Posted on 01/27/2007 8:55:29 AM PST by spintreebob
Ping!
"If the GOP continues its lurch to the far right, all is lost."
Refusing to pardon border patrol agents, opening the border, running deficits to record levels, widespread corruption and earmarks. Yeah, that REALLY looks like a lurch to the right. /sarcasm off
That is not the whole truth and is thus not the truth.
The NRCC TV ads said immigrant/immigration without the adjective illegal. Here on FR and many other internet sites, both R and not R, many antis repeatedly refer to immigration/immigrants and Mexicans and Fox and other things without connecting it to illegeal.
Hannity will say immigration 100 times in 3 hours and only once use the adjective illegal. The antis are the communication problem here. They are incompetent at PR.
I know, just look at those referendums they passed.
Says the man who thinks the republican party voters are evenly split 50-50 on immigration.
I'm not 100% sure about America as a whole, but if you had a national referendum on immigration with just registered republicans voting, it wouldn't even be close. Don't kid yourself (it's obvious from your homepage why you "love illegals").
Oh and Dane, the senate passed a liberal immigration bill with a republican majority and the republicans still lost six seats out of a hundred and lost the majority. Yet all I hear is crickets from you about that. As someone already posted, if Bush had been directly on the ballot, he would have been massacred. This election had nothing to do with immigration, like the article said. Which means that people didn't throw out Abramoff-tainted J.D. Hayworth in the same state where numerous anti-illegal referendums passed. It had nothing to do with illegal immigration and everything to do with Iraq, scandals and the overall distaste for Bush.
The advantage of a good guest worker program is that it puts the work out in the spotlight. No more below-cost labor, not skipping taxes, no hiding in the shadows.
The jobs have to be advertised, so any american can bid on them. In the Senate plan, the jobs had to pay Davis-Bacon wages, which are higher than minimum wage. But in any plan the jobs would have to meet federal and state wage laws. The workers would be covered by workman's comp, and because the workers couldn't hide, the employers couldn't threaten them with "outing" to make them work cheap.
By forcing them out of the shadows, we can make them leave when the work is done (BTW, a lot more used to leave when the work was done, but all the "compassionate" crap about educting their kids and stuff gave them incentive to stick around, and then the increased border security, without any other changes, made is so that, once they made it in the country, they were NEVER going to leave because it would be too hard to get back again (I am for border security).
Again, if you think over half the country agrees with the statement that "all we need to do is enforce current laws", you are mistaken. People DO support "enforcing current laws", but majorities also support changing those laws, especially in the areas of forcing english as our official language, a guest worker program, and a path to citizenship for illegals who have been in the country for years and have assimilated.
A majority also wants increased border security, which goes beyong current law, so it's not just people want more liberal laws, they want a real solution to the problem.
" People DO support "enforcing current laws", but majorities also support changing those laws, especially in the areas of forcing english as our official language, a guest worker program, and a path to citizenship for illegals who have been in the country for years and have assimilated. "
We shall see.
"A majority also wants increased border security, which goes beyong current law, so it's not just people want more liberal laws, they want a real solution to the problem."
The President's solution will just make it worse.
Then explain it. Put together a coherent explanation of what WILL be better for our country. Send it to every major newspaper as a letter-to-the-editor. Get your hometown paper to give you a guest column. Send it to your congressman and senators.
Post it here to try to win over the smart conservatives who don't agree with you now.
You can have a brilliant plan, but if you are too smug to do anything more than call people names if they don't agree with you, and can't argue better than saying a majority must agree with you or else they are stupid, you aren't contributing to the solution.
THe pro-amnesty folks aren't the ones arguing on FR. At least not in the threads I'm frequenting. I guess my position is closer to theirs so I don't see the namecalling from that side.
Anyway, it wasn't a criticism of you. Feel free to be smug all you want, or take any approach you want. I'm telling you what I think you need to do if you really care about your position and think it is the one that will save our country. I should think you'd be happy if I didn't tell the pro-amnesty folks how to win, because you want them to lose.
Your "plan" doesn't explain what you are going to do with the millions of long-term illegals who are settled into this country. You say let's "enforce the laws" which suggests you want to send police out to round them up and deport them all. We all know that is impossible -- most argue that we should focus on punishing the employers, which would remove the reason for being here, so the illegals would leave.
Let me help. You have stated platitudes. Here is what a plan would look like:
My plan to end the illegal immigration policy has the goal of not allowing a single current illegal immigrant to EVER be allowed back into the country. To do that, I have to do two things: FIRST, I need to get rid of every illegal immigrant. SECOND (and here's the hard part) I have to get the identification of every illegal so I can identify them when they apply for legal entry.
To do the first, I will enforce all existing laws against illegals. We will increase the penalties on companies, so that when we DO catch them, they will be put out of business. We will institute a national ID card for every legal person, and require all people here legally to obtain this card within 6 months of adoption, or face jail time.
With a national id card, we can require every employer to check the id, and report the use of the id to the new office of illegal removal. All uses of the id will be reported to the valid holder to ensure it hasn't been stolen. Without an ID you cannot buy any items, work, OR ship money overseas. In short, without the national ID living in this country in any manner other than as a homeless fugitive will be impossible.
To handle number 2, we will close the border, using 100,000 troops. The illegals have to get out of the country because they can't live here, and we will catch them on the way out (or if they try to buy their family food). We will fingerprint every one, and then let them cross the border.
We also will pass a constitutional amendment making it illegal for the children of illegal immigrants to attend our schools, or to get citizenship simply by being born in the country.
OK, that's a plan. It needs work, but it defines the goals and how to get there. It is a plan that will be supported by no more than 20% of the population, and you will never get elected. Your next step would be to explain why your goals are preferable to the goals of your opponent.
And I recommend that when you PUBLISH your goals, don't include the part about not wanting 50 million more "democrat voters" -- half the country will reject your plan on that basis alone.
LAst thing. Sooner or later, you are going to have a police team show up in a nice middle-class neighborhood. They are going to surround the house in the middle of the street, the one with two cars and a nicely maintained yard. There is a nice couple there, with 3 kids, one preparing for college. They've owned the house for the last 10 years. The guy is the head of the HOA, and also is the scoutmaster. They are strongly involved in the local Catholic church, she teaches sunday school and he's on the board of deacons (or whatever Catholics call that). Their two youngest attend the local catholic school, but the high-school boy is a starting running back for the football team, a member of the honor society, and won 3rd place last year in the county science fair.
The teen daughter is also in the local drama club, and starred in their presentation of Jack and the Beanstalk last year. They are friends with everyone on the street. He runs a local video store, and employs 8 hardworking american citizens.
The mother volunteers at the local Crisis Pregnancy Center, and also does stints at the library and other community organizations.
They speak perfect english, and nobody really has a clue that they are actually here in this country illegally. Their two younger children were born in the local hospital, and are actually U.S. citizens under current law.
The one parent is from Mexico, and the other from El Salvador -- they met here in the United States.
This causes some trouble. We can't deport them all to either country, as neither country will take the other parent. Neither country really wants the american citizens either. The two have NO family in either country of origin, no place to live, no place to go to.
The youngest children DON'T SPEAK SPANISH, and the oldest is better at French (the language he learned in school) than his supposedly "native" tongue which he hasn't spoken since he was 5 years old.
Of course, the news gets a hold of this, and these people are on the front page of the paper, and on national news. They are the quintescential "american" family, except our government (because of the republicans) is about to send them to a country that is foreign to them, where their lives will be over. 8 americans will be out of work, a community will be torn.
Your plan for these people is simple -- even though they have paid their taxes, learned our language, and assimilated into our society, you must kick them out -- no exceptions. There are other people waiting in line that you would much rather have in the country than these people.
Of course, they did break the law (well, not the kids really, they just had law-breaking parents, but we should visit the sins of the parents on the children).
Your position is legally justified. As a law-and-order guy, I might even agree with you. But we'll be in a small company. You have NO argument (at least none you have presented) that will prevail against the onslaught.
If your plan doesn't have a way for this family to stay in this country, you better explain why people like this need to have their lives destroyed, meaning you better explain the ACTUAL HARM they have caused to society. Because nobody will see these people as "law-breakers". Sure, they came into the country illegally, but they haven't cost us anything, instead they have contributed in a positive way. (Yes, they cost government money like all people living do, but no more so than any other person -- not like the standard argument of "illegals not paying taxes and stealing our jobs).
See, with 20 million illegals in the country, most americans know an illegal like this, at least most who belong to churches. In many cases, the churches have been helping these people. But in any case, they are like "family" to others. THESE are the families, (few in percent, but not in number) that cause a vast majority of americans to FAVOR a way for long-term illegals to get into the line for legal status without being thrown out of the country, IF a preliminary investigation suggests they are exactly the kind of people we WOULD let emmigrate, if not for their one crime of not coming into the country legally.
BTW, just to make it clear. When I was a child I used to cut through people's back yards. Technically, what I did was illegal, but I didn't harm anything. Sometimes I might stop and ride a swingset, or play with the army men. Maybe once or twice I actually stepped on a flower, or tore up the new grass, I'm not sure.
"The NRCC TV ads said immigrant/immigration without the adjective illegal. Here on FR and many other internet sites, both R and not R, many antis repeatedly refer to immigration/immigrants and Mexicans and Fox and other things without connecting it to illegeal."
In the absence of the adjective "ILLEGAL" it sounds racist and bigotted to someone on the outside looking in.....someone seriously needs to page Karl Rove about this...but I suspect this is to corporate America's interest that it appear this way....
One would think Mel Martinez and Bush hired this guy to write this propaganda.
http://numbersusa.com/interests/publicop.html#amnesty
Maybe you should review some of the polls.
"In short, we are tired of you."
You have said it very eloquently. There seems to be more moderates nowdays than conservatives on this "conservative" website.
Regarding Tancredo, don't forget that he is in favor of the Real ID Act of 2008.
"You have said it very eloquently. There seems to be more moderates nowdays than conservatives on this "conservative" website."
That's the problem with the GOP nowadays sadly.
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