Posted on 11/12/2010 9:24:08 AM PST by SwinneySwitch
WASHINGTON — A failure to reform the nation's immigration laws is the result of an electoral process that forces the parties to seek ideologically pure candidates, former President George W. Bush said in his new memoir.
Bush proposed comprehensive immigration reform, one that would have granted citizenship to illegal immigrants who paid fines and learned English, during his second term in office, but he was rebuffed by congressional leaders in his own Republican Party.
“The failure of immigration reform points out larger concerns about the direction of our politics,” Bush said in “Decision Points,” a 477-page autobiography out this week.
Bush said the blend of isolationism, protectionism and nativism that affected the immigration debate also led Congress to block free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.
The book was released one week after the midterm elections, in which Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and won seats in the Senate.
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, widely expected to chair the House Judiciary Committee in the next Congress, has said his panel will focus on enforcement of current immigration laws.
He opposed Bush's immigration proposal when it was introduced.
Smith and other GOP leaders have sided with Arizona in its crackdown on illegal immigration, which prompted a lawsuit by the Obama administration contesting the state's enforcement of federal immigration law.
Bush said lawmakers in both parties have been impractical on the issue.
He said those tied to organized labor opposed guest worker programs needed for economic growth, and conservatives opposed citizenship and other measures that would stop human rights abuses and exploitation of illegal workers.
The former president said the Senate was a couple of votes short of passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2007, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., failed to keep lawmakers in session over the July 4 weekend and the legislation died.
In his book, Bush said one way to reduce the ideological extremes in Congress is to change the way we elect members of Congress.
He noted that in 2006, only 45 or 435 House members were seriously contested in the general election. Bush said members were more vulnerable to an attack within their own party during primary elections.
“The result is that members of Congress from both parties tend to drift toward the extremes as insurance against primary challengers,” Bush said.
Several Republican lawmakers were challenged in party primaries in 2008 by tea party candidates who backed stronger measures against illegal immigration.
Miss him yet?
Maybe Americans have seen this before and didn’t want the same load of shit sold in 1986?
Clinton likes his book, & now this tired ....
I’ll wait `til its at Goodwill in paperback.
That is not reform -- that is appeasement.
It’s that bleeding heart liberal “compassionate” part of Bush that is beyond redemption.
Actually, he spelled it wrong - its Idiology not Ideology and it was HIS, not ours.
No I don’t miss him - never did. He gave us the moron in the White House now.
I heard part of his interview last night talking to O’Reilly and once again, he confirmed my prior analysis of him, he was better than the alternatives - but only barely.
Now I wish he wouldn't.
I knew of it sixty years ago while I was growing up in West Texas. We don't need Amnesty when a green card program is all that is needed. Either George is disingenuous or very slow and challenged. But then again he and his daddy are carpetbaggers from Connecticut. There has been a Green Card (guest worker)
program for over sixty years to my knowledge.
When GW started do reelection commercials in Spanish that was a clue.
Wonder what he thinks about American Flags and Bicycles?
How about simply enforcing current immigration law and securing the border as opposed to comprehensive immigration reform. Seems pretty simple and not nearly so reactionary.
Now railing against idealogues, his statements that the bailout was needed to save the free market system and how he was hurt by Kanye West’s Katrina remarks this book paints a very unflattering picture of a leader lacking resolve in many areas. I guess that constant exposure to Rove had a very debilitating effect.
Ping!
What pisses me off is that we wouldn't be in this position had prior Administrations dealt with this issue the way it should have been dealt with. Thanks to our inaction we now have a huge Hispanic voting bloc that is reflexively opposed to ANY immigration restriction, and it has the politicians scared to death.
We've dug our own hole, now we're paying the consequences.
Listen Jr.:
Go back to Crawford and chop some Mesquite or kill a snake or two.
You are an enigma to us.
You rightly drop kicked the Taliban, idiotic 7th century sand dune hicks if ever there was one.
You excecuted the expressed will of the United States to finish Saddam’s regime and end his aspirations. Thankfully his sons, who suffered from sharing the same disconnected brain stem also perished.
You gave us tax cuts and few people have benefited from dying this year so their families wouldn’t have to pay an outrageous death tax.
You gave us Justice Roberts and it appears he is ruling correctly.
Sadly, you also gave TARP, never once vetoed a bloated budget and a few other items of consternation to those who believe the government smokes our dollars stuffed with wacky weed.
So stop putting your foot in your mouth and enjoy your retirement.
BTW, Laura looks lovely.
Two more things that irk me:
Sarbanes- Oxley was a travesty on companies and their employees who hoped to get rich from an IPO, which sadly because of SOX we have damn few of.
Patriot Act- This frickin’ scam violate our rights in many instances or steps just across the line with one foot on both sides. Moreover, it’s just plain un-American.
Shut up and sing, George.
Yes, but that means you have to track them all down and aren’t the open borders people against this?
And those who don’t learn english and/or pay a fine are still illegal immigrants, and so will we just ignore them as we have the past 20 years?
It makes no sense.
Crawford was a political prop. He lives in Dallas now.
BTW, Laura looks lovely.
Laura Bush is a pro-abortion and pro gay marriage Democrat.
According to the Mexican president Vincente Fox at the time of 9/11 Bush was going to throw the borders wide open in preparation for an EU like NAU. But those planes hit the world trade center
and that made such a move politically impossible.
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