Melder's Musings

Mitt Romney, the Republican Governor of Massachusetts, wants to be elected President in 2008. Mitt Romney also hates illegal immigrants. Do a quick search of “the Google” for his name and you’ll read that in a lot of places. Thanks to a report in Friday’s Boston Globe, we see that Romney is guilty of that most frequent of GOP blunders; he got caught red handed (and red faced) in hypocrisy.

Romney is well known as an anti-immigrant. Some of his most printed quotes prove it. In the interest of full disclosure, you should note that these came from his speech to the Heritage Foundation.

“I would like to see us, as a nation, bringing in fewer illegal immigrants.”

“In my state I’ve said that I will veto any legislation which calls for a drivers license for illegal immigrants.”

“I didn’t want to create any incentives to have people move to our country illegally.”

So, as a matter of public policy, Romney would have us believe that illegal immigration should be discouraged and punished. As a matter of personal policy, however, Romney seems to march to a different beat.

As the Boston Globe reports, “for a decade, the governor has used a landscaping company that relies heavily on workers like these, illegal Guatemalan immigrants, to maintain the grounds surrounding his pink Colonial house on Marsh Street in Belmont.”

In fact, Globe reporters travelled all the way to Suchitepequez, Gautemala, to interview some of the workers. ”Outside his aqua-colored concrete house here, Rene Alvarez Rosales paused under an almond tree to answer questions about a subject with which he has surprising familiarity: Governor Mitt Romney’s Belmont lawn.”

“For about eight years, Rosales said, he worked on and off landscaping the grounds at Romney’s home, occasionally getting a ‘buenos dias’ from Romney or a drink of water from his wife, Ann.”

Naturally, Romney’s handlers are denying he knew that the workers were illegal. The Democratic National Committee has rightly called him on his double standard. When asked about his hypocricy by television reporters, Romney reportedly said "oh, geez" and walked away.

In the long and short of it, the man that “would like to see us, as a nation, bringing in fewer illegal immigrants,” is more than happy to give them a “buenos dias” if they’re working on his lawn. Somehow, all this reminds me of a certain movie.

It’s a long way until November 2008. It’ll be fun to watch Romney keep squirming.