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Editorial: Cooler heads on immigration

Matt Zalaznick
Vail Daily Editorial Board
Vail, CO Colorado

Immigration, illegal and otherwise, was supposed to be one of the major issues of this presidential campaign. And then, as Jon Stewart said, people started voting.

The candidates who claimed to be “toughest” on all types of immigration have not only dropped out of the race, but they hardly registered at the ballot box.

Xenophobe-in-chief, Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, was barely a blip on the radars of American voters, and when Rudy Giuliani finally entered a primary, even “America’s



Mayor” didn’t seem to want to vote for himself. Only Mitt Romney, among Republicans who struck nativist poses, collected enough delegates for the remaining candidates to covet. And the remaining candidates ” by, say, Minutemen standards ” are all pretty soft of immigration.

That should send a message to the next administration and Congress that while we, as a nation, are not running around with our hair on fire over illegal immigration, most of us would like to see the system fixed. The message also says that only a small minority of us expect to see 12 million illegal immigrants immediately deported, but we would like to see them begin to abide by the same the rules that other immigrants ” and all citizens ” follow.

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The message demands that the next Congress and president not allow themselves be bullied by the fearmongers on the fringes who obstruct all progress by insisting on unrealistic measures ” such as deporting a number of people equal to about two-and-a-half times the population of Colorado, and to heck with the fact that many families would be split up in the process.

The results of this presidential election, so far, show Americans want a moderate solution to what they consider a moderate problem. Our hair may be on fire, but it’s over other problems.


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