From the man who gave us "Bomb Iran Bomb Bomb Iran [V.2]" : more refreshingly brisk and puckish off-the-cuff musings. As reported here, there, and elsewhere, it seems that McCain had a little harmless fun at the expense of the Candidate Most Resembling Hollywood's Idea of a President and/or Ingratiatingly Handsome Cover Person/Game Show Host, that varmint--persecuting Nimrod, Mitt Romney.
[quote begins from The Politico, Jonathan Martin, McCain Unloads on Romney, Mitt's Camp Punches Back]
Sen. John McCain used a blogger conference call today to unleash his toughest -- and most personal -- attack yet on former Gov. Mitt Romney.
Per a McCain aide, one of the bloggers asked about the immigration issue and Romney's attack on the compromise."Maybe I should wait a couple of weeks and see if it changes because its changed in less than a year from his position before," McCain responded, referring to his rival's immigration stance. "And maybe his solution will be to get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn."
[quote ends]
Ooooh, burn! I love the run-up to the primaries, when you can watch the candidates eat their own.
The Guatemalan reference relates to this evocatively titled December 1, 2006, article in The Boston Globe: Illegal immigrants toiled for governor. (Thanks, Politico!)
Never mind, Mitt, they're just jealous. Mitt Romney leads GOP field in Iowa.
Furthermore, an update to Jonathan Martin's above-referenced blog indicates that McCain made the varmint-related comment with a light laugh. That's just so darling and proves he didn't mean to be mean.
As everyone knows, Romney's recently advocated some pretty strong remedies against those pesky illegals who insist on coming here to work without going through proper channels.
[quote begins from The Boston Globe 16 March 2007, Romney's Words Grow Hard on Immigration by Scott Helman]
Proudly touting the endorsement of Joe Arpaio, a sheriff in the state who is known nationally for rounding up immigrants in desert tents, Romney boasted of cracking down on illegal immigrants as governor and denounced an immigration bill that the Arizona senator introduced with Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 2005.
It is a theme Romney has hit hard in recent weeks in his appeals to conservatives, many of whom attack McCain's immigration bill for proposing an eventual path to citizenship for immigrants living illegally in the United States and a guest-worker program to help fill American jobs.
...Romney's past comments on illegal immigration suggest his views have hardened as he has ramped up his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
[quote ends]
If you want to know how much, The Boston Globe article has two audio recordings of Romney then and now. I'm not that bothered myself by the alleged flip-flopping. It's okay with me if candidates for public office change their minds on the issues. That's what intelligent people do when confronted by new information suggesting that a previous position might not fit the needs of the situation.
However I am very interested in revisiting the underlying allegations to which McCain's remarks refer. It wasn't quite fair of McCain to suggest that Romney ever would use the same forceful methods against undocumented workers that he claims to have used to ban varmints from his premises. There I think McCain went too far.
The December 2006 article suggests that Romney has never treated the illegals (employees of the lawn maintenance company who provided services to his grounds) with anything other than the utmost respect as they were toiling away to provide it. Though understandabl anxious that their grounds (including a swimming pool and tennis court) be meticulously maintained and groomed, it is gratifying to know that the Romneys were alleged by some of the laborers who tended their grounds to be pleasant to work for, dispensing Spanish pleasantries and the occasional drink of ice water.
[quote begins from Boston Globe, Illegal Immigrants Toiled for Governor by Jonathan Saltzman, Marie Cramer, and Connie Paige]
For about eight years, Rosales said, he worked on and off landscaping the grounds at Romney's home, occasionally getting a "buenos dias" from Romney or a drink of water from his wife, Ann.
"She is very nice," said Rosales, 49.
About 6 miles away in Copado, a 37-year-old man who recently returned to Guatemala from the United States told a faimilar story, describing long days tending Romney's 2 1/2-acre grounds.
"They wanted that house to look really nice," said the worker, who asked to remain anonymous. "It took a long time."
[quote ends]
Furthermore, Romney apparently didn't ask the workers any awkward questions about their immigration status or---we must assume---closely query the company who employed them about the legitimacy of employing them. Instead, he trustingly assumed that the people who were mowing his lawn and mulching the flower beds (or whatever those people do; I have no grounds and don't have any idea). As the company's owner asserted, "He doesn't have to ask. ...I'm a company."
Similarly, the owner of the company---with whom Romney apparently exclusively dealt--- very sweetly didn't require them to show any papers. When questioned, the owner of the company allegedly asserted that he had in fact never asked the workers if they were legally in the country or required them to produce documentation because he knew they were there legally. How? He just knew, that's all.
And of course Romney wouldn't intentionally have employed (whether directly or indirectly through the agency which supplied labor to him) undocumented workers. To suggest otherwise would be ludicrous.
Still, it was and is a wee bit awkward that---quoting from the December 2006 article---"as Romney travels the country, vowing to curb the flood of low-skilled illegal immigrants into the United States," illegal immigrants were maintaining his grounds.
[quote begins from Boston Globe, Illegal Immigrants Toiled for Governor by Jonathan Saltzman, Marie Cramer, and Connie Paige]
The workers who had landscaped Romney's property seemed unaware of the governor's support for stricter controls on illegal immigration. Several described casual encounters with Romney over the years and said he had never expressed any curiosity about their status.
[quote ends]
You know, my first thought was: "Well, if he hired the company to supply the services, why should he be expected to inquire into the status of the workers who were tending his lawn?" The reason for hiring such a company is to avoid having to deal with just such issues. We rely on such companies to check the papers, withholds federal taxes, and pay social security (or not). Is it fair to hold Romney responsible for the trusting nature of the company's owner? """I don't need to tell them to show me documents," [the owner] said. "I know who they are, and they are legal."
So let's just stipulate for the record: Romney didn't know that his workers were undocumented.
[quote begins from The Washington Post, 1 December 2006, Aide Romney Unaware of Illegal Workers]
....Eric Fehrnstrom, the Massachusetts governor's communications director, said Friday that Romney was not aware of or "knowledgeable about the information alleged."
"Governor Romney hired a legitimate Massachusetts lawn service company to take care of his yard. He knows the owner as a decent, hardworking person who is a legal resident," Fehrnstrom said....
[Romney] has said employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants should face penalties.
[quote ends]
Which is okay, because he totally didn't know! It's pleasant to know that after all was said and done, Romney weathered the allegations. [quoting from ABC article] "Two-and-on-half months after the story appeared, it does not appear to have slowed Romney from making inroads in the House GOP Conference where anti-immigration passions run high."
Even so... I like to think that if I were thinking of running for president, and before I took a tough line against undocumented workers, I'd make it my business to find out whether the laborers who (allegedl) were regularly supplying services to me and my lawn had the requisite papers. I like to think that I'd be concerned in such a case about the potential appearance of impropriety---and, incidentally, of hypocrisy. I'm not blaming Romney, though if I were in politics, I think I'd go that extra mile to be sure of avoiding embarrassing "oh geez" moments and the blunt-force-trauma-inflicting witticisms of John McCain..
It's the appearance of hypocrisy---because, again, I believe that Romney didn't realize that some of the people cutting his grass might b e undocumented--- that most concerns me, assuming these allegations are all true. Well, that and the morality of adopting a harsh stance toward the same people who do the chores you'd otherwise have to do yourself. The fact is, undocumented workers in this country provide services that would otherwise not be available (or would not be available at the price people with extensive grounds can afford). Romney himself, before his views on immigration hardened, acknowledged that many illegals provide valuable services to American citizens. """These people contribute in many cases to our economy and to our society," he said."
It seems apparent to me, based on my own observations, that many people who oppose the presence in this country of undocumented workers are quite happy to adopt a "don't ask/don't ask" stance with respect to the companies which exist to provide them with services. In default of an actual servant class, they benefit tremendously from the presence of undocumented illegals who are willing to work for cash in hand.
[quote begins from Boston Globe, Illegal Immigrants Toiled for Governor by Jonathan Saltzman, Marie Cramer, and Connie Paige]
In addition to maintaining the governor's property, they also tended to the lawn at the house owned by Romney's son, Taggart, less than a mile away on the same winding street.
Asked by a reporter yesterday about his use of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, Romney, who was hosting the Republican Governors Association conference in Miami, said, "Aw, geez," and walked away.
[quote]
Oh geez, indeed. Because unless Americans who believe that illegal immigration is undermining the culture, the quality of life in America,and the economy take the responsibility of making sure they aren't doing business with companies who employ them, it seems to me that they are to blame for creating the conditions that sustain the problem. Never mind whether they have a legal obligation to look into the background of the people who do the jobs they don't want to do themselves, or to pay the rates charged by companies that don't employ cheap [illegal] labor.
As someone who has to do her own menial chores (or not have them performed at all, which is also a choice) I resent the "fortunate sons" who created the problem taking it out on the very class of people from whose services they benefit. .
[quote begins from The Boston Globe 16 March 2007, Romney's Words Grow Hard on Immigration by Scott Helman]
Romney took strong action against illegal immigration as Massachusetts governor by vetoing a measure to grant in-state tuition rates to children of undocumented immigrants, opposing proposals to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, and authorizing National Guard troops to assist with border patrol.
[quote ends]
And even though Romney is a nice, handsome man who would never dream of treating illegals the way he claims to treat furry little animals or of driving Guatemalans off his lawn (so unfair of McCain), he apparently is happy to accept the support of "a sheriff known for rounding up illegal immigrants in desert tents" and to oppose McCain's bipartisan bill.
When I hear a certain type of Republican or Democrat carry on about wanting to round up the illegals and send them back where they came from, I can't help flashing back to my childhood in South Carolina in the 1960's, when confronted with any complaint by the African-American underclass who cleaned their houses and kept up their lawns. And while this was different in a way---those people were just as American as their employers and just as entitled to be where they were---it was also similar. There was the same unspoken attitude on the part of the well-to-do employer that the existence of a servant class was a necessity for them to be able to pursue their way of life and the same resistance to acknowledging that the people they relied on for services were entitled to any reciprocal consideration.
In my early childhood, every family I knew had a maid and sometimes a yard man, invariably men and woman of color, who did the work for what they could get because there was a surplus of people around without the necessary vocational training to do anything else. I remember as a small child back in the Johnson era hearing some of the local ladies moaning about the minimum wage. "Pretty soon I won't be able to afford a servant," one of them said. And it's true: as conditions for African-Americans improved, it became progressively less cost effective to employ them. At a certain point, it isn't cost effective to hire other people do the work you don't want to do. You have no choice but to sell your palatial home for something more scaled down, involving less yard maintenance.
I really wonder what will happen when the advocates of strong measures against illegals get their wish. Aren't a lot of them occupying that ecological niche left open by that vanished class of service personnel from my early childhood. Who will do their laundry, look bring up their children, cook their meals, pick up after them? (There's a reason---or as my husband would have it, a "lame excuse"--for my lack of household or housecleaning skills). And who will do those other back-breaking, tedious, necessary jobs that lie outside the scope of most Americans' American dream?
And I have to shake my head in disbelief when I hear of opponents of illegal immigration actually---and whether knowingly or not---benefiting directly from such labor. If you care about the problem, you ought to make sure that you're not perpetuating the causes.
So though I think John McCain's "varmint gun" remarks were just that little bit over the top, I do think they illustrate the sort of hypocrisy to which we Americans seem especially heir: that certain blindness that strikes when it's you your own sweet self who is helping to create exactly the situation of which you complain and for which you assign all the blame elsewhere.
If you' are or have been part of the problem, even inadvertently, it stands to reason that you can't be part of the solution. In other words, if you're in favor of---let us say---brusque, strict treatment of undocumented workers, mow your own damn lawns and prune your own damn shrubs and change your own damn diapers.
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