COLLEGE STATION, Texas — During an interview with Fox News in College Station, Texas, Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and potential Republican candidate for the 2016 presidential election, said that immigration should be considered “an act of love” instead of a felony.
In regards to illegal immigration, Bush said that it’s a different type of crime that should be punished “but it shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families.”
Bush believes that having a “bigger and broader” vision on the issue would help candidates win elections. Although much speculation exists regarding Bush’s thoughts on whether or not he will run for president in 2016, Fox News is already reporting about him in positive light.
For example, Fox News Latino suggests that despite Bush’s refusal to build a formal campaign so far does not prevent him from having “a built-in legitimacy and name recognition that any candidate would kill for.”
Perhaps the only negative thing Fox News Latino said about Bush is that his mother would probably not vote for him because “we’ve had enough Bushes” serve as president already.
On the other hand, Al Jazeera said that Bush’s remarks on immigration caused many conservatives to criticize him on Twitter and calling him a “RINO”, which stands for “Republican in Name Only.”
But the report revealing this information might be too easy on the former governor of Florida. The independent media has more to say about Bush’s political history.
According to Oregon-based writer Mark Harris, the most important question to ask is, “in a nation with over 300 million people, many of whom have ideas and college degrees and all sorts of positive contributions to make, how is that names Clinton and Bush keep coming up?”
Unlike Fox News Latino, Harris’ piece published in Z Magazine argues that corporate politics, not the legacy of their last names, is the reason Americans continue to see Bush and Clinton on the ballot.
Harris said that investigative publications have long suggested that Bush has been associated with Camilo Padreda, “a former intelligence officer with the Batista dictatorship in Cuba.” Moreover, he also lobbied for Miguel Recarey, a Cuban exile who participated “in CIA efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro.”
But Harris also claims that Clinton is not any better.
“As for Hilary Clinton, here is a politician who went right along with George W. Bush’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ lies in the drive to war in Iraq in 2003,” said Harris. “As an elected official, she’s never opposed the massive war budget that now equals half of all the world military expenditures.”
This is the information that the American mainstream media refuses to report. As news providers such as Fox News and CNN continue to conduct superficial analysis regarding the people that have long dominated Washington, more people may be given the impression that Bush may be a great candidate.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, Bush’s decision to hold a more moderate view about immigration may hurt them during the election. But what does it matter anyway? While explaining to Democracy Now! why he decided to leave MSNBC, Cenk Uygur, who is also known for his progressive politics at The Young Turks said that Obama is essentially a Republican.
Uygur makes a valid point due to the number of people that have deported under the Obama administration.
Tanya Golash-Boza, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced, said that more interior removals of immigrants have occurred under Obama than any other president. But she also said that more data is necessary before reaching a definitive collusion.
When the Department of Homeland Security uses the word “removal”, it is referring to two different forms: interior and border.
An interior removal involves those who have been living in the United States but were eventually forced to leave the country. Conversely, a border removal pertains to the people who tried to enter the country illegally but were soon captured and deported.
“It is true that there has been a shift during the Obama administration to more border removals, and fewer interior removals as a percentage of all ICE removals,” Golash-Boza said. “However, interior removals have remained fairly steady – fluctuating from a high of 156,495 in FY 2009 to a low of 113,883 in FY 2012.”
Returning to Bush, he is probably taking a more moderate stance on immigration to take advantage of Obama’s failure to reform how the system operates in case he does decide to run for the presidency. With the help of Fox News, Bush may be able to convince its Latino viewers that a republican is finally developing an interest in their struggles.
However, it is important to emphasize that Bush only said that immigrants who came into the country illegally should not be regarded as felons. Fox News Latino did not explain how Bush would make the immigration system any better.
This basically brings us back to square one regarding the issue on immigration. But as Harris also suggested, maybe the time has come for a new wave of ideas to develop in Washington.
He believes that independent grassroots, such as the one that help elect socialist Kshama Sawant to city council, needs to be “duplicated in cities across the country”.
It is therefore important for voters to set aside the information provided by the mainstream media regarding Bush and other potential candidates for the 2016 presidential elections. News organizations such as Fox News often refuse to conduct the historical analysis necessary to help the voter understand their politicians.
Sources: Al Jazeera, Counterpunch, Democracy Now!, Fox News Latino, Z Magazine
Photo: Huffington Post