Bush's Ridiculous Speech About Immigration Reform

"Employers must not hire undocumented aliens or temporary workers whose legal status has expired. They must report to the government the temporary workers they hire and who leave their employ so that we can keep track of people in the program and better enforce our immigration laws. There must be strong workplace enforcement with tough penalties for anyone -- for any employer violating these laws."

...and that question is, "why can't we go ahead and do that NOW"? If we did this today, most of the people who are here illegally would go home because they couldn't find jobs. So why do we have to wait until after we've made all these illegals who don't respect our laws into citizens to do this?

bump for a truism so simple, you weep at the knowledge that some continue to overlook it.

21 posted on 01/08/2004 1:43:53 PM PST by KantianBurke (Don't Tread on Me)

Bush's increased gov't spending and size increases make him less & less of a fiscal conservative.

And more, and more a left winger. What are we going to to with 40 million new illegals???

22 posted on 01/08/2004 1:44:56 PM PST by org.whodat (Someone turn Bush over he's done.)

To: MissAmericanPie; Guyin4Os

"...unenforceable, unworkable, unrealistic and unreasonable.

And politically untenable to suddenly bring out the hammer in enforcing laws that have merely been winked at for at least 30-odd years now.

I agree with Guyin4Os that this is at least a start.

23 posted on 01/08/2004 1:46:13 PM PST by onedoug

Ah, Bush intends to put them on"Double Secret Probation." That'll show'em!

24 posted on 01/08/2004 1:47:42 PM PST by KantianBurke (Don't Tread on Me)

JOBS AMERICANS WONT' DO

So, then, why not strictly limit it to agricultural labor, or bussing tables, or jobs that wouldn't have American takers at living wages? I wouldn't even toss janitorial services into the list, there are a lot of Americans who would do those jobs if the el-cheapo WalMarts would pay as much for it as they pay a "greeter" to slobber all over you as you enter their store. Janitorial "companies" that hire illegals would do so, anyway, the only leverage you have over a subminimum wage worker to keep him from stealing the place blind is to turn him in to the INS.

I've posted in the past that I believe there should be a "guest worker" program, as I don't expect my kids and grandkids to pick lettuce, nor do I want to pay five bucks a head for said vegetable. But why include the really stupid parts of this program? Why allow application from within the US? Why let Momma come over here to breed her pups on this side of the border, to become automatic citizens? Why get the Social Security administration involved with this? I sure don't want my grandkids paying out Social Security taxes of 25% to support this generation's wetbacks who are living it up in Mexico for their retirement.

This plan sucks, pure and simple. And this comes from somebody who does NOT support automatic "round 'em up and shoot 'em all" ways of dealing with illegal immigration.

25 posted on 01/08/2004 1:47:52 PM PST by hunter112

To: Blzbba; Ann Archy

I looked the other way (with great difficulty) when Bush signed that obscene Farm Bill; then I held my tongue as Bush silently left his judicial nominees twisting in the wind; then I dared not criticize that corrupt Energy Bill proposal; then I tried my best to restrain my criticism of Bush for creating the biggest federal entitlement program since FDR -- the Prescription Drug giveaway; but now I'm really at a loss. How can I stay silent when I truly believe Bush's proposal will wreck this country?

26 posted on 01/08/2004 1:48:12 PM PST by kevao

What are we going to to with 40 million new illegals???

Raise taxes to pay for the services that they will demand.

27 posted on 01/08/2004 1:50:14 PM PST by sarcasm (Tancredo 2004)

"What are we going to to with 40 million new illegals???"

Give 'em more federal handouts, I guess. All you have to do is put a spending bill in front of Bush that would win him some Hispanic votes and he'll sign it guaranteed.

I mean, the guy has yet to cast a single veto on ANY spending bill.

28 posted on 01/08/2004 1:52:16 PM PST by Blzbba

The government has no trouble enforcing so called laws against posting the Ten Commandments on government property. I'd like to see an illegal alien try that!

29 posted on 01/08/2004 1:53:57 PM PST by Aquamarine

To: RolandBurnam

I think this is a master stroke... might win new mexico, arizona and give him a chance in caleeeforneea ... at least he is on offense!

You thing he will win in Arizona? Ever heard of the Protect Arizona Now initiative? Arizona is doing something similar to what California did with Davis not too long ago. Funny! All the pols are against it but about 70 % of the people are stampeding to sign the petition.

And you think he might win California? Trust me Roland! Not a chance! I'm there! This is a serious blue state and with this amnesty thingee, he is losing a lot of his hard core base.

30 posted on 01/08/2004 1:54:13 PM PST by navyblue

Yes. I'm afraid that the right is becoming as blinded as the left in their ideology. This could be possible due to the morphing of the two together. I don't know any more what is more pathetic - listening to this garbage or that of Michael Jackson. Maybe that's why the MJ media is a popular as it is.

31 posted on 01/08/2004 1:54:31 PM PST by Digger

All you have to do is put a spending bill in front of Bush that would win him some Hispanic votes and he'll sign it guaranteed.

And the great irony is, Bush won't win one single vote more from the Hispanic community for this.

32 posted on 01/08/2004 1:54:39 PM PST by kevao

"I looked the other way (with great difficulty) when Bush signed that obscene Farm Bill; then I held my tongue as Bush silently left his judicial nominees twisting in the wind; then I dared not criticize that corrupt Energy Bill proposal; then I tried my best to restrain my criticism of Bush for creating the biggest federal entitlement program since FDR -- the Prescription Drug giveaway; but now I'm really at a loss. How can I stay silent when I truly believe Bush's proposal will wreck this country?"

Not much you can do but write your Congressmen, I guess. We have 4 more years of increasing the size of gov't and increased federal spending to look forward to. The War on Terror is his strongpoint, but at this rate, America will be so broke and full of uneducated immigrants begging for more of my tax dollars in the form of entitlements that there won't be much for the fundie Islams to terrorize.

33 posted on 01/08/2004 1:55:07 PM PST by Blzbba

America will be so broke and full of uneducated immigrants begging for more of my tax dollars in the form of entitlements that there won't be much for the fundie Islams to terrorize.

What's worse, we'll be in such a financial bind that we'll have difficulty even financing a war on terror. We'd better vanquish the Islamofascists real quick, before the world wises up and stops financing our debt.

34 posted on 01/08/2004 1:59:49 PM PST by kevao

To: MissAmericanPie; Guyin4Os

Guyin4Os "I agree with the President's proposal. Our current immigration laws are unenforceable, unworkable, unrealistic and unreasonable."

I'm going to have to ask you to be more detail specific and back up that claim. Name those laws and detail exactly how they are unenforceable, unworkable, unrealistic, and unreasonable.

And then explain how we are supposed to enforce the guest worker program if our current laws are unenforceable. The guest worker program only makes it more complex.

If we can enforce the guest worker program then we have displayed that we can enforce current immigration laws.

Enforceable, workable, realistic and reasonable laws dont work when they not enforced. Hence our illegal immigration problem.

35 posted on 01/08/2004 2:00:00 PM PST by PuNcH

>But I damn well am going to oppose anything I believe will harm this country, whether its proposed by a Democrat or a Republican.

To my eyes, by far,
most immigrants are decent
and play by the rules.

Immigrants that don't
play by the rules seem to be
a minority.

It is troubling that
conservatives seem to see
immigration as

defined by the small
(comparatively) number
of the illegals,

rather than all the
law abiding immigrants.
None of us accept

liberals when they
define gun control built on
criminals rather

than law abiding
gun owners. We should judge by
the good, not the bad.

36 posted on 01/08/2004 2:00:15 PM PST by theFIRMbss

Well Clinton let all the mexicans in ! There were no mexicans around here in alabama before Clinton, and now they are everywhere, Mexican store on every corner, something has to be done! You can't swing a leaf blower aroun dhere without hitting a mexican around here!

37 posted on 01/08/2004 2:02:08 PM PST by RolandBurnam

LOL...I like the name of the ping list.

38 posted on 01/08/2004 2:03:20 PM PST by Lady Eileen

Here, then, are a few examples of how knowledge of our constitutional past can alert the mind and imagination to new possibilities. Revisiting the historical record and entering the outlook of the Framers can be a source of inspiration. We may not want to return to the prescriptions of the Framers in every detail, but awareness of their thinking is a prerequisite for revising their ideas via the amendment process. Without it we do not even know what the Constitution was and is.

Many will be surprised to learn that the Constitution allows the states potentially limitless powers, known as powers of police, that, although recognized by the early courts as wholly immune from federal interference, are now usurped with abandon by the federal government. Considered a direct attribute of sovereignty, these powers include the authority to make all laws within a state’s territory for the protection of public order, safety, health, welfare, and morals. Included are laws prohibiting or regulating murder, violence, fraud, obscenity, intoxicants, narcotics—the list is potentially endless.

Chief Justice John Marshall, though a renowned champion of strong national governance, declared in several landmark decisions that the general government had no jurisdiction over such matters except where authorized by an explicit grant of power, such as the power to punish counterfeiting given in article 1, section 8. Yet today the general government routinely asserts its dominance over health, education, welfare, the environment, public safety, criminal justice, and other matters that, constitutionally, are police powers belonging exclusively to the states.

A second example concerns immigration. In Federalist No. 2, Hamilton cites as essential supports for a union of the states “that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, [and] very similar in their manners and customs.”

Today the federal government is failing to slow the flood of immigrants who exhibit little or no interest in making America’s traditional institutions and culture their own.

As concern over immigration mounts, most Americans are unaware that, under the Constitution of the Framers, the states enjoyed extensive authority to regulate immigration into their territory.

In the 1849 Passenger Cases a divided Supreme Court split four-to-four on where the power to regulate immigration lies. The division, however, was not over whether the states could regulate immigration but whether the federal government also could do so.

Even the four justices who did support a federal role went to great lengths to stress that no power of the federal government could compel the states to admit undesirable aliens, such as, in the delicate formulation of Justice Grier, “lunatics, idiots, criminals, or paupers.”

Meanwhile, Chief Justice Taney and three other justices insisted that the regulation of immigration, being a police power, was a matter to be addressed solely by the states. As Justice Woodbury explained, “it is for the State . . . to decide on what is sufficient cause for . . . [excluding aliens],—whether . . . sickness or crime . . . , danger of pauperism, danger to health, danger to morals, danger to property, danger to public principles by revolutions or change of government, or danger to religion.”

Yet today the federal government controls all aspects of immigration. Federal judges routinely deny the states any means either of controlling the admission of aliens into their territory or of protecting their citizens from resulting tax burdens or other ill effects.

Turning to the third and final example, perhaps no other regulations of the federal government are more harshly administered than those concerning the use of land.

What many Americans, including members of Congress, don’t know is that the Framers intended that the states, not the general government, would possess ultimate control over all land within their territory. To assure that this always would be so, the Framers inserted in the Constitution a requirement that the general government obtain permission from the state legislature before purchasing any property within a state to be used for federal purposes.

Article 1, section 8, clause 17, which gives the federal government exclusive jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, allows it “to exercise like Authority over all Places [and here are the significant words] purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.”

Why this was done is spelled out explicitly in a few brief paragraphs of Madison’s Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention. The relevant passage is as follows: On the clause

[2:510; Madison, 5 Sept.]

“to exercise like authority over all places purchased for forts &c.

Mr Gerry contended that this power might be made use of to enslave any particular State by buying up its territory, and that the strongholds proposed would be a means of awing the State into an undue obedience to the Genl. Government—

Mr. King thought himself the provision unnecessary, the power being already involved: but would [and here are the key words] move to insert after the word “purchased” the words “by the consent of the Legislature of the State” This would certainly make the power safe.

Mr. Govr Morris 2ded. the motion, which was agreed to nem: con:. . . . [Emphases added]

That is the entire record of the origins of this provision. So that the states would not be intimidated "into an undue obedience to the general government," the latter was made dependent on the states for the acquisition of property in their territory.

For more than eighty years, when the general government wanted to build a fort or a lighthouse or a post office, Congress would pass a statute requesting that the appropriate state legislature cede land to the general government for the purpose. The state legislature, at its discretion, would approve, and, if suitable property was not available on the open market, the legislature would use its reserved power of eminent domain on behalf of Congress, the latter having no such power.

But then in 1875 the Supreme Court's decision in Kohl v. U.S. literally inverted the previously existing relation of the two levels of government concerning land use.

For the Court, Justice Strong wrote:

The powers vested by the Constitution in the general government demand for their exercise the acquisition of lands in all the States. These are needed for forts, armories, and arsenals, for navy-yards and light-houses[, etc.] . . . If the right to acquire property for such uses may be made a barren right by the unwillingness of property-holders to sell, or by the action of a State prohibiting a sale to the Federal government, the constitutional grants of power may be rendered nugatory, and the government is dependent for its practical existence upon the will of a State . . . . This cannot be. [Emphasis added.]

The Court completely ignored that this dependence of the general government on the states was precisely what the Framers had intended.

Strong went on to argue that, as the states derive the power of eminent domain from their sovereignty, the general government should have the power as well, since it “is as sovereign within its sphere as the States are within theirs.” This last inference is particularly disingenuous. For part of the states’ retained sphere of sovereignty was the ultimate control of all land within their borders except for any that had been ceded. It is impossible to give ultimate control over state territory to the federal government and still to leave ultimate control with the states. Recognizing that this power could not reside in two places and believing that to put it in the general government would make hash of the states’ reserved powers, the Framers made a conscious decision to leave eminent domain where it had been—with the states. In its ruling in Kohl, the Supreme Court brazenly flouted this explicit intention of the Framers.

Soon the Framers' worst fears were realized. Over the next 21 years, the previous sovereignty of the states was obliterated root and branch. The following summary of the Supreme Court’s 1896 ruling in Chappell v. United States, taken from FindLaw, says all we need to know:

The fact that land included in a federal reservoir project is owned by a state, or that its taking may impair the state’s tax revenue, or that the reservoir will obliterate part of the state’s boundary and interfere with the state’s own project for water development and conservation, constitutes no barrier to the condemnation of the land by the United States. [Emphases added.]

Here, then, are three examples of far-reaching changes that have been inflicted unlawfully on our nation’s constitutional practice. Many others could be cited. What is important is that these changes have all but destroyed the federalism and the government of checks and balances that the Constitution was meant to guarantee.

How has it come to this? The most obvious culprit has been the Supreme Court. Hamilton, in Federalist 78, wrote that of the three branches the judiciary would “always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution,” because it was “to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment." Yet if the Court’s incredible ruling in Kohl is not an example of will rather than judgment, I do not know what would be. Will may be the least of it; the murder of federalism with malice aforethought might be a more apt description.

How might such judicial activism be discouraged or its effects minimized? In keeping with the judiciary’s responsibility to exercise judgment, not will, I think the Court itself might do well to adopt as a rule of jurisprudence that, in matters of constitutional interpretation, older precedents be given more weight than recent ones in the absence of compelling evidence that the former were in error. This rule would be the converse of that governing interpretation of statutes, which holds that, where laws are in conflict, the most recent act of the legislature is controlling.

But the courts are not entirely to blame. Ours was to be a government of checks and balances, in which all three branches were to protect the Constitution by jealously guarding against abuses by the others. But, with few exceptions, the intended competition among the branches and levels of government has broken down.

As a way for Congress to reassert its duty to the Constitution, I proposed several years ago that it might establish committees (or one joint committee) on delegated powers, with responsibility for determining the constitutionality of proposed legislation before it would be allowed to go to the floor.

A similar purpose might be served in the executive branch by the appointment of a constitutional advisor to the president. Significantly, the mechanism by which the president can promote a revival of effective constitutionalism is already present in his veto power. While the Constitution provides that the president may object to a measure for any reason, I think it is significant that the first six presidents—from Washington through Quincy Adams—used the power exclusively to register constitutional objections. And not once during all of those years was a presidential veto overridden by Congress. In our time, it might be helpful if the president, in future veto messages, would formally distinguish between objections of a constitutional nature and those of a prudential nature.

39 posted on 01/08/2004 2:05:08 PM PST by ATOMIC_PUNK (Islam .......it's worse than even the Muslims thought it was !)

This is a serious blue state and with this amnesty thingee, he is losing a lot of his hard core base.

If GW ever was looking for that 20% in the middle vote he sure has lost it here plus any chance to win my vote as vanished. He's just an elite globalists which most are in Washington & they will sell out the good folks of this nation at the drop of a coin to enrich their sorry a$$e$. Interestingly, some of GWs fervent followers are seeing how mistaken he has been (except for the war effort) so their redeeming factor is to build this war thingee up as if we will be killed tomorrow w/o Tom "water-me-twice-a-week" Ridge. I believe that the emeny is within. ie illegaals, judges, lawyers, sellout politicians.

40 posted on 01/08/2004 2:06:12 PM PST by Digger

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