August 1998
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Hispanics should reject "tyranny and hypocrisy" of the two older parties, says Jacob Hornberger
Libertarians could benefit by reaching out to immigrants, and immigrants could benefit by considering the Libertarian Party as a new political option -- that was the message Jacob "Bumper" Hornberger delivered to the delegates at the LP convention in his passionate speech on July 3.
Hornberger, a possible LP presidential candidate in 2000 whose grandparents immigrated from Mexico, asked: "Why do 20 million Hispanics support Democrats and Republicans, their abusers and insulters? Es incredible!"
Then, in Spanish, he excoriated the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the IRS -- and urged Hispanics to "elect us, the party of Thomas Jefferson and the only party of liberty."
Hornberger delivered a hefty segment of his speech in flawless Spanish -- offering a preview of his possible presidential election campaign, which he suggested would focus on non-traditional constituencies, such as Hispanics.
Hornberger, president of the Virginia-based Future of Freedom Foundation, said he has a longtime interest in the plight of immigrants.
He grew up in Laredo, Texas, near the Mexican border, so he has seen up-close the "tyranny and hypocrisy" of U.S. immigration laws, he said.
An example of that hypocrisy: "Thousands of Americans died to save Vietnam from communism, and now we repatriate refugees at sea back to Cuba," he said. "How can we send people back into poverty under communism?"
The tyranny of immigration law takes many forms, he said, including the concentration camp-like detention centers, ringed with barbed wire and sentry posts, for Hispanic immigrants on the Texas-Mexico border, where we "jail people -- religious, hardworking people -- crossing the border looking for work."
Because of their shabby treatment at the hands of the U.S. government, recent immigrants should be a natural constituency for the Libertarian Party, he said.
Besides ending the INS and immigration laws, other Libertarian issues could appeal to immigrants, he said, including an end to the government school monopoly.
"Why not separate school and state the way our ancestors did church and state?" he asked, a policy which would free immigrants from failed government schools and substandard educations.
The War on Drugs has also taken a deadly toll on immigrants, he said -- but it's merely a diversion.
"All [the politicians'] wars -- the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on racism -- they've all failed," he said. "They're afraid the American people are going to figure out how they've been plundered to the tune of $1.7 trillion a year. It's not about loving the poor; it's about money and power -- it's always been about money and power."
Hornberger concluded his speech by recounting a recent visit to his doctor's office in northern Virginia. The nurse who was tending to him was an Oriental woman with a heavy accent, he said.
He asked her where she was from. "Shanghai, China," was the response.
"I thanked her for coming all this way to help us out in this country," he said. "She paused. She put down her pen, she'd been writing. She turned to me and I could see tears on her face and she said, 'No one has ever said that to me. People say the meanest things to me. Don't they realize what I've had to go through to come here?'
"I told her, 'Yes, many of us do.' "
