Immigrants Of Questionable Legality: The California GOP Welcomes You!

by hilzoy

Via TPM, the SF Chronicle:

"Michael Kamburowski, the Australian immigrant hired as a top official in the California Republican Party, was ordered deported in 2001, jailed three years later for visa violations -- and has filed a $5 million wrongful arrest lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to U.S. District Court documents.

Kamburowski was named in March to be the chief operating officer of the California GOP. He is responsible for the state party's multimillion-dollar budget and oversees campaign funds and financing for the nation's largest state GOP organization. (...)

Kamburowski is a former registered lobbyist for Americans for Tax Reform and a top operative for the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, both founded by conservative activist Grover Norquist. Nehring -- also a former senior adviser and consultant to Norquist's Washington, D.C., operation -- worked with Kamburowski at Americans for Tax Reform in the 1990s.

News of Kamburowski's troubled immigration past comes on the heels of revelations in The Chronicle earlier this month that the state GOP used a highly sought-after H1B visa to hire another immigrant as a top consultant.

Christopher Matthews, a Canadian citizen with no experience in statewide politics, was hired this month after the California Republican party applied for, and received, an H1B visa specifically to fill the role of "political director,'' according to U.S. Department of Labor data. (...)

(A)sked about his immigration status, Kamburowski said he has a green card and added, "I am a legal resident. I am a permanent resident, and it can be proven.'' He referred all questions regarding the matter to his attorney."

Actually, it's not clear from the article that Kamburowski is legal; the story of his immigration travails presented by the article ends with his having been released from custody on a $7500 bond in 2004. And he was pretty clearly illegal before that.

In any case, you'll never guess why they hired these two. Honest, you won't:

"The decisions to hire Matthews and Kamburowski represent the welcoming values of the Republican Party, the California Republican chairman said."

Ah, yes: the California Republican Party, so well known for its welcoming attitude towards those who seek refuge on our shores. Tee hee hee.

Still, you might be thinking, maybe these people are really so exceptional that the GOP couldn't really expect to find anyone of their caliber in a state as large as California, or even in the entire US. Judge for yourselves:

"Kamburowski's former boss in the Dominican Republic resort town of Punta Cana -- where Kamburowski worked until February -- expressed astonishment that the Australian was hired for such an important financial job in a major political party.

"I wouldn't give him my company to run, I can tell you that,'' said Rico Pester, the owner of Re/Max Island Realty in the fashionable Caribbean beach region.

Pester said Kamburowski arrived in Punta Cana in the summer of 2006 and "was so successful that he couldn't sell anything the whole time he was here -- and we provided him with clients. He didn't rent anything and he didn't sell anything. ... I have no idea what he was doing.''

Then, in February, Kamburowski "ran away without mentioning anything to us,'' he said.

"I couldn't understand how somebody like him could become a (Republican Party) COO,'' Pester said in a telephone interview." (...)

Kamburowski's current resume -- which states his objective is "to play a major role in the reshaping of the California Republican Party into a hyper-effective political organization'' -- shows no employment from 2000-2006. Sources said that during at least some of those years he called himself an aspiring actor, and occasionally worked in desk clerk jobs before he eventually tried his hand at selling real estate in New York and the Dominican Republic, which he left in February.

One month later, the board of directors of the California Republican Party approved Kamburowski's hiring to head up financial operations handling millions of dollars in campaign funds."

At least the California Republican Party doesn't have any serious problems to deal with while Kamburowski sorts out his legal troubles. I mean, other than gearing up for a national Presidential election and stuff. Oh, wait, it does:

"The hiring of Kamburowski -- a virtual unknown in state party circles -- comes at a time when the state GOP's financial health appears weak. The California Republican Party at the end of 2006 had $219,000 in the bank and outstanding debts of $4.4 million -- and a $3 million loan repayment to wealthy contributor Larry Dodge is due at the end of this month. Yet senior party members, speaking not for attribution, say Kamburowski has had little contact with the team behind Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has generated a fundraising bonanza for the state GOP."

Heckuva job, Kamburowski.

***

It occurs to me that I'm assuming that being the Chief Operating Officer of the California Republican Party involves some real responsibility. That's not an assumption I'm in a position to make, since, when I was 16, I was the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee, a title given to me because I was doing some of the logistics for the Massachusetts delegation to the 1976 convention, and I needed a response for those occasions when I had to explain to someone why s/he couldn't come to the Convention even if s/he was Mo Udall's closest childhood friend, and I was asked: well, who are you, anyways? At moments like that, "I'm a sixteen year old unpaid intern" didn't really seem to cut it, and so I became an Executive Director until the Convention was over. It was good for giggles -- the people who actually ran the place would look at me and say: I have some xeroxing for our new Executive Director to do, ha ha ha. But it was an essential part of that story that I wasn't being paid, and had no real responsibilities. If it turns out that Kamburowski doesn't draw a salary either, I will take back my laughter.

Comments

[liberal japonicus]

The narrative I see emerging is that the Republican party was taken over by Aussies who perverted the party in order to serve their own insidious goals, but now that we've gotten rid of them, we can sigh a big sigh and get life back to the way it used to be.

[Johnny Pez]

Whenever the GOP does something that doesn't seem to make any sense, you can be sure that someone somewhere is making a dishonest buck out of it. Mark my words.

[rilkefan]

I thought I saw this story discussed here a while ago. Déjà lu?

[liberal japonicus]

I think that the revelations of deportation and lawsuits are new, rf.

[rilkefan]

lj, right you are.

[Incertus (Brian)]

Pester said Kamburowski arrived in Punta Cana in the summer of 2006 and "was so successful that he couldn't sell anything the whole time he was here -- and we provided him with clients. He didn't rent anything and he didn't sell anything. ... I have no idea what he was doing.''

Hmmm. Sounds like a perfect person to head the Republican party. I mean, he has so much in common with the current President as far as job experience and all...

[Jay Jerome]

hilzoy:

Kamburowsky seems to fit the profile of a shifty con man-and if that's the case, the California Republican Party was gulled along with a lot of other people (if the two women married him for love and not for green-card remuneration, they were conned too). Bottom line, if this guy was allowed to disperse money somebody in the chain of command at Republican headquarters better have a quick audit, to see what went where, and how much ended up in off-shore bank accounts.

Still, none of that flim-flam mitigates this heading: "Immigrants Of Questionable Legality: The California GOP Welcomes You!" First, only one immigrant of "questionable legality" was discussed in the article: Kamburowsky. The other immigrant mentioned (Matthews) may have had questionable experience, but nothing in the post or links provided indicated his immigration status was shady.

I know you were aiming for an ironic touch with the header, but it fell kind of flat because you're missing the forest for the trees. Stopping the flow of illegal immigrants through Mexico is not a Republican preoccupation -- the issue transcends party lines.

A week and half ago when Bush was pitching his immigration case to the public the Rasmussen Reports conducted a telephone survey in which only 20% of American voters said they wanted the immigration reform bill to pass. 69% said they would favor an approach focusing "exclusively on securing the border and reducing illegal immigration." Of those who supported the enforcement-only approach 84% were Republicans, 55% were Democrats, and 69% were not affiliated with either major party.

So let's put those numbers in perspective: a whopping majority of Republican voters, a substantial number of unaffiliated voters, and a solid percentage of Democratic voters are in favor of an enforcement-only approach. Nevertheless, even though it's obvious illegal immigration transcends conventional party lines you and others continue to pigeon-hole it as a Republican 'base" issue. Well, if it is, that means the conservative base has metastasized and absorbed huge numbers of moderate and liberal Republicans, and moderate and conservative Democrats, and majorities of Independents too. Either that, or Lou Dobbs isn't a newscaster, he's a hypnotist genius who somehow has managed to inculcate his views across the nation just by staring at the screen and skrunching his forehead.

[liberal japonicus]

Either that, or Lou Dobbs isn't a newscaster, he's a hypnotist genius

I'm not really sure that for Lou "the Leper" Dobbs, these are the only two applicable choices...

[Justin]

He might have been thrown into removal proceedings in 2004 but that doesn't mean he's not a permanent resident now. He may have had a way to adjust his status in proceedings or after them.

[Carleton Wu]

So let's put those numbers in perspective

A lot of the response depends on how the questions are asked. So
this
poll shows a very different outlook (ie 56% favor a guest worker program, 67% favor some sort of amnesty, etc).
Neither one of these is probably telling the whole story- but it's a mistake to take the poll with the numbers you like the most and treat it as definitive.

[Jay Jerome]

Yes, Carleton, I agree, you get different responses depending on how questions are phrased; but my point in writing the post was that immigration (legal and illegal) is not a partisan Republican-Democratic issue for American voters – it crosses all party lines. But the misguided impression you get from bloggers here (well-intentioned people, who I’m sure pay their taxes on time and send greeting cards to their loved ones on the holidays) is that if you’re against the amnesty provisions in the bill, think illegal immigrants are a net economic minus and overall not good for the country, and you want the government to do something about the porous southern border NOW, you must be a buffoon Republican like Tancredo, or a neer-do-well hypocrite racist like Lou Dobbs (so cynical and egregious a lout he married a Latina to deflect his truthful bigoted nature).

But low and behold: those exact views are held by significant numbers of Americans—in the very poll you linked to above. Here’s some of the quotes from it:

-61 percent said that illegal immigration was a very serious problem.
-A large majority, 70 percent of respondents, said they believed that illegal immigrants weaken the American economy because they use public services but do not pay corresponding taxes.
-75 percent of those who responded favored tougher penalties for employers of illegal workers.
-82 percent said the federal government should do more to reinforce the border.

According to the wide-brush tar-and-feather view typically expressed here, all those people who responded as they did above must be Conservative Republican evil-doers. And I must be an elitist racist pig for holding those same views.