Wednesday, June 21, 2006

I think this is the one thing Reilly is sincere about. And that is because his mother is an immigrant. I give Reilly credit for his convictions on this one. Otherwise he ia an opportunistic phony. Or stupid. I am not sure which.

I'm as big a Reilly fan as they come, so I have to ask the obvious question: precisely WHO is REilly supposedly pandering to? Illegal immigrants don't vote and merely mentioning the words "illegal immigrants" opens a candidate up to opportunisitc post-shotsm such as the one taken by Gabrieli.

Tom Reilly is stating a principled position that he has held since 2001, while Chris Gabrieli is trying to capitalize on Sunday's Globe story. It's pretty clear who is pandering.

Eileen McNamara wrote about the right topic, but the wrong subject.

It is clear that Gabrieli has chosen this issue to seperate him from the other two candidates. His establishment base is already pro-Reilly and his liberal base is pro-Patrick. I think it is sad and clearly driven by his consultants from Virginia.

In one of the last debates, he even commented that services should be given to the children of illegal immigrants, even if the children are born in the US. If I am wrong, I apologize for making this assumption, but I know he was talking about more than the instate tuition bill.

Yet when you think of the factors in play ( Gabs has no base and won't break into Reilly or Patrick's without something big and the Howie Carr crowd ), it makes sense. Still it is sad.

"figuring out if a politician's stances are sincere or expedient is an inexact science"

You seem to be forgetting Keller and the Spin-O-Meter.

Quite frankly, I am baffled and profoundly disappointed that someone like Gabrieli, who has devoted so much time and energy to the issue of quality education, has taken such a cold and hard-headed position on instate tuition for the children of illegal immigrants. You can't talk about growing our economy out one side of your mouth and limit the opportunities of blameless children out the other. It was a shameful statement. Even Kerry Healey has softened her immigration postion.

(Note--this is paraphrased from something I wrote at Blue Mass Group)

I definitely don't think that Reilly is pandering at all. I remember being at an event organized by GBIO at Faneiul Hall where Reilly was honored for his support of immigrants. As I recall, it focused on his support for immigrant workers who'd been screwed out of money by an employer. His office had helped them pursue their wage and hour claims without investigating their immigration status. Without this policy, it was feared that undocumented workers wouldn't be willing to report exploitative conditions for fear of it coming down on their own heads. That's a situation that remains to some extent, of course; heck, a lot of immigrant crime victims don't report it it. While I haven't looked into the specifics of this policy, I'd say that Reilly is to be applauded for his effort to enable exploited immigrant workers to report their situations--which in turn allows the state to crack down on the employers who are taking advantage of them.

I'm also profuondly disappointed in Gabrieli's stance, which I'm more inclined to see as pandering, as it's just popping up now.

I'm not disappointed at all on this. Gabrieli is right; it is an outrage that we look the other way on the illegal immigration problem. And it is a problem in this country which depresses wages for hard-working, ordinary Americans who were born here.