HispanicVista Columnists

It only took 24-hours for the California Republican Party to respond to my CalNews.com criticism of hiring foreigners for top jobs in the State Republican Party.

Official Party spokesman Hector Barajas wrote me that "The State Deputy Political Director has yet to be hired." I stand corrected. Also, the Canadian Chris Mathews my previous article revolved around has, according to Baraja, "worked in Great Britain for the Conservative Party and in Canada."

I should note that the Conservative Party of Great Britain hasn’t won a national election in over a dozen years, or, as Mathews is 35 years old, during his entire adulthood. So much for that political reference and experience.

"Chris is currently working on a TN Visa as a management consultant - he is helping with organizational management and networking. Similar work was done in San Diego, " Barajas wrote. The visa involved here is a one-year visa set up under NAFTA to allow professionals to work in one of the other NAFTA countries of Canada, the USA or Mexico. So, did Nehring look at Mexicans who might understand California better than Canadians.

Now, consider this, an H-1B Visa is requested by an employer, not the job applicant. Thus, Barajs may have misstated the following: "The H-1B visa applicants go through a lottery system and Chris was approved for this Visa." An employer must request one of only 65,000 national H-1Bs for special jobs for which they can’t find qualified Americans. Question: Aren’t there any Americans qualified for these two jobs in the Republican Party?

Barajas describes the work Mathews will do when his H-1B visa takes effect in October, "…Chris will be the Director of research and political technology – looking at voter registration statistics, overlaying consumer data, home sales, income, education, ethnicity, etc." Question, isn’t there a single American citizen in the entire 38,000,000 person state of California who can do this job?

Then we have press reports quoting Australian citizen Michael Kamburowski and his criticism of the press for revealing the secret effort by new State Republican Chairman Ron Nehring to fill top jobs with people who can’t vote. In a letter to the state Executive Board, he wrote, "The press is trying to portray Republicans as racist when we discuss illegal immigration…yet when we promote individuals who have displayed great skills but who just happen to hail from another country, we are pegged as hypocrites." Actually, I would state it in stronger terms, how about stupid hypocrites.

What we find here is the same mentality that brought California the infamous Proposition 187 that made the ballot only because the State Republican Party paid out $300,000 to gather petition signatures. It never saw enforcement against illegals and targeted Mexicans because it was unconstitutional. It has nurtured some of the worst xenophobes and racists in the country since then in the State Assembly, State Senate and among several of its congressional delegation. In so doing, it lost the confidence of the huge California moderate electorate and doomed itself to the political graveyard.

The Party used to be peopled by Good Government Republicans who managed to win every single election for governor in the state since the 1880s with few exceptions in 1938, 1958 & 62, 1974 & 1978 and 1998 & 2002. The Good Government Republicans produced political giants Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren, Bill Knowland, Richard Nixon (forget Watergate, think China), Thomas Kuchel, Casper Weinberger and lesser lights George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson. Wilson proved to be the crossover governor to political Nutsville and the Black Hole California Republicans have found themselves in since 1994.

Consider that the official national Republican position and that of Good Government Republicans on illegal immigration is to legalize those here now, stronger enforcement on the border and a guest worker program. Under anti-illegal immigrant Chairman Ron Nehring we find strong attacks on the national position while he hires people for top jobs who can’t vote.

It’s even worse than that. In his e-mail, Hector Barajas wrote that: "Michael Kamburowski has been in the United States as a Resident for more than 12 years- he worked for Newt Gingrich and the Reagan legacy project." This man is a living insult to loyal California Republicans of the American citizen persuasion. Nehring claimed in news reports that Republicans should be happy when foreigners want to become Americans like his two hires.

If that’s so, Chairman Nehring, why are you hiring Michael Kamburowski for any job in the Republican Party when he hasn’t seen fit to become a citizen for the past seven years in which he has been eligible for citizenship?

Millions of illegals and their supporters hit the streets last year asking for a path to citizenship and were heavily criticized ----- Kamburowski has a path to citizenship and he hasn’t bothered to avail himself of that path, why, Chairman Nehring? Why?

Contreras’ books, THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA?? and, A HISPANIC VIEW OF AMERICAN POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION are available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com