Rachel’s Tavern- Shakesville Comment on Whiteness and Racial Awareness
- Arrested for BAHWB (Being at Home While Black)
- John Hope Franklin Has Died
- Bottles, Breasts, and Mothering “Choices”
- NAACP Class Action Lawsuit on Subprime Loans
- We Have a Future Blogger
- I’m Afraid President Obama, Himself, is a Bit of Coward on the Race Issue
- Highly Skilled US Immigrants are Emigrating: What’s the deal?
- Troll Comments Galore
- Mark’s Spinach Face
Dec
29
Mike Huckabee’s Creative Geography
Filed Under Xenophobia and Immigration by atlasien
Here’s a short post for Rachel’s new “xenophobia” category.
Some political xenophobia is wielded with cold, calculated opportunism.
Huckabee prefers a more hot-blooded mondo whacko kind of flavor.
On reading the article below, I at first felt a very selfish, materialistic sense of excitement to imagine that we might share a Southern border with Pakistan. The shopping opportunities… the rugs… tandoori… ah, it’s not to be.
Huckabee Sees Pakistan as Reason for Border Fence
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: December 28, 2007DES MOINES Mike Huckabee used the volatile situation in Pakistan Friday to make an argument for building a fence on the American border with Mexico and found himself trying to explain a series of remarks about Pakistanis and their nation.
On Thursday night he told reporters in Orlando, Fla.: We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if theres any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country.
On Friday, in Pella, Iowa, he expanded on those remarks.
When I say single them out I am making the observation that we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities except those immediately south of the border, he told reporters in Pella. And in light of what is happening in Pakistan it ought to give us pause as to why are so many illegals coming across these borders.
In fact, far more illegal immigrants come from the Philippines, Korea, China and Vietnam, according to recent estimates from the Department of Homeland Security.
Asked how a border fence would help keep out Pakistani immigrants, Mr. Huckabee argued that airplane security was already strong, but that security at the southern United States border was dangerously weak.
The fact is that the immigration issue is not so much about people coming to pick lettuce or make beds, its about someone coming with a shoulder-fired missile, he said.
The sudden emergency in Pakistan and Mr. Huckabees response come at a time when he has come under increasing scrutiny from opponents for his lack of fluency in foreign policy issues, and the situation in Pakistan appeared to have challenged him.
We have seen what happens in the Musharraf government, Mr. Huckabee said on MSNBC. He has told us he does not have enough control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists. But on the other hand, did he not want us going in, so what do we do? Those borders are actually on the west, not the east.
[...]
For a truly hilarious analysis of Huckabee’s foreign policy, check out this piece by my favorite Atlanta blogger, Andisheh Nouraee.
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7 Responses to “Mike Huckabee’s Creative Geography”
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And he leads in Iowa??? What could they possibly be thinking
P Campbell: Short answer: They’re not. I think he’s getting the Ignorant Vote. Unfortunately, it’s a pretty big voting block.
Nto sure if it was this speech or an earlier one, but he has also said that hundreds of illegal (supposedly, but I’m not confident he made that distinction) Pakistani immigrants had crossed the US border LAST YEAR, when in reality the number was from about 2001 to 2005, COMBINED.
One snarky version here: http://mydd.com/story/2007/12/28/185935/90
Shouldn’t a written quiz labeling countries on a map be a pre-req? Or is this what Ms. Teen South Carolina was babbling about?
That was pretty wild… when I first heard about that, I was like “he must’ve heard that from someone at a dinner party, or something, because that doesn’t even sound right”. *shakes head* I knew it was going to come to this, though… years ago, there were rumblings about the possibility of terrorists coming over the southern border. Why the southern border? Because the unspoken perception behind it is that the racial appearance of the stereotypical terrorist and that of the stereotypical illegal immigrant aren’t diametrically opposed enough to refrain from somehow conflating both groups into one big “scary, multi-tiered, multi-national brown threat to America”.
Dana: He mistook a Denver Post article for a CIA brief…. because he’s in regular contact with BOTH organizations? Riiiiiight…
ITA with you on the “brown menace.”
Ironically, didn’t the few Sept. 11 hijackers who entered the country illegally (as opposed to entering legally and overstaying a visa) come from CANADA?
I have a friend in Canada who wants to know where her fence is, and why her adopted homeland is considered unworthy of such attention.
Looks like Mike Huckabee just won Iowa! Ha ha ha! I love it… whoever the Democratic nominee is, they’ll have a much better chance running against Huckabee. Or so the polls say. If they’re wrong, we might have a giant anti-Pakistani wall in a year.
I tend to agree, but having finally understood this year what a “caucus” is and how cockamamie the process is, I’m not placing too much faith in it.
Dean won in Iowa too, if I recall. We all know how that turned out.
Bah on my crappy memory – I factchecked this morning – Dean was predicted to win Iowa and lost. I thought it was NH where he lost and then lost his mind a bit.
Still, I’m not sue Iowa speaks for the rest of the country, unless people start dropping like flies and I’m left with no choice when PA finally gets around to their primary.