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The U.S. government is on the verge of approving a mass amnesty to millions of illegal aliens -- a plan pushed aggressively by meddling Mexican officials who reap billions of dollars in remittances (illegal aliens' earnings sent back to Mexico) without having to lift a finger to clean up their own country. And the thanks we get? Internationally televised public humiliation. Monday night, the beautiful young woman who represented America in the Miss Universe pageant was booed and mocked as she competed in Mexico City. Rachel Smith, 22, did her best to respond with grace and dignity during the Top...

Bush scolds balking GOP By Stephen Dinan and Ralph Z. Hallow THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published June 2, 2007 President Bush yesterday renewed his attack on Republicans who oppose his immigration bill, again charging that they are trying to "frighten people" and calling on supporters to rally around the compromise. The president pleaded with senators to "show courage and resolve" to withstand outrage from voters in their districts. "It is right to argue for what you believe and recognize that compromise might be necessary to move the bill along. And it is right to take political risk for members of the...

Bush gives pep talk on immigration bill President rallies pro-immigration troops as Senate prepares to resume debate on a comprehensive measure. By DENA BUNIS The Orange County Register WASHINGTON Like a coach on the eve of a big game, President Bush gathered a group of pro-immigration reform advocates at the White House complex today and gave them a pep talk before next week's crucial Senate debate. The president's message was the same as it has been for weeks: The nation's immigration system is broken. The Senate bill is not amnesty. He wants a bill on his desk to sign. And...

President Bush had had enough. His last chance at another legacy legislative achievement, immigration reform, was in peril, and from his own people, conservative Republicans. He wasn't going to take it any more. At a training school for border agents, the president ripped into his own people for opposing his bill. Bush did so indirectly, so a guided tour through the speech may be in order. The opponents, he said, "haven't read the bill," a polite way of saying their ignorant. They are opposing it with "empty political rhetoric." They're vacuous, too. They worry the bill "would make somebody else...

McClatchy exclusive: Bush accuses conservative critics of fear-mongering on immigration By Ron Hutcheson - McClatchy Newspapers Firing back at conservative critics, President Bush defended his plan to overhaul immigration laws Tuesday and accused its opponents of "trying to rile up people’s emotions" with misinformation. In an exclusive interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Bush expressed his determination to fight for changes that would let millions of illegal immigrants gain legal status. He cast the debate as a struggle over America’s soul and its reputation as a welcoming nation. "I’m deeply concerned about America losing its soul. Immigration has been the lifeblood of...

The Wall Street Journal is at it again today, giving the White House free rein over its editorial page. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman do their best to sell the amnesty deal to a skeptical public and enraged conservative base. With the latest Rasmussen poll showing that just 16% believe the bill will actually reduce illegal immigration, the White House is pulling out all everything at its disposal to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, Bush and Mehlman's argument is the same rhetoric that we're tired of hearing. They even have the gall to say...

There has been a sharp decline in contributions from RNC phone solicitations, another fired staffer said, reporting that many former donors flatly refuse to give more money to the national party if Mr. Bush and the Senate Republicans insist on supporting what these angry contributors call "amnesty" for illegal aliens. "Everyone donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue," said the former employee.

By JEB BUSH AND KEN MEHLMAN We support the immigration reform compromise worked out in the Senate for a few simple reasons. It strengthens our national defense. It makes our economy more competitive and flexible. It enhances the rule of law and promotes national unity. And it also does these things in a fair, practical way. The bill provides real border security for the first time, protecting us against the entry of terrorists and stemming the flow of illegal drugs. The temporary worker program will reduce the number of people trying to sneak past the border patrol, allowing law enforcement...

IMMIGRATION BILL FAQ Q. I'm concerned that the immigration bill focuses more on giving illegal immigrants amnesty than border protection. Does the President share these concerns? A. The President doesn't hate brown people. Q. This isn't a racial issue. Many people think this bill will only encourage more illegal immigration and leave our borders open and dangerous. What are the answer to these charges? A. To answer your underlying question, I'm afraid the the President is against your proposal to commit genocide against Hispanics. Q. This isn't about Hispanics! This is about our laws being respected and our national security!...

McClatchy Exclusive: Bush Accuses Conservative Critics of Fear-Mongering on Immigration Firing back at conservative critics, President Bush defended his plan to overhaul immigration laws Tuesday and accused its opponents of "trying to rile up people’s emotions" with misinformation. In an exclusive interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Bush expressed his determination to fight for changes that would let millions of illegal immigrants gain legal status. He cast the debate as a struggle over America’s soul and its reputation as a welcoming nation. "I’m deeply concerned about America losing its soul. Immigration has been the lifeblood of a lot of our country’s history,"...

GLYNCO, Ga., May 29 — President Bush took on parts of his conservative base on Tuesday by accusing opponents of his proposed immigration measure of fear-mongering to defeat its passage in Congress. “If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s an amnesty bill,” Mr. Bush said at a training center for customs protection agents and other federal agents here in southeastern Georgia. “That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens.” It was some of Mr. Bush’s toughest language as he started an intensified effort to build support for the compromise bill in the...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In his speech Tuesday on immigration reform, President Bush was trying to provide political cover for members of Congress to support the legislation. That could be tough. Republicans are getting an earful on immigration. "I have learned some new words from some of my constituents," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, said. The angry response comes as a shock. "The level of intensity and volume is, I think, surprising,'' CNN contributor and radio talk show host Bill Bennett said. "We've talked to a number of Republican senators, and they confessed to being surprised by the reaction." There's a big...

Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., head of the Immigration Reform Caucus, took offense at President Bush’s assertion that critics of a Senate immigration bill were determined to find fault with the measure by looking “at a narrow slice of it.” “Amnesty for 12-20 million illegal immigrants isn’t a ‘narrow slice’ Mr. President, it’s the whole darn pie,” Bilbray said, in a press release. “The American people want us to secure the border and crackdown on the number one incentive for illegal immigration which is illegal employment - they don’t want another amnesty,” he added. The House Immigration Reform Caucus has more...

Recently many Freepers have been acting like Bush has never addressed the issue of immigration, and now all of a sudden they recognize that his view of how to deal with the subject is not exactly conservative in nature. Wow. He's only spoken to this subject several times...and he has not stepped away from what he said he would do. We voted for him twice, knowing full well what his immigration policy was going to be. Stop acting like he's suddenly worse than Nixon, Carter, and Clinton all rolled into one. Kudo's to On The Issues for archiving all of...

WASHINGTON - After a group of senators revealed their immigration “bargain” a couple of weeks ago, their promoters set out to sell a deception to the American public by using a lexicon of catch phrases developed over the last two years. While each is designed to spin public perception, the most misleading moniker for this legislative travesty is “comprehensive immigration reform” — a bald euphemism for amnesty. To gain some perspective on the Senate’s amnesty bill, we need we look no further than our nation’s kindergartners. Kindergarten kids quickly develop an acute sense of right and wrong. They learn the...

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 WASHINGTON NEWS Bush Blasts Conservatives On Immigration During a visit to Georgia yesterday, President Bush sharply criticized conservative critics of the Senate immigration reform deal. The tenor of Bush's remarks and his apparent willingness to stand against a sizeable swath of his own party base are receiving extensive attention in today's newspapers. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says Bush accused conservative critics "of having failed to read the legislation they're attacking." Bush's audience "gave him a polite but cool response, reserving most of its applause for the beginning and end of the speech." The Los Angeles Times says...

Immigration Sellout, Not Reform The Kennedy-Kyl (K-K) Amnesty bill should be titled An Act to Destroy the Republican Party because it pits President Bush against the majority of the Party that elected him. When Senator Ted Kennedy appeared as the centerpiece of the photo-op announcing it, that told the grassroots all they needed to know about the politics of the deal trumpeted as bipartisan. The Bush Administration has been tone deaf about how offensive are the words comprehensive and compromise. The American people want border security that we can see with our own eyes on television, and they are...

CARLSBAD, Calif. (AP) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain is challenging critics of a proposed immigration overhaul plan to provide a better alternative. The Arizona senator criticized his leading rivals, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, when a reporter asked him about their opposition to a Senate compromise brokered earlier this month. McCain says anyone who doesn't like the plan should offer their own idea. The plan before Congress includes tougher security, guest workers and a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. McCain says the US can't afford to continue to allow...

The amnesty deal negotiated by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and the White House has Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over it. Plain and simple, it’s bad public policy being used to advance a political agenda. We’ve seen this happen before, most notably in 2003 when Rove and President Bush strong-armed Republicans in Congress into supporting the largest entitlement program since the days of LBJ’s Great Society. The Medicare prescription drug bill, conservative critics were told, would guarantee Republicans the majority for decades. Three years later, the GOP was knocked out of power in Congress, and if the party keeps heading down...

GLYNCO, Ga. (AP) - President Bush attacked opponents of an immigration deal Tuesday, suggesting they “don’t want to do what’s right for America.� “The fundamental question is, will elected officials have the courage necessary to put a comprehensive immigration plan in place,� Bush said against a backdrop of a huge American flag. He described his proposal—which has been agreed to by a bipartisan group of senators—as one that “makes it more likely we can enforce our border—and at the same time uphold the great immigrant tradition of the United States of America.� Bush spoke at the nation’s largest training center...

I have always held Linda Chavez in high regard. But this kind, rational, and (until now) honest commentator, has fallen in my estimation by resorting to scurrilous argument in favor of the deeply flawed immigration "compromise." Of course, she has plenty of company among the GOP elites, but somehow I expected better of Linda. Consider this sample form her latest column: Some people just don't like Mexicans - or anyone else from south of the border. They think Latinos are freeloaders and welfare cheats who are too lazy to learn English. They think Latinos have too many babies, and that...

WASHINGTON, May 25 — Angry calls poured into Senator Jon Kyl’s office this week by the thousands, expressing outrage beyond anything he said he had witnessed in his 20-year political career. The callers were inflamed by Mr. Kyl’s role in shaping the bipartisan immigration compromise announced May 17, which lawmakers continue to debate. “Yes, I have learned some new words from some of my constituents,” Mr. Kyl, an Arizona Republican, said at a news conference on Thursday, drawing titters from those in the room. Mr. Kyl, 65, who garners top ratings from conservative groups every year, is the unlikely lynchpin...

WASHINGTON — Trent Lott usually doesn't answer his Senate phone himself, but when angry callers are burning up the lines — as they are over this week's debate about revising the nation's immigration laws — the Republicans' No. 2 Senate leader has picked up to hear what they have to say. A lot of the talk is misinformation, he says. Talk radio and the blogs were blasting the compromise bill, which includes a guest-worker program and a path to legal status for many illegal immigrants, well before the bill's text was ready for senators Tuesday. "We talked for 15 minutes,"...

On Monday, May 21 st the acrid air of a back room plot to deliver amnesty for up to 20 million illegal aliens on the eleventh hour leaked out the “Grand Bargain” nest at the Whitehouse and into the Senate Gallery for an unveiling followed by a rushed vote. Neither the dismaying secretiveness nor the slight-of-hand haste with which it was presented was designed to allow the majority of Senators to know the hidden elements of the amnesty bill much less to give the American public a chance to weigh in with opinions. The plotters, lead by Republicans Senator John...

May 25, 2007 - The immigration deal worked out between Senate leaders and the White House is an unwieldy compromise nobody much likes. Democrats will mostly support it because the liberal lion, Ted Kennedy, is leading the charge. And the fact that right-wing Republicans are worked up into such a lather about the bill may give some Democrats enough reason to back it. President Bush is at war with his own party, tearing it apart over an issue that was supposed to be the GOP’s ticket to an enduring governing majority. In his Rose Garden press conference Thursday, he pleaded...

WASHINGTON: Having won his fight with congressional Democrats on an Iraq war spending bill, President George W. Bush is now waging an equally aggressive battle with Republican senators as he tries to persuade them to support an immigration bill that he hopes will be a signature domestic achievement. As the Senate debated the immigration measure, Bush spent the past week lobbying behind the scenes to build support for it. A dozen Republican senators, including some of the staunchest opponents of the bill, were summoned to Oval Office meetings to hear the president deliver an impassioned appeal for the legislation. In...

Some people just don't like Mexicans -- or anyone else from south of the border. They think Latinos are freeloaders and welfare cheats who are too lazy to learn English. They think Latinos have too many babies, and that Latino kids will dumb down our schools. They think Latinos are dirty, diseased, indolent and more prone to criminal behavior. They think Latinos are just too different from us ever to become real Americans. No amount of hard, empirical evidence to the contrary, and no amount of reasoned argument or appeals to decency and fairness, will convince this small group of...

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration and key congressional Democrats and Republicans stepped up their efforts to sell a broad immigration compromise Thursday as lawmakers braced for a public backlash at home. "Many Americans are rightly skeptical about immigration reform," President Bush said in a Rose Garden news conference. "This bill provides the best chance to reform our immigration system and help us make certain we know who's in our country and where they are."

Initial public reaction to the immigration proposal being debated in the Senate is decidedly negative. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey conducted Monday and Tuesday night shows that just 26% of American voters favor passage of the legislation. Forty-eight percent (48%) are opposed while 26% are not sure. The bi-partisan agreement among influential Senators and the White House has been met with bi-partisan opposition among the public. The measure is opposed by 47% of Republicans, 51% of Democrats, and 46% of those not affiliated with either major party. The enforcement side of the debate is clearly where the public passion...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain came to the defense of one of his biggest allies Wednesday over the pending immigration vote in the U.S. Senate. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has come under fire in the last week for his defense of an immigration compromise that provides amnesty for illegal aliens. It reached a peak when he was booed during the state Republican convention Saturday in Columbia. “I always think it is unfair when I hear Lindsey Graham is criticized,” McCain, R-Ariz., said during a conference call Wednesday. Graham has been an ardent campaigner for McCain in South Carolina –...

COLUMBIA, S.C. | Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Wednesday defended the immigration legislation winding its way through Congress, saying the measure is needed to protect the country from terrorism. "People who grew up in London, people who have spent most of their lives in the United States, have somehow become induced to be terrorists and that argues strongly for accounting for and bringing under control a situation where 12 million people are in our country illegally," the Arizona senator said during one of several conference calls with reporters from early voting states where he is vying for support. ---...

Apparently, at an awards dinner sponsored by "La Raza", Lindsay Graham commented on the activists lining up against the immigration bill. He said, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut up..."

Amendments threaten immigration deal POSTED: 10:12 a.m. EDT, May 22, 2007 North Dakota Democrat Sen. Byron Dorgan's amendment would eliminate the guest worker program entirely. The amendment offered by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, would cut the program in half. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, one of the negotiators who crafted the agreement, said he is concerned about both amendments passing but especially Bingaman's because a similar amendment passed last year with 79 votes. Graham challenged critics to "do more than just shout amnesty." "This debate is about the future of the United States, when it comes to our national...