Posted on 12/22/2005 4:12:12 PM PST by Reaganwuzthebest
Watching the action in the House of Representatives last week, it was easy to imagine that immigration was a strictly partisan issue.
The bill under discussion, mostly the brainchild of Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, was about as tough as it gets: not just 700 miles of border fence and stiffer penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants but also a provision that turns illegal presence in this country from a civil violation into a federal crime -- subject to an entirely different kind of policing and punishable by much stiffer penalties.
Over two days of emotional debate on the floor, Democrats railed against the legislation, standing up, member after member, to defend our tradition as a nation of immigrants. Most of the Republicans who spoke used an entirely different vocabulary -- all about policing and punishment. A few brave GOP dissenters stood up to say that we can have both -- can remain a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. But when these moderates clashed with hard-liners -- when restrictionist Tom Tancredo demanded that the leadership renege on a promise to balance the bill's tough enforcement with recognition that we also need more realistic, more enforceable laws, in line with our need for foreign workers -- the party chieftains came down squarely with Tancredo.
Then, when it came time to vote, the members split lopsidedly along party lines: most Republicans for tougher enforcement, most Democrats for a broader approach -- enforcement plus a temporary worker program and a provision to deal with the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country.
Add in President Bush's tough-sounding speech on border security in Tucson last month, and the conclusion seems obvious: The Republican Party is pivoting on immigration, resolving the differences that have plagued it since Bush proposed a guest-worker program nearly two years ago and coming together around a new hard line calculated to please the base in the run-up to next year's election.
The only problem: This isn't true. And though the hard-liners had the upper hand in the House, they do not speak for the party and will not, we are convinced, triumph in the long run.
What happened last week was less about immigration than about a GOP congressional leadership looking for an issue to rally the party after a bad autumn dominated by Katrina, Iraq, Harriet Miers and accumulating indictments. Many pro-immigration reform Republicans understood that and went along, not because they support the Sensenbrenner approach, but because they didn't want to buck the leadership or disregard the powerful committee chairman. No doubt, this was agonizing for them -- and the heavily partisan votes made the party look unappealingly anti-immigrant. But don't mistake it for a new, harsh GOP unanimity.
In fact, the reform-minded wing of the party is alive and well -- and standing ready for the next phase of the battle, in the Senate and beyond.
Who makes up the reform wing?
• There are political operatives such as Ken Mehlman concerned about how immigration plays with Latino voters.
• There are business friendly Republicans at The Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute and elsewhere who know that immigration is good for the economy; not just good for individual employers -- in agriculture, food-processing, hospitality, healthcare, construction and other sectors -- who depend on these workers to keep their businesses open and growing, but also for native-born workers employed by these companies and others that trade with them.
• There are security-minded Republicans like Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his predecessor Tom Ridge who know that creating a system for immigrant laborers to enter the country legally is the best way to free up border agents whose real job is protecting us from terrorists.
And then there are Republicans like Ronald Reagan and now President Bush who understand in a more general way that immigrants are good for the country: that they bring entrepreneurial energy and family values and fresh patriotism -- and that, as Reagan emphasized, the nation must remain a beacon to the world.
None of these Republicans think enforcement or legality are unimportant. But they are convinced that the best way to restore the rule of law is to start with more-honest, more-enforceable immigration quotas -- a temporary-worker program more in line with the reality of our labor needs -- and then make those realistic limits stick with all the means at our disposal. This is the approach that the Senate will almost certainly pursue when it turns to immigration in January or February, and it is the approach the president hopes to sign into law, perhaps as soon as next spring.
Let's not kid ourselves: What happened in the House last week will make those next steps harder. This polarizes the debate, in and outside the beltway, and it may unnerve hesitant senators who side with the president but fear spitting into what they see as the prevailing political wind.
The challenge for the Republican Party is particularly difficult -- precisely because of the way the issue divides us from one other. But we remain convinced that reason -- and the party's traditional values -- will prevail in the end. Instead of trying punitively to enforce unrealistic law, the majority of the GOP will eventually come together around an immigration policy worthy of the label Republican -- one that encourages the American Dream and rewards work, even as it restores the rule of law and enhances national security.
If they "went along" so as not to "buck the leadership or...," it's a first. The RINOs manage to have their say about everything under the sun mainly disagreeing with any conservative ideas and voting with the Democrats on anything of importance. IF they shut their mouths over this, there is only one reason - they know it's political suicide to take the opposite position just like the Democrats knew they had better keep their mouths closed over 9/11, and give the president their vote to conduct the war on terror even though it must have been hell for them to do so since we now know how they felt all along.
Grover Norquist, White House point man on immigration.
"If the Republican Party works with the Hispanic community, the immigrant community, they're natural allies. People who came to this country are more freedom-loving and more American than people who just happened to be born here because they made a decision to go to a great deal of trouble and effort to leave their parents and their family and their small towns or whatever to come to the United States. They're natural Reagan Republicans. As long as we're welcoming them, we win their votes.
We've seen, with some effort on the part of the Republicans to reach out to Hispanics, a tremendous increase in our support in Hispanics. In Florida, where it's second nature for the Republican Party to work with Hispanics, we carry a majority of the non-Cuban Hispanic vote and more than a majority of the Cuban vote. We have, when we have worked at it, carried a majority of the Asian-American vote. So immigration is something that if Pat Buchanan became our nominee, we would lose the immigrant vote. But the strength of George Bush is that he was [the] pro-immigrant, pro-trade Reaganite in the race, and that was the winning issue, not just in the primary but in the general [election], and also the winning strategy for governor. A Republican Party which becomes anti-immigrant will become a minority party."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/architect/interviews/norquist.html
If any of you have seen Norquist on TV, you will notice he uses the same emotional, nonsensical talking points we have had foisted on us. He simply cannot say "illegal immigration". Looks like the majority of our congress is now "Anti-immigrant" according to him.
When it happens, the usual suspects....Durbin, Kennedy, Pelosi, Boxer, Dingy Harry....et al ought to be rounded up and shipped to Gitmo, never to be heard from again....EVER!
We would also hope that there is some shadow-y group in our government that is going around taking care of business by quietly eliminating sleepers in our country....and taking care of any "journalists" who stumble onto the operation.
Democrats think their base is Illegal Immigrants, and minority's so they are playing to their base!
The RINOs manage to have their say about everything under the sun mainly disagreeing with any conservative ideas and voting with the Democrats on anything of importance.
-----
A huge problem. Too bad the other Repubs don't have the cajones to put these stinking RINOs up against the wall politically. The conservative voters should boot them out.
Norquist has also been exposed as the founder of the Islamic Insitute, a group believed to be funded by foreign governments, Wahhab Islam elements in Saudi Arabia, and U.S. Muslim groups recently raided by a special Treasury Department task force for funding Al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorists.
snip
Norquist's relationship with Muslim groups that support terrorism became public after Norquist launched an unexpected and inexplicably vitriolic attack against Frank Gaffney, the President of the Center for Security Policy.
During a routine Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in early February, Gaffney participated in a panel discussion about the balance to be struck in time of war between preserving civil liberties and safeguarding American's lives and safety. Gafney expressed concern about one of the most insidious of the Wahhabis' activities, a concerted attempt to penetrate and influence the Executive and Legislative branch of our government.
snip
Norquist responded to Gaffney's comments by calling Gaffney a racist and religious bigot in an appearance on Fox News Channel and in letters sent to the Washington Post and Washington Times and barring Gaffney from attending the most important meeting in Washington, the regular Wednesday meetings of conservative Capitol Hill aides and interest-group representatives held in Norquist's offices.
It is unclear whether the Muslims who have been acting as White House gatekeepers - Ali Tulbah and Suhail Kahn - were actually placed in that position by Grover Norquist's Islamic Institute. Norquist is credited with delivering the Muslim vote for Bush in the 2000 election and has the ear of the most influential man in Washington, Karl Rove, President Bush's political advisor. Rove has been a featured speaker at Norquist's Wednesday meetings.
Although it is not noted on either group's website, Norquist's Islamic Institute actually shares office space and staff with Americans for Tax Reform.
According to news reports, while Norquist served as founding Chairman of the Islamic Institute the group received seed money from Abdurahman Alamoudi, then a member of the left-wing American Muslim Council. MSNBC and Fox News have aired videotapes of Alamoudi standing in front of the White House, declaring his support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Hamas is currently one of the leading groups responsible for Palestinian suicide bombers. Hezbollah, sponsored by the Iranian government, was responsible for the death of 240 Marines in Beirut in the 1980s and is believed to be responsible for the attack on Khobar Towers, a barracks in Saudi Arabia.
snip
Since 9/11, Norquist has led opposition to domestic anti-terrorism laws and has been quoted in frontpage NY times articles allelging a wholesale loss of faith by conservatives in Attorney General Josh Ashcroft. Norquist has also attacked Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, and others who have attempted to alert Americans to the dangers of Islam.
http://tinyurl.com/d8fts
Sure, we can remain a nation of LEGAL immigrants.
ILLEGAL immigrants are called ILLEGAL immigrants for a reason.
Did Norquist really say these illegals are more American that people born here?
If he did, that is outrageous!
vomit inducing article...
they don't have any idea of where to go or how to get there...
Just get along with the Democrats is their only program.
Jacoby is known as a huge open borders advocate, BTW.
On April 2, 2005 Norquist married Palestinian activist and former high school classmate Samah Alrayyes.
Alrayyes has radical Islamic credentials of her own; she served as communications director at the Islamic Free Market Institute, the Islamist organization Norquist helped found. Now, she is employed as a public affairs officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development – and so it appears that yet another Islamist finds employment in a branch of the U.S. government.
Norquist has for some years now been promoting Islamist organizations, including even the Council on American-Islamic Relations; for example, he spoke at CAIR's conference, "A Better America in a Better World" on October 5, 2004. Frank Gaffney has researched Norquist's ties to Islamists in his exhaustive, careful, and convincing study, "Agent of Influence" and concludes that Norquist is enabling "a political influence operation to advance the causes of radical Islamists, and targeted most particularly at the Bush Administration."
http://tinyurl.com/aw4no
When corporate America wants cheap labor, their money will flow into leftist activists groups, MSM and Park Avenue ad companies to fight us. Atleast the Latino advocate groups are honest, they stand in front of us and shout at us. Corporate America is from the back, in the dark and thru a third party. They are the traitors to the American nation on illegal immigration.
Grover's obviously not paying attention to the recent events in France, Denmark, Holland and Australia otherwise he wouldn't be attacking Americans speaking out on the danger of Islam. Either that or he's a nut.
What nonsense.
Hilariously, purely Miami Herald at it's best - even 'Commissar Carl' Hiasson couldn't be more whacky.
The Herald is trying to spin the unspinable. America doesn't approve of the illegals, knows the immense costs (financial and cultural) of the illegals, and wants them stopped.
The Republicans are stopping them. And the Communism Lite types at the Herald are deeply saddened.
I, on the other hand, know that the Herald has shrunk substantially over the last few years. And I know it will be smaller next year.
Message to the Herald: May the coming New Year bring you all that you deserve. ;-)
J.D. Hayworth is against a guest worker program.
I hope the guest worker program will never pass and anchor babies born here NOT be granted citizenship!
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON VOLUNTARY FOREIGN AID
Samah Alrayyes, Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs, USAID
******
But raising questions about the Islamic Institute's ties to the imprisoned Alamoudi wasn't enough for the "Jihad-Watchers." They next got very personal -- as alarm-bell ringers just about always do. In April, Norquist married Samah Alrayyes, a Palestinian Muslim who had worked for the Islamic Institute and who currently does public-affairs work for the U.S. Agency for International Development. No less a figure than Daniel Pipes -- a Harvard-trained historian and the author of a dozen books on subjects including Islam, the Middle East, and the role of conspiracy theories in American and European politics -- weighed in with a few paragraphs on his blog endorsing speculation that Norquist had converted to Islam as a result of his marriage. (In fact, according to a friend, Norquist remains a Methodist; his wife remains a Muslim.) Norquist's bride, Pipes continued, "has radical Islamic credentials of her own" by virtue of her work for the Islamic Institute. And as for her job with U.S. AID, Pipes added, "it appears that yet another Islamist finds employment in a branch of the U.S. government."
snip
Norquist said he was being targeted by "bigots." He declined to talk for the record about Alamoudi. Saffuri, who recently resigned from the Islamic Institute and is now a full-time lobbyist in Washington, told me he distanced himself from Alamoudi in 2000, after his former boss declared his public support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Saffuri says he had no knowledge of Alamoudi's criminal activities and that Alamoudi had deceived him.
In response, Gaffney says the "bigot" rap is just Norquist blowing "smoke," and not an explanation "for the company he has been keeping." Gaffney added, "I would be happy to go toe-to-toe with Grover Norquist anytime, anyplace." The pair still work on the same floor of that L Street office building -- but they avoid each other.
http://tinyurl.com/7c4w6
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