Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Impudent pandering to the Latino vote

Yesterday I posted something about how Bush was losing the non-Cuban Hispanic vote in Florida, and how generally he was doing badly with Hispanics, which could make a huge difference nationwide.

Now I see the Washington Post reports that yesterday the Department of Homeland Security --I'm sorry, but things are really screwed up when it's Homeland Security making that kind of decision -- announced an extension of temporary protected status for Nicaraguans (4,300) and Hondurans (82,000), while they are "favorably disposed" to granting another 18 months to some 300,000 Salvadorans living in the U.S. TPS for the former is up in January, while for Salvadorans it expires in March.

The good news is that, as far as I can tell, there's very little coverage (newspaper or wire service, that is) of this fact, importantly not even in the Miami Herald today. Could it be that everyone sees this is a brazen, last-minute electoral ploy for votes? There was a story in Monday's Herald, however, noting that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mel Martinez was already trumpeting this decision over the weekend.

Too little, too late.

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