Posted on 04/26/2006 5:20:12 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
President Bush generally favors plans to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at U.S. citizenship without leaving the country, but does not want to be more publicly supportive because of opposition among conservative House Republicans, according to senators who attended a recent White House meeting.
Several officials familiar with the meeting also said Democrats protested radio commercials that blamed them for Republican-written legislation that passed the House and would make illegal immigrants vulnerable to felony charges.
Bush said he was unfamiliar with the ads, which were financed by the Republican National Committee, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
At another point, Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other members of his party pressed the president about their concern that any Senate-passed bill would be made unpalatable in final talks with the House.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat, said the lawmaker who would lead House negotiators, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, had been "intractable" in negotiations on other high-profile bills in the past. Bush did not directly respond to the remark, officials said.
The Republican and Democratic officials who described the conversation did so Wednesday on condition of anonymity, saying they had not been authorized to disclose details.
Bush convened the session to give momentum to the drive for election-year immigration legislation, a contentious issue that has triggered large street demonstrations and produced divisions in both political parties. Senators of both parties emerged from the session praising the president's involvement and said the timetable was achievable.
"Yes, he thinks people should be given a path to citizenship," said Sen. Mel Martinez., R-Fla., a leading supporter of immigration legislation in the Senate.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Truman, Nixon, Bush Sr., LBJ, and just about a third of all Presidents in the history of the US.
You've posted full facts? Hardly.
Documentation required from me but not by you, though repeatedly asked? Fine. Here's some more (and I'd appreciate the courtesy if you would finally do the same, as asked for repeatedly regarding my first paragraph).
Bush budget scraps 9,790 border patrol agents
President uses law's escape clause to drop funding for new homeland security force
Michael Hedges, Houston Chronicle
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
....Officially approved by Bush on Dec. 17 after extensive bickering in Congress, the National Intelligence Reform Act included the requirement to add 10,000 border patrol agents in the five years beginning with 2006....But Bush's proposed 2006 budget, revealed Monday, funds only 210 new border agents.
The shrunken increase reflects the lack of money for an army of border guards and the capacity to train them, officials said.
Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
March 16, 2005
We are seeing an increase of 137 percent in immigrants who are from countries other than Mexico. These immigrants, which are called OTMs, "other than Mexicans," are coming into our country in the largest numbers we have ever seen. But due to a lack of resources, they are often caught and released, or they are not caught at all.Recognizing our serious border vulnerability, Congress passed the intelligence reform bill last year and authorized an increase of 10,000 Border Patrol agents over 5 years. It included provisions to add 8,000 detention beds and 800 additional interior investigators. Unfortunately, the [President's] budget before us only allocated enough to cover 210 agents, 143 investigators, and 1,920 beds for detention.
The Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently said:
We do not have enough agents; we don't have enough technology to give us the security we need.
Let me give you some examples of recent happenings.
In Detroit, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani was indicted in the Eastern District of Michigan on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to Hezbollah. Kourani was already in custody for entering the country illegally through Mexico and was involved in fundraising activities on behalf of Hezbollah.The two groups of Arab males were discovered by patrol guards from Willcox, AZ. One field agent said:
These guys didn't speak Spanish, and they were speaking to each other in Arabic. It's ridiculous that we don't take this more seriously. We're told not to say a thing to the media.
This is a field agent for the Border Patrol.
* * * When I first came to Congress, we doubled our Border Patrol agents from 3,000 to 6,000. We were a country that was porous, both on the borders of Canada and Mexico. But, clearly, we have had more and more influx of illegal aliens that have become a burden in many parts of our country, and now we have a security threat from people who do not live on our borders but are using our borders as a conduit to come into our country. The examples that Senator Ensign and I have just mentioned, where we are finding Muslim prayer rugs and instructions in Arabic on how to cross the border of the Rio Grande River, are just wake-up calls that we cannot avoid. So we are, hopefully, going to have the support of Congress to add a full 2,000 Border Patrol agents.But as important as it is to catch these people, we also need to be able to detain them. Today, many times, because we have no detention facilities, we will say to the people: You must promise to come back in 60 days for your hearing on illegally entering this country.
Well, guess how many come back. Ten percent come back for their hearing. What happened to the other 90 percent? We are finding them in places such as Vermont, New York, and Detroit, MI. That is what happened to them.
So the answer is for the President to stop them at the border? Seems to me if the state of California wasn't offering them such a nice benefits package it would be a lot easier to work on this problem.
are you for vigilantes in the United States of America ????
That's true. I disagree with his policies but he does say what he means and acts on it. Much of the so called Bush Conservative agenda never was spoken by him and never existed to begin with.
He told everyone plainly before the election He and Mr Gore were not that far apart on most issues. He didn't lie about that one either. Still even that did not convince the voters as to what he stands for.
Bush in the 1960's would have been a LBJ Democrat. With each deal like this {I don't need the article to know Bush is pushing for citizenship for illegals} Bush makes achieving any form of conservative agenda an impossibility.
Any Conservative Republicans wishing reelection would do wise to distant themselves from the White House agenda omn immigration. Make no mistake about it if the GOP doesn't stand firm on no amnesty, go home and apply legally, and a secure border it will loose both houses 2006 & the Oval Office in 2008.
The only good coming from this debate is for those who don't sip the kool-aid it is exposing the globalist currently in both parties.
Did you just forget, or what?
It's...or what.
The article you show simply quotes Bush as saying the word "vigilantes". If one wishes to show that Bush called the Minuteman vigilantes then one should show the full quote and the full context of the quote.
How unreasonable, huh?
Stick around. Their emotional bantering and "head in the sand" spin is amusing.
Facts don't matter.
Actually, under the governorship of Pete Wilson, CA passed a propostion that would have denied a lot of services to illegals, but a Carter appointed judge overturned it and then Gray Davis had his AG drop the appeal that Wilson's AG had filed.
BTW, don't put claim words I wrote that I didn't.
"For starters" does not mean "only". What's the biggest city in Maine?
I doubt it.
Well...those Rinos. See what they did!
; )
Look y'all.....it's Dan Rather!
Regrettably, you're spot on with that assessment.
Bush just lost the support that put him in office. A sad day to witness....IMO.
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Rush said it today, there are essentially three political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, against the CONSERVATIVES.
And yet .. I keep hearing how Democrats in office would be better for us
I have yet to figure out the logic of that one
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