Jul 03 2007
“Enforce The Immigration Laws” Was A Lie
How do we know all those cries to just “enforce the laws” was a lie? Well, if current laws could do the job why are the amnesty hypochondriacs now saying they need new legislation?
“The defeat of the Senate bill is not an excuse for Congress to do nothing when we have within reach a broad consensus on the need to address employer verification, interior enforcement and border security … we should instead renew our commitment to getting something done immediately.â€
Homeland Security Committee ranking member Pete King (R-N.Y.), a cosponsor of border security legislation that will be introduced later this month, said through a spokesman that the Senate bill has “reinvigorated the border-security debate.â€
…
“Until we’re able — the government’s able — to demonstrate to the American people that we can in fact secure the borders and enforce the laws, the American people aren’t willing to take those next steps in this process,†House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said.
…
It would also expedite the removal of individuals in the country illegally
Oh, yeah – because they need to fix the laws so they can deport all the illegal aliens here now! You know, people do not take kindly at be lied to. False advertising is not going to gain credibility. Why can’t we just enforce the laws all of a sudden? Apparently because now the hypochondriacs say current laws won’t do the job. Don’t expect straight or honest answers out of these people. They are out to purify the country (and their party).
Why am I not surprised?
And they are going to end up with a very pure but very tiny little party if they keep that up.
I’m not so sure that this mantra was a deliberate lie, except for those at the top who really did know better, like Tancredo. Most of those who’ve been singing this tune haven’t bothered to inform themselves that the current immigration laws are an unworkable, unenforcable and self-contradictory mess. (willfully uninformed, to be sure) It’s the laws themselves that have led to the current situation!
This is what happens when bumper sticker slogans replace actual thought.
It would also expedite the removal of individuals in the country illegally
Yep, that’s what this is all about. Let the hunt continue! (And the banishment of the GOP along with it.)
Related… there’s a fine article on the front page of today’s Seattle Times by Lornet Turnbull. She went out with an ICE team and reported on actual deportations — giving faces to the people the restrictionists want to “send home.” One of them has been here since 1989, another is a hotel maid, mother of four, arrested on her birthday when she planned to watch her daughter graduate from elementary school. It just makes you so proud to see our tax dollars devoted to this purpose of dispatching huge law enforcement resources to “round up” peaceful and productive people whose only crime involved illegal entry, years and years ago.
[SNIP] At an hour when a few residents were leaving for work but most were still asleep, a team of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had come in search of a single target: a mother of four who, after violating a no-contact order nearly a decade ago, was ordered removed from the country.
Ana Reyes-Velasquez, a hotel maid, would later say she had lived in fear of this day.
It came last week on the morning of her 41st birthday — a day she’d planned to spend watching her 13-year-old daughter graduate from Seahurst Elementary School in Burien.
But the ICE officers gathered outside her apartment that morning had other plans.
Article here:
http://tinyurl.com/34b82e
Linda Chavez weighs in:
[SNIP] …But none of this matters to the radio talk show hosts who encouraged their millions of listeners to shut down the congressional phone system with calls protesting “amnesty.” Nor does it matter to the myriad direct mail outfits opposing immigration, which will reap tens of millions of dollars in donations to fatten their coffers as a result of this “victory.”
Meanwhile, the real majority of Americans will have to wait for genuine immigration reform. And Republicans who believe this will help them at the polls in 2008 may find themselves sitting on the back benches for years to come.
See:
A Pyrrhic Victory?
http://tinyurl.com/26aoyv
This is what pisses me off. We have no laws that say you can round people up and just run them out of the country. The way our laws are written people get notices, hearings, etc and it is a process, not an event.
It is different if the border patrol actually catches them at the border, but the idea that there are laws on the books that require law enforcement people to drop everything else like bank robbery and rape and just dedicate themselves to kicking in doors and dragging people off to some detention cell is not true.
And now the hardliners are going to have to admit that because they are not going to be able to “just enforce the laws”.
I say screw em. They wanted this stalemate, this dead end. Let them deal with it.
And besides, I thought they were supposed to be going after cop killer rapists drunk driving drug running serial killer criminals, not hotel maids.
AJ:
I don’t know if you have ever read Dennis the Peasant but he has an interesting article up on the immigration debate and people like Malkin. He can be rough, but he is right on this, this is an excerpt:
The reality of the situation – and that’s what’s important here… THE REALITY OF THE SITUATION – is that there is nothing remotely like a politically viable consensus for the sort of policy Michelle Malkin advocates, which is the rejection of any amnesty for illegal immigrants prior to their forcible removal from the United States. Had there been such a consensus, the Malkin Solution to illegal immigration would have become law during the six years the Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House… And as we know, it did not. This was not because the standard issue villains – the Democrats – foiled the noble efforts of legislators such as Tom Tancredo, it was because a large number of Republicans simply couldn’t buy into the fantasy that is the Malkin Solution.
At present the Congressional Budget Office estimates there are roughly 7 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, although it readily concedes that estimates running to up to 10 million could be closer to the truth. If those sorts of numbers are accurate, the idea that the Department of Homeland Security (and more specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement) can either stem the current tide of illegal immigration or make any significant reduction in the number of illegal immigrants presently living in the United States with the resources available constitutes one of sillier of Malkin’s constructs. In her world, there are hundreds – perhaps thousands – of ICE agents sitting around their offices passing the time playing three pack Canasta, waiting to be turned loose on the bad guys.
If only that were the case…
In the real world, anyone who has followed the reality of the phenomenon of illegal immigration over the past 25 or so years will tell you exactly what I’m telling you right now: Any and all federal agencies charged with the responsibility for managing and controlling illegal immigration have suffered from chronic underfunding since forever. It doesn’t matter whether its been a Republican or Democrat in the White House, or whether Republicans or Democrats have controlled any or all of Congress, the result has always been the same: The dollars needed to enforce the law have never been available. Today is absolutely no different from yesterday in that regard. And that, more than anything, is why the law isn’t being enforced.
Were Michelle Malkin truly serious about illegal immigration, she’d be well aware that there is no chance in this particular Congress for DHS or ICE to get the money needed to shut down our borders and catch and deport our illegal immigrant population. The Republican Party couldn’t get that done during the six years they controlled everything lock, stock and barrel, so the idea Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are going to hand Malkin and the Tancredos of the world exactly what they want simply doesn’t pass The Laugh Test.
And it’s important to understand why the dollars haven’t been made available… Pushing that sort of spending is a sure political loser irrespective of party affiliation. What Michelle Malkin is either unaware of, or simply doesn’t wish to admit (and in the final analysis, it doesn’t really matter which) implementing the sort of immigration policy she advocates will cost over a billion dollars a year, and will generate the sort of political fallout that only the most rabid “no amnesty” politicians will be willing to accept. Here’s why:
First of all, let’s understand that you cannot secure a 2,000+ mile border and remove 10 million illegal aliens with 300 miles of fence and an additional 1,000 ICE agents. In fact, there really isn’t anyone who thinks 1,000 agents can secure our southern border, let alone allow for the removal of significant numbers of the illegal immigrants already here. To actually add ICE agents at a ratio of 1 per every 1,000 illegal aliens present means adding 10,000 people to the federal payroll, not including another, say, 2,000 support staff. So what we are talking about is adding somewhere between 12,000 and 25,000 agents at between $75,000 and $100,000 (salary plus benefits) per agent. That’s between $900 million and $2.5 billion per year.
Secondly, since illegal immigrants can petition the courts for relief prior to deportation, it would be necessary to significantly expand the court system to expedite the deportation process. Remember, those illegal immigrants facing deportation must be housed and fed at taxpayer expense. As there aren’t facilities available for detaining, say, 10,000 illegal immigrants at a time, they will need to be built and staffed. And since we are talking about a population spanning infants to criminals, there would need to be detention facilities of varying degrees of security and support – especially medical support – all paid for by you and I. The price for a couple of thousand judges, lawyers, baliffs, etc. for the courts… plus new court houses? A hundred million? What about the cost of prisons, detention facilities and camps to house thousands? The cost of the guards, staff and medical personnel? Hundreds of millions more?
BTW, before the reactionaries took over the Republican party, Dennis was a loyal Republican. They have just about run him out of the party.
He mentioned something else that is worth noting, the women and children in the detention centers.Think how that will play on the evening news.
Terrye, your figures are EXTREMELY low. My rough cut for securing the border would require about 10 agents per mile on post at any time. There’d be a cavalry screen up forward to find the crossers and a reaction force to intercept them.
That’s about 21,000 bodies on post. Add 15% to allow for supervisors: that’s 24,150 personnel on post. To allow 24×7 manning, that’s 120,750 bodies (vacation, illness, and other absences mean that manning 1 post 24/7 requires 5 persons).
Now, multiply the day shift force by four to get your admin & logistical support (maintaining the fence that keeps the manpower requirements halfway reasonable, operating the sensors, fixing the vehicles, typing the reports, etc.) That’s 96,600. 217,350 persons assigned just to keeping MORE people from coming in.
Now, workplace sweeps and detaining illegals caught in same: the sky is the freakin’ limit on that one. 1 body per 1,000 illegals in country? Try 1 per 100 for the sweep and detention functions, respectively. If you use the Malkinbot number of 12,000,000, that’s another 240,000 persons. Add them together, that 457,350 people.
Loaded rate for a federal employee (salary, benefits, office space, etc.) is $120,000 per. So, we end up with a bill for about $55 billion per year.
And that does not include the vast increase in the size of the judiciary to process the backlog of deportation cases that would result.
It also does not include capital costs (all the facilities required).
He mentioned something else that is worth noting, the women and children in the detention centers.Think how that will play on the evening news.
I have heard otherwise sane Republicans advocating seeding the border strip with land mines.
I wonder how Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public would react to seeing an eight-year-old getting his legs blown off on CNN during breakfast.
If those children were born here then she is the parent of dependent US citizens and will probably be allowed to stay IF she doesn’t waive her rights and has a lawyer.
That woman wasn’t hurting a soul, there is no reason to put her and her children though this. Poor kids are probably scared to death … US citizen kids. So they have no problems terrorizing elementary age kids in order to get their pound of flesh. This sounds more like 1930’s Germany than the United States of America.
“I have heard otherwise sane Republicans advocating seeding the border strip with land mines”
Got a link to that?
Cobalt:
Those were Dennis’s numbers, not mine. I think they are low too.
“But the ICE officers gathered outside her apartment that morning had other plans.”
SallyVee, this is what just burns me up. This Nazi Germany style Malkin “round-up”. THIS IS NOT THE AMERICA I KNOW AND WANT!!
I know, Michelle, you don’t advocate “round-ups”. But you DO advocate HARRASSMENT.
I am with George W. Bush who is concerned for the soul of the nation. I am deeply concerned…the VDARE’s make me ill as does the pathology of the Left. As does Malkin now. Even Rush has a more hardened heart, imho.
Don’t worry, what the far right wants is a physical impossibility so it will never happen. We just don’t have enough unemployed to take the jobs that the migrants hold. Take 12 million workers from our economy and replace then with the 6.5 million unemployed and the 1 or 2 million who might have given up working and you are still about 5 million workers short.
It would be like detonating a bomb that killed 5 million americans. It would be an economic nightmare. It will never, ever, ever, happen.
Well that does it I am switching my position. Lets open up the borders, do away with the minimum wage laws, unemployment compensation laws, workman comp laws, and go to a pure capitalistic America! I am ready how about you?
I am a GM/COO, not too many Mexicans competing for my job. How about you? Oh you say you don\’t cut grass, not a framing carpenter, don\’t do concrete work and the other assorted jobs that \”Americans\” don\’t do? Guess you won\’t be affected either. So we have a consensus…?? Open the borders!
Lets bring the third world here….Weeeeeeeeee….we can fix it all.
You guys are a hoot…no really its fun reading these \”insightful\” comments…really.
Pierre:
Oh yeah, we are a hoot. What have you guys accomplished thus far other than crippling the Republican party and virtually handing the government to the Democrats on a silver platter?
Have you laid land mines at the border yet? Put a moat around the country? Made it a law to shoot a Mexican everyday?
Really, what have you accomplished? Where is your big victory?
Crosspatch – I have read the land mines idea (and also heard it from my very own uncle), I have heard many people on radio and in print talk about a moat populated with alligators, and the last RNC fundraiser who called me told me he’d had people on his call list say we need machine guns mounted every 20 feet along the border.
Everyone ought to do a little poking around at the SPLC and elswhere and learn about the hate crimes against Latinos in the last few years, which are on the rise big time. It’s very, very distressing.
What is with the BOLD ?
This is me trying to stop it
Did it work?