LA Times hit piece on Tancredo

Article Launched: 11/27/2007 01:38:54 AM PST

JOEL STEIN is a Los Angeles Times columnist.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_7568754?nclick_check=1

I never thought GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo would eat Mexican food with me. The Colorado congressman has proposed anti-immigration legislation so draconian that he's been banned from the White House and called a "nut" by Jeb Bush. And I definitely never thought Tancredo would tell me that Mexican is his favorite cuisine. That was like finding out that CNN's Nancy Grace gets turned on by violent criminals. Only surprising.

Tancredo agreed to our Mexican lunch during a campaign sweep through Iowa in October. But the night before our appointment, I found out he was already headed to Mami's Authentic Mexican Food in Muscatine for dinner. The man was planning two Mexican meals in a row. I had little to teach him.

On my way to Mami's, however, I got a call from his aide. A local Republican had tipped Tancredo off to the fact that Mami's owners marched in the Great American Boycott on May Day 2006. So Tancredo was now driving all the way to Davenport to go to Carlos O'Kelly's Mexican Cafe instead. If his campaign staff was as skilled at finding voters as Mexican restaurants in Iowa, Tancredo would win the nomination.

Carlos O'Kelly's makes the finest Mexican food with an Irish flair of any chain restaurant in Iowa. The enchiladas came with a sort of hollandaise sauce that constituted a greater insult to Mexicans than anything Tancredo has ever said. Tancredo, who is a very likable, polite man, gave the food a very generous C-plus. "I was sick we couldn't go to Mami's. I heard it was good," he said. "But if they're going to boycott America, I'm going to boycott Mami's." Looking at my enchiladas, he sighed. "For all I know, this place is owned by a big liberal." A big liberal who hates food.

Our waiter was one of the nicest, most incompetent servers either of us had encountered. He kept running away in the middle of our orders, apparently distracted by either Mexican or Irish things. I told Tancredo that I wished we were at a restaurant in Los Angeles with a Mexican waiter filling our chip basket every two minutes. "I'm with you," he said. "These people that come to our country are generally hard workers, and bless them for it."

For all his talk of assimilation, Tancredo conceded that Carlos O'Kelly's may, in fact, have gone too far. He truly enjoys the authentic Mexican restaurants in Washington, D.C., and Colorado. "Food and music are things America has always been able to accommodate and benefit from," he said. "The thing that is difficult is the lack of assimilation. It has nothing to do with the appreciation of ethnicity." So Tancredo's complaints, like those of many who oppose immigration, come down to which aspects of Mexican culture he is personally comfortable with: language and flags, no; burritos and ballet folklorico, yes.

History, Tancredo knows, hasn't been kind to anti-immigrant crusaders - the Know-Nothing Party, the No-Irish-Need-Apply sign makers, the internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. "But things are very different today," he said. "Can you think of a time historically when you had millions of people in the street on May Day saying very, very divisive stuff?" He feels that if America is too diverse, we'll be stripped of our national identity, no longer bound together as a country. He also feels certain that he has the wisdom to determine exactly how much diversity is OK.

Odds are, I told him, history will judge him a racist. That may be so, he said. Still, he's sure the U.S. will rally behind his cures: kick illegal immigrants out; build an effective border fence; force legal immigrants to assimilate faster. "Years from now, they'll say there was no problem. They'll say 'These guys were racists and fear mongers.' . . . That's a big cost, you bet your life," he said. "But we'll have solved the problem."

I never liked someone I disagreed with so strongly. He believes he is doing the best thing for his country. I watched him talk to rabid anti-immigrant groups for two days, and he never spoke with anger, just sadness that something he loves is being lost. Tancredo may be a reactionary, a xenophobe and a nationalist, but he isn't a racist.

However, if he gets his way - even if history proves him wrong - his personal cost will be much smaller than that paid by the millions of Mexicans denied the opportunities his own grandparents got. And smaller still than the cost to us all when America loses the very thing that historically has given it advantages in economic growth and innovation.

Before we left, I asked Tancredo: Instead of struggling with the problems that stem from illegal immigration, why don't we just let more people in legally? "Just so I can have a good Mexican restaurant?" he asked. How a man who ate the same meal as me can even ask that question is beyond my understanding.

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What else would you expect from the LA Slimes?

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i hope this reporter lose's his job to a La Raza writer . then lets see his attitude

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The reporter fails to mention that much of the southwest and west was won and bought from Mexico and We the People, the citizens of the United States, are not interested one bit in returning it- that is a huge difference when referencing anything Mexican immigration-invasion related on this side of the border.  We don't share a border with Japan or Ireland last time I checked.

I did however find the paragraph that starts "Carlos O'Kelly's makes the finest Mexican food..." very funny.  I guess fat-boy Teddy Kennedy doesn't own the place.

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Write letters to the LA Times and protest!

Get your letter in the public response!

Once again here's an illegal alien sympathizer who refuses to distinguish between legal immigrants and illegal aliens.  You only have to look to the second sentence of the article to see this. 

"I never liked someone I disagreed with so strongly. He believes he is doing the best thing for his country. I watched him talk to rabid anti-immigrant groups for two days, and he never spoke with anger, just sadness that something he loves is being lost. Tancredo may be a reactionary, a xenophobe and a nationalist, but he isn't a racist."  Good – glad he made that point! 

However, if he gets his way - even if history proves him wrong - his personal cost will be much smaller than that paid by the millions of Mexicans denied the opportunities his own grandparents got. And smaller still than the cost to us all when America loses the very thing that historically has given it advantages in economic growth and innovation.  So I guess the history books are wrong – illegal aliens built America into the economic power that it is?!

GO TOM – keep immigration in the forefront!

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I posted my message:

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Jim from Texas you have already made my point but I'm going to comment anyway.

"However, if he gets his way - even if history proves him wrong - his personal cost will be much smaller than that paid by the millions of Mexicans denied the opportunities his own grandparents got. And smaller still than the cost to us all when America loses the very thing that historically has given it advantages in economic growth and innovation."

Tom Tancredo's grandparents were legal.

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All the pro-illegal alien supporters refer to them as immigrants.  Look at how many times Reid and Durbin ,to name two, stood on the floor of the Senate and told stories of their grandparents.  I emailed them and others and told them the following.  "We American citizens are sick of the "Grandma was an immigrant " game.  Well she may have been but she was a legal one and you need to learn the difference."  Of course I never received a reply but I let them know that they weren't fooling anyone.