Bush Attacks Immigration Deal Opponents

GLYNCO, Ga. (AP) - President Bush attacked opponents of an immigration deal Tuesday, suggesting they “don’t want to do what’s right for America.”

“The fundamental question is, will elected officials have the courage necessary to put a comprehensive immigration plan in place,” Bush said against a backdrop of a huge American flag.

He described his proposal—which has been agreed to by a bipartisan group of senators—as one that “makes it more likely we can enforce our border—and at the same time uphold the great immigrant tradition of the United States of America.”

He chose the get-tough setting as conservative critics blast a Senate proposal as being soft on people who break the law. Hoping to blunt that message, Bush emphasized that any new options for immigrants and foreign workers would not start until tougher security is in place.

The presidential stop came during a congressional recess, with senators back home and facing pressure from the left and right on the immigration plan. Bush’s aim is to build momentum for the legislation, perhaps his best chance for a signature victory in his second term. The Senate expects to resume debate on it next week.

“A lot of Americans are skeptical about immigration reform, primarily because they don’t think the government can fix the problems,” Bush said.

“And my answer to the skeptics is: give us a chance to fix the problems in a comprehensive way that enforces our border and treats people with decency and respect. Give us a chance to fix this problem. Don’t try to kill this bill before it gets moving,” Bush told students and instructors at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

“Those determined to find fault with this bill will always be able to look at a narrow slice of it and find something they don’t like,” the president said. “If you want to kill the bill, if you don’t want to do what’s right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it.

“You can use it to frighten people,” Bush said. “Or you can show leadership and solve this problem once and for all.”

The bill would give temporary legal status to millions of unlawful immigrants, provided they came forward, paid a fine and underwent criminal background checks. To apply for a green card, they would have to pay another fine, learn English, return to their home country and wait in line.

The plan also would create a guest worker program. It would allow foreign laborers to come to the U.S. for temporary stints, yet with no guarantee they can eventually gain citizenship.

Both the new visa plan and the temporary worker program are contingent on other steps coming first. Those include fencing and barriers along the Mexico border, the hiring of more Border Patrol agents and the completion of an identification system to verify employees’ legal status.

The legislation would also reshape future immigration decisions. A new point system would prioritize skills and education over family in deciding who can immigrate.

Georgia’s senators both played leading roles in producing Bush’s deal with the Senate. Yet they have also said they may not support the final bill, depending upon how it is amended.

Bush chastised those who say the proposal offers amnesty to illegal immigrants. He called it empty political rhetoric.

As a side note. All sorts of diseases are appearing now, that were conquered in the USA many years ago and are due now mostly to the flood of illegal aliens coming here.

Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/tuberculosis_infection;_ylt=AsFSanaXHOrzqglAs7wiEaWs0NUE

TB case brings warning to air passengers

5/29/07

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer
A man with a rare and exceptionally dangerous form of tuberculosis has been placed in quarantine by the U.S. government after possibly exposing passengers and crew on two trans-Atlantic flights this month, health officials said Tuesday.

It is the first time since 1963 that the government issued a quarantine order. The last such order was to quarantine a patient with smallpox, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC urged people on the same flights to get checked for tuberculosis.

The government issued the order after a CDC official reached the man by phone in Italy and told him not to take commercial flights, but he flew back to North America anyway, said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine.

“He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back,” Cetron said.

The infected man flew from Atlanta to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385. He returned to North America on May 24 aboard Czech Air Flight 0104 from Prague to Montreal. The man then drove into the United States.

Cetron reached the man once he was back in the United States. At that point, he voluntarily went to a New York hospital, then was flown by the CDC to an Atlanta-area hospital. He is not facing prosecution, health officials said. Federal officials declined to release details about him.

The man is hospitalized in Atlanta in respiratory isolation, according to the World Health Organization.

He was potentially infectious at the time of the flights, so CDC officials recommended medical exams for cabin crew members on those flights, as well as passengers sitting in the same rows or within two rows.

CDC officials did not release row numbers but said the airlines were working with health officials to contact those passengers. Passengers who should be tested will be contacted by health officials from their home countries, Cetron said.

The man told health officials he was not coughing during the flights. Tests indicated the amount of TB bacteria in him was low, so passengers are not considered to be at high risk of infection, Cetron said.

The man, who went on the trip with his wife, also traveled within Europe, but CDC officials said they did not have information to release about how he made the trips. His wife is not considered a public health risk, Cetron said.

CDC officials said they are concentrating on investigating the trans-Atlantic flights, when possibility of spread of the disease was greatest.

The man was infected with “extensively drug-resistant” TB, also called XDR-TB. It resists many drugs used to treat the infection. Last year, there were two U.S. cases of that strain.

Because of antibiotics and other measures, the TB rate in the United States has been falling for years. Last year, it hit an all-time low of 13,767 cases, or about 4.6 cases per 100,000 Americans.

Tuberculosis kills nearly 2 million people each year worldwide.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/tuberculosis_infection;_ylt=AsFSanaXHOrzqglAs7wiEaWs0NUE

I've read 30 posts so far and found nothing but rage. You get the feeling you have no political power? You don't.

I have to give you credit, as a group, you're doing pretty well cowing the senators and congressmen on this issue. Your faxes and phone calls seem to have some effect.

But on other threads, I have tried to forward a theory why we Americans have such a hard time controlling the political class in this country. That theory would explain why you are so mad now, why you feel the President is forcing this amnesty down your throats. No it is not because they are misbehaved, or need to be educated in Constitutional Principles. What ails us now was designed into the system from the beginning.

My thinking is along these lines: The States after the Revolution inherited much in the way of legal traditions, English Common Law, individual Rights, from the colonies. Despite the fact that the King was abusing the colonies, the people of the colonies saw themselves as inheritors of legal traditions going back to the Magna Carta. When the colonial governments were phased out and replaced by State governments, the States inherited much of what went before in the way of liberty protecting institutions.

Call me a nut if you must but consider, when the federal government was created and given a small amount of land to play in, it inherited nothing, because nothing came before it. There was no colony that was made into it, no State, nothing. There were no Citizens, no people with allegiance to the federal government. And no bill of rights for those who would eventually become citizens of the federal government once Congress got the idea to solicit for new citizens, who, of course, were told they had two citizenships, one of the state, and one federal. The people of the States were guaranteed a Republican form of government and they got it, but over the years the ancestors of those people have been reduced to "residents" of states and citizens only of the United States, i.e., the federal government. I describe the process here.

It has become an article of faith, not fact, among the people that the Bill of Rights (which are actually restrictions on the federal governments scope of power to the States and the people), applies to everyone.

This faith is held in vain and is actually damaging because it prevents the population from extracting itself from federal citizenship and returning to State Citizenship where they actually can claim to have political rights.

I am in the process of verifying this court case, but I will put it here just the same:

Quote: I have no doubt that those born in the Territories, or in the District of Columbia, are so far citizens as to entitle them to the protection guaranteed to citizens of the United States** in the Constitution, and to the shield of nationality abroad; but it is evident that they have not the political rights which are vested in citizens of the States. They are not constituents of any community in which is vested any sovereign power of government. Their position partakes more of the character of subjects than of citizens. They are subject to the laws of the United States**, but have no voice in its management. If they are allowed to make laws, the validity of these laws is derived from the sanction of a Government in which they are not represented. Mere citizenship they may have, but the political rights of citizens they cannot enjoy until they are organized into a State, and admitted into the Union. [People v. De La Guerra, 40 Cal. 311, 342 (1870)]

The above case is about federal citizens and the character of their citizenship as long as they remain a territory. The judge says if they want political rights they have to beome a state. I'm saying that we have let our State Citizenship status lapse, and the political rights along with them, and are viewed as purely federal citizens now and the reduced subject-like rights that go along with that. It is almost as if we have as a population and over generations reverted from Citizens of States, back to the (small c) citizens of territories and the District of Columbia by way of federal citizenship. It doesn't matter that you "live" in a State, you merely reside there as a "Resident." On all forms you claim U.S. citizen, which puts you at the same level as a citizen of the Territories back when we had them, and DC.

If you want to review the string of posts regarding this topic, you can find them here, going back to about 5/22. I simply started observing that "it's all about" federal citizenship these days. The States have been marginalized as sovereign entities, and since it is all about federal citizenship. Inoccuous laws have been passed in Virginia having to do with Legal Presence . Again the process is in place to get you to start and continue asserting federal citizenship, even when interacting with your State. To establish legal presence in Virginia to get a drivers license, you need a U.S. passport (fine by me), a U.S. birth certificate. Emphasis mine. The part of it I have a problem with is "U.S." why is the U.S. handling my birth certificate? For people born in a State, the State should handle its own birth certificates. The U.S. has taken over EVERYTHING that used to be of the State including protector of liberties. The joke is you don't have any as a U.S. citizen. Read the court case again. Where is the federal bill of rights for federal citizens which we are all now? There is none. That is why the federal government seems unresponsive to the will of the people, they haven't viewed us as individuals possessing political rights for a very long time.

And this is why threatening never to vote for a Republican again doesn't scare them----Democrat or Republican, they both have the right to rule federal citizens as they see fit. So it wouldn't matter if you voted in a Libertarian, or a Constitution Party President, because they'd view you as federal citizens entitled to no rights just like the other parties do. If we could get 200 million citizens to go back to being State Citizens viewing their State as the focus of Sovereignty and having allegiance only to it, then the Congress would have to listen.

Some still fighting the so-called civil war are wont to say, "The South will rise again." That is not what we need. What we really need is for all States, North AND South, to rise again, assert their sovereignty, and have their Residents go back to being State Citizens. And let the federal government, that is a City-State Democracy that inherited nothing in the way of liberty protecting institutions from anywhere, lose its pseudo-citizens (except for those that continue to reside in DC)

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