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.
Read my lips:
NO MORE BUSHES!!!!
My guess is this book of his may kill his brother’s chances.
At least the dope had the decency to wait until AFTER the General election to come back into the light with the book. He and it would only have hurt us.
I can’t fix that stuff.
Laura is still a beautiful woman and I love her laugh.
In his book, does he reprise those old favorites?
“Doing jobs Americans won’t do.”
“Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande.”
I’m sure I forgot some, but...
“I’ll see you at the bill signing.”
The Heritage Foundation concluded that the cost of amnesty alone would be $2.6 trillion for just the entitlement costs. And the number of additional LEGAL immigrants who would join those who were the recipients of amnesty through chain migration, i.e., family reunification, would approach 70 million over a 20-year period, assuming there are only 12 million illegal aliens. We cannot assimilate such numbers. An amnesty would destroy the United States of America with the stroke of a pen.
Not very “compassionate” to American blue collar workers who compete with this wave of cheap labor subsidized by welfare.
Not his love for Amnesty and the illegal resource sucking criminals.
Puerto Rico.......When Puerto Ricans moved to the mainland, as citizens they had a right to vote. Ain't sayin' I agree, but that's how it all started.
Actually, with one change I think his immigration bill would have been a pretty good solution. But instead of any path to citizenship for the already-here illegals, it should have merely stated that the path to citizenship begins ~in mexico~. Start there, not here. That would’ve been simple and easy to explain. You wanna be legal? Go get in line.
The rest of it, with the improvements to the border, the better management of worker-visas... the rest was OK.
Compared the minutemen to vigilantes.
Well then, thank God for Ideology!
This man is an asshat!
| We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture. Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende. For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America. Our future cannot be separated from the future of Latin America. As I speak, we are celebrating the success of democracy in Mexico. George Bush from a campaign speech in Miami, August 2000. |
Here is an excerpt of a good critique of that speech:
In equating our intimate historic bonds to our mother country and to Canada with our ties to Mexico, W. shows a staggering ignorance of the civilizational facts of life. The reason we are so close to Britain and Canada is that we share with them a common historical culture, language, literature, and legal system, as well as similar standards of behavior, expectations of public officials, and so on. My Bush Epiphany By Lawrence Auster
Notice: Illegal to call 'em illegal.. they are to be called essential workers to fill America's critical labor shortage. That is immigration reform.
-- The Government.
After Bush took office in 2001, he often said that better relations with Mexico was his number one foreign policy goal. Of course, he wasn’t telling us about his amnesty for illegals plan, just a lot of feel good stuff. But 9/11 happened and that side-tracked him for the rest of his first term.
Then, after lying about his stance on amnesty during a 2004 debate with Kerry, he and Rove starting pushing amnesty (while refusing to admit they were pushing amnesty) and pushed it throughout most of his second term. That and a few other divisive moves did incalculable harm to the Republican cause and paved the way for Obama and the large Dim majorities in Congress.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Archive/Bush_Kerry_3_Immigration.htm
I did miss him, but when he says dumb stuff like this, I dont.
Thats a really good way to put it. I miss much of the things he did, yet on some big issues, he was sticking it to everyone.
W, you missed one thing at the time and obviously you still are missing it. We wanted the BORDERS CLOSED FIRST!
We tried “amnesty first, monitor borders second” under Reagan and the monitoring NEVER occurred.
During the debate, the voices spoke loudly that we wanted the borders closed first and then let’s debate “pathways to citizenship.” And what were we called? We were called VIGILANTES!!!
No, it was Bush's refusal to listen to the millions of phone calls to him and Congress demanding that they "Secure the borders first". It seems these four words were too much for them to understand. To them it seemed easier to just ram it down America's throat than to do their duty first, and only then, move on with immigration reform and deciding what to do with the illegals already here.
After reading this, less than ever.
Ok, so hopefully those drooling over this putz all week will finally remember what a RINO he was on nearly everything except the war on terror. I DO NOT miss George W. Bush. He was better than Obama to be sure, but America deserves better than either one of them.
You would have thought Bush would have learned a thing or two from Ramos and Compean, or murdered rancher Robert Krentz, or Obama's war on SB1070. But no, he has learned NOTHING, and calls our opposition a "blend of isolationism, protectionism and nativism". How dare he smear us like that. It is called PATRIOTISM, Mr. President, and you ought to apologize for smearing Americans who want to stop illegals from stealing Americans jobs, keep drug cartel mayhem and DUI maniacs from harming our families, and who recognize that serious terrorists are far more likely to cross the Mexican border (perhaps with plutonium) than subject themselves to one of those body scanners. Can we now expect him to come out against Jan Brewer et al in AZ, and support the DREAM Act?
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