HispanicVista Columnists

Republicans and the Smell Test
By Raoul Lowery Contreras

What do Hispanic Republicans do in an atmosphere of hysteria created by the anti-immigrant smell surfacing in parts of the country?

Let us not be fooled by the anti’s public statements that they are just against illegal aliens, not legal immigrants or that they really aren’t anti-Mexican just against illegally present Mexicans. These are people who hate Mexicans.

That is evident in their beliefs in fictions they create about Mexicans who they call "invaders," "vermin," and "criminals." They constantly promote fictions about an illegal alien "crime wave," massive "murders" by illegals and traffic "slaughter" by illegal alien drivers. None of these beliefs are true.

Nonetheless, anyone who speaks up for Mexicans is labeled part of the "Open Borders Crowd," or part of the "Treason Lobby." The President is renamed "Jorge."

For example: Many charge that illegal aliens choke our prison systems. In California, out of 171,000 inmates, less than 10% are Mexican-born and fewer than that have Federal immigration holds on them and a minority are in for violent crimes. In the federal prison system, 30% of a total of 185,000 federal prisoners are non-American citizens and most of them are in jail for immigration violations and smuggling, not murder, rape or other violent crimes.

Hispanic Republicans need to combat these fictions and their perpetrators everywhere they can. Letters to the Editor, call-in talk shows, one-on-ones are all methods they can use after they dig up facts from official sources such as their state’s Department of Corrections.

Hispanic Republicans and those inclined towards the Democrat persuasion need only to follow the national Republican vote that resulted in John McCain as our Presidential nominee and, specifically, in the Special Election in Illinois this week to replace former Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert.

In that Special Election, a Democrat defeated a hysterically anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican Republican who had a two to one Republican registration advantage in a district that has never elected a Democrat.

Jim Oberweiss ran on a Gestapo-like round-them-all-up and deport them, arrest-any-employer-hiring illegals platform and his fellow Republicans slaughtered him. He is not the first. He follows Tom Tancredo, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee and Duncan Hunter. They have all run on hysterical anti-illegals campaigns and they have not scored more than a few percentage points at the polls.

The most serious, of course, was Mitt Romney who was slaughtered by Republican voters in California and Florida after spending $25-35 million dollars in those states.

Republican voters have done "The Lord’s Work" for us. Now we have to pick up the sledgehammer and slam the Mexican haters at every juncture, in every forum, in every Op-Ed page, in every talk show and at every meeting they attend.

We must kick these people while they are down. Republican National voters have led the way. We must attack, attack, and attack!

This would not be new. In 1954 Republican Senators came out of hiding and attacked Wisconsin Republican Senator Joe McCarthy. He had terrorized American government and politics since 1949 when he claimed that 211 (or was it 93, or 399 or whatever) State Department employees were card-carrying Communists. With support from the extreme Right, he ranted and raved for five years.

On March 9, 1954 Republican Senators stood up to McCarthy and his decline started and didn’t end until he died in 1957.

On that day, Republican Senator Ralph Flanders (Vermont) blasted McCarthy on the Senate floor, charging that he was a "one-man party" intent on "doing his best to shatter that party whose label he wears." Hispanic Republicans can use his tactics of sarcasm as in: "The junior Senator from Wisconsin interests us all, no doubt about that, but also he puzzles some of us. To what party does he belong? Is he a hidden satellite of the Democratic Party, to which he is furnishing so much material for quiet mirth?"

Facts and sarcasm are the most useful tools we have in fighting the hysterical girlie men who carry their hatred of Mexicans on their sleeves.

Republican voters have done us a favor by rejecting the haters, now we must back that up by making these enemies of America define themselves for what they are. They will do that, for their views are race based. They use code and we must expose that code for what it is. The code escapes many who want to believe they are good Americans, but they are not, they are just ignorant.

For example, a Chandler, Arizona police officer declared that when he stopped a Mexican-looking driver he knew when they were in the United States illegally. How? "By their smell…"

President Thomas Jefferson wrote 200 years ago that Negroes urinated through their skin pores thus, they smelled different. Has nothing changed in 200 years?
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Contreras’ books are available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com