Gutknecht, Kline, Bachmann Ignore RNC Guidance

If this election is going to be a referendum on illegal immigration policy, why are Minnesota Republican candidates ignoring the Republican National Committee strategy ?

On May 26, 2006 Matthew Dowd, RNC Senior Advisor, issued a strategy memo entitled Public Opinion on Immigration Reform.

http://www.gop.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=6348

The first thing that you will notice after reading the memo is that the Republican-controlled Congress did just what the RNC did not want to happen – inaction. The RNC pleaded to get the immigration issue resolved … but the extremists in the House (Gutknecht) refused to meet with the Senate in a Conference Committee to resolve the House version versus the Senate version.

Second, the memo clearly recognizes that criminalizing illegal immigrants is a bad strategy and that there is support for a temporary worker program as long as immigrants pay taxes and obey the law. Further, it states that voters do not consider granting legal status to those already here amnesty.

The oddball aspect in the Congressional Debates thus far is the blaming the undocumented workers instead of the employers of those workers. Tim Walz in his debate with Gil Gutknecht questioned “why in 1999 were we issuing hundreds of fines against employers for the hiring of undocumented workers and today we're issuing three." In the Bachmann-Wetterling debate, Wetterling, advocated prosecuting employers whom she blamed for hiring illegal immigrants. "Stop them, charge them, jail them," she said. Bachmann took the opposite approach. Leave the employers alone, she said, and make the illegal workers "pay the price."
The Bachmann response is akin to solving a street drug problem by going after the hundreds of users instead of concentrating the efforts on the one dealer.

Undocumented workers are coming here for the jobs. Proper policing of the employers will insure that only legal immigrants and US citizens get jobs. Without the possibility of employment, many will soon realize that it is foolhardy to bother attempting to cross the border. But the focus on undocumented workers is just another example of the fear that Republicans have that they might upset their corporate backers.

http://www.kttc.com/News/index.php?ID=8462
http://www.startribune.com/587/story/772279.html