That should be the real headline of this story, the gist of which is this: It turns out that New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s grandparents were illegal aliens from Mexico. Big whoop.
Martinez, a native Texan and conservative Republican who became America’s first female Hispanic governor in the 2010 GOP sweep, has been working to overturn a New Mexico law that allows illegal aliens to get state drivers licenses. Martinez is right on the policy here, but rather than meet her on the merits, her critics have taken to accusing her of being a turncoat or some such. The media in NM has been looking generations into her family’s past, and has determined that her grandparents were indeed illegal aliens.
he Santa Fe New Mexican reported in July that the 1930 U.S. Census Bureaurecord lists Martinez’s paternal grandparents’ citizenship status as “AL” for “alien,” a status that refers to “all foreign-born persons neither naturalized nor having first papers.” However, Martinez was not directly quoted in the story addressing her grandparents’ immigration status.
Martinez spokesman Scott Darnell said Thursday the governor had just recently learned of her grandparents’ immigration status through media reports that cited census records showing her grandfather entered the country illegally.
“The governor has no reason to question that 1930 Census record about her grandfather and has always known, and publicly spoken of the fact for years, that her family roots trace back to Mexico,” Darnell said.
“It’s unfortunate that some are choosing to personally attack the governor, but these tactics prove that supporters of giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants have run out of legitimate defenses for a bad policy.”
Martinez was born in Texas and is a bona fide US citizen; her grandparents obviously crossed the border in a very different time and world from our post 9-11 reality, in which WMDs are too easily transported and Hezbollah is known to be active in war-torn Mexico. What she is supposed to do about actions taken by her deceased relatives decades before she was born is unclear. But it is clear that the medialeft thinks this gotcha about her grandparents should compel her to be soft on illegal immigration now. It, of course, actually means no such thing.
New Mexico’s lenient drivers license law, coupled with its position on the US-Mexico border, makes that state an obvious gateway for drug smugglers, coyotes and perhaps terrorists moving from Mexico into the United States. They can get a drivers license in New Mexico and from there, do just about anything from board an aircraft to perhaps vote in elections. That law is a serious gap in our national security. Martinez’s effort to overturn it is logical and right. The media’s shameless birtherism campaign against her should stop.
Now, how about we get a look at Barack Obama’s college transcripts…
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