W's Live Speech Thread

Fox News | 1-7-04 | my favorite headache

[My Favorite Headache]

Press conference starts at 2:45 EST....get the prilosec out...we are going to need it.

[Cultural Jihad]

I've been feeling the same for quite some time, this just accelerates my fear that we no longer have a representative government.

I know exactly what you mean. The last time I tried to vote they said I was not a citizen of Antares II and to go away before they vaporize me.

[My Favorite Headache]

Sigh......

[RockyMtnMan]

Well I have been drinking ;-) Couldn't pass up penis humor!

Businesses that violate the law by hiring illegals should be fined and held accountable to the law. Bush himself stated the reason for so many illegals, jobs. Cut off the gravy train and watch the flood reverse. If they are hear for jobs, then make them follow immigration procedures to get them. As for Congress, let them increase the immigration quota's if the "business community" really needs the labor.

[DeepDish]

Mark this date on your calendar. This could very well be the day that GWB lost the election of 2004. Desevedly so.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

IMO this all hangs on enforcement against employers who afterwards elect to employ illegals.

Which means this is much ado about nothing. It is ALREADY against the law to hire illegals. Arggggh!

[Cultural Jihad]

Well, that's exactly what President Bush has proposed.

[RockyMtnMan]

Is that anywhere near Orion?

[RnMomof7]

Good lord something I hadn't considered .. that means that wages for IT jobs will be depressed.. this isn't just about menial labor BUT ALL JOBS! GOOD LORD!

It has to be or it will not be "fair"

[RockyMtnMan]

Perhaps, Uranus? I hear they're undergoing an invasion of illegal Klingons. Poor bastards have to cross that huge gaseous anomily.

[RockyMtnMan]

Not quite, where did he say businesses would face any repercussions for not following the new policy? Why isn't the existing law good enough if actually enforced? This is basically an admission of gross negligence on the part of the government under both Bush and Clinton administrations. Why not buck up and actually enforce the law even if it isn't politically expedient?

[prisoner6]

This is a Republican forum...

From the front page...Free Republic is an online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web.

Sadly it IS more pubbie today...sigh. It would be deeply saddening if FR became a pubbie version of DU.

First we have to beat the Dems before we can purge out RINOs.

Agreed, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna vote for Arlen Specter.

W's overall record is fine...>kinda< like Santorum...but neither is a solid conservative, and this move is a BIG mistake for the adminstration. Dubya better find a way to fix it fast. If he can appease Mexicans, big busniess and other groups...he better well start thinking about keeping the growing, active conservative base happy.

prisoner6

[FrontlinesofFreedom]

exactly - all these whining corporations claiming they need these sweatshop work forces - didn't we hear this same argument from the South as to why the USA had to keep slavery intact....

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

President Bush hits another home run!

IMO, he has no more than a base hit. And then he'll be thrown out trying to steal second. Congress isn't going to pass this monstrosity no way, no how. Their hides would be stripped and hung from stakes.

[nutmeg]

find later bump

[Cultural Jihad]

No, not because it is not politically expedient but because it no longer is effective based on the sheer numbers involved and based on our Judeo-Christian ethic which we as a society are unwilling to relinquish.

[MissAmericanPie]

Thank you very much.=o)

[FrontlinesofFreedom]

Years ago in the 50s. Californians did do the harvesting for the farms. I know a man who worked during the summers in the orange orchards in Orange County picking oranges. It was a great way for him to make money while in high school. He had no problem doing it and he tells the stories of how the farming system worked then..

I have another friend who is an airline pilot and a farmer in Minnesota, while he was flying in CA. on smaller aircraft, he went to work at the dairies in Chino, CA.... This was in the 80s.

While in college and high school, if the wages were not substandard, I most certainly would have worked at the farms. It would have been easy work, and outdoors work.

The corporate farms would have to raise the wages if they did not have this desperate work force coming in from Mexico.

It is sick to hear the various talking heads say that
the illegals will only be taking the low wage jobs that no citizen would take..... so that makes it ok, to create a perpetual poverty subclass....for the gain of big corporations

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Cleaning offices or picking fruit is an important job. America's working poor citizens deserve a decent wage to do that work. Instead, America's working poor are at the mercy of "elites" who want to save a few pennies on fruit, so they give those jobs to illegals. And then they tell us they can't find Americans to do those jobs.

Agreed. IMO, MOST employers KNOW that they are hiring illegal immigrants. Slap these SOB's with massive fines and the illegal immigrant problem will be eliminated over night.

Of course, the price of goods and services will reach a new equilibrium, but that's what we should have -- eliminate the supply/demand-wage/price perversion and control immigration, no matter the affect on prices.

In the end, illegal immigration serves as a cost subsidy to suppliers and a price subsidy to consumers. Nail the suppliers for using illegal immigrant labor and the labor-cost/product-price equilibrium will reach the appropriate level. I for one would be willing to pay $2.50 for a melon (instead of the prevailing $1.25) if the illegal immigrant labor subsidy was eliminated in the process.

[FrontlinesofFreedom]

Excellent comment. How about if we allow doctors from other countries to have cross-licensing in the USA, no additional training.... then the various companies HMOs, Hospitals...etc... can offer really low wages, so only the foreign labor force will take it.

It is very important that we all look for what these immigration polices will do to the American job market... we are not a nation of corporations...

[FrontlinesofFreedom]

Chamber of Commerce is totally on board...