Posted on 06/03/2006 1:27:38 PM PDT by Doctor13
Yesterday Sean Hannity, a conservative who I think generally tries to do a good job of researching his stories, attacked one of the most conservative members of the House of Representative, Chris Cannon, who happens to be my congressman. In that attack he joined what has become a nationwide campaign to defeat Congressman Cannon over the issue of the illegal immigration problem. Rep. Cannon has been voting for bills to address the illegal alien problem since his first years in Congress during the Clinton Administration, as he points out on his website.
Cannon was voting for legislation in the House 5-7 years ago that was designed to do what many of his current critics claim they want done, i.e. assist the Bureau of Border Security and U.S. Customs Service on preventing the entry of terrorists, drug traffickers, and illegal aliens into the United States and stopping the sale of false identification documents that have allowed so many illegal alien to remain in the country and find jobs. He is probably the best informed member of Congress about what has worked and what hasnt worked in addressing the problem.
The 11 to 12 million illegal aliens now in this country did not suddenly arrive since George W. Bush was first inaugurated in the year 2000. In fact, 20 years ago, when Senator Diane Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco, she made a major contribution towards helping illegal aliens remain in the USA by signing an ordinance, passed 4-3 in 1986 by the San Francisco City Council that made San Francisco a sanctuary city for illegal aliens and prohibited spending city funds to assist immigration enforcement.
This problem really started back in 1965 during Lyndon Johnsons presidency when Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) introduced a bill eliminating the national origins quotas of the 1920s that favored northern Europeans. The bill became part of the 1965 Civil Rights Act. It wasnt a big deal at the time, but within 4 years of passage of Kennedy's bill the complexion of America had been forever reversed as new immigrants from Asia and Africa outnumbered European immigrants 4 to 1.
Then in 1982 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe, that a Texas statute which withheld state funds from local school districts for the education of children who were not legally admitted into the United States , and whichauthorizes local school districts to deny enrollment to such children violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 1986, as most Republicans want to carefully forget, conservative President Ronald Reagan signed a bill passed by Congress that was intended to stop the rapidly growing problem of illegal immigration by providing a one-time amnesty and banning employers from knowingly hiring illegal workers.
For 20 years it has been illegal for employers to hire illegal aliens. That was greeted by the creation of a new industry: the making and selling forged identification documents. In 1996 during the Clinton Administration a bill was passed, and signed, that called for fences to be built in San Diego and El Paso to stop illegal aliens. The unintended consequence of these border tightening efforts was a change in the behavior of the illegal aliens. The men who came through the porous borders to harvest or plant crops, stopped going home for fear they could not get back in the country. Instead, using the new law intended to unite families, they began bringing their families into the United States, instead of going back home. In effect, those laws ENCOURAGED rather than discouraging illegal aliens to stay in the USA.
Douglas S. Massey, a Princeton University sociologist and co-director of the Mexican Migration Project, after a survey of more than 18,000 migrants, observed, We've transformed what was before 1986 a circular flow of workers into an increasingly settled population of families. We have actually accelerated the rate of undocumented population growth in the United States and shifted it from a relatively less costly population of male workers into a much more costly population of families."
In spite of this history that efforts to close the borders and to build fences at the borders have dramatically INCREASED the flow of illegal workers into this country, we now have a growing and angry demand that we repeat exactly what has failed in the past. We are also experiencing an election year effort to defeat people like Congressman Cannon who has a ten year record of trying to correct the problem and who knows that the cures being demanded by Sean Hannity and others make the problem worse.
In 2004 we in the 3rd Congressional district of Utah were bombarded with propaganda, largely funded by people outside of Utah, to defeat Chris Cannon. Billboards which inaccurately claimed that the bill introduced by Chris Cannon was an amnesty bill were funded by a Manhattan restaurant owner who, it turned out, had mostly illegal aliens working in his restaurants.
So, how come he was spending his money trying to deceive the sometimes gullible voters of Utah about Chris Cannon? I think he was really just trying to defeat a congressman who has been trying for 10 years to actually DO something about illegal aliens.
Deception has become a major weapon in American politics. Many who claim they want to STOP the influx of illegal aliens are really merely working to defeat the only people in Congress who are trying to actually stop the influx of illegal aliens!
Is this just simple ignorance of the history of illegal immigration that prompts so many people to demand a repeat of past failed policies, or do they really KNOW the history and are trying to deceive the public in order to eliminate those who might come up with a workable solution to the problem of illegal aliens?
Utah Lawmaker Pushes for Illegal Alien Amnesty | ||
Thursday, April 01, 2004
By Matt Hayes
The hearing took place in connection with various “guest worker” bills pending before Congress. Rep. Chris Cannon (search), R-Utah, a committee member, has spent extraordinary resources trying to convince voters that the bill he co-sponsors is not an amnesty, though it would not prosecute the millions of illegal aliens (search) who have committed a crime by entering or remaining in the U.S. without a current visa. Instead, it would give them a work permit. Cannon, a lawmaker, has openly expressed his contempt for the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. “We love immigrants in Utah. We don’t make the distinction very often between legal and illegal,” he said on June 6, 2002, as he received an Excellence in Leadership award from MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (search). Cannon’s remarks are entirely consistent with the beliefs of MALDEF’s co-founder, Mario Obledo, who said in June 1998 “California is going to be a Hispanic state and anyone who doesn't like it should leave. They should go back to Europe.” "Reconquista" is a term employed by groups like MALDEF who want to see California and its neighboring states annexed, at least culturally, with people free to move there from Mexico. If there had ever been doubts that Cannon was doing the bidding of the "reconquistadors," they were erased at that hearing. Cannon’s bill, the Agricultural Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act of 2003 (AgJOBS,” H.R. 3142 (search), would make all foreign nationals who were illegally in the United States between February 2002 and January 2003 (which Cannon estimates is 11 million people), and who had also worked for 100 days in agriculture, immune from prosecution for the crime of entering the U.S. without a current visa, and then give them work permits. The bill also mandates payment of a penalty, and Cannon cites this as his reason to not label it an amnesty. But under the AgJOBS bill, the normal immigration law that prohibits gaining legal immigration status due to unlawful presence would be waived. Though this doesn’t fit Cannon’s definition of “amnesty,” it worked for Webster. Thanks to the House of Representatives’ excellent Judiciary Committee Web site, Utah’s voters can see the depths to which Chris Cannon is willing to go in an effort to smear advocates of immigration reduction as white supremacists. Rep. Cannon employed a line of questioning developed by members of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950’s. In referring to an umbrella organization of groups that advocate against massive, uncontrolled immigration, Cannon asked one witness, “Did you go to lunch with other folks that were associated with that umbrella organization?” But according to Allison Solin of ProjectUSA (search), the Washington, DC-based social advocacy organization that has five billboards up in Utah’s 3rd Congressional district advertising Rep. Cannon’s support for an illegal alien amnesty, Rep. Cannon wants to have it both ways. “Congressman Cannon objects to our participation in the political debate in Utah and calls us an ‘outside special interest,’” says Ms. Solin. “Yet we’re only Americans exercising our democratic rights. On the other hand, Congressman Cannon seems to have no problem with ‘outsiders’ as long its cheap foreign labor driving down American wages and making life even more difficult for struggling American families.” Indeed, most of the hundreds of organizations listed on his website as endorsing his AgJOBS amnesty represent industries that stand to profit financially from cheaper labor, and some of the groups listed actually work in concert with the government of Mexico to influence U.S. immigration policy. “In our view,” says Ms. Solin, “those are the real ‘outside special interests.'” The attempt, however, to cast immigration reductionists as white supremacists did provide one humorous, if embarrassing, moment in last Wednesday’s House hearing. Rep. Cannon was deep into a rambling monologue in which he was attempting to draw links between the alleged white supremacists plotting a take-over of the Sierra Club and the alleged white supremacists driving the immigration reduction movement. At one point, Rep. Cannon, following the Southern Poverty Law Center line, asserted that five current candidates for the Sierra Club’s Board of Directors are all members of this white supremacist conspiracy. Unbeknownst to him, however, one of those Sierra Club candidates was sitting right in front of him at the witness table — Frank Morris, a black man who formerly headed the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Many observers have said that when it comes to illegal immigration, there is very little difference between the positions of the two major parties. But voters have a choice when it comes to Chris Cannon. Cannon’s positions and rhetoric do not so much resemble those of either major political party as those of the radical Left. Again and again, he speaks of a Marxist, Open Borders America in which the notion of “illegal immigrant” no longer exists. Then he legislates for it. Rep. Cannon has found his constituency. It just doesn’t consist of American citizens. |
Cannon sounds like someone who would make a great former Congressman.
This is a great story. This is the way it should be. If you go against your party, you are challenged in the primary.The split on immigration within the Republican Party should be given a chance to be voted on in the primary. But what makes both parties so corrupt is that incumbency has almost eliminated what could be healthy primary challenges. Incumbents accumulate money which serves two purposes, it scares away primary challenges and it is used to usually outspend the general election opponent. It usually works. If the Republicans go down in November, a lot has to do that the party faithful are not given opportunities to make a meaningful choices in the primary. Most of the big boy Democrats that went down in 94 had not had to work for votes in a meaningful primary for decades. It is like these corrupt incumbents bought a franchise to operate politically irregardless of the wishes of those in the party. When they fail miserably they fall back on the franchise. What the subtext is that you need to vote for me even if we have disagreements and I am a failure. You are a Republican and I have bought the Republican franchise and you cannot vote for a Democrat.
If there were a healthy two party system, which had more open and meaningful primaries, then those of in the base would not feel so betrayed when our President goes around making nice to Teddy Kennedy, Little Dickie Durbin, Insane McCain, and el Presidente Fox and by doing so picking a fight with a majority of elected Republicans in both houses.
Money can't buy elections; we forfeit them. We need to volunteer and beat the streets, post the signs, call in the chits, make the calls, collect the funds, talk it up, Giv'em Hell!! If this travesty of justice does not result in massive changes in the primary, we should check between our legs to see if anything is still there (no offense to the ladies).
Add in the over 75% of cocaine in this country that comes through the open Mexican boardersI think you mean "borders" (boarders are people who pay rent)... but, if the U.S. wasn't consuming 1/2 the cocaine in the world (CIA figures), that particular import/export trade would dry up tomorrow. Mexico does not have a very big domestic market for narcotics.
When in our history have we ever made an effort to "build fences at the borders?" Or even a serious effort to 'close the border?" This woman is making it up as she goes along, for some reason.
Hannity was also on his knees for Arnold. Fake conservative.
Well said.
This diffuse and meandering essay does not make a case for the reelection of Cannon. He is a supporter of the Bush/Senate proposal, which is at odds with an aroused majority in the GOP and the country. Cannon's loss would make clear to other House members that it is politically fatal to vote for the Bush/Senate measure instead of the majority GOP House bill.
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I think they're grading on the curve.
I don't know of a Republican Congressman who has pushed as blatantly for open borders as Chris Cannon has.
No kidding.
He'll probably be a lobbyist for the Chamber of Commerce.
For some reason = an agenda
susie
I find it difficult to believe that is the case, since it is clear that many MANY people cross the border, going both directions, regardless of the meager attempts we've made at *securing* it.
I find it hard to believe anyone even BELIEVES that.
susie
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