Posted on 03/01/2004 10:49:55 AM PST by yonif
WASHINGTON – Conservatives balking at President Bush's proposal to grant illegal immigrants three-year work permits are floating a counteroffer that would hamper his efforts to woo Hispanic voters in November's election.
It's a dicey political predicament for the president, one that seems likely to push a final vote on key elements of his plan into 2005, well after the November balloting.
Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., and Sens. Zell Miller, D-Ga., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., are conditioning their support for Bush's plan on Congress agreeing to also broaden the power of state and local police to arrest suspected illegal residents.
"If they don't have this in it, they'll pass that bill over my cold, dead political body," Sessions said of Bush's proposal.
Sessions, Miller and Norwood say they speak for thousands of conservatives who believe stronger enforcement of immigration laws must accompany any plan that would let illegal immigrants remain in the country legally.
Because federal immigration agents are stretched too thin, they argue, 650,000 local police officers should be given the authority and resources to go after immigrants still undocumented after Bush's plan takes effect. Immigrant advocates say the distrust that would raise between Hispanics and police would erase any political advantage the president might hope to gain.
"Latinos very much support law enforcement, which is why we think making police officers immigration agents is a terrible idea," said Cecilia Munoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza. "If the victim of domestic violence feels she can't be calling police because they might be asking for papers, that's bad for the public safety."
Many Senate Democrats agree that conditioning the work permits for illegals on deputizing local police to help enforce immigration laws would do more harm than good.
"Our police officers have gone about the business of protecting their communities, and left the federal government to enforce civil immigration laws," said Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The division of labor makes a great deal of sense, and the burden faced by those who would change it should be awfully high."
Norwood said his Clear Law Enforcement for the Criminal Alien Removal Act could actually be popular among Latinos because it targets law breakers, particularly those identified as crime suspects in a national computer database.
"If you got tough with the enforcement of our laws, I honestly believe you would get more votes from the Hispanic community," Norwood said.
Administration officials are treading carefully on the concept of local enforcement, but supporters of the Norwood and Sessions bills are interpreting some of their recent comments to mean they might be open to the idea.
Questioned by Sessions at a recent hearing, Asa Hutchinson, the Homeland Security Department's undersecretary for border and transportation security, conceded there are not enough federal agents to go after illegal immigrants every time the police call them in.
Hutchinson then pointed out that Bush is asking Congress to double work-site enforcement, detention and removal facilities in the 2005 budget.
At another hearing, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, asked Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to consider forging "cooperative law enforcement agreements" with local police rather than spending money on training new federal immigration agents.
Ridge said Craig's idea had gotten mixed reviews on the local level, but he didn't rule it out.
"Part of the reason may be philosophical, others may be fiscal," Ridge said. "Either way, you've got 650,000 men and women in local law enforcement that should be viewed as a potential asset and resource in enforcing the new law, whatever it might be."
Craig, who is co-sponsoring Sessions' bill, is also pushing one of his own that would establish an agriculture worker program. Although he said he doesn't care whether the enforcement proposal passes first or last, he acknowledged that conservatives may block other immigration plans without it.
"In a broad-based approach of the kind the president is talking about, that linkage might be necessary," Craig said.
OK, Now you have exposed your flank.
That idea is just plain ludicrous!
It would be one thing to encourage voluntary work like this, but what you suggest is not, and will never be considered,
It would be involuntary servitude......
The very thing that my forefathers fled to this country to escape!
Ludicrous!
Conscripts and domestic servants and Even the French Foreign Legion were paid.
This is a free country!
We have no intention of turning the clock back over 200 years.
I thought Al Gore would do something like this, but didn't think that Bush would get away with it.
You bet it is, and this is exactly what is causing so much resentment in America. The takers outnumbering the givers and stealing from them.
What, is "eat free" the new mantra of the anti-immigration contingent.
While it may be true that social services are indeed strained in some areas, the seasonal nature of the employment, the desire for work and a life made them cross with only the cloths on their backs.
Those same services still have a majority American citizen customer base and you know it.
Bush's proposal does in fact control this illegal alien problem, by tying the entry to a bonded job offer that has been vetted.
The line for these work visa's will be long, but the line will be in Mexico!
At the same time this is implemented, the ones left on the street with no paperwork will be disappearing as they leave a now hostile environment for a undocumented worker without a visa or a job.
Control of the employer is what this idea really does.
I'm not anti-immigration, I'm anti-parasite !
Eliminate the welfare hammock (completely) for these folks, and most of my antipathy towards illegals ceases.
While it may be true that social services are indeed strained in some areas, the seasonal nature of the employment, the desire for work and a life made them cross with only the cloths on their backs.
So many errors in a single statement make it hard to respond.
Services are more than "strained" in some areas, American citizens are being crowded out by hordes of illegals.
"Seasonal" employment my rear end ! These folks come and stay, and bring their families. They put down roots, tapping every public benefit they run across, and at their income level, that's a lot of them.
Would that it was their desire for "work" that made them cross. It is in fact their desire to live better for less work that makes many come. Their "income" is substantially supplemented, else they couldn't live here, period. How do you support a family of five or six on ten bucks an hour? With state, local and federal subsidies, that's how.
And those come out of my pocket, and I'm damn tired of it.
Bush's proposal does nothing more than legalize those who're here, and act as a magnet for millions more to arrive, to be subsidized by taxpayers like me. It's a gift of taxpayer subsidized employees to business, and it sucks.
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