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.
Merlin:
I don’t doubt that Reid thought the GOP Senators might get enough amendments in there to make the palatable to most conservatives….and so he tabled it and then blamed Bush.
When I read the statement Reid made saying “Where is the President, where are his people?” stating Bush had not supported the bill and then I read hardliners calling Bush Jorge, I thought…this stinks. Something is wrong here.
Jaqui:
Congress not lie to you? Well how about the hardliners not lying to you?
The point is the American people put the Democrats in charge. And the Democrats get to make at least some of the rules because of that. It is the way our government works. The hardliners are trying to subvert the process by demanding the majority be ignored.
That will not happen.
And anyone who passes this law off saying something along the lines that day 1 all illegals become citizens, day 2 they kill the wall, day 3 they give the southwest to Mexico and day 4 Spanish becomes our national language….does not need to talk about anyone else lying about anything.
The deliberate attempts to end any kind of rational debate on this subject by insisting there are two sides to the debate:
1 the hardliners, who love God and country and like George Washington would never tell a lie
and
2 bad people who want to destroy America and they are the ones who do not knee jerk agree with number 1.
This attitude of calling people like Kyl and anyone else who is supporting a piece of legislation they do not like liars and traitors has made it impossible to even have a debate about the issue.
So, I don’t believe they just lied. The truth is I would trust the likes of Tancredo, Malkin, and their ilk about as far as I could throw my chevy.
Terrye
Read Big Lizards again, he got it right.
Reid dumped the bill because it was getting out of control.
He wanted to cut off amendments because the next ones down the line were going to counter the provisions he wanted to keep in the bill, and hoped to slide by in the “do something even if it’s wrong” rush to judgment.
Even Kennedy was sliding away from him, since this was Ted’s third time to bat.
When Durbin came out and countered Reid, then he shut it down and played his blame Bush game.
You should have watched the streaming coverage. Reid looked like a deer in the headlights.
After Reid played all his political cards then Mitch came back with how a dozen Dem’s still did not support Reid for cloture and Harry had a major pucker factor on his face when they panned to him.
Dems and Reps both had amendments to tighten this bill up with all the gaping holes it has. Oh and the dem ones could almost be confused with reps choices because if you read the bill you can see how many could not take it home to the voters and defend it unless their voters were only getting the Readers Digest condensed version.
Harry read the tea leaves and punted. Simple as that.
If you bypass the committee process, amendments are the only way you can go.
Harry has a paper thin majority in the Senate.
This is not about gotcha politics, there were some valid concerns being addressed by outstanding amendments and Harry knew it.
In all the streaming I watched for the whole day, there was none of the extremist left or right of center posing.
All were working to try to make the best bill possible under the circumstances.
All the bull flying around about how this was dumped by the extremes is just that , plain bull. Whoever buys into that should have tivoed this thing since it was obviously beyond their priority meter to actually watch and see what was happening.
Let every one else pose and interpret. It will be both fun and sad to watch.
For all of you who have not read the bill, it will probably be a bit of surprise that the AUTHORIZED chain migration under the bill as it stands and the guest worker program (which was sliced in half) , plus the increase high value worker quotas will EXCEED the WORST year of illegal immigration numbers that anyone said was crossing the borders, even if the fence is in place.
Yup you can build the lock tight fence and the AUTHORIZED numbers that can come in the front door makes it a moot point.
Bet you didn’t hear that on the MSM coverage did you.
There is so much BS running around on this bill that it could choke a TREX.
But all of you just continue on and do your light work for or against.
The bill has many good features, but also holes wider than the border to be fixed.
My position is try to do all the fixes we can and realize we won’t get them all…this time.
If the Senate and the House blow it for a third time and screw the pooch again, the fourth time is going to be a major backlash to roll back even the best features as collateral damage.
Put down the Latte, forget about Paris Hilton. There is major business of the country afoot.
Oh there were a couple of Pres wannabe proposed amendments that were put up that couldn’t even meet the test of being valid Hail Marys, they were just pure political chip buying play to the rubes no chance in hell of passing pandering things.
All of those deserve having a can of concentrated whip a$$ opened on them for their pure political plays.
But all of you who were too busy to watch missed it and it was not reported like a tree falling in the woods when nobody was there.
Otherwise carry on and lets see where it goes next.
Merlin,
Now we are ‘rubes’ who deserve to have some ‘whoop ass’ applied? And you wonder why the conservative coalition is no more? How much denial can you folks be in?
Aj
You are so blinded by your position you can’t see I was saying the Prez pretenders deserved the “whoop ass”.
Take off the blinders and you might see something.
Just politics, it seems to me. I cannot see any great evidence
of parties in tatters. In fact I can’t even see many who care much
at all about the immigration bill’s failure, except for politicians
and illegal immigrants who have a vested interest in staying.
I rather liked Jay Cost’s analysis over on his now famous
horserace blog that actually our political system worked as it
is supposed to, preventing passage of a hosed up bill that
no one particularly wanted, (except for those with a vested
interest, ie. illegal immigrants and illegal immigrant employers).
Often asked is the “now what” question. In other words, “are you
proposing to deport twelve or twenty million people?” to which
the only intelligent response is: “No, just make it prohibitively
expensive to be caught employing them, like 100K for one
employee, 200K (each) for two employees, 300K (each) for
three employees, etc.”
What’s that? American business cannot exist without this
uhh “slave underclass”? Think we did that once. Can’t find any
nuanced thought that defends it again. It is not the defining
question of our time. It’s just a bunch of dirty washington
politics and most of us can see it for that.
Merlin,
Are they blinders or have I just moved past the naysayers and give little credibility to them anymore? You decide.
AJ, you keep knocking the loss of the ‘conservative coalition’. Who did you think the conservative coalition was? George Soros is not a member of the conservative coalition. Neither is Ted Kennedy, or La Raza, MeChA, the democratic party, none of them are members of the conservative coalition. They are far left socialists. But you keep slamming the ‘Far right’ about not doing exactly what these far left fringe socialists are asking them to do. I got news for you buddy, the right is alive and well and defeating this steaming pile of legislation will prove that. I think in the end, those republicans who fought against this bill will be strengthened and any republican candidates who run against this idea of open borders and amnesty is going to clobber any opponent who fought to pass it. On the other hand, look what is happening to the left, which is pretty much made up of a lot of social engineering groups looking for their individual handouts. That is the difference between the right and left, the right fights for principle, the left want’s whatever is in it for me. The democrats are having some real rifts develope between the party and the labor unions and those voting Americans who thought the left was for the little guy. I don’t think those poor construction workers who don’t have jobs anymore, are going to be so supportive of what the left tried to do here. Have you noticed how the left politicians have been almost silent on this? They don’t want to run on the ‘I tried to bring forty million more poor people here to compete with you for work’ ticket. The right and the left are very polarized right now and the only people who are irrelevant are the mushy middle. No, the republicans are not leaving the republican party, the mushy middle is leaving the republican party and as far as I’m concerned, good riddence. All they do is try to talk the right into doing exactly what the democrats want. If there is one good thing that comes out of this fight, hopefully, the beltway glass house will finally see there is another world out there and we need to start taking seriously the fact that a nation without borders is not a nation.