RE: VA RACE [Jim Boulet Jr.]
Virginia viewers of the post-Redskins-Eagles ESPN Sportscenter were graced with a political ad entirely in Spanish, a Service Employees International Union endorsement of Democrat Tim Kaine in tomorrow's Virginia governor's race.
In a joint campaign appearance with Kaine, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson pronounced that "the multiethnic component of Northern Virginia is going to be critical" on Election Day. Kaine's approach to winning that vote is to oppose local enforcement of immigration laws.
Given that learning English is required for U.S. citizenship and only U.S. citizens are supposed to vote, the SEIU is targeting who exactly with this Spanish-only strategy?
Learning English is not required for U.S. citizenship. In fact, most people become citizens before they can speak English. Stunning, I know, but they weren't smart enough to learn to speak before they were born. Many of our fine citizens live in Puerto Rico (population 4 million), where they generally grow up speaking Spanish, and Spanish is one of the official languages of the fine state of New Mexico, having a significant native Spanish speaking population.
And, yes, one needs to obtain some English proficiency to become naturalized but proficiency doesn't mean fluency.
And, finally, Jerry Kilgore is targeting who exactly with the Spanish language version of his website? Many Repulican candidates and of course the RNC itself regularly run Spanish language ads.