Posted on 09/14/2004 5:17:54 PM PDT by 4.1O dana super trac pak
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) considered calling for a top Bush administration official to resign after reading his recent comments on enforcing immigration laws, according to sources.
Upset with Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson's remark that it would not be realistic to enforce current immigration laws, Tancredo, a staunch supporter of more immigration laws, contemplated calling for the administration officials resignation.
The two Republicans planned last night to discuss their differences, and it is not expected that Tancredo will ask for Hutchinson to step down.
Hutchinson last week told The Washington Times that it would be unrealistic to say that officials would be able to reduce the number of the millions of illegal immigrants in the country.
Tancredo, chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, is often at odds with the Bush administration over its immigration policies. Last month he criticized the GOP's platform om immigration, calling it weak.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which will hold a press conference on immigration solutions to combat terrorism with Tancredo today, also strongly criticized Hutchinson's comments.
FAIR called Hutchinson the "Bush administration's point man to sell a massive illegal alien amnesty and guest worker program," and the groups Executive Director Dan Stein said: "The only thing 'unrealistic' are the choices of the administration is presenting to the American public."
A spokesman for Tancredo said the lawmaker was "fairly angered" with Hutchinson's comments. The staffer added that Tancredo and Hutchinson were scheduled to discuss the remarks last evening, with the expectation that the matter would be resolved and Tancredo would not call for Hutchinson's resignation at today's press conference.
A spokesman for Hutchinson could not be reached for comment by press time. Prior to joining the Bush administration, Hutchinson served as a member of Congress from Arkansas from 1997 to 2001.
A couple of jurors interviewed after the cases closed made it clear that they didn't consider giving someone a job to be a criminal matter, and that the law of the land was contrary to the custom of the land in that respect.
The modern illegal immigration problem started in 1965. That also happens to be when the guest worker program ended. I submit that the two events are related.
When laws diverge significantly from what the people at large think the law should be, those laws are going to get ignored by a lot of folks. Note the abject lack of prosecutions for violations of the Roberti-Roos Act in California.
I think we need a Goldwater.
THE GOLDWATER DOCTRINE
“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more
efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote
welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to
repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones
that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose,
or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not
attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first
determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later
be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I
was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am
doing the very best I can.”
Barry Goldwater, “The Conscience of a Conservative”
Jeffersonian Constitutionalist Barry Goldwater was my ideological twin.
He passionately loved my America, too.
Asa is a lap dog....doing exactly what he is told to do.
They did a much better job of it than you did. The jury said, "Talk to the hand."
I'm sure a professional prosecutor with more time and a jury consultant would have a better closing but you get the idea. I think people understand that we can;t leave the border open.
We can't leave the borders open to illegal immigration. But the problem is that we have criminalized a practice that most people have historically viewed as not being criminal, and was criminalized solely at the behest of a liberal political interest group.
Sarah Brady managed to criminalize the sale of a few ugly guns in 1994. There were exactly five prosecutions under the Brady law.
It's on a par with criminalizing production and sale of alcoholic beverages: that effort was vigorously pursued in the 1920s, and the people said, "Talk to the hand." Relative to the number of violations of the Volstead Act, there were very few prosecutions successfully made. Most people in America did not view the production and sale of alcoholic beverages to be a truly criminal matter.
When law is forced, by special interests, into a mold that does not have organic support from the citizenry at large, enforcing it is extremely difficult unless you also place all aspects of the prosecution under the control of those same special interests--including the membership of the jury.
Amen
Hoo, boy, that screams for abuse. I agree - require that they pass the bar, or have the immigrant represent him or her self.
I say exempt border fences from environamental impact law.
I agree. National security ought to trump, but sadly it legally doesn't.
DNA sample all those caught.
DNA tests take lots of time, weeks, unfortunately. A fingerprint database of those deported ought to suffice.
Deputize citizen patrols along the border. They want to help.
If they want to help, then they can click here.
Put overstay final deportation orders on the NCIC.
A good idea, but...
REQUIRE local police to keep illegals in custody.
REQUIRE ALL DMV do a legal status check.
I don't think such a Federal mandate on local governments is legally possible. Wasn't there a lawsuit over the Brady Bill which resulted in part of it being overturned because of just such a mandate?
Basically manadate any government interaction require a imigration status check FOR all aplicants.
That would be you and me, too. "Papers, please!" For all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth here at FR over national ID, I don't see how it's possible to reconcile opposition to ID with simultaneously requiring it. Heck, some people here don't want hospital ERs to treat patients without the patients providing proof of status. I bet they'd change their tune real quick the first time life-saving treatment is delayed due to a problem with their papers.
According to the FR Consensus it seems that jury nullification is gooooood unless it's in an immigration case, when it's baaaaaad. Got it.
Maybe National ID or something like it is good, BUT only after you gain control over the border. We can't waste time deporting folks when they will just come back in the next dang day.
New GOP motto: Better Mexican than Muslim
"Our border is unprotected; our first line of defense is not manned," Mr. Stein said. "After the attacks of September 11, there are no excuses. They want to pretend that we have a line of defense, even though we could secure the border if we wanted to. But we choose not to."
Because, most of the time, the grand jury no-billed the indictments.
As to the topic at hand, were your examples of prosecutions in a post-September 11th world?
No, they weren't. But there were a lot of "illegal alien crime wave" stories in the press at that time.
As every survey has indicated that a minimum of 2/3 of the country opposes illegal immigration, I doubt your premise that the public does not support these laws.
People oppose illegal immigration in the abstract. When concrete proposals for effective enforcement are proposed, they oppose those proposals more than they oppose illegal immigration, because those proposals will, if enacted, personally inconvenience them more than illegal immigration does.
Bottom line: a guest worker program will make it far more convenient to hire legal employees than illegal employees. This will greatly reduce the incentive to hire illegal aliens, which will reduce the incentive for illegal immigration, and thus reduce illegal immigration attempts; reducing illegal immigration attempts will, in turn, make it easier to detect, identify, and apprehend illegal immigrants.
But, instead of fixing the underlying problem (a broken US policy that has been demonstrated to be unenforceable), you insist on trying to keep a bad policy in place against the wishes of the American people (as expressed by their behavior).
In other words, you realized that you have no logical argument, and must instead resort to fabricating an argument and claiming it's my position.
In that case, I will sum up your position in an equally odious and slanderous manner: You wish to kill dark-skinned people to gain sexual gratification. I do not.
What is a "guest worker program" but a method of driving wages down to the lowest legal level and then filling them with foreign workers who think that a wage that is unlivable to American workers is a fortune? And tell me, what would you do about the anchor baby problem as related to guest workers?
It's a means of matching labor to jobs along the border. It was perfectly legal for many years. It did not force wages down. Closing the program is what forced wages down. What would happen in reality is that wages in the affected fields (mostly stoop labor that you literally cannot pay spoiled Americans enough to do) would go up from their present artificially low levels.
And tell me, what would you do about the anchor baby problem as related to guest workers?
Simple: you state in the legislation that the guest worker program does not grant resident alien status, and that any offspring of the guest worker does not gain US citizenship.
1. That makes no economic sense. By expanding the labor force, you drive wages down. That is the basic law of supply and demand.
2. What politician will have the guts to enact such legislation? As I understand, it is not part of the Bush proposal.
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