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Republican Immigration Scandal in California

The right-wing blogosphere has been apoplectic since the San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday that a top official hired by the California Republican Party was ordered deported in 2001, jailed three years later for visa violations, and has filed a $5 million wrongful arrest suit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Party COO Michael Kamburowski resigned a few hours later, after Jon Fleischman of the Flash Report blog asked, with typical talk-radio rhetoric, "Is our COO suing America?"

The short answer is of course, "yes," but what bemused GOP border watchers have failed to consider is that Kamburowski may have filed his suit with good cause. He was jailed for about a month for visa violations, but an immigration court later overturned his deportation order. This is not to say that Kamburowski is innocent in the matter; at minimum he exercised colossally bad judgment by not disclosing the issue. Still, the GOP rush to condemn him says a lot about the way the party treats immigrants these days. The most interesting question raised by the scandal: why did someone who says he was traumatized by overzealous DHS goons go to work for a party inimical to civil rights and immigration reform?

This latest twist comes after the Chronicle reported earlier this month that the state GOP hired another immigrant as a top consultant using an H1B visa, a specialized work visa that requires employers to make a good-faith effort to hire Americans first. "Apparently," Jay Leno said that evening, "working for Republicans is one of those icky jobs Americans just don't want to do." And perhaps that explains Kamburowski. If I had to guess I'd say he has a lot in common with the migrant laborers who were busted by ICE in Southern California after they'd helped build the border fence.

Posted by Josh Harkinson on 06/25/07 at 10:55 AM | Comments (2) | Email | Print

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