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.
You answered a question with a question. I take it you are in the same boat I’m in. We have no idea.
I’m either in the belly aching crowd or the whining crowd. Because I believe I am asking legitimate questions about a bill that is potentially going to cost me in tax dollars. Is there no middle ground? Couldn’t I just be someone concerned about a bill that makes no sense to me? The proposals that Bush put forward are not what we are looking at now. They have been watered down to where we end up right back where we started. No enforcement of the laws. Why bother? There will be no deportation of illegals, before or after. The only way to handle the situation is to make it where businesses are punished in their pocket books. And that isn’t going to happen.
Sue,
Under the new program the immigrants will have a tamper proof ID. They will not be able to simply use someone’s SS ID like they can now. Why would they? The use of SS cards now is primarily to get jobs. There are no provisions now to have a way to check an SS ID is valid to the person using it. That changes with the new Bill.
Fact is Sue, every single reasonable complaint I have ever heard is addressed in this Bill. the hypochondriacs are now making things up and exaggerating to make their losing case. And they are leaving the party iin a fit of frustration their theories are not be bought at face value.
Pick your side: a lot of good solutions including border enhancements or nothing. That is the decision space here. If you like the status quo over lots of new changes, be my guest. But don’t try and tell me you are concerned about the issue. Because to be concerned would mean to be willing to let a lot of ideas come from various perspectives to have lots of opportunities for positive change. The hypochondriacs are simply saying their way only – and no one elses.
OK – we deal with it on those terms and we go get support from the left and leave the right out of it. We conservatives who support Bush and the bill will keep the pressure on for border security. We don’t need the far right since we have always agreed on that point. If the far right is redundant on border security and a poison pill to progress then we will figure out how to do it without them.
I think I will post this comment.
Cool. You’re “either with us or against us”.
I won’t try and tell you anything AJ. You seem to have the upper hand here. It’s your blog.
Later.
Terrye
If you had studied up on the fence proposal there will be different types of fences based on the type of terrain. In some areas where it will be difficult to put up a regular fence there will be a virtual fence. Terrye are you saying that we can send a man to the moon but we can’t put up a fence between our borders?
Sue:
The other day I was notified by the state registry that a database with all these health care workers numbers had been hacked into. Stealing ss numbers, happens all the time. All sorts of people do it for all sorts of reasons.
Can I predict what will happen? No, I am not psychic. It will be the same kind of nightmare it is when anyone illegally uses someone’s numbers. Arrest them, lock them up, whatever. But killing this bill will not do a thing to deal with that problem. Nothing. We can do this all day. Like I said, it is increasingly a waste of time. My point about Hewitt and the Corner is that the conservatives will have lost influence by marginalizing themselves to the point that no one cares what they say. They are just the nothing works and everything sucks and what about this thing crowd. If we can’t solve all the problems why bother solving any of them, or even trying to. Just put up a fence and wave a magic wand and make the bad people go away.
This is the problem with the polls, on the issues people largely support facets of the bill, such as a guest worker program and regularization of some of the illegals at least etc. What they have come to distrust is the government’s willingness and ability to actually do what it is supposed to do. So one thing kind of negates the other and we find ourselves in this endless “what if” cycle. We have something like 12,900 miles of border and all this argument is over a fence of about 700 to 1500 miles.
Just wrecking this ball and splitting your own party is not going to help conservatives win a majority and without a majority you can’t do much of anything. And maybe that is what they want, otherwise we would see more serious attempts at workable alternatives and less self destructive charges and counter charges. I have been voting Republican for some time now, but the only thing keeping me voting that way is that Bush is a Republican and Pelosi is a Democrat. But I am wondering more and more if I belong here.
I am sure a lot of people won’t care about that, but that is just one more reason to wonder if I should stay with this party.
And it is not true to say that no one will be deported, the fact that some people have the option of signing up for a provisional visa does not mean that no one will be deported at all, ever again.
Terrye, the Maginot Line was not a WALL.
If the info for the background checks is already in the computers that will disqualify someone for the Z visa, then why hasn’t it already been used to deport them? The only thing the computer check does when a policeman runs a check at a traffic stop is if you have any outstanding warrants that have been entered into the system. It has no bearing or relationship on whether you are a sex offender, a murderer, an illegal alien, etc. Only if you have an outstanding warrant.
Who wrote the “overview” of the bill you read? Was it one paragraph? Was it Dimmicrat? Overviewed are written to influence, the devil is in the details. You need to read the bill, the overview is only an opinion.
Terrye,
And patrick, if you really believe that we can build a 1500 mile double fence with a road in the middle through all kinds of terrain desert to mountains to rivers in a couple of years, I have some jewelry I would like to sell you. We can not even get New Orleans cleaned up in a couple of years.
It was the bill backers that promised to get the border secured within 18 months. Not Patrick. If you don’t think they can build a fence in two years, how can they secure the border within 18 months. See, you oughta read the bill.
You know FE, every time you ask a question you demonstrate just how little you know and why the Bill is a good solution. 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.
For example, while it is illegal to use a gun the commission of a crime, we had to create a special federal law to make sure people who used a gun in a crime got a minimum of 5 years in prison. Not because it was not already illegal, but because few states tied mandatory time to the use of a gun.
And this is why the immigration hypochondriacs cannot be taken seriously. They act like they know what is going on but they don’t. Believing current laws will solve the problem is like believing in the Easter Bunny. Interesting – but pointless.
terrye, thanks for the laugh of the day.
I am not saying it would be as easy as that either, but to say that a criminal background check has to take days and it is not possible to get information on people quickly is not accurate. If it takes more people to do the job adequately then they should change that part of the bill to make it more workable,
So you’re saying that someone that murdered someone on the Upper Amazon basin in Brazil and headed north and crossed the border and gets caught is going to be identified within just days as a felon?
then just change that part of the bill? Isn’t that basically what Dale, Bikkerken, Apache, Merlin, R05, and others have been saying? Just change the part that makes everyone legal to read that they will be given legal status after they apply and are approved for temporary status. So if they get adequate background checks and are approved then they become guest workers. Now it is done backwards so that they get the legal status first and it never changes. I would even be in favor of letting them register, get TEMPORARY Card good for say 6 months, if everything comes back clean on them then they get longer term, If it doesn’t come back clean, they go home. Everyone not registered within 6 months, could never register, they have to go home. Let’s put the wagon back behind the horse and do it right, we’re only gonna get one shot at this and the way the Dimmicrats and liberals want to do it is to gain a permanent advantage. The right way, no one gets an advantage.
AJ, everytime you write a response like the one just above demonstrates clearly that you still haven’t read the bill and don’t understand what’s in it. That’s why you have no credibility on it. Every non-citizen that commits a felony can be deported as part of the punishment. I personally don’t care if they get deported as long as they pay or serve the appropriate sentence for whatever crime they commit. If someone kills a person, they should serve life in prison or be executed, I don’t care if they are then deported or not.
The deportation that you think is in the bill, well, it’s just not in there. The only possible deportation allowed in this bill is so many years down the road, after many years of appeals, all handled at taxpayer funded expense, that it is non-existent.
And you avoided answering the question. You fully approve the President’s war on global warming? After all he is always right. Right?
FE – see what I mean about being distracted? We are talking immigration and you go on and on about your hurt feelings and global warming. You hate Bush -you have BDS. Got it. Something else to say?
Fact is Sue, every single reasonable complaint I have ever heard is addressed in this Bill. the hypochondriacs are now making things up and exaggerating to make their losing case. And they are leaving the party iin a fit of frustration their theories are not be bought at face value.
Again clearly demonstrating that you have not read the bill. While you say someone is ‘making things up’ you don’t say specifically what it is they’re making up and what provision of the bill addresses what you are ‘claiming’ it addresses.
Under the new program the immigrants will have a tamper proof ID. They will not be able to simply use someone’s SS ID like they can now. Why would they? The use of SS cards now is primarily to get jobs.
Saying tamper-proof and being tamper proof are two different things, “never was a horse that couldn’t be rode, never was a cowboy that couldn’t be throwed.”
I am now retired and have never once, in my entire life had to show my SS card to anyone to get a job. Not once. They asked for SS number and I recited it to them, that was it. Never showed the card.
.
a lot of good solutions including border enhancements or nothing. Such as the 18000 border agents that the bill ‘does not” provide for hiring?
Because to be concerned would mean to be willing to let a lot of ideas come from various perspectives to have lots of opportunities for positive change.
The hypochondriacs are simply saying their way only – and no one elses.
And this is different from your “my way or the highway” position?
OK – we deal with it on those terms and we go get support from the left and leave the right out of it.
You don’t have to go get support from the left. It is their position that you are supporting.
We conservatives who support Bush and the bill will keep the pressure on for border security.
All right!! oh….. you mean this bill? No border security there.
We don’t need the far right since we have always agreed on that point.
“always agreed on that point” who was in on this agreement? So it was planned this way from the beginning? Did that include an agreement to bash the far right for being excluded? hmmmm.
I think I will post this comment.
AJ
and you go on and on about your hurt feelings and global warming. You hate Bush
Where did I mention feelings? hurt or otherwise?
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. The only reason I asked you about global warming is, I know your position on it and I know Pres Bush’s and they are 180 but then you say you support him on everything and so I asked? Global warming?
I notice you didn’t answer that question and I notice you still haven’t said you’ve read the bill.
Since you are all for the ability to deport criminals. What does the bill provide will be the minimum amount of time that would expire before that person could actually be deported?
AJ so your position is, if someone has genuine questions about the bill, which no one will answer and they would like a little more thought and debate, because they won’t blindly buy a bill of goods without at least discussing the price,
that person has BDS?
I guess you’ve put a lot of thought into that.
FE,
I support the stronger borders, etc. I ALSO support the guest worker program. It is not ‘my’ way or the highway! Too funny. And no FE, after months of providing detailed answers to endless made up issues you do not get responses any more. They are on this blog and I have a topic for all my posts on the matter. Knock yourself out. But since it is the far right’s way or the highway I say “get on down the road”
C ya!
Terrye, does your house have walls? Why?
What does the Bill say about deporting?
(h) Treatment of Applicants-
(1) IN GENERAL- An alien who files an application for Z
nonimmigrant status shall, upon submission of any
evidence required under paragraphs (f) and (g) and after
the Secretary has conducted appropriate background
checks, to include name and fingerprint checks, that have
not by the end of the next business day produced
information rendering the applicant ineligible –
(A) be granted probationary benefits in the form of
employment authorization pending final adjudication
of the alien’s application;
(B) may in the Secretary’s discretion receive
advance permission to re-enter the United States
pursuant to existing regulations governing advance
parole;
(C) may not be detained for immigration purposes,
determined inadmissible or deportable, or removed
pending final adjudication of the alien’s application
AJ
I say “get on down the roadâ€
C ya!
too funny. Yea, you’ll see me, I’ve been reading your blog for a long time, I know you’ve been around 2 years (i read the post by LJ on the 2nd anniv and i’ve been reading you most of that time and I still plan to. As I’ve said, I may be far right, in your opinion, but I would say I’ve agreed on your position on every single issue, except immigration, just as many of the other ‘hardliners’ (Dale,Biker,R05,Apache,Merlin, etc) say they do also. Very few of your regular readers (that think for themselves) agree with you on the immigration issue. They just don’t comment on it because they don’t want to offend you. Well, my purpose is not to offend anyone, but I try to make a reasonable argument for my position and you almost always do. But for some reason you won’t discuss why you support the liberals position on immigration. This must be the only subject that you just resort to shrill name calling and say we are deranged if we don’t see it your way but then you won’t even say why you see it your way. So I think you owe it to your loyal readers, including me, at some point to say why this is a name calling , avoid the content of the subject, issue. You say you “after months of providing detailed answers to endless made up issues you do not get responses any more. They are on this blog and I have a topic for all my posts on the matter. Knock yourself out.” I think this is just another of your ways of avoiding the subject. There are no ‘answers’ that I can find.
Would you at least give some guidance as to where we might find the answers to why you support this bill. Where you actually address the content? Why you go against every other belief that you have conveyed on various subjects in endorsing this fraudulent liberal bill? As I’ve said, I’ve read almost everything you’ve ever written on this blog and I can see nothing you have written that gives me any clue as to why you are buy the liberal position, without even reading their position, in this bill.
The logical reason for anyone to support this bill would be that they have a personal stake in it, but I can’t even imagine that could be the case with you.
From your archives:Posted by AJStrata on Saturday, September 30th, 2006 at 8:49 am.
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 using current laws to and process them out of here.
From your post above, this thread:Left by AJStrata on June 2nd, 2007
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.
For example, while it is illegal to use a gun the commission of a crime, we had to create a special federal law to make sure people who used a gun in a crime got a minimum of 5 years in prison. Not because it was not already illegal, but because few states tied mandatory time to the use of a gun.
And this is why the immigration hypochondriacs cannot be taken seriously. They act like they know what is going on but they don’t. Believing current laws will solve the problem is like believing in the Easter Bunny. Interesting – but pointless.
Left by AJStrata on June 2nd, 2007
Whoa, what happened between Sept last year and june this year. They were deporting them in Sept using current laws, but can’t now. Wow.
Thanks for the tip to search the archives. Maybe there are some other jewels in there also.