Posted on 03/22/2007 5:46:25 AM PDT by radar101
Plan would grant temporary legal status to millions and offer a path to citizenship.
WASHINGTON -- Bipartisan legislation to be unveiled today in the House of Representatives would offer temporary legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants but would require them to leave the country before they could be eligible for permanent residency and U.S. citizenship.
The bill by Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., is the first major immigration legislation to be introduced in the current session of Congress, as lawmakers address the status of more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.
A comprehensive Senate immigration bill died in the previous, Republican-controlled Congress amid intense opposition from Republican members, who rebuffed President Bush's call for a sweeping overhaul of immigration laws. With Democrats in control of Congress, Bush again has made immigration a centerpiece of his domestic agenda.
The Gutierrez-Flake proposal includes many of the ingredients of the failed Senate bill. It would create a guest-worker program that would enable foreign workers to stay in the country for up to six years to hold jobs that U.S. workers have bypassed.
Bush has insisted that a guest-worker program be part of any immigration bill to give U.S. businesses a steady source of foreign workers to fill what they say is a chronic labor shortage in low-skilled and unskilled jobs. Under the Gutierrez-Flake bill, qualified foreign guest workers would get three-year visas that they could renew for another three years, then they'd be required to return home.
Flake said in an interview Wednesday that illegal immigrants who were in the country now also could be eligible to work legally here for up to six years if they paid back taxes and fines, learned English and passed criminal background checks.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
This is just the camel's nose under the tent. Once this is passed, they will incrementally upgrade the status of illegal aliens until they've effectively given complete amnesty to all.
NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT!!!
Please call your Representatives TODAY and urge them to reject guest worker amnesty legislation. Tell them:
You oppose guest worker programs that displace American workers and depress wages;
You oppose rewarding illegal immigration with a path to citizenship;
Rewarding illegal immigration will only lead to more illegal immigration;
and Granting amnesty is inherently unfair to those who play by the rules, apply through legal channels, and patiently wait in line to come to the United States.
Are your surprised by Flake co-sponsoring this?
Can someone, anyone please answer me these questions? Once the guest workers are here, what happens when they have children? Are these children citizens or do they give up the right of having anchor babies? Will the employers be responsible for them having health insurance or will it remain the status quo of social services picking up the tab? What happens if they get fired or quit their job?
Who is going to enforce that? They don't enforce the laws they have now, which is the real problem.
Unless the border is secured this will amount to nothing more than a hilarious Chinese fire drill. The federal government can be counted on to take any bad situation and make it worse.
This is money changing hands only....our congress critters are going to become wealthy, beyond their wildest dreams, on this one bill. Stick it to the citizens and those here legally and watch the congress critters walk away with billions.
Act all you want. This is going to happen. They've decided that this is to become yet another a hispanic kleptocracy. Nothing is going to stop it.
There is a point when either the democrats or republicans will cave. If the faxes are pushing out enough protests against this bill there is a point where the democrats will not sacrifice their majority status to pass this bill now.
I cant speak for the republicans. It seems they lost the 2006 election because they failed to acknowledge that the point had been reached.
I'd like to think you are right, but I don't really see it.
I could be wrong but I thought I heard that Mcain was doing a little bit of a back peddle on Amnesty
I'm not surprised, but I wouldn't trust him to speak my weight.
Me neither
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