making of Castro a modern day martyr for the rest of the world.

Are you wondering what Cubans think about The Dream Act? Cubans are the first one to cry out loud – and I mean loud – against deporting these young men and women that were raised here and going to school. They will call the radio stations and proclaim their disapproval in no uncertain terms, Cubans are very passionate in the way they speak, to put it in a nice way, but that outrage disappears when faced with their innate, and somewhat justified, hate for Castro – so they’re willing to ‘sacrifice’ The Dream Act, after all it doesn’t apply to them, if Romney promises that he will remove Castro from the island. The Never Ending Story that Republicans brilliantly use time and time again when campaigning in Miami or South Florida.

Cubans represent only about 4% of the Hispanic population in the United States, according to the latest Census, so regardless of how impressive Romney’s Hispanic win in Florida may seem, it is definitively not a true representation of how the Hispanic vote will be on November 2, 2012.

(this article was first published, with minor differences, in http://technorati.com/ by Independent Thinker)