(MD) Repub success with anti-Dream Act petition drive to be copied against gay marriage bill

[pampango]

Same-sex marriage, meet the Dream Act

http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/TOP/2011/07/17-42/Same-sex-marriage-meet-the-Dream-Act.html

Maryland Republicans are looking at the upcoming Dream Act referendum and saying they see a way to block any same-sex marriage bill the General Assembly passes next session. This optimism is based on the tactics used this spring and summer to collect enough voters' signatures to delay implementation of the controversial 2011 Dream Act, which would have allowed some illegal immigrants to pay in-state college tuition rates.

Jacobs said Democrats have a tough choice to make: if they pass same-sex marriage in the session that begins in January, referendums regarding that bill and the Dream Act - both hot-button issues guaranteed to bring out conservative voters - will be on the ballot at the same time President Barack Obama is facing re-election in the middle of a stubborn economic downturn.

While normally eloquent in his public addresses, Mr. Parrott slipped up in a way that undermines his argument when, rather than drawing distinctions between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants, he repeatedly drew a line between people with citizenship and those who are not citizens. The problem is the language appears to draw lines between citizens and immigrants, treating hundreds of thousands of honest, law-abiding tax-paying immigrants who live here as if they should be punished for living and working in Maryland.

The citizenship rhetoric has become so common in the debate among conservative Republicans here, it’s as if the distinction does not matter to many of them. Still, the citizen versus immigrant comparisons raise serious doubts about the sincerity of elected officials who follow those statements intended to rally support for their cause, with subsequent assurances that they are not “anti-immigrant.”

When repub politicians lump legal and illegal immigrants together in their "us vs them" ("people with citizenship and those who are not citizens"), you never know if they are just being intellectually dishonest in order to appeal to their base or if they really are against all immigration.