Mitt Romney is still employing illegal aliens to do lawn work at his mansion.
In fact, their work was part of a regular pattern. Despite a Globe story in Dec. 2006 that highlighted Romney’s use of illegal immigrants to tend to his lawn, Romney continued to employ the same landscaping company — until today. The landscaping company, in turn, continued to employ illegal immigrants.
Two of the workers confirmed in separate interviews with Globe reporters last week that they were in the country without documents. One said he had paid $7,000 to a smuggler to escort him across the desert into Arizona; the other said he had come to the country with a student visa that was now expired.
Now, look, without immigrants doing the crap work in this country the economy grinds to a halt (my - legal - immigrant family has done some of “the work Americans won’t do”), but Romney and the GOP field are all vying for who’s most anti-immigrant, so the irony is quite thick.
Mike Huckabee, on the other hand, has apparently inherited Fred Thompson’s ability to be completely clueless.
Reporter: I don’t know to what extent you have been briefed or been able to take a look at the NIE report that came out yesterday …
Huckabee: I’m sorry?
Reporter: The NIE report, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Have you been briefed or been able to take a look at it –
Huckabee: No.
Reporter: Have you heard of the finding?
Huckabee: No.
Silly me, I thought presidential candidates were supposed to pay attention to vital national security news, especially news about which middle eastern countries are and aren’t trying to get nuclear weapons.
But that’s just me, silly Democrat.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Neither of these men could win against any of the top three Democrats. They all have major weaknesses that have not yet been fully exploited. I would say the same for Giuliani, but Sex on the City seems to have killed him. (Latest Rasmussen daily poll has him tied with Huckabee, while he was double the pack just last Friday.) And I’m not sure even Thompson knows he’s still running for President.
McCain is the only Republican I fear.
By the way, I still think Clinton is the most electable Democrat. She draws in Republican women at a huge rate, enough to turn states like Alabama purple. Add in her money advantage, and she’ll be able to put so many states into play that she’ll be able to drain the Republicans of all their cash.
Not a Romney fan at all, but I do have to agree with his point that he can’t be responsible for vetting the employees of contractors that he hires.
It is somewhat of a no-win situation. Get criticized because you don’t demand proof that every worker employed by a company you hire is here legally, or get accused of bigotry because you question the validity of anyone with an accent.
However, it’s a no-win situation of Romney’s own devising. If he and others weren’t so gung-ho about proclaiming illegal immigrants and undocumented workers to be a blight on the nation, then this sort of thing wouldn’t hurt them quite so much.
When the daughter of a pro-choice politician has an abortion, it isn’t news. When a pro-equality politician comes out of the closet, it isn’t news.
News is when the pro-life politician is revealed to have paid for his wife’s abortion, or when the people pushing hardest for a Federal Marriage Amendment get caught paying for gay hustlers. Or, in this case, when people who rail against undocumented workers can’t be bothered to see how they benefit from said workers.