Posted on 11/25/2011 1:16:30 PM PST by Starman417
Newt Gingrich risked his standing with conservatives on Tuesday night by calling for a "comprehensive approach" to immigration reform. "Comprehensive immigration reform" is a poisonous a term to conservatives because of the reckless dishonesty with which it has been applied to a long series of bills that have been anything BUT comprehensive. In particular, these bills have promised to both secure the border and establish a path to citizenship for those illegals who are already here (amnesty), while only actually providing amnesty, which together with our still unsecured borders dramatically increases illegal immigration. It's like hosing gasoline on a burning house and calling it "a comprehensive approach to firefighting." Comprehensively dishonest and comprehensively disastrous perhaps. It took a huge fight to turn back the last such attempt (the McCain-Kennedy Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007). Newt had been asked about his vote for the first such phony-comprehensive bill and stepped in it by making a renewed appeal to comprehensiveness:
I did vote for the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. Ronald Reagan, in his diary, says he signed it -- and we were supposed to have 300,000 people get amnesty. There were 3 million. But he signed it because we were going to get two things in return. We were going to get control of the border and we were going to get a guest worker program with employer enforcement. We got neither. So I think you've got to deal with this as a comprehensive approach that starts with controlling the border, as the governor said.A comprehensive approach vs. a comprehensive bill It is a tricky rhetorical question: how to call for a genuinely comprehensive approach to immigration reform when the term "comprehensive immigration reform" has been systematically used in the most dishonest fashion as cover for what are actually pro-illegal-immigration policies? But there is a simple answer.
Truly comprehensive immigration reform MUST be a two-step process. The border must be secured FIRST. Until that is accomplished, even to talk of amnesty, never mind legislate about it, only increases illegal immigration. In other words, a "comprehensive immigration" BILL is the diametric opposite of a comprehensive immigration APPROACH. Anyone who talks about a comprehensive immigration reform bill (McCain) is a anti-conservative fraud who should be routed out of the party.
Newt's control-the-border-first statement shows he understands the problem, but does he understand the solution?
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
First it'll be: Secure the border first, then amnesty for those here a long time.
Then it'll be amnesty for those here a long time first, then secure the border. What the heck. You gonna quibble about a detail?
Then the Republicans will sign off on it.
Then it'll be "let's back-burner that 'secure the border' stuff, we need the money to buy votes so we can stay in office."
Maybe the Republican Party thinks it can win without conservative votes?
Does anyone think they will secure the border, ever??
I’m not enabling that drunken abuser anymore. I’ll be voting my way and letting the chips fall where they may.
I think a cursory study of history shows that a loss of immigration control is not generally a recoverable error.
We had a one-time amnesty 25 years ago. We had an amnesty without enforcement and securing the border. We gave amnesty to 2.7 million in 1986. Today we have 12 to 20 million illegal aliens. In 1986 we had amnesty without enforcement. Let’s try enforcement only this time.
If you understand the problem, you have 90% of the solution.
Newt is prudent to separate his plan from the open-borders Bush-McCain "comprehensive bills."
See you at the bill signing, Dubya. Smug elitist punk.
I agree. Newt’s plan is not that radical if you take him at his word. If you just don’t trust the guy then you won’t be convinced by any argument.
I am not personally opposed to letting a very small percentage stay based on the tight criteria Newt outlined Tues. night. As long as the border gets secured first.
Until we dry up the market in illegal labor we will always have a border security/illegal alien problem.
Oh, Newt understands the problem, all right. As long as you define the problem as NOT solving illegal immigration, but selling amnesty as something other than amnesty.
Hence his coining the term 'path to non-deportation'.
Just that phrase alone shows he has no desire to approach this honestly. He joins McCain in pretending that his amnesty isn't. Yet I am supposed to trust him that he would not sign an amnesty by emulating Obama and Napolitano in declaring the border to be secure when it is not.
Newt just coined the phrase 'path to non-deportation.' Engaging in doublespeak like that is hardly conducive towards taking him at his word.
If you just don’t trust the guy then you won’t be convinced by any argument.
He keeps giving us reasons NOT to trust him.
Build a guest worker program for the worker only, no family, that allows unlimited entry and re-entry. Guest workers wouldn't pay FICA, but their employers would, to keep foreign labor from having a financial advantage for employers.
From a humanitarian standpoint, two governments are tempting dirt poor Mexicans to cross dangerous stretches of the desert Southwest. That is wrong.
As long as "securing the border first" remains couched in the terms of a condition for something else to happen, it will not happen. Border security is being used as a bargaining chip rather than a Constitutional mandate. It should be the sole topic of discussion. The debate at this point should be focused exclusively on how to secure the border, not on "what happens after." At this point, our candidates are like a couple of surgeons quibbling about the optimum closing stitches, while the patient bleeds to death on the table with multiple gunshot wounds.
No, they are all globalists and will continue to ignore the bloody war on the border.
This is the guy who as a 16 year old high school student was dating his geometry teacher ... the guy who was banging Callista on a House conference room table while trying to lead impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton for perjury in relation to Monica Lewinsky? The man who was forced to resign as Speaker because of ethics violations?
Newt is prudent???
Well I agree with you that the chances of the border ever being secured is slim. There has been an agreement at the top between the US and Mexico for a long time to keep a certain status quo. Somewhere around 50% of the Mexican GDP comes from money being sent back home by illegals working in the US. If we cut that off they will totally collapse. So it doesn’t matter whether we elect a Dem or a Rep the border will probably remain pretty porous. Between that and big business wanting cheap labor its almost a losing battle.
The only thing that I think will finally close the border is when the drug cartels and their violence gets to the point that the public just starts screaming.
Me too.
Here in Florida illegal labor is used extensively in the citrus, sugar, cattle, service and construction industries..
Whole towns around the big lake are majority illegal and one NEVER sees or hears of ICE showing up with busses checking everyone.
Orlando and Disney area hotels restaurants etc are extensively using illegals.
Ice? Federal gub mint? Secure what?
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