Free Republic

An ambitious agricultural guest-worker plan died with a whimper and not a bang this week, as senators quietly dropped the proposal from an Iraq war spending bill. With little ceremony and no debate, a quick parliamentary maneuver late Tuesday night killed California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's guest-worker plan. The plan would have given temporary legal status to 1.35 million illegal immigrant farm workers, as well as their spouses and children. "We knew it was an uphill battle, but we thought it was one worth fighting," Scott Gerber, Feinstein's press secretary, said Wednesday. Still, the unexpected revival and equally abrupt demise...

NION CITY - Republican presidential candidate John McCain joined Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in calling today for comprehensive immigration reform, including guest worker visas to bring employees to California's Silicon Valley and the state's vast agricultural fields. The two men brought up the issue at McCain's prompting during a global competitiveness roundtable featuring California technology executives and entrepreneurs. Asked by Silicon Valley panelists on what he would do to grant more visa for skilled technology workers, McCain broadly advocated the comprehensive immigration reform plan he had backed with Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy in Congress. The same issue brought McCain intense criticism...

<p>Bush administration to make dramatic changes to increase numbers of legal foreign workers to harvest crops.</p> <p>The Bush administration today plans to announce the most significant overhaul in two decades of the nation's agricultural guest worker program, in a bid to dramatically increase the number of legal foreign laborers available to harvest crops.</p>

Mike Huckabee cannot be trusted on immigration matters. I'll say that again: Mike Huckabee cannot be trusted on immigration matters. In fact, just after releasing a plan that unfortunately took in some people, he now admitted on Fox News Sunday (link, video below) what I suspected: his plan includes a revolving door whereby former illegal aliens would leave the U.S. only to return within "days, maybe weeks" as legal workers. He didn't specify whether they'd just be coming back as "guest" workers with no chance at citizenship, but considering that he's supported a "pathway to citizenship" in the past, and...

ODESSA, Texas (AP) - President Bush's former deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, says the government will need a temporary worker program to be successful with immigration reform. Rove said the program is needed reduce pressure on the nation's border security apparatus. But he says the details of such a program haven't been explained to the American public well. He also says the U.S. Border Patrol will need to be doubled and its budget tripled with 300 miles of fence built. The comments came yesterday as part of the John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute's Distinguished Lecture Series at the...

For years, the vast majority of politicians in the main parties have avoided having honest public conversation about the extent and consequences of immigration. The fear of appearing racist, or giving any ground to the arguments of the far right, has left most MPs and commentators in Pollyanna territory - extolling the economic and cultural benefits of immigration and glossing over problems. That has done the nation no favours, because the consequences of rapid social change have been scarcely studied, let alone addressed. And it has increased many people's distrust of the political universe, as the gulf between their own...

It has been an unusually violent week for Amsterdam's western Slotervaart district. Cars were torched and youths clashed with police on several consecutive nights after a 22-year-old ethnic Moroccan was shot dead at a police station. He was killed by a policewoman he had just stabbed a number of times. The riots that followed reminded Amsterdam's Chief Commissioner Bernard Welten of a major nightmare for Western European cities: violence on a Parisian scale. Every major town in the Netherlands has its share of so-called problem youths, the type of violent adolescents who gang up to terrorise the neighbourhood. Many of...

WASHINGTON -- With a nationwide farmworker shortage threatening to leave unharvested fruits and vegetables rotting in fields, the Bush administration has begun quietly rewriting federal regulations to eliminate barriers that restrict how foreign laborers can be brought into the country legally. The urgent effort, under way at the U.S. departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor, is meant to help farm owners caught in a vice between an impossibly complex process to hire legal guest-workers and stepped-up enforcement that has reduced the number of undocumented planters and pickers crossing the border. "It is important for the farm sector to have...

Senator to assure that farm legislation is a priority in today's Fresno appearance. WASHINGTON -- Get ready for another ride on the immigration roller coaster. Today, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein will be assuring a San Joaquin Valley audience that Congress will once more take up a big agricultural guest-worker bill. A top priority for Valley farmers, the bill soon could resurface on Capitol Hill. "Agriculture is going to push this thing," Manuel Cunha, president of the Fresno-based Nisei Farmers League, said Wednesday. The agricultural guest-worker package is getting its second wind two months after comprehensive immigration reform collapsed in the...

Landscapers in the United States often have two choices when it comes to labor: a difficult search for locals to do the job — or hiring ready, willing and undocumented immigrants. When former San Antonio City Councilman Richard Perez hires for his family-owned business, he prefers a lesser-known but legal and sometimes viable third option: guest workers from Mexico. As the U.S. Senate stalemated over comprehensive immigration reform this month, it was immigration policy as usual for Perez, on his third trip this year to the U.S. Consulate here to help five applicants get H-2 visas to work for Fairway...

Cloture fails, 50-45. Immigration bill pulled off floor by Sen. Reid. ... It can't really be about how many amendments Republicans get to offer. ... Alternative: Maybe it's about not being able to take the worst ideas from the left (instant legalization of illegals) and the right (second class guest workers), put them together, call it centrism, bask in fawning MSM coverage and ram it down the throat of voters who don't want it!

...But as the emotionally charged issue of immigration consumes the U.S. Senate and the nation this month, skilled foreign professionals are almost as contentious a part of the restructuring debate as impoverished illegal immigrants.. In many ways, the proposed legislation favors high-skilled immigrants and the industries that employ them. It would increase the ceiling on new H-1B professional visas, which allow one- to six-year stays, from 65,000 to 115,000 a year... Companies that rely on skilled foreign workers say they desperately need more of them, but opponents see their proliferation as an invisible blight on the economy. They argue that...

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Wednesday to slash the number of foreign workers who could come to the U.S. on temporary visas as part of a broad bipartisan immigration bill. A new guest worker program would be capped at 200,000 a year under the proposal, which passed 74-24 over strong opposition by the Bush administration. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the change, proposed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., would interfere with a "central component" of the White House-backed immigration measure. That plan provided for 400,000 worker visas annually, plus an option to increase that number to 600,000 if market conditions...

WASHINGTON --- Sen. Chuck Grassley today said the immigration reform bill being debated in the U.S. Senate is riddled with loopholes and flaws. During a speech on the Senate floor, he outlined for the American people nearly 30 flaws within only two sections of the bill. “I was burned once in 1986 when I voted for amnesty believing that it would solve our problems. Now, we have a 12 million illegal immigrant problem. I’m not getting burned again,” Grassley said. “Not only do we have a glide path to citizenship, but it’s a glide path with plenty of loopholes that...

MONTERREY, Mexico — Congress' new immigration plan was bad news for tens of thousands of poor Mexicans who depend on a U.S. guestworker program for temporary jobs in agriculture and other seasonal work, such as landscaping and construction. Millions of would-be migrants have been holding tight to President Bush's promise that they could one day apply for temporary visas to get a glimpse of the American dream. At the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, which hands out more temporary visas than any other consulate or embassy in the world, Edmundo Bermudez, a 36-year-old from the northern city of Durango, said the...

Congress ought to examine and end existing abuses in U.S. guest worker programs before it starts a new one for illegal immigrants, a civil rights group said Monday. The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala., said foreigners hired through programs for farm and non-farm laborers work in conditions akin to indentured servitude. Discrimination based on national origin, race, age, disability and gender is deeply entrenched in the H-2 guest-worker system, the report said. Because they are bound to a single employer and don't have access to legal resources, guest workers are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to...

After President Bush highlighted the need for a temporary-worker program as part of a larger immigration reform in his State of the Union address, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., compared the president's proposal to slavery. Rangel is right to be concerned. Our nation's history with such programs has been dreadful. Many Latinos still have searing memories of the infamous bracero program, which more than 50 years ago became synonymous with worker abuse. The current guest-worker programs for agriculture and other "non-skilled" labor are not much better. Experience tells us that there is good reason to be concerned that a new worker...

Brazil murder fugitive nabbed in Framingham (Mass.)

NEW HAVEN -- A dozen Guatemalan workers filed a federal lawsuit Thursday accusing one of the nation's largest nurseries of engaging in human trafficking by forcing them to work nearly 80 hours per week, paying them less than minimum wage and denying them medical care for injuries on the job. The workers, who filed the lawsuit against Imperial Nurseries in Granby and its labor recruiter, say they were promised jobs planting trees in North Carolina for $7.50 per hour. Instead, they say they were taken in a van to Connecticut without their consent, had their passports confiscated so they would...

It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I only have room for about 700 here so let me be more concise. Just the other day, an editorial cartoon, set in the 1600s, depicted a rowboat full of Pilgrims coming ashore in the New World and encountering a group of Indians constructing a log wall to keep them out. Standing next to a boulder marked "Plymouth Rock" (in case you didn't get it) on the shoreline, one of the Indians, with his arms folded in an unwelcoming position and a disapproving frown on his face, blocked their way....

Over the 2000-2005 period, immigration levels remained very high and roughly half of new immigrant workers were illegal. This report finds that the arrival of new immigrants (legal and illegal) in a state results in a decline in employment among young native-born workers in that state. Our findings indicate that young native-born workers are being displaced in the labor market by the arrival of new immigrants...

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez testifies on Capitol Hill yesterday before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on immigration reform. The Senate immigration bill would require that foreign construction laborers here under the guest-worker program be paid well above the minimum wage, even as American workers at the same work site could earn less. The bill "would guarantee wages to some foreign workers that could be higher than those paid to American workers at the same work site," says a policy paper released this week by the Senate's Republican Policy Committee. "This is unfair to U.S. workers, inappropriate, and unnecessary." The...

Protesters against illegal immigration stated their case Saturday on west Omaha streets. Organizer Tim Narducci estimated that 175 people gathered in the vicinity of 114th and Davenport Streets for a two-hour demonstration. Narducci said there were no incidents or problems in this, the third such protest. The group's primary message encourages Congress to seal the Mexico-United States border with a fence or wall and more manpower. Congress currently is struggling to determine what to do about the millions of people who are in this country illegally. The Senate has passed a bill requiring stiffer border security and an opportunity for...

LOS ANGELES - Former President Bill Clinton praised President Bush on Saturday for supporting reforms that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to seek citizenship but said the debate in Congress is being fomented by Republicans who want to divide America. "I'm proud of him for doing it and I thanked him for doing it," he said of Bush during a "Cafe con Clinton" breakfast speech to the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights advocacy group. Clinton said Bush's roots in Texas — which has one of the nation's largest Hispanic...

CALDWELL, Idaho (AP) -- U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, has sponsored legislation that would allow illegal immigrants who have worked in agriculture in the U.S. for at least three years to remain as temporary workers. But not everyone agreed with Craig's bill at a town hall meeting on Wednesday at Albertson College of Idaho. "Get them out!" shouted some of the 70 people who attended the meeting. "We may disagree on how the problem gets solved," Craig told the crowd, "but I'm hell-bent to solve it." Craig talked about the war in Iraq and salmon recovery, but illegal immigration became...

While the U.S. Congress dithers over how best to stop illegal immigration, the Mexican people may have already decided the issue this past weekend. Mexicans went to the polls Sunday to pick a new president, only the second presidential election in the last 75 years that could be characterized as a truly free and democratic contest. The more conservative, free-trade-oriented candidate, Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN), appears to have eked out a slim victory with a few hundred thousand more votes than the leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Although Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City...

Mexican politicians continuously demand more visas for their citizens, an expanded guest-worker program, and "regularization" of illegal aliens living north of the Rio Grande. While neglecting to mention that the United States admits nearly one million legal newcomers each year, they also fail to publicize: (1) the extremely high salaries they receive, often—in the case of federal and state legislators—more than their counterparts in developed nations that have substantially longer annual sessions, (2) the generous stipends that they grant themselves, including year-end aguinaldos and end-of-term bonuses of tens of thousands of dollars known as bonos de marcha, and (3) the...

Turks make up the largest ethnic minority in Germany, but there are none in Germany's World Cup squad. Snip This is not an accident of timing - there have been very few Turks to play for Germany. The future looks no different. One of Germany's most exciting young players hails from Borussia Dortmund. Nuri Sahin became the youngest player ever to feature in the German Bundesliga last year, at 16 years old. But despite approaches from the German side, he has opted to play international football for Turkey. "I was actually born in Germany but feel more Turkish," said Sahin,...

June 22, 2004, 9:44 a.m. Post-Americans They’ve just “grown� beyond their country. By Mark Krikorian The Wall Street Journal editorial page published another of its periodic eructations on immigration last week. This one was essentially a campaign ad for Utah Congressman Chris Cannon, the administration point-man on immigration in the House of Representatives, who was forced into a primary (being held today) because of his avid support for illegal-alien amnesties. The reason for the Journal editorial, not to mention its sneering tone, is not obvious. Cannon is way ahead of his opponent, former state legislator Matt Throckmorton, according to...

A Florida company wants to implant its Radio Frequency Identification tags in immigrants and guest workers so they can be identified at the workplace. Scott Silverman, chairman of the Delray Beach-based VeriChip Corporation, said in a "Fox & Friends” TV interview that its RFID implant could be used to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities on the job. Illegal immigrants could then be readily distinguished from those who registered. Silverman said: "We have talked to many people in Washington about using it.” The VeriChip RFID tag is about the size of a large grain of rice...

Chain's use of database to fire employees who don't check out angers advocates for immigrants You may have already seen the signs popping up at your local Dunkin' Donuts shop: ``We follow the law! This company hires lawful workers only. " The signs, which have begun appearing in shops around Boston, make public the company's participation, starting June 1, in a voluntary federal program that enables employers to quickly check the immigration status of new hires. The company chose to participate in the program partly because it sometimes receives complaints from customers who assume its workers -- especially those whose...

They say Senate bill needs assurances on living conditions, pay Picking beets, cherries and cotton and shoveling manure on farms across the United States as a Mexican guest worker in the 1940s and 1950s, Cecilio Santillana was glad to earn a few dollars a day. He didn't complain about living in horse stalls without bathrooms or doing stoop work for 12 hours a day without breaks for fear he would be sent back to Chihuahua and lose the steady work that allowed him to support his family in Mexico. But the 78-year-old San Jose man opposes a temporary worker proposal...

Guest Worker Plan Would Be An Easier Sell If ...there was something in it for me. Hm. Or maybe it's just a matter of priorities.As a normal, heterosexual male, I think, actually, that the Federal Government should first put into place a "Guest Husband Plan," or maybe even a "Guest Boyfriend Plan."Admittedly, I'm still working on the details, but it has a lot of promise, doncha think? (As well as a lot of parallels to what is currently being done to us.)

JOSEPH C. PHILLIPS: Guest workers? Or guests that don’t go home? by Joseph C. PhillipsMay 12, 2006In 1952, the United States passed the immigration and nationality act. The act created various categories for non-immigrants entry into the country. One of these was the H-2 program for temporary workers. In the 1950’s, the U.S. Virgin Islands used the H-2 program to allow unskilled workers from various neighboring islands to work in the agricultural and tourist industries. The best laid plans being what they are, by the 1960’s these temporary workers were being employed for any and every job on the Islands....

The (Senate) bill extends Davis-Bacon “prevailing wage” provisions—typically the area’s union wage that applies only to construction on federal projects under current law—to all occupations (e.g. roofers, carpenters, electricians, etc.) covered by Davis-Bacon. So guest-workers (but not citizen workers) must be paid Davis-Bacon wage rates for jobs in the private sector if their occupation is covered by Davis-Bacon. Presumably because Senate Democrats’ union bosses thought this provision too modest, an amendment by Senator Barack Obama, approved by voice vote, extended Davis-Bacon wages rates to all private work performed by guest workers, even if their occupations are not covered by Davis-Bacon.

According to the Bush administration and the US senate, we need guest workers in this country, presumably to do the heavy lifting which Americans are no longer capable of. I've got an idea for a sort of an ultimate version of something like that... According to everything I read, gorillas in the wild are in danger of outright extinction, mainly due to human encroachment on teritories. Also from most of what I read, gorillas are basically bright, and very easy to get along with, as compared to chimps which should be regarded as dangerous. According to some of what I...

BEWARE FROBL’s!!! You are being sent this message because you have recently been stung by a FROBL. That would be a Free Republic Open Border Lobbyist. Do not be concerned! Their stingers are so tiny it’s laughable. Which is what makes them so darn pesty and contrary. They make a lot of noise, considering there are only about a dozen of them, and are really quite harmless, unless they are able to zap some unsuspecting victim who has wandered into “their territory”. Now “their territory seems to be, well, whatever they decide it is, usually any thread with people trying...

If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611) would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years, allowing an estimated 103 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years—fully one-third of the current population of the United States. Much attention has been given to the fact that the bill grants amnesty to some 10 million illegal immigrants. Little or no attention has been given to the fact that the bill would quintuple the rate of legal immigration into the United States, raising, over time, the inflow of legal immigrants from around...

SASABE, Mexico -- The old brickyard, known here as "la ladrillera," is the last stop in Mexico for many migrants headed illegally into the United States. This is where the "coyotes" give last-minute instructions to their human cargo, who each will pay fees ranging from $1,500 to $2,000 to be guided on the sometimes-deadly northbound trek into America. It's a three-day walk through the desert, where temperatures often climb above 110 degrees. For Gilbert Reyes, a self-proclaimed capitalist, the business to be in is alien smuggling. And, yes, business is "very good": The number of illegals crossing into the U.S.,...

CHATTANOOGA — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said the United States should "lock down" its borders and create a better temporary worker program. Frist, R-Tenn., spoke with reporters before giving a commencement speech at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's graduation ceremony Sunday. "The No. 1 problem we face today when it comes to immigration are the people streaming across our border and the lack of border security," Frist said, adding that the Senate will begin debating immigration reform legislation next week. "It's a national security issue, an economic issue and a humanitarian issue." He also said that drilling for...

MONTGOMERY — During a CNN news show last week, Rep. Micky Hammon, R-Decatur, blamed liberal Democrats for the failure of his anti-immigration legislation to pass the Legislature. ALFA, Alabama Farmers Federation was among groups that lobbied against the legislation. The Business Council of Alabama did not even have illegal immigration bills as part of its legislative agenda. Neither of the two can be categorized as liberal. During an appearance on the Lou Dobbs show, Hammon said none of the six bills sponsored by Republicans came up for a vote by the full House or Senate. He said he wants Alabama...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Trying to bridge a growing chasm in his party over immigration reform, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said Thursday the nation needs both a temporary worker program and consequences for illegal aliens. Opening the party's annual meeting of state chairmen in this conservative bastion, Mehlman borrowed a page from President Reagan, saying the party must practice "the politics of 'and,'" meaning people on both sides of the debate have to come together to accomplish reform. "There has been a lot of rhetoric about this issue over the last few months, but in my opinion, not...

Herndon voters yesterday unseated the mayor and two Town Council members who supported a bitterly debated day-labor center for immigrant workers in a contest that emerged as a mini-referendum on the turbulent national issue of illegal immigration. Residents replaced the incumbents with challengers who immediately called for significant changes at the center. Some want to bar public funds from being spent on the facility or restrict it to workers living in the country legally. Others want it moved to an industrial site away from the residential neighborhood where it is located.

Whether or not the U.S. Senate takes up the immigration-reform debate in the coming weeks, it is certain that the subject will be a central issue in the coming electoral season. And the most heated debate will undoubtedly focus on the main proposition of the Kennedy-McCain bill—namely, that amnesty for many, if not most, of the millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is a prerequisite for the success of any effective immigration reform. Even though most advocates of this bill would strenuously deny that it is about amnesty, they nonetheless take it as an article of faith that a...

The top U.S. commander in Iraq has ordered sweeping changes for privatized military support operations after confirming violations of laws against human-trafficking and other abuses by contractors involving possibly thousands of foreign workers on American bases, according to records obtained by the Chicago Tribune. Gen. George W. Casey Jr. ordered that contractors be required by May 1 to return passports that have been illegally confiscated from laborers on U.S. bases after determining that such practices violated U.S. laws against trafficking for forced or coerced labor. Human brokers and subcontractors from South Asia to the Middle East have worked together to...

When President Bush arrives in Irvine on Monday morning to pitch his immigration reform plan, one of his party's best-known local standard-bearers will be maintaining a respectful — and politically careful — distance. Dana Rohrabacher, the nine-term Republican congressman from Huntington Beach, generally supports the president, but disagrees with his immigration policies. So Rohrabacher plans to sit out Bush's speech to the Orange County Business Council. "I don't want to be behind him looking glum and not applauding," Rohrabacher said. "So as not to be rude to the president — which I think is inexcusable — I think I'll just...

MEXICO CITY — An immigration study partly funded by the Mexican government recommended Friday that Mexico bar its citizens from the most dangerous illegal border crossings. The recommendations from the joint report by U.S. and Mexican immigration experts run counter to Mexico's long-standing claim that it cannot prevent its own citizens from massing at the border, because the constitution guarantees freedom of movement. But Assistant Foreign Relations Secretary Geronimo Gutierrez said his country was willing to consider the recommendation that "restricted access zones should be established in dangerous areas." "It's no secret this topic has been taboo in Mexican politics,"...

President Bush will land in a hotbed of the illegal-immigration debate Monday when he flies into Orange County, and he's likely to find a tough sell for his approach. Bush's call for a guest-worker program has riled many who say that the international borders must be secured before normalizing the status of any of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. When Bush stands up at the Hyatt Regency Irvine to pitch his views on immigration to the Orange County Business Council, some will applaud his decision to talk here - if not what he's pushing. "I'd...

As President Bush and his allies in the Senate push forward for amnesty for the 11-12 million illegal aliens already in the United States and for a guest-worker program that would bring in millions more "temporary" workers, they are withholding an important report that indicts the agency that would be processing the massive influx of aliens we would expect under the proposed programs. An investigation by the (GAO) has found that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), the agency within the Department of Homeland Security in charge of adjudicating immigration benefits such as citizenship and permanent residency, is rife...

Hamid Khan stood out among the Hispanics he marched alongside at a recent immigration protest. When one demonstrator asked Khan where he was from and the reply was Pakistan, the man asked, "'Then what are you doing here?'" Khan was surprised. "I said, 'Look, there are non-Latino groups who are also suffering under these laws,'" said Khan, 49, a commercial pilot and director of an advocacy group called the South Asian Network. Hispanics, the nation's largest immigrant group, are leading the movement to demand a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and defeat legislation that would criminalize them. Khan's experience...