Rohrabacher Immigrant View Booed, Cheered

Dana Rohrabacher (I omit “the Honorable” for obvious reasons) has given his affliction a name--”Pedro.” He has also given a symptom to his affliction--a $50,000 heart operation. Since he has named his affliction “Pedro,” I assume that he has the demographic data to support his claims.

The thing I find most ironic is that Mr. Rohrabacher recently attended a function with Vice President (Dan) Quayle wherein he proclaimed the virtues of immigration. He further extolled the virtues of those brave people who had risen above insurmountable odds to make it to this country. I stood about 10 feet from the podium so I am pretty sure of what was said.

Now he happens to find himself in a (different) crowd. Not wanting to exercise wisdom and render a positive solution to the problem at hand, Mr. Rohrabacher proceeded to create “mainly anecdotal” inferences which he expects to find to be proven true as the issue is debated in months to come.

Mr. Rohrabacher further believes that his proposal is a “simple solution but requires hard choices and people have to be tough.” Does he think that America’s solutions are found in “mainly anecdotal” manifestations? What leads this man to believe that he can blame our societal deficiencies on Hispanics? What have we done to suddenly become the source of abuses?

Leadership often is gauged by the battles that we engage and win.

Should Mr. Rohrabacher choose to pursue a better return on taxpayers’ money (we do pay his salary), I would recommend that he take on real world foes. He may pursue the abuses of political largess. He might choose to review his campaign habits. Other recommendations would be that he may even want to realize a deeper awareness of Hispanic issues (which, by the way, are very mainstream American) or he may wish to remain on a collision course with a significant portion of his constituency.

RUBEN MARTINEZ

Co-Chairman

Republican National Hispanic Assembly

Irvine