Actually you didn't show me any polls showing strongly against either a guest worker program or an earned path to citizenship. But one poll you showed me that you apparently believed in "TIME" showed just the opposite. Yet you ignored those findings. At least a little honesty would be worth of a "conservative".
# 1. Our Republican congressmen have been swamped with phone calls, letters and town hall meetings wich are OVERWHELIMNGLY AGAINST ANY KIND OF AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS. That that by far trumps any polls, because these are the peope that actually VOTE for our Republican candidates. I don't really care what RATS voters want. They don't vote for us.
No they don't, but what you forget is that in war, business and politics, unless you are holding a completely winning hand (which Republicans are not), you try for a win-win through negotiation. Since all the polls show that a majority of Americans want a comprehensive plan, it is clearly in the Democrats' interest that no bill make it before election time. That would show the Republicans actually doing something. Perish that thought.
# 2. Practically every poll out there has up to 12% more RATS in the samples than Republicans, which doesn't make any sense, given that Republicans have consistently gotten more votes in every House elections since 1994, including the most recent in 2002 and 2004 where we got at least 51% of the voote, and 3 million more votes than RATS in the 2004 presidential elections. So if you have samples with more RATS, that's not the view of Republican voters, which are the only people we care about.
That's why polls are weighted to account for differences if they are significant (more than 10%). So that dog don't hunt. You bring out all the polls, and when you find out they don't tell you what you want to hear, you trash them all.
And #3. The only poll that counts is the poll in November, and if our Republican congressmen continue do what their constintuents want and kill the Senate Shamnesty Bill ( which they are already doing very nicely), we will win again in November.
I agree, but you brought out all the polls. I just helped you complete your little poll project, since you inadvertently overlooked most of them.
You wouldn't would you? The Senate Bill is chock full of goodies( at American tax payers expense) for Mexicans, and amnesty for breaking plenty of Americans laws, including identity fraud, and social security fraud, not to mention immigration laws.
That is what the conference is designed to take care of. But for some reason, the House Republicans fear a conference. Lots of things in both bills that need to be negotiated out. As I said, since the Republicans are not sitting there with a straight flush, they will either have to negotiate or nothing.
"Another insult to our intelligence is that amnesty is not amnesty if you call it something else. The fact that illegals will have to fulfill certain requirements to become American citizens is supposed to mean that this is not amnesty.
That's like saying, if I am stopped and given a speeding ticket, once I pay the fine, I have been given amnesty because I can again drive? You like the term "amnesty? even though it is not, like somehow that is a watershed term. Look at the requirements instead of sticking labels on.
The fact that there are requirements for getting American citizenship is a separate issue entirely. Illegal aliens who do not choose to seek American citizenship are under no more jeopardy than before. They have de facto amnesty.
Of course they are under jeopardy if they do not register, etc. And at least we would have the tools to deal with them, under a comprehensive package.
Yet another insult to our intelligence is saying that, since we cannot find and deport 12 million people, the only choice left is to find some way to make them legal.
Well, with all your expertise in terrorism, why can't we find a few hundred known terrorists that in the Country now? And no, just as the President said, we cannot go out and find and deport 12 or 20 million illegals. There has to be something that will encourage a significant part of them to come in and register.
There is probably no category of law-breakers -- from counterfeiters to burglars or from jay-walkers to murderers -- who can all be found and arrested. But no one suggests that we must therefore make what they have done legal.
Maybe because that's what most Americans and half of Congress wants?