May 18 2007
Guest Worker Program Success
Addendum: It seems that all across the right side of the blogoshpere the sky is falling! LOL!. I am so glad I am an independent. Hysterics over documenting undocumented workers is the exact kind of reaction I said would marginalize the right. The far right has officially jumped the shark. The far left has too. And contrary to the doom and gloomers, America will survive and we will elect serious leaders with serious ideas and prosper. Enough already with “the end of the world” wailing. You folks bet the farm and lost. Get over it. – end update
Yes, I know many on the right feel the effort to bring the immigrant workers out into the open and under a more controlled program is tantamount to treason, but I just cannot share these “Drama Queen” fears. And I know my visits will take another hit (as they always do when I post on my support for Bush’s plans for immigration) but so be it. The fact is the Rep Congress had their little test of wills and lost. And now that they do not run Congress Bush is able to do what he needs to get this needed program going. And from what I see it is pretty good plan (not everything I wanted, but I never expected to get what I wanted):
The plan would create a temporary worker program to bring new arrivals to the U.S. A separate program would cover agricultural workers. New high-tech enforcement measures also would be instituted to verify that workers are here legally.
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The key breakthrough came when negotiators struck a bargain on a so- called “point system” that would for the first time prioritize immigrants’ education and skill level over family connections in deciding how to award green cards.
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The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a “Z visa” and—after paying fees and a $5,000 fine—ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years. Heads of household would have to return to their home countries first.
They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and the high-tech worker identification program were completed.
These features (and many more the media is just not reporting on) will deal with the 12 million illegal workers here now (and presumably who have some significant time in – like 2 years minimum). The entire national security component of this plan is to separate those associated with the minor infractions (working without proper papers) from those who are violent criminals and terrorists. Finding a needle in a haystack (the terrorists) is not hard when most of the hay will walk up and move out of the way so you can deal with the bad stalks and the needle you need to find ASAP. This is why those interested in National Security support Bush’s plan because it is the best balance of dealing with the compounded issues involved with illegal immigrants. The plan optimizes and expedites this separation process.
And for new workers the program is really reasonable all the way around
A new temporary guest worker program would also have to wait until those so-called “triggers” had been activated.
Those workers would have to return home after work stints of two years, with little opportunity to gain permanent legal status or ever become U.S. citizens. They could renew their guest worker visas twice, but would be required to leave for a year in between each time.
This is clearly not amnesty. With a fine and back taxes, and limited immigrant worker time and opportunity to stay permanently this is light years ahead of what we have now. I am looking forward to having my prediction come true. And while I will warn my friends on the right not to get all aggitated and angry and spewing names at people who don’t agree with them, sadly I know they will not listen. The anger on the right over this issue is as mindless as the anger on the left over the 2000 election. Logic will not penetrate it. But by the same token, the moderates in America will not tolerate disrespectful and demeaning attacks. So that fastest way to marginalism is to rant and rave about what was an obvious result of the far right’s attack on Bush – which started with Harriet Miers. Many times I predicted we would lose the next three years of the conservative agenda over the civil war the far right started with Miers (see here and here). The far right went from Miers onto Schiavo onto Immigration – and they lost the conservative agenda for 3 years – as I predicted.
I am fairly positive there will not only be hesitency, but outright resistence to the far right if they react in the same fashion which put them on the sidelines in 2006. The Immigration solution is well balanced. It is not driven by partisan ideology but by pragmatic prioritization. It is not out to ‘win’ but to pogress. And anyone who lashes out in anger because the ‘pure’ did not win out over the ‘best’ is going to get shunned. OK, I have given my warning. I am glad to see this success come about in the middle of the battle of partisan wills over Iraq. It shows some semblence of seriousness we have been missing for over year in DC.
This bill means we now have between 12 and 20 million, projected to be 100 million in the near future, more people eligible for low income provided govt. services. I would like to remind you all that we now have water wars in western states as affluent retirees move from California to inland states to get away from the influx of new alien “citizens” , and Canadians are protesting piping Canadian water down to Texas.
Have any of you generous folks who want to accept all who want to come, considered that our population is exploding at an alarming rate, even as native born Americans genocide their offspring via abortion on demand to produce a less than zero growth rate, and it is projected to be near 500 million within 50 years. In 1953 the population of China was only 500 million. Today it is 3 times that and people aren’t beating down the doors to get into China.
It’s great to be magnamous but we are committing national suicide. Is this what we want for our children and grandchildren?
Definition of amnesty. Tell them they are all good guys, we’re sorry if they’re not happy here, Can we do more for them. Do they need more free health care and more handouts. Do they have to pay too much in taxes, can we refund them even more. Get the drift?
Amnesty means not holding them responsible for disobeying any of our laws. Amnesty means getting them on the voting rolls for the Dimmycrats.
CP, where are you getting your info on what’s in the bill? I can’t find anything and everything seems to be hearsay. I am not for rounding up or deporting anyone unless they fail to register within the first 6 months after the new law is passed. If they don’t register, then they become felons and should be deported if caught in the normal everyday routine of doing things. No additional law enforcement should be hired for deporting or rounding up anyone. But if they get stopped 6 months after the law is passed and aren’t registered, off they go… never to return…
6 months is more than enough time to get registered.
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AJ may be in an area where they have some illegals,
and as I recall, he didn’t like it when they moved into his neighborhood.
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Dale, Great Post!! Where I live in San Diego, there are probably close to two million illegals within 150 miles of here. I see the problems everyday exactly like what you described. The people who are supporting this bill are assuming that somehow this bill is going to improve the situation because they think that the illegals WANT to come out of the shadows and pay taxes and become citizens. That is just wrong. What the illegals want is to keep gaming the system and just be left to do whatever they want.
I have several Mexican friends here, some are illegals but they are still my friends and we talk very frankly about this. We’ll be tossing back a beer down by the beach and they laugh their ass off at this, and tell me that they will be the ruling class in twenty years because we are too stupid to stop it! Sadly, I have to agree with them, they are right.
The reason I am so against these bills is because they don’t attack the root of the problem which is that we have citie governments, employers, police forces, and public organizations which are going out of their way to accomodate these people. That’s what brings them here! These people can get arrested dozens of times and they keep getting released because they get sympathy from judges because they are poor illegal aliens. Can you imagine being able to commit one crime after another and just keep changing your identity when it gets hot?
While I applaud the fact that the bill has a biometric ID card in it, I don’t think you’re ever going to see a Mexican produce one of those to a cop, ever! Most americans do not understand that the whole Mexican culture does not place the kind of emphasis on hard identification like us and being honest about who you are when you come into contact with the police, who are a real treat on their own!
There is a real NIMBY problem here, unless you live in the middle of it and it affects your daily life, then people seem not to have a real grasp of the situation. Remember John McCain getting blasted in Iowa by people who were tired of seeing their quite state become a Mexican gang banger haven? That is the real issue here, not nanny’s and fruit pickers.
BK
Right on.
Back years ago when I did my little project in Iraq, I saw gang banger slogans and graffiti posted on Iraq home walls and even painted on US tanks and armored vehicles.
The local cops here in Florida are screaming to the legislature about the growth of MS13 and similar groups here. The alarm bells are sounding but the question is if anyone is listening.
BK
My office in Iraq I worked out of was right across the hall from a lecture room where the military met.
After a week of major gang banger graffiti appearing the Major in charge was giving a pep talk and advising the troops that an upcoming series of equal opportunity lectures and such were in the pipeline.
I got up from my desk and walked up to the Major and told him he was quite frankly having the effect of pi**ing up a rope and a few other choice words.
When I left the stage to go back to my office, which I thought might be nuked on the following day or maybe even that afternoon, I got a standing ovation by the troops.
The last thing the Major saw before they finally closed the lecture hall doors was me tossing the brigade cup that held my coffee against the wall and having it shatter into a million pieces.
For a while thereafter I came to briefings in his office with those lame 4oz Styrofoam cups they issue and he looked all kinds of smug about that, but then I showed up with about a 2 liter Bavarian beer stein of coffee since they were based out of Germany that one of his soldiers had shipped in for me as a way to say thanks, I thought the poor dude was going to need a blast of nitro when he saw that.
I used to think you had your “Shit Together!”
Rewarding Illegal Behaiour will Make it all Better!’
C Ya!!
Any bill with Teddy “Cape Cod Orca” Kennedy’s fingerprints cannot be good. Nor can one done in the shadows with plans to ramrod it thru without full public disclosure and open & lengthy debate. And why does AJ, like the MSM, have to paint dissenters as hard-right or irrational and worse? Because it’s a tactic to coerce the un-informed that the bill must be good.
Dale nails it quite well. Those for this “bill” have ignored or disregard the long-term impact it will have on the economy with it’s huge and lasting drain on across-the-board social services and entitlements. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, insurance, etc.
And AJ totally misread the election results. The vast majority of voters favor strong immigration measures. Not one repub who lost election was due to his/her stance on immigration. (the Inidaina rep Terrye sites was NOT due to immigration.) Every district where immigration was a hot-button issue, the dem candidate was as tough or tougher (to the right) of the repub candidate. Elections were lost b/c of the Bush/Iraq anchor, lack of fiscal discipline and the MSM taint of scandal & corruption — not b/c of so-called “hard-line” reps on immigration. If anything, voters were pissed something more wasn’t done to beef up border security.
I just did another round of the congressional and other political active sites that have early drafts of legislation and this bill is still a total ghost.
It’s like stealth under the radar.
All comments here are only based on reported issue points it contains.
Why is this one being bottled up like no other bill in recent history?
If it is so controversial that it has to be back room only hacked and then rushed to a vote before it can be printed out and the ink dries it ain’t gonna be pretty.
Compromise just for the sake of compromise to make a move is like dropping your shot of bourbon on your chess board and saying whoops.
wiley, you nailed it…
FE
I will ditto both Wiley and Dale, I wish I was better at words to say how I feel about this, my bad.
“CP, where are you getting your info on what’s in the bill? I can’t find anything and everything seems to be hearsay”
That, sir, is absolute truth. I guess we are going to have to wait and see what gets sent to the House before we have a good look at it.
Actually, all this chatter might be part of the plan. They put out some basic ideas and now maybe they are listening to the criticism and using that to craft the bill. Its a shame so many people have already made up their minds about it when as far as I know it is pretty much just an agreement in principle with nothing cast in stone yet.
I don’t think anyone is “rewarding illegal behavior”. There just isn’t a good alternative.
What if the bill says that illegals should be flogged on the courthouse steps? Think we would have any better chance of finding the illegals? Unless you create a way for them to have an incentive to come forward voluntarily, you are never going to find them. Short of going house to house, busting in doors and demanding to see people’s “papers” there is nothing you can do and if that is what my country devolves into, then I would be left with no other choice but to rise against it.
We can not deport 12 million workers. We don’t have enough unemployed to take their place. It would cause the entire economy to shrink. Sealing the Mexican border only stops half the influx of illegals and does nothing to address those already here.
Some mechanism of A: giving them legal work status so we can at least know who is here and B: providing incentive for them to learn english and assimilate is needed.
This notion that we can somehow get rid of them or that the Southern border is the majority of the problem is just plain nuts. It is only half the problem of the incoming illegals, we don’t have 12 to 20 million unemployed (the latest number of unemployed people is 6.8 million) to take their place. It would wreck our economy.
CP, we cannot deport 12 million workers? Why not? Mexico did!
Bk
That is the quote of the morning.
Why should we bite the big one because they can’t get their sh** together?
BK brings up a point. If Mexico turned capitalist they have a very active workforce that could support all types of industry and endeavors. But instead they chose to hold onto control of a few industries that are being degraded over time because the don’t invest or bar by law foreign investment or technology insertion. We get some oil from Mexico and Pemex is dying on the vine and output is slowly dribbling off but could without intervention drop to almost nothing since their tech base of oil extraction is still 1950’s.
The last election there was fought hard and a shadow government was formed. It’s a powder keg that has a fuse that is getting real short.
Film at 11.
The sucking sound you will hear is when all the Mexicans run home to fight in “La Revolution”. Gun sales here will skyrocket just before that happens. Watch the numbers.
Actually my last post was an overstatement.
Put yourself in their place, should I fight city hall or just wander over to the next place over where I can scam them for all it’s worth.
I haven’t taken a personal census but we see numbers scattered about of between 12 to 20 million illegals in the country.
I don’t know the method by how these numbers were derived but a nearly 2 to 1 spread makes you wonder does anyone have a clue as to the true number and this ain’t AQ in hiding and we can’t even get a good number to work with.
Can we trust either of these numbers or could it even be worse. Does Mexico do census data that would show the corresponding outflow?