Posted on 03/22/2010 8:09:39 AM PDT by ejdrapes
Candidate Obama was direct, specific and seemingly sincere when he promised three things on immigration: to create secure borders, to remove incentives to enter the U.S. illegally and crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, and to bring people out of the shadows.
For those who believed that, well ... never mind. Those campaign message points are ones anyone could agree with. (I would add that there should be a fourth point: no amnesty.) The details may end up being different than his press releases, but let’s take him at his word for a moment.
What’s wrong is the president’s approach. He included only a passing reference to comprehensive immigration reform in his State of the Union speech this year, and then promptly punted to Congress. Congress? We have seen how well that has worked for the president’s other initiatives this past year. Having had a little experience passing legislation, it is obvious the president is not prioritizing this effort. Passing major legislation works best when the president uses his megaphone to talk about the issue — and Members can amplify it when they join in — and then work with Congress. If left up to Congress alone to drive a message, an issue as complex as immigration will fragment into a million shards on the floor.
Illegal immigration and our broken immigration system is a serious matter and should be a Congressional and presidential priority. Difficult? Yes. But sometimes the things that are the most difficult are the things that most need to be done.
And, for a faltering president with a disappearing agenda, immigration is one issue, despite its complexity and challenges, where the president could find some bipartisan support and success — that is, if he approaches it correctly.
Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are expected to introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation soon. I don’t know what it will contain. I don’t know that I’ll support it. But whatever specific provisions it includes, I know that their bill, along with a major immigration march scheduled for this month in Washington, D.C., will reignite the immigration debate.
Given the complexity and the magnitude of the problem, if immigration reform has any chance of bipartisan success, either this year or next, it must contain border security measures much stronger than the current law. What we are doing now just doesn’t work. As a matter of national security, we absolutely must secure our borders.
We also must find a way for people who are here illegally to pay taxes and get right with the law. The legislation must create a program so businesses have the employees they need — such as a fair and efficiently run guest-worker program. In Texas we know firsthand that the only reliable measurement for knowing how many people we need here to take these jobs is the marketplace.
What we don’t need is another czar, summit or federal agency that creates artificial limitations on supply and demand. To be successful, immigration legislation must be the product of a bipartisan effort and can’t be written in the deep recesses of the AFL-CIO.
Our country will never build a wall tall enough or a ditch wide enough to keep a man from feeding his family. Finding a comprehensive solution to illegal immigration means that isn’t our only answer. Unfortunately, the president seems to have other priorities.
Former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was Majority Leader and Majority Whip.
I never said he was.
Please read my post again, and I will quote exactly what I said, ok?
“Hey Delay, its precisely because of brain dead policies like this by you and Bush that the Republicans got booted out of power in the first place”
Note, I said "Republicans got booted out of power", not Tom Delay. Ge it?
“He filed an “ethics” charge that the partisan prosecutor Ronnie Earle took up and STILL has not brought to trial 4 years later’
I am fully aware of that.
“Are you happier with Pete Olson in Tom DeLay’s seat? Nancy Pelosi running Congress?”
Nope.
But then if the Republicans(including Delay) had kept to fiscal conservatism which they run on, instead of going on a spending spree and ignoring all appeals by conservatives to rein on their spending, maybe we wouldn't be in our present predicament.
“I would add that there should be a fourth point: no amnesty.”
Citizenship is what amnesty is about. This is not about granting citizenship or even putting them on the path to citizenship.
A turnstile of low income migratory labor. GUEST workers. What part of the word “guest” (as in not permanently here) do you misunderstand?
END Welfare now and you will see American workers push for no guest workers.
But for now you have Americans on the dole ready to vote Democrat (or Republican) and accept “santuary cities” in their state.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/12/03/dick-armey-immigration/
In addition, Dick Armey was accused by multiple co-eds when he became a college instructor. One female student actually transferred to another school.
Armey, who was one of the major Clinton critics, left his wife of 30+ years and is now married to a former student, so I would say the accusations appear to have merit.
Like Keene, DeLay, Norquist, etc. Armey is using the conservative movement to line his pockets.
That’s just too bad. Thanks for the info. :(
A limited amnesty is like being a little bit pregnant. Rule #1 should be the Rule of Law and the enforcement of our existing immigration laws.
Instead, we have a sorry tract record of immigration advocates like Grahamnesty, Chuckie and McCain opposing the exclusion of the most undesirable of the lot even in return for amnesty.
Not so. They have been playing the game of saying that we should deport the 2 million or so criminal illegal aliens and allow the "good behavior" illegals to stay and pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line on an earned path to citizenship. They should all go regardless of whether they are "criminals or not." They all broke the law, which says that anyone entering this country illegally should be deported.
Kyl was part of the McCain cabal that tried to force McCain-Kennedy thru bypassing the committee process and limitiing amendments.
“Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are expected to introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation soon. I don’t know what it will contain. I don’t know that I’ll support it. But whatever specific provisions it includes, I know that their bill, along with a major immigration march scheduled for this month in Washington, D.C., will reignite the immigration debate.”
Well, Tom, you squishy republican, it’s just like McCain/Kennedy. Like he thought it would be anything different.
And YES, it is AMNESTY, no matter what McPain tries to call it.
[snip]The announcement also coincided with the release of an outline for amnesty legislation authored by Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
According to the outline, illegal aliens would be required to admit that they broke the law, pay an unspecified fine for having settled illegally in the U.S., pay back taxes (which should have been paid anyway), and fulfill some minor civic requirements. In addition, the outline calls for increases in future immigration to the United States. The concrete benefits for the people who violated U.S. immigration laws are offset by vague promises of future immigration enforcement.
******The Schumer-Graham plan appears to be a near carbon copy of the McCain-Kennedy-Bush amnesty legislation that was resoundingly rejected by the American people in 2007,****** said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). “The public believed amnesty was fundamentally unfair, harmful to the interests of law-abiding citizens and legal immigrants, and prohibitively expensive to American taxpayers. Since the last attempt to pass amnesty, U.S. unemployment has more than doubled, the size of the federal deficit has grown tenfold, and nearly every state government is facing a fiscal crisis.”
I agree. After last night’s debacle, we have no choice in our party but to embrace amnesty, such that the inflow of illegal aliens who end up being legalized embrace the Republican party as equally as the Democratic party.
If we fail to embrace them, the conservative movement is doomed for 8 decades or more.
That is an amnesty. And with a green card they can sponsor approximately 70 million family members as legal immigrants thru chain migration, i.e., family reunification. This will cost $2.6 trillion according to the Heritage Foundation.
And trying to prevent people with green cards from eventually becoming citizens is politically and legally unsustainable.
“As a rule of thumb, Congressional legislation that is bipartisan is usually twice as bad as legislation that is partisan.”-Thomas Sowell
Sounds like he has Newt Gingrich Disease.
53% of immigrant headed families are on welfare. The poverty rate for immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) is 17 percent, nearly 50 percent higher than the rate for natives and their children.
We import poverty with the vast majority of the 1.2 million LEGAL IMMIGRANTS who enter this country annually being poor and uneducated.
Milton Friedman said, “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” We have just expanded the welfare state exponentially with Obamacare.
“
I agree. After last night’s debacle, we have no choice in our party but to embrace amnesty, such that the inflow of illegal aliens who end up being legalized embrace the Republican party as equally as the Democratic party.
If we fail to embrace them, the conservative movement is doomed for 8 decades or more”
_____________________________
Oh, please, that old argument has been proven wrong by every election. How would you suggest we ‘embrace’ them...we embraced and gave them all they wanted with Bush & McCain, that wasn’t enough. They get free healthcare, food, housing...we don’t follow our own laws against them, deportation, etc......what else?
They will never stop demanding more, they are from socialist 3rd world holes and will never be conservative.
A falsehood is repeated by open border advocates which I will address here:
The lie, “anti-illegal immigration people cost the repubs the 2006 election!!
The truth:11.5% of all Republican seats in Congress were lost as Democrats took back control of Congress
But only 6.7% of the Members of Tancredo’s Immigration Reform Caucus lost their seats.AND- one of them was Hayworth who voted against HR 4437!
# 9.6% with an A grade lost
# 25.0% with an F grade lost
http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/electionanalysis.html
__________
Over and over the USA public is against ‘legalization’ and wants fewer legal immigrants. Your’s is a minority opinion.
See keyword: immigrationpoll
What the GOP really needs is more “conservatives” like Tom DeLay. /s
Myth #1 - there is no such thing as a Pro Life Democrat
Myth #2 - there is no such thing as a recipient of immigration amnesty who registers to vote Republican
Love it
Live it
Learn it
Oh, and the majority will stop it? Yeah, just like health care. Tell me something original, and yet, truthful.
I’m sorry, you learned nothing from our defeat last night. I won’t try to convince you otherwise, merely point you to the facts.
There is a difference between being a defeatist, and learning from your defeat so you know how to play the game next time. You obviously didn’t learn.
What is the old saying? “Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.”
Good luck on that.
“I’m sorry, you learned nothing from our defeat last night. I won’t try to convince you otherwise, merely point you to the facts.”
NO, I gave you facts, you ignored them and continued your emotional rant.
Now, we’re done.
No, amnesty is about rewarding illegal behavior by allowing these people to stay and work here. You don't have to be a citizen to reap the benefits of citizenship save voting. Green card holders are eligible for all of the benefits the welfare state offers. And their children and grandchildren will be citizens and vote Democrat because they are the party of free stuff.
A turnstile of low income migratory labor. GUEST workers. What part of the word “guest” (as in not permanently here) do you misunderstand?
Guest workers don't go home. Moreover, they depress wages and incur social costs subsidized by the taxpayer.
By increasing the supply of labor between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of native-born men by an estimated $1,700 or roughly 4 percent. Among natives without a high school education, who roughly correspond to the poorest tenth of the workforce, the estimated impact was even larger, reducing their wages by 7.4 percent. The reduction in earnings occurs regardless of whether the immigrants are legal or illegal, permanent or temporary. It is the presence of additional workers that reduces wages, not their legal status.
END Welfare now and you will see American workers push for no guest workers.
Yeah and if pigs had wings they could fly. We have 60 million people on Medicaid. Close to 40 million are on food stamps and unemployment benefits have been extended for up to two years. Where are the votes going to come from to eliminate welfare? Almost 50% of the population pays no income taxes.
In principle, I agree with you. In practice, I don't see how it is politically possible. An amnesty visa for each more desirable (or even least undesirable) illegal alien in return for permanent deportation of the most undesirable illegal aliens is, at least, a partially desirable outcome.
As you say the "advocates" have been playing the game of saying that we should deport the 2 million or so criminal illegal aliens and allow the "good behavior" illegals to stay under certain conditions. You and I both know that a game is all it is. When push comes to shove, nobody gets deported and everybody stays. The vote which I reproduced on the Cornyn amendment makes that crystal clear.
We’re done, alright, if we go against amnesty. Mark my words, and I will be back to remind you on this thread just after November elections.
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