Jun 10 2007
Democrats Make Sense On Immigration
I disagree with Dem Governor Janet Napolitano on many issues. But on immigration she (and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sen McCain and Sen Kyle) and I agree:
Opponents of the Senate immigration bill — those who really want to do nothing — merely yelled “amnesty” in place of reasoned opposition. They were — and are — just plain wrong. Don’t let them derail your efforts.
No one favors illegal immigration. But there are upwards of 12 million people illegally in this country — people who work, who have settled their families and who have raised their children here. For 20 years our country has done basically nothing to enforce the 1986 legislation against either the employers who hired illegal immigrants or those who crossed our borders illegally to work for them. Accordingly, our current system is, effectively, silent amnesty.
If we have no comprehensive immigration reform this year, and if we do not deal rigorously and openly with those already here, silent amnesty will continue. As a border-state governor who has dealt with immigration issues more than any other governor I know of, I am certain that continued inaction by Congress — silent amnesty — is the worst of all worlds.
While the far right got the initial message that to do something is worse than nothing, I doubt that myth will hold up to the light of day. But one thing is for sure. The Dems are sounding damn good on this issue. Not all dems. The far left and far right repulse me equally (which is why I end up near the center I guess). But clearly, on this issue, the center is the place to be. And we see the foolishness of the anti-immigration crowd wasting law enforcement resources on kids who win science fairs instead of terrorists and criminals:
· The Immigration Customs and Enforcement agency has sent several top-ranking students from Arizona State University to a camp in Eloy, Ariz., to await deportation to countries they have never lived in. The students have earned top marks, have never been in serious legal trouble and by all measures are primed to become productive members of our economy. This is a wise immigration policy?
· A team from an Arizona high school that has a high percentage of immigrant students went to Upstate New York in 2002 to compete in a science fair. After winning the top prize, the students crossed into Canada to see Niagara Falls — and were stopped at the border when they tried to return. After nine hours of interrogation they were allowed back into the United States, but a years-long legal battle ensued over whether they should be deported. We spent precious law enforcement resources on these high school students rather than on combating putative terrorist threats or, indeed, on infectious tuberculosis carriers. This is good homeland security?
And this is coherent national security – going after law abiding kids? Sure, whatever.
Addendum: Are the immigration hypochondriacs all upset that Dems are making reasoned sense and someone is pointing out how they left all these criminals in our midsts and prepetuated the silent amnesty of the status quo? I little reminder to our exaggerating and hyperventilating former conservative allies. The provisions this bill promises are more realistic than the wild claims those who support are for amnesty, open borders and immigrants being allowed to vote with instant citizenship. Accusing their former allies of being ‘traitors’ is par for the course for serial exaggerators on the right. No one who is pro-amnesty and open borders would support a bill that has heavy fines (up to $9K according to some calculations), strengthening the borders, and cutting off all paths to citizenship for guest workers. It is clear the far right hypes EVERYTHING on this issue. From their superior patriotism to the hurt feelings. So yes, after all the BS dems are much more credible.
The far right has no cedibility – they lost it all on this subject.
Great piece. THe GOvernor win election wuite easily last year. We need to start listening to blug dog Dems like Giffords and Republicnas like McCain, Flake, and Kyl all from Arizona on this issue
Biglsufan, you made a comment about the Texas GOP convention last year and how Hispanics were treated rudely. On what do you base that assumption? Where you there? Were you a delegate? Or are you relying on what you were told by someone else?
I would be interested in how you seem to know so much about the events at the convention.
How can you say Democrats make sense on immigration? Senator Reid pulled the bill. Last time I looked, he’s a Democrat. And why did he pull the bill? Because he’s only for part of the bill. He pulled the bill because of upcoming votes 0n amendments to the bill. These were amendments that Democrats wanted to vote no on, but didn’t want to be seen voting no on, principally:
Insuring border security, and,
Insuring that the path to citizenship was indeed a path that had to be completed in a timely manner .
This same Governor also stopped some anti war people from using the face of a dead soldier on Tshirts they were selling. They said they had the right under the first amendment, she said that the freedom of speech did not make it ok for you to make money off dead American soldiers.
Well, I don’t know what people expected. The Democrats are a political party if they see a weakness in the opposition they will make use of it. And when the opposition has loud mouthed demagogues out there celebrating a defeat for their own party while they call people like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnel and John Kyl and George Bush traitors I would say the Democrats are half way there without even trying.
The Democrats make sense on immigration? Senator Reid pulled the bill! He pulled it because he is only for half of the bill . He’s opposed to the enforcement provisions which, in the current bill, would not be enforceable.
He pull the bill because a number of amendments were coming up that improved the enforcment provisions of the bill. These would have been amendments that Reid, and others, couldn’t vote yes on. But they couldn’t be seen as voting no on.
Democrats killed this bill.
On immigration this site is turning into a “far left” and “open-borders” blog. If a country can’t manage its borders and its immigration policy then it ceases to exist.
REtire when I get back from Mass I will post the stuff from last year
Jacqui
AJ is far from far left. ALso Open Borders is becoming quite a misused term. OPen Borders is a concept that is endorsed by the far left and those extrem liberatarians on the right. BY far except for some Liberatarians blogs I encounter it is rare that I see any conservative that endorses this is for Open Borders. If we were for open BOrders I doubt we would be supporting a bill that would
Place heavy fines on Employers
Have a Workplace verfication system
Have a ID Card
Provide more border patrol
Provide for more border security etc
biglsusportsfan
We can’t even track people coming into and out of our country now – and they will give 24 hours for a background check? I have heard the same promises in past bills. We funded over 700 miles of the border fence last year – have you seen it? These are empty promises made to get “buy in” for the instant legalization. I am not opposed to legalizing the 12 +million or the guest worker program. In fact, I would like to see our immigration expand to bring in highly qualified persons to work in many of our industries that need them. But I have no confidence what you stated will materialize based on past performance of Congress. When the bucket is leaking – plug the hole before you add more water.
I’m just not ready to accept this “better than nothing” legislation unless it gets better structure and proper funding. You need to read the fine print that is buried in the 300 page document. The first few pages look good but buried deep inside are the exceptions and excuses in legaleze. If you read the fine print – you will find out, you are not getting what you think you are getting.
I am not far left, but then again I have been told by people on the right that I am not one of them either.
I voted Republican because of the war on Terror, but that means supporting Bush and since the right has decided that he is the enemy my primary reason for voting GOP has vanished. They would weaken a war time president for this hysterical nonsense.
And by the way, Reid did not take the blame for pulling this. Maybe he should have but instead he blamed Bush {the default}, he said the president did not give the bill the support it needed to pass.
Go figure.
And jaqui, it is not about being better than nothing. It is about a process, it is about the best deal you can out of the Senate and then getting a better deal out of the House and then trying to strengthen it in Conference. If you insist on having everything your way 100% in the Senate from the git go then nothing will ever get done.
Why is that so hard for people to comprehend?
“For 20 years our country has done basically nothing to enforce the 1986 legislation against either the employers who hired illegal immigrants or those who crossed our borders illegally to work for them,” Strata correctly says.
But unless Strata can provide evidence that he sounded like , for example , Patrick Buchanan in the 1980s, lamenting loudly that the country was not enforcing the laws then, it is milquetoast surrender-to-Mexico Strata who has lost all credibility, not the “far right.”
Yes I said “Surrender-to-Mexico Strata” because it is Mexican government policy to flood us with their excess Latinos. And yes I said “Surrender to Mexico Strata” because long before ragtag
bans of Moslems will make his kids bow to Mecca, the Mexican revanchists will recapture the Southwest for “La Raza.”
Like your own medicine, AJ?
And speaking of idiotic, while we have the people here who think that Mexico is a bigger threat to the United States than the Islamists are, it might be worth noting, that they keep trying to convince people they are not really that extreme. Why? Because they sound crazy and they know it. They don’t want people talking about the conspiracy theories and all the crap going on out there on fringes.
Speaking of crazy, we have an unholy alliance between the far left in the Democratic party who did not support this bill and the far right who obviously did not. So calling other people leftists or whatever while you are allying yourself with the same people who get their support from LaRaza and/or the AFL CIO is just another example of how ridiculous this whole debate has become.
And as for Pat Buchanan is concerned, he does not support any kind of immigration, and that includes legal immigration. The wall is just the beginning with Pat, he wants no more brown people.
Most everyone including Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson have made a real effort to let people know they are not in the Tancredo/Buchanan camp.
Buchanan is also an antiSemite who has said things about Israel that sound more like the ravings of the mad mullahs of Iran than an American politician.
So…. if back in the 80’s, Pat Buchanan {who got a whopping 1% of the vote in 2000} had not made such a point of sounding like a loon maybe someone would have paid more attention to the border. But I doubt it, people wanted the labor. And I don’t just mean the government and big business either.
By the way, speaking of the left, they love Pat. He has become quite a hit with the blame America crowd. And if the right intends to resurrect Pat Buchanan for this debate then that can only be good news for the Democrats.
Terrye
You’re going to lose both the Southwest and the Mideast.
But at least you will assuage yourself that you never
strayed from the comfortably cocooned “middle” of losers.
Ok Retire05 HEre are just some of the news reports I read out of the State Covention last year
“Hispanics feeling alienated
GOP delegates look to make concerns known in immigration debate”
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/060306dntexgophispanics.31e62f8.html
From a liberal Blog but I was able to get the direct newspaper link last year
“GOP delegate Stephen Mallet said he has “mixed feelings about it” and said his party should avoid harsh rhetoric.
And,
The tone of the convention at times grew so heated that some Hispanic delegates feared it was sending the wrong message to Latino voters.
“I don’t like the rhetoric,” said Reggie Gonzales, of Houston, state chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly. “Being a proud American of Mexican descent, I don’t like the overtones.””
http://stxc.blogspot.com/2006/06/rick-perry-demagogue.html
More here
http://media.www.dailytexanonline.com/media/storage/paper410/news/2006/06/08/StateLocal/Texas.Republican.Party.Diverges.From.Bush.Border.Security.Plan.Calls.For.Fewer.B-2043058.shtml
“Reggie Gonzalez, state chairman of the National Republican Hispanic Assembly, said when President Bush was Texas governor, he sold Hispanics on the idea that the Republican Party was the party of opportunity.
Gonzalez said that is being lost by the current round of Republican attacks on immigration. “It’s hard to distinguish an American citizen of Mexican descent from a Mexican national,” Gonzalez said. “They (the Republican Party) want to roll us all into one category.”
http://tmohouston.net/news-immigration.shtml
THere wera lot of articles last year from average Hispanci dlegates that thought they were getting the Cold shoulder last year in San Antonio
I am going to email Mr Gonzales of the Hispanic Republican Assembly of Harris County and ask hi m if he can start commenting on these threads
OK, bigslufan, I thought YOU were going to comment on the Republican convention held last year in Texas. Now you want to bring in someone else to speak for you?
This is just a “I know what happened but I don’t feel qualified to speak about it” moment for you. If you were there, you know what happened. If you were not there, you don’t have a clue. Now I am sure that Reggie would be more than happy to discuss the issues that Texas Hispanic Republicans have, like the increasing drop out rate among Hispanic teens or the high out of wedlock birth rate.
But you lead me to believe that you knew what happened at the convention and clearly, you were not there, you don’t know and you are just trying to pretent to have information you don’t have.
So much for your credibility.
Terrye, I’m sorry to say I think Romney is following, not leading on the immigration issue. I’ve just listened to an amazing interview via my MedHead subscription — Michael Medved interviewing John Kyl last Friday. Along the way, Romney’s name came up and my heart sank. Medved’s disappointment was palpable as well, because he’s been an enthusiastic admirer of Romney’s up til very recently. In a nutshell, Romney’s recent remarks (in a WaPost interview) seem to echo the latest far right tack — “attrition through enforcement” (my words, but I think you’d agree if you heard it).
Something else that’s been bothering me… I read a report last week at AmSpectator that Romney met with Pitchfork Pat specifically to get help framing his immigration stance. Creepy.
I’ve sent a note to Medved begging him to make the entire Kyl interview available for public access. The Romney mention was only one of the interesting segments… the whole thing is superb, exceptionally informative from beginning to end. If it becomes available I will post the link here immediately. If you have your own MedHead subscription, I urge you to spin it up ASAP.
The most regrettable aspect of the current immigration controversy is that it is an important and complicated issue that requires time, focus, attention and rationality, but so electric and so susceptible to emotionalism that it drives the sides apart, and makes th0ughtful and reasoned bipartisan discourse almost impossible.
I do salute AJ for trying to insert rationality into the discussion; I fear it may prove futile, however, as unreasoning emotion is so much easier to do.
Well Sally V if Mitt does the lapdog routine and drags Pat out, he can forget about my vote. . I mean that.
And center, you said I will lose the southwest and the mideast, are you not an American?
So now I guess if I disagree/question those on the AJ Immigration Train, that post is not to come up?
I am still waiting for biglsufan to explain to me how he knows what happened at last year’s TxGOP convention although now it seems he want to check with the chairman of the Texas Hispanic Republican Assembly.
Terrye says that she won’t vote for Romney. Anyone surprised by that? My guess is Terrye won’t vote for ANY Republican but has, in fact, back slid into her liberal roots.
Ain’t it funny how, when you are someone to prove their claims, they never provide a link?
No, Retire, I said that if the Republicans are stupid enough to pander to that holocause denying loon Pat Buchanan I will have nothing to do with it. That is my choice, my right and none of your business.