Posted on 05/04/2007 6:37:00 PM PDT by Graybeard58
As a lame-duck president, George Bush isn't worried about being held accountable in the next election to past promises.
But other politicians inside the Beltway don't have that luxury, and when it comes to immigration reform, the clock is ticking down to November 2008.
That's when U.S. voters will almost surely call presidential candidates and members of Congress on the carpet if there is no comprehensive federal plan in place. In both of his inaugural addresses, the president promised reform. Members of Congress agreed. Eight years will have been more than enough time to have worked out a bipartisan compromise on one of this country's most polarizing economic and cultural issues.
On many issues, the president himself has been a polarizer, but not on immigration. Perhaps because of his experience in a border state -- Texas -- Bush early on staked out a middle ground between the immediate deportation faction and the let-them-in-for-free crowd. He endorsed tighter border security, guest worker status, a realistic earned path to citizenship and employer penalties for illegal hirings once a proven national identification system was in place. Two U.S. senators with very different political philosophies -- Edward Kennedy and John McCain -- crafted a compromise bill with all those provisions that passed the Senate.
But the House, controlled back then by immigration restrictionists, balked. Now the Democrats are in control and the White House is in retreat from anything that smacks of compromising with them, whether on Iraq or immigration.
As a result, the new proposal being floated by the White House is more a punitive, political document than a workable plan. It proposes that to gain legal status, an undocumented immigrant would need to pay $3,500 in fines and fees for a three-year visa that could be renewed once for another $3,500. After that, he would have to return home and pay an additional $10,000 fine to re-enter the U.S. if his application for permanent residency was accepted.
Who is the White House trying to kid? Out of an estimated 12 million immigrants here illegally, how many are likely to leave their jobs and risk not being allowed to return -- assuming they can afford the fines and fees in the first place? The obvious answer is very few, meaning illegal residents will remain in the shadows and continue their cat-and-mouse games with police and employers instead of seeking to assimilate with our culture.
The plan is also anti-family, despite the pro-family rhetoric coming from the White House earlier in the Bush term. It denies those immigrants who have worked out legal status to sponsor their relatives to join them, a privilege this country has always afforded other immigrants in the past. These are often the relatives who help new immigrants start up family businesses, and denying them entry would be bad business as well as needlessly cold-hearted.
As for guest workers, economists estimate the U.S. needs at least 400,000 immigrant laborers a year just to get crops picked and meet other demands for manual labor. But the Bush plan requires these temporary workers to pay $1,500 for a two-year visa, then return home for at least six months before re-applying to return. Given the choice between seeing their best, stable workers sent home on an artificial timetable or continuing to break the rules on undocumented labor, employers are bound to choose the latter and hope they don't get caught.
The marches this past week by immigration reform backers were smaller than last year, in part because the White House has not yet publicly pushed its punitive, unrealistic plan. When or if it does, we predict the popular backlash will be as strong as it already has been on the editorial pages of both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Americans overwhelmingly want workable immigration reform that gets beyond punishing undocumented workers and closing down the border. That will mean compromise, which takes leadership. If the White House can no longer lead on this issue, at the least it should get out of the way.
Sorry but a significant percentage of us US voters do not want a comprehensive plan. We want border control. We want employers held accountable for employing illegals. We want English as the official language. We do not want any plan of amnesty disguised as a 'comprehensive plan, period!
I've got better idea. Amnesty:
We give illegal aliens 1 year to leave the country. Then we start arresting and deporting them en masse, and finning them and their employers for the cost.
Too punitive — sounds very liberal to me. After all we are now a nation that does not believe in punishing criminals — just ask our judges. Heck, we are already PAYING THEM FOR BREAKING OUR LAWS — what else can our BENT government do for criminal felons???
Maybe not a full barf, but this piece at least needs an upchuck alert.
At the risk of being too simplistic, that means we have about 11,600,000 more illegals than we need to do the work "Americans won't do".
And, I believe I'd be better off paying $4 a pound for tomatos picked by Americans. It'd be cheaper for the country as a whole in the long run.
“The plan is also anti-family ...It denies those immigrants who have worked out legal status to sponsor their relatives to join them, a privilege this country has always afforded other immigrants in the past....”
Big fat lie... Immigrants in the past have brought their spouse and minor children... The illegal aliens want to bring 200 other people with them...
Plus American CANNOT afford all those relatives...
“These are often the relatives who help new immigrants start up family businesses, and denying them entry would be bad business as well as needlessly cold-hearted”
Nooooooo These are all minor children of the “immigrant” the siblings, the aunts, the cousins etc (none of them old enough to work) and all the old people, parents, granparents, aunts, uncles 2nd colusins anyone who will collect Social Security...
Few will be old enough to start up a “business”
BTW I thought they only did jobs Americans wont do...Most Americans would be delighted if the US govedrnment sponsored them to start a family business for them and 200 relatives...
Punitive plan! what a load of bull.The plan as I read it would make it easy enough for the entire populace of Mexico to move into the U.S. with No problems at all.
I don’t want to see a law that make immigration easier.I want the laws we presently have enforced.Let the So called immigrants stay in their own countries and work on them.Instead of mooching off of the American taxpayer.
Tell me, where were all of the FR “border bots” on election day 2006? Busy cutting off their noses to spite their faces?
It would be far better if they would just leave the country and go destroy someone else's.
Just take out the word “no” in the quote:
“That’s when U.S. voters will almost surely call presidential candidates and members of Congress on the carpet if there is no comprehensive federal plan in place.”
Exactly. Last year there was no “reform” because people (like me) melted the phone lines demanding it. Yet another example of how the MSM is trying to tell it like its not.
COMMENT:
I would also add that we would like the Maim Stream Media such as the Arizona paper to support the constitution and laws of the United States.
Instead these wimps give us a bunch of emotional feel good cry baby crap.
Good point. You cannot pick and choose the laws you follow. Personally I despise the income tax laws and regulations. Maybe I will just stop paying income tax because they hurt my family and are just wrong (in my opinion). After all, I am just trying to help my family. Would the Lame Stream Media support me?
Might be worth looking at them.
If the Feds wanted to solve the illegal problem, they could do it in 2 months.
If the Feds went after employers of illegals, jobs would dry up and all illegals would go back home.
Someone cheats $100 on their taxes and the IRS goes after him with a vengeance. Business cheat billions by hiring illegals and nobody in Washington cares. Amazing!
Apparently, what he meant is that there aren't enough illegals in the states, so he intended to open the door wider, as he subsequently did.
i figure between the food stamps and welfare cash cards...well dang just one free visit to our ers..about covers that first $3500 ...its owed and due
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