Immigration and the Vice Presidential Race
03/12/2008
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF
For those of us concerned about immigration, the presidential race is starting to get boring—or sickening. McCain, Clinton and Obama all have rather poor records when it comes to immigration. However, once they get their parties' nomination, the politics change just a bit.

What this means is that the leading contenders for the VP spot in both parties(other than the current presidential nominees themselves) have rather interesting track records on immigration.

According to Intrade, the leading GOP VP hopeful is Gov. Pawlenty of Minnesota—who has been openly critical of illegal immigration, despite his support for McCain. On the Democratic side, the candidate with the best chance at the VP spot after Ms. Clinton is Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia. Webb got his Democratic Senate nomination by beating the architect of expansion of H-1b visas, corporate lobbyist, Harris Miller. I'm not blown over by his record on immigration policy, but as Peter Brimelow has previously said, a Webb Vice presidency, promises to be "interesting".

What this means is that anyone serious about winning the presidency is going to have to appeal successfully to voters that are rather revolted by the current state of presidential politics.

Print Friendly and PDF