Jun 01 2007
The New Litmus Test: Immigration
We all have a new litmus test on the right, amongst conservatives. It is what side you chose on immigration – and it will define who is in and who is out in the GOP. And by defining who is in, it will define whether the GOP can create a governing coalition or become a minority party again for decades to come. The immigration issue has created a fissure because the far right, who have a lot of what they want in the Bush bill, will not allow anything other conservatives believe are valid and valuable elements in the bill. They have nothing but hysterical ‘what if’ scenarios which refuse to address what if things do work to some degree as advertised. But they have made it clear only their wishes can be passed – no one elses.
The hypocrisy is ripe with the immigration hypochondriacs. For years they have touted one story after another about crimes committed by immigrants (legal and illegal). This bill finally makes deportation a punishment for committing violent crimes, including DUI’s. Right now you cannot deport someone for the commission of a violent crime. You can only deport them for being here illegally. But that process is slow, rife with holes and clearly doesn’t work. The Bill fixes that – but the hypochondriacs resist the fixes. In fact, the hypochondriacs would let the status quo remain, with criminal immigrants staying in country, because they want more punishment on those workers who do not have a criminal background. They are willing to live with the violent criminals so they can get more flesh out of the non criminals. That is so screwed up it is scary.
Right now we cannot hold employers accountable to any real level because there is no repository to check if a worker is a valid immigrant worker. People who over stay are impossible to identify since they have some of the paperwork (like SS cards, etc) they had when they were legal. There is no tamper proof ID with a expiration date. The bill would fix that. The hypochondriacs oppose it. Therefore the immigrants will keep working here and therefore staying here.
And the best aspect of all is the guest worker program – where not a soul is elligible to become a US citizen. Not one. That is much better than the current practice. Come, work, stay a while. You will never vote. What is the response of the immigration hypochondriacs? No way – we would rather do nothing at all.
One of my readers who has commented many times he would rather leave things as they are than pass all these great ideas add the gall to claim he was putting security of this nation first. It was such a hypocritical statement I had to post one more item on this matter. Those of us who, like Bush, support the guest worker program and Z-visas do so because it expidites sifting the hard working, good immigrants from the criminal element – and all of them from the terrorist that may be hiding amongst them. It is not a perfect bill – but it does (a) document all the workers, (b) entices them to come forward instead of using law enforcement resources to go after them (all 12-20 million), and (c) allows us to focus our limited law enforcement forces on terrorism – not nannies, landscapers, painters, mechanics, cooks, maids, etc. The idea that we should divert more resources than we have in place today to deal with a population that is primarily made up of hard working people is insanity itself.
This reader was saying securing the border was better than patting down people in airports. He was wrong of course (civilian airliners make massive weapons well beyond anything that can be hauled across the border). I guess for the umpteenth time we have to remind the immigration hypochondriacs that the 9-11 attackers WERE HERE LEGALLY!!! All the border security in the world would have done NOTHING to stop 9-11. The NSA Surveillance program would have stopped it, but not a bigger fence. But the dems these far right allowed into power want to dismantle that. The hypochondriacs don’t care. They would sacrifice our security in a heart beat if it meant one undocumented worker could become documented after paying a fine and back taxes. They don’t think that is enough punishment. So they would rather let things remain as they are than let THAT happen.
The hypochondriacs can pretend to claim they are for security – clearly they are not. They resist all the new security in the bill. It scares them because more people will want to come to our shores. Get a clue, people will always want to come to our shores. Always. The hypochondriacs lamely claim ‘enforce the laws’ – like that has worked for the last 20 years. That is the same as saying ‘more of the same’ or ‘my way or nothing – nobody else gets anything’. Clearly democratic governance in their mind is dictating their views over all others.
I dare Scott Rasmussen to start tracking one questions. (1) If the choice on immigration was the current Bill in the Senate or the status quo, which would you support? I strongly suggest he then ask again what the support levels are for the Bill – because they will go up. Just like the liberals avoided the hard question on Iraq (“do you support surrendering Iraq to al Qaeda”) the far right is missing the point. It is not this Bill or their fantasies. It is this bill or nothing. America will not accept nothing again. Go ahead Scott – prove me wrong. Ask the question. I dare you.
Addendum: As to who will be in or out of the GOP I do not know. I do know this. Any group that is inflexible to compromise our allowing additional features beyond what they support is doomed to minority status. Coalitions are not dictatorships full of ugly sniping when one does not get their way. Coalitions are places were people respect each other, win respectfully and lose respectfully. And when they lose they do not pull their support from the coaition. If everytime a group lost a vote in Congress they seceded from the country we would have no country. Coalitions do not divert debate from the matters being addressed to feign their feelings were hurt when someone said ‘you are wrong’ in too tough of terms. Laura, stop with the feinting spells. Your ideas are not good for America. Even patriots make mistakes (ask Churchill and Roosevelt). I get flak for calling the far right the far right. Well since a compromise with Ted Kennedy is in and by itself not enough to wig me out (I prefer to know what the compromise is) then I am clearly left of the immigration hypochondriacs. Naturally I am, I am an Independent conservative. A Reagan-Bush conservative. I do not bow to the alter of LauRusHannitLevin or the GOP. If the Bush backers win there is a very good chance conservatism will once again overtake liberalism as we head towards a future of new, positive ideas. If the LauRusHannitLevin wing wins then the country will be seeing who races to the bottom quicker – the left or the right – on an endless zero sum game. Can we end the partisanship and get on with America now? That is the big question.
FE,
Geez. Do I need to type slow so you can keep up? You can be deported for immigration violations after a long process and many rounds of catch-and-release. Got it? They are deported for being here illegally, which is a slow, cumbersome useless process that can drag on for years.
But hey, not to worry right? You folks are promising us more of the same we have now! And all will be good. LOL! Yeah right.
From your very first post archived on immigration:June 10th, 2005 at 8:14 am.
To make this work we need to get serious and crack down. I do not think exporting massive amounts of people will help one bit identify well meaning cheaters of the system from the dangerous ones. It will drive them deeper. So I support registration as a way to avoid fines, jail time and/or deportation. Give people grace time to register and they should take it. And if most do that shrinks the size of the pool of people we need to address. After the grace period a worker who has no criminal background and is supporting family here (mitigating circumstances allowed in determining punishments at all levels) and who is picked up gets misdemeanor level fines. Repeat offenders rapidly graduate to deportation. Those who can provide leads to others breaking the law can get reduced sentences. This is normal. Corporations will need to be brought into this too, but first the US will need an information bank or service available for companies to verify papers or status.
That means ANYTIME an illegal alien is picked up he gets registered and dealt with legally. Focusing on this will start to ’round up’ what we need, which is information on aliens and working out the balance between labor needs and rushes at our borders.
OK, lots of background. But think about how this community is dealing with the problem given the context I just laid out.
NEW IPSWICH, N.H. — The police chief of this tiny whitewashed New England town has crafted his own border-control policy — he has charged illegal immigrants from Mexico with trespassing in New Hampshire.
The novel legal strategy has made a minor celebrity of W. Garrett Chamberlain. The 36-year-old police chief hops to his feet and deposits a pile of letters on his desk, from Alaskans and Californians, Border Patrol agents and soldiers in Iraq, all applauding his initiative. Fox News commentators have called, too, seeking his views on national immigration policy.
…
His officers had discovered illegal immigrants several times, but immigration agents declined to detain them.
That last line is the problem. They should be detained until they get fully registered. If they check out as employed and hard working (which means they are filling a labor need) with no criminal record they get a fine like in traffic court (where there are lots of illegal immigrants, btw) but 24 month probation for their legal status to work here.
If they have a criminal record, repeat offender, etc they are jailed or deported. How hard is this? We do not round up massive amounts of people. Sadly, we round them up everyday for illegal actions – we just don’t take actions to fix the situation.
Posted by AJStrata on Friday, June 10th, 2005 at 8:14 am.
I added the bold to emphasize the points which are practically identical to my present position, written on this blog within the last 5 days or so.
Noneof these things are possible under the new bill.
Practically speaking, the only change that would need to be made to the new compromise bill to fill these needs are that ‘probationary legalization will only follow after registration and valid checkout’
My position is still that, AJ’s is now substantially different that what was posted way back in’05
He believed in detaining then, not now (the bill doesn’t allow it)
He believed in deporting then, now now (the bill doesn’t allow it)
etc.
FE
\”BDS, nope, voted for Bush twice, would vote for him again if he were running. Agree with him on everything but this bill and global warming.\”
Didn\’t you claim the immigration problem, if not solved, would
ultimately seriously damage if not destroy the country? If so,
you also have BDS. I suggest Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter, and
Tom Tancredo are the only GOP candidates with an
acceptable position on the subject and if Bush were running
against them would not deserve the vote of a single American
who wished to solve the most pressing problem.
Geez. Do I need to type slow so you can keep up? You can be deported for immigration violations after a long process and many rounds of catch-and-release. Got it?
A little slower I guess, because that wasn’t slow enough for you to miss the point that the delay will be much, much longer with the new bill, in fact, so slow, it will be non-existent.
Geez.
Why can’t we deport people for committing crimes right now? Because this is not the law. There is NO LAW which says immigrants can be deported as part of their punishment for serious crimes.
I can’t keep up, first ” There is NO LAW which says immigrants can be deported” and then it’s “You can be deported for immigration violations after a long process and many rounds of catch-and-release.” Which is it? is there NO LAW or is there one? either way, the new bill extends that”after a long process and many rounds of catch-and-release.” by many more years and many more rounds. ..
thecentercannothold
nope, never said that. Quit throwing around that BDS thing. I’ve said many times, I voted twice for Pres Bush and would vote for him again, I admire him very much and think the country was blessed to have him as President on 9/11. The only subjects that I am aware of that I don’t support him on is the present version of the immigration bill and global warming. I’m not 100% sure that I disagree with him on yesterday’s statement on GW since it only kicks the can down the road to time when the fanatics will start worrying about the coming ice age again.
Disagreeing with his position on how to solve the illegal alien deal is not a symptom of BDS.
I’m glad I went back thru some of the archives on immigration, especially that first one. It was interesting to me how my solutions to the problem are so nearly the same as AJ’s was way back when, and I haven’t changed my position one bit. I still feel that the single most important issue is to control all the borders of the US, not just the southern one, tho it does appear to be the biggest source of illegals.
It’s strange that for the beliefs in ’05 to be nearly the same, that one can see the present bill(unread) as being the near perfect solution, while the other(having read the present bill) doesn’t think it will even begin to solve the problem.
It’s also strange that the tactic for the ones that have not read it to convince the ones that have read it to accept their beliefs is to call them names, say they are insignificant, accuse them of destroying conservatism, while the tactic from the other side is to quote straight from the bill and state why that won’t work.
Very interesting. More archives to review.
I must have left a html tag unclosed somewhere here’s one to close it.
nope it was the post by “thecentercannothold” that left it unclosed, but that one I put in did the trick.
AJ if you could insert one at the end of his post, it would take out all those italics.
FE
FE,
Don’t kid yourself. I read what you wrote and it clearly says what I say now – and I have always been for the guest worker program you oppose. Sorry, you aren’t going to get me on your side by twisting my words you cherry picked out of context.
That’s pretty lame.
FE
I define BDS to include your forgiving attitude. Actually his response on 9/11, to attack in unplanned fashion Iraq an unthreatening country, was one of the worst he could have undertook, strengthening alQaeda.
http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=11052
as conservative expert Michael Scheuer broadly reviews.
Cherry picked out of context?
Don’t kid yourself. I read what you wrote and it clearly says what I say now – and I have always been for the guest worker program you oppose. Sorry, you aren’t going to get me on your side by twisting my words you cherry picked out of context.
In addition to not reading the bill you are trying to sell, you wrote that comment without having a clue as to what i say. Where have I ever said, at any time that I am against a guest worker program? I clearly stated in this thread above that I am for a guest worker program, always have been…
So I’ll go back and get the entire message so the entire context is there, I don’t think it’s out of context.
And talking about lame: Is there a law that allows deportation now or not? you didn’t clear that up, you certainly applauded them for using current laws to deport last year. Did they repeal those laws?
thecentercannothold
then your definition of BDS is different from everyone’s else. You’re saying I like Pres Bush so much I forgive him for invading Iraq.
BDS is normally defined as those that hate Bush so much that everything bad that has ever happened was his fault.
Actually I don’t forgive him for invading Iraq. I THANK him for it.
Here is that whole paragraph leading to my ‘out of context’ quote:
But all that aside, those conervatives who are agitated about illegal immigration have one reasonable point – violent illegal aliens. The ones not here to make a good living. The predators and hardened criminals. Here I join chorus with the broader anconservative population. And I go one further. Whether an alien is here legally or illegally, violent criminal behavior is sufficient to get the boot and to never come back. While the immigrant who wants to be a valued part of our community is welcomed, the criminal is not. And I have long advocated a one-strike-your-out approach to this problem. Now we see the Feds taking a stand usi ng current laws to and process them out of here. That is good news and much more important than a fence.
Now I read that as you are happy for the good news that current laws are being used to process illegal criminals out of the country.
So you’re not saying you were happy about it? How can the context be different? This is in sept 06, when it appeared that they had laws that allowed processing and deporting criminals which you now said there is NO LAW that allowed that..
You stated that your position was clear that it was in the archives and then when I pull up your position from the archives, you say it’s not in the correct context.
I didn’t notice any foot notes on that column describing ‘context’. So guess it is clearly open to interpretation.
FE
I understand what the narrow definition of BDS is-you prove there is a more comprehensive one.
Moreover, as extrapolating Scheuer might instruct, those who want to save the Mideast for American (and Israeli) dominance deserve
to lose both it and the Southwest.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070601/wl_mideast_afp/britainmilitaryiraq
believe Rose, FE.
thecentercannothold
Ok, now I understand you’re part of the hate America First crowd. good bye.
FE
And you criticise Strata for lying? Physician heal thyself.
By the way, General Sanchez ow also says Iraq is unwinnable. He becomes ” hate America First” too, I suppose.
I notice in the same thread you complained about Strata’s “lying” about you, you also said re immigration “the politicians will continue to do what is in the politicians interests, not America’s.”
If you had applied that logic to the politicians getting us into the
Iraq War, you’d be getting somewhere.
Center, You’re out of your mind. I notice you didn’t quote where I said AJ was lying. I have never accused anyone on this site of lying. Just having or stating a different opinion is not lying. You need to go back to your leftie sites where that is their mantra.
Before you go, link or paste the accusation of lying. Now there is at least one place where AJ accuses me of lying, but not the other way around.. Paste it.