With elections on horizon, immigration bills have new momentum in Congress

Give work permits to illegal immigrants who pay taxes and study English. Legalize tens of thousands of high school students who sometimes discover only when applying for college jobs that their parents brought them here illegally.

These ideas have been floating around Congress for years, promoted mostly by Democrats and immigrant advocates.

As politicians strive to appease Latino voters who will influence next year's elections, and placate powerful business groups that need immigrant labor, several efforts are gaining momentum in Congress to legalize millions of undocumented workers and students.

"The majority of these people are seeking the American dream, looking for a good paying job that will enable them to provide a better life for themselves and their families," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of several Republicans pushing immigration reforms. "We must recognize that as long as there are jobs available and employers in need of workers, people will continue to migrate."

One plan with a good chance of becoming law would legalize up to 500,000 agricultural workers, and trim the paperwork for hiring those workers from abroad. The plan, by Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., was negotiated for years between farm workers' unions and farmers, and has the support of Senate leaders and the White House. Immigrants who can show they did farm work for 100 days over the past 18 months would get temporary resident status. They would have to work another 360 days in the following six years to keep that status.

Normally, the bill's roughest ride would be in the House Judiciary Committee, immigration advocates said. But committee chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., seems to have warmed to some immigration reform ideas.

Some experts see that as a testament to how powerful farm interests have given new momentum to immigration legislation.

"The agricultural interests are really quite formidable in Congress, and many of them need workers at a price they can afford to pay," said Sidney Weintraub, who runs the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Kennedy is also working with another Republican – Chuck Hagel of Nebraska – on a plan that would, for a $1,000 fee, give work permits to all immigrants who have been in the country for five years, paid taxes for three, and taken English instruction. Their spouses and children would also get legal status.

McCain and Reps. Jeff Flake and Jim Kolbe, all Arizona Republicans, would give law-abiding undocumented workers in other industries – restaurants and hotels, for instance – a chance at getting work permits. Workers would have to wait six years for permits, and there is no provision for family. The lawmakers introduced the bill last summer, after 339 people died crossing the country's southern borders.

Immigration expert Riordan Roett believes Republicans are warming to legalization plans because Americans are warming to undocumented workers who have long contributed to the American economy and paid taxes.

"I think there is now a growing sense that the Latino population is spread across this country, and that they're seen as good citizens in more and more congressional districts," said Roett, director of the Western Hemisphere Program for the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies

Others, however, believe Republicans recognize they must appease Latino voters before next year's elections.

In August, a New York Times/CBS poll showed that only 21 percent of Latinos would vote for Bush, though the president carried 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000. Experts believe this disenchantment arose after President Bush failed to keep a promise to help undocumented immigrants gain legal status by reducing the waiting periods for naturalization.

"Democrats, having allowed Bush to gain the initiative, now have seized it back," said Robert Leiken, director of the Immigration and National Security Program at The Nixon Center, a foreign policy think tank. "Republicans are trying to regain it."

Not all Republicans are on board. Conservatives say many of the plans moving through Congress reward people who broke immigration laws, while costing American citizens jobs.

In general, immigration advocates dislike the strictly Republican plans – such as McCain's – because they leave out family and lack worker protections.

"We're very happy Republicans are looking at immigration reform, but (the McCain bill) won't solve any problems," said Katherine Culliton, an immigrants' rights attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF).

Immigrant advocates are happy, however, with a plan by GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah that would give conditional residency to as many as 70,000 teens who have been in the country five years, graduated from high school, and have no criminal record.

Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expects the committee to pass his plan on Thursdayoct.23.

"Often, these students don't find out – until they fill out financial aid forms – that their parents stuck them in this immigration limbo," said James Ferg-Cadima (cq), legislative staff attorney for MALDEF.

A plan by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, would speed citizenship for the 37,000 immigrants serving in the U.S. armed forces. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., has a similar plan that is likely to move faster than Cornyn's.

How do you ever find all the good links you do?-g- Bump!

My fellow Americans, our federal government is failing us in one of its most basic, most elementary duties: It is not protecting our nation's borders and points of entry, and it is not exercising proper supervision over foreign visitors. Every week, thousands of foreigners enter our country illegally, or stay here illegally when they ought to leave. Most of these people simply seek to better their lives, to escape from the poverty or oppression of their homelands, to build prosperity for themselves and their families in a free country. A small minority are common criminals, who believe they can ply their lawless trade better in a country which severely restrains the activities of its police, and whose courts give the benefit of every possible doubt to the accused. A much smaller minority are terrorists, who come here with the intent to kill as many of us as they can, by the most horrifying means they can think of, in order to change the direction of our national policies, or even with the hope of destroying our nation altogether. All, however, are breaking our laws, as are those American firms that employ them.

Why are these laws not enforced by our federal executive? Why, if the laws themselves are unsatisfactory, are they not changed by our federal legislature? Why are these laws repeatedly interpreted by our federal judiciary to give maximum scope to the continuation of this mass illegality? If, as the federal judiciary apparently intends, a person who enters the United States unlawfully, or unlawfully overstays his agreed term of residence here, is to be granted something close to full citizenship rights, without significant penalty, why do we have complex and expensive procedures for legal immigration? And what do we say to immigrants who follow our laws and wait patiently for their citizenship, when those who scoff at the laws and jump the lines are waved through?

We can discuss the answers to those questions in another place — I shall be glad to offer my own answers upon interview. I only want to stress to you here the plain fact that our laws are not being enforced, that our federal government is derelict in the performance of its most basic duty towards its masters — we, the people. Also to draw your attention to the consequences of that dereliction, namely, that the character of our country is being changed.

Change is, of course, nothing to fear for a dynamic and forward-looking nation like ours. Americans have always welcomed change. The great wave of lawful immigration into this country through the late 19th and early 20th century changed and enriched us immeasurably — though we should recall that in order to give those newcomers time properly to assimilate, we severely curtailed legal immigration for 40 years, from 1924 to 1965.

As welcome as change may be, however, it must come about in a way the American people have considered and approved, a way codified in laws passed by our elected representatives. Such great changes as are now occurring in the population of our nation, and in the distribution of useful work, and even in the languages spoken in our communities, require the approval and ratification of the American people. Otherwise we are not a democracy.

Our nation is being transformed before our eyes, not in any way we willed or planned or specified or approved or voted for, but haphazardly, by vast influxes of people who have come not because they are the most able, or most desired, or best qualified, or most useful, or most likely to make good Americans, but simply because they are the most adjacent, and the most audacious in evading our laws and border controls. Because the federal authorities will not enforce our laws — existing laws, laws passed by our own elected Congress! — our states and municipalities, our hospitals and schools, our welfare and police and prison systems, are being beggared by the demands placed upon them by foreigners who scoff at the procedures we have carefully established for entry into the United States.

The matter of unrestrained illegal immigration is linked to, though it is not the same as, the issue of immigration at large. Very few Americans are hostile to immigration. The overwhelming majority of us, after all, are descended from lawful immigrants, if we are not actually lawful immigrants ourselves. However, just as we insist that the laws of this republic be properly, fairly, and humanely enforced by the officers of this republic, we also insist that, as a nation of free citizens, we should participate, through our political institutions, in decisions about the number of immigrants to be admitted, the countries or regions we should prefer them to come from, and the kinds of skills we should like them to bring to our republic.

That participation is being denied to us. It is now almost 40 years since the revolutionary Immigration Act of 1965, which created the current regime of legal immigration. Did that act work as intended? Does it need revising? Adjusting? Repealing? Leaving alone? There is apparently a consensus among our political classes and media elites that this topic is out of bounds — that to broach it in the public forum is "nativist," "racist," or "bigoted." Why? Is not the composition of our country's population a matter American citizens ought to be concerned with? Is it improper for us even to discuss what kind of country our children and grandchildren will spend their lives in?

My fellow Americans, I urge you to cast a vote for me in November. I promise you that my first acts as president will be to secure our nation's borders and points of entry, identify and expel all foreigners who are living here unlawfully, punish all American corporations who have violated our laws by employing illegal aliens, and ask Congress to assist my administration in drafting a comprehensive new bill on legal immigration, one suitable for the conditions of the early 21st century.

Even in the event I am not successful in my quest for the presidency, your vote will have helped make it clear to our established political parties, and to our representatives and judges and administrators, that we, the citizens of the United States, cherish our laws, even if our government does not; that we desire to see those laws enforced — fairly, properly, humanely, without discrimination, but enforced — and that we insist on having some say in the composition of the country that we shall hand on to our children: its population, its environment, its customs, its language, its religions, its legal and political traditions, its values. Cast your vote for me in November!

Here is my prediction. Should a candidate come up saying these things, or anything close to them, and should that candidate's campaign not be derailed by the machinations of his opponents or the media, or by some gross blunder of his own, he will get at least 20 million votes next November — more than Ross Perot got in 1992.

From which party's candidate will most of those votes be taken? Figure it out for yourself. Will those votes be enough to change the outcome of the election? Heck, I don't know. As I said, the spreadsheet shufflers are still bickering about 1992, and a great many things can happen in the next 13 months. It is certainly possible, though.

It is possible, in other words, that the 2004 presidential election will be the first one in U.S. history to be decided on the National Question: Who are we, and who do we wish to be? If I were George W. Bush, I'd be having nightmares about this.

The plan, by Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., was negotiated for years between farm workers' unions and farmers, and has the support of Senate leaders and the White House.

The senator from Idaho?

LOL, and all those people that fled to Idaho to get away, and now Idaho is being flooded with illegals.....

Hispanics Largest Growing Population In Idaho-puts more pressure on public schools, must change

Hispanics Largest Growing Population In Idaho

By Associated Press

BOISE -

Idaho's Hispanic population grew three times faster than the state as a whole in the first two years after the last census.

Leaders of the state's largest minority say that puts more pressure on public schools.

According to new estimates from the Census Bureau, the state grew at three-point-two percent overall from mid-2000 to mid-2002, with the Hispanic population jumping ten-point-six percent. Only 13 other states saw higher percentage growth in their Hispanic groups.

Gladys Esquibel, who heads the state Commission on Hispanic Affairs, says schools must change to address the needs of Hispanic students. The latest results from the state standards achievement tests show that more than half of Hispanic high school sophomores failed.

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