Indeed, See Post #260. Fatalis blew it. Illegals have to return home under Bush's plan in order to get a renewal, contrary to her claim.
Posted on 12/31/2004 5:43:33 AM PST by white trash redneck
No issue, not one, threatens to do more damage to the Republican coalition than immigration. There's no issue where the beliefs and interests of the party rank-and-file diverge more radically from the beliefs and interests of the party's leaders. Immigration for Republicans in 2005 is what crime was for Democrats in 1965 or abortion in 1975: a vulnerable point at which a strong-minded opponent could drive a wedge that would shatter the GOP.
President Bush won reelection because he won 10 million more votes in 2004 than he did in 2000. Who were these people? According to Ruy Teixeira--a shrewd Democratic analyst of voting trends--Bush scored his largest proportional gains among white voters who didn't complete college, especially women. These voters rallied to the president for two principal reasons: because they respected him as a man who lived by their treasured values of work, family, honesty, and faith; and because they trusted him to keep the country safe.
Yet Bush is already signaling that he intends to revive the amnesty/guestworker immigration plan he introduced a year ago--and hastily dropped after it ignited a firestorm of opposition. This plan dangerously divides the Republican party and affronts crucial segments of the Republican vote.
The plan is not usually described as an "amnesty" because it does not immediately legalize illegal workers in this country. Instead, it offers illegals a three-year temporary work permit. But this temporary permit would be indefinitely renewable and would allow illegals a route to permanent residency, so it is reasonably predictable that almost all of those illegals who obtain the permit will end up settling permanently in the United States. The plan also recreates the guestworker program of the 1950s--allowing employers who cannot find labor at the wages they wish to pay to advertise for workers outside the country. Those workers would likewise begin with a theoretically temporary status; but they too would probably end up settling permanently.
This is a remarkably relaxed approach to a serious border-security and labor-market problem. Employers who use illegal labor have systematically distorted the American labor market by reducing wages and evading taxes in violation of the rules that others follow. The president's plans ratify this gaming of the system and encourage more of it. It invites entry by an ever-expanding number of low-skilled workers, threatening the livelihoods of low-skilled Americans--the very same ones who turned out for the president in November.
National Review has historically favored greater restrictions on legal as well as illegal immigration. But you don't have to travel all the way down the NR highway to be troubled by the prospect of huge increases in immigration, with the greatest increases likely to occur among the least skilled.
The president's permissive approach has emboldened senators and mayors (such as New York's Michael Bloomberg) to oppose almost all enforcement actions against illegals. In September 2003, for example, Bloomberg signed an executive order forbidding New York police to share information on immigration offenses with the Immigration Service, except when the illegal broke some other law or was suspected of terrorist activity. And only last month, a House-Senate conference stripped from the intelligence-overhaul bill almost all the border-security measures recommended by the 9/11 commission.
The president's coalition is already fracturing from the tension between his approach to immigration and that favored by voters across the country. Sixty-seven House Republicans--almost one-third of the caucus--voted against the final version of the intelligence overhaul. And I can testify firsthand to the unpopularity of the amnesty/guestworker idea: I was on the conservative talk-radio circuit promoting a book when the president's plan was first proposed last January. Everywhere I went, the phones lit up with calls from outraged listeners who wanted to talk about little else. Every host I asked agreed: They had not seen such a sudden, spontaneous, and unanimous explosion of wrath from their callers in years.
Five years ago, Candidate George W. Bush founded his approach to immigration issues on a powerful and important insight: The illegal-immigration problem cannot be solved by the United States alone. Two-thirds of the estimated 9 million illegals in the U.S. are from Mexico. Mexico is also the largest source of legal immigration to the United States. What caused this vast migration? Between 1940 and 1970, the population of Mexico more than doubled, from 20 million to 54 million. In those years, there was almost no migration to the United States from Mexico at all. Since 1970, however, some 65 million more Mexicans have been born--and about 20 million of them have migrated northward, with most of that migration occurring after 1980.
Obviously, the 30 years from 1940 to 1970 are different in many ways from the 30 years after 1970s. But here's one factor that surely contributed to the Mexican exodus: In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, the Mexican economy grew at an average rate of almost 7 percent a year. Thanks to the oil boom, the Mexican economy continued to grow rapidly through the troubled 1970s. But since 1980, Mexico has averaged barely 2 percent growth. The average Mexican was actually poorer in 1998 than he had been in 1981. You'd move too if that happened to you.
Recognizing the connection between Mexican prosperity and American border security, the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations all worked hard to promote Mexican growth. The Reagan and Clinton administrations bailed out Mexican banks in 1982 and 1995; the first Bush administration negotiated, and Clinton passed, NAFTA. George W. Bush came to office in 2001 envisioning another round of market opening with the newly elected government of his friend Vicente Fox, this time focusing on Mexico's protected, obsolete, economically wasteful, and environmentally backward energy industry.
Bush's hopes have been bitterly disappointed. The Fox government has actually done less to restore Mexican growth than the PRI governments of the 1990s. And so Bush has been pushed away from his grand vision and has instead accepted Fox's demand that the two countries concentrate on one issue: raising the status of Mexican illegals in the United States. But this won't work. Just as the U.S. cannot solve the problem by unilateral policing, so it also cannot solve it through unilateral concession. Bush had it right the first time.
Some of the president's approach to immigration remains right and wise. He is right to show a welcoming face to Hispanics legally resident in the United States. He is right to try to smooth the way to citizenship for legal permanent residents. He is right--more controversially--to give all who have contributed to Social Security, whatever their legal status, access to benefits from the Social Security account.
But he is wrong, terribly wrong, to subordinate border security to his desire for an amnesty deal--and still more wrong to make amnesty the centerpiece of his immigration strategy.
Right now, of course, the president does not have to worry much about political competition on the immigration issue. But Republicans shouldn't count on their opponents' ignoring such an opportunity election after election. "I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants," Hillary Clinton told a New York radio station in November. And later: "People have to stop employing illegal immigrants. I mean, come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand on the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx. You're going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work." Okay, so maybe Hillary will never pick up many votes in Red State America. But there are Democratic politicians who could.
Republicans need a new and better approach--one that holds their constituency together and puts security first.
First, Republicans should develop and practice a new way of speaking about immigration, one that makes clear that enforcement of the immigration laws is not anti-immigrant or anti-Mexican: It is anti-bad employer. Illegal immigration is like any other illegal business practice: a way for unscrupulous people to exploit others to gain an advantage over their law-abiding competitors.
Second, Republicans can no longer deny the truth underscored by the 9/11 commission: Immigration policy is part of homeland-security policy. Non-enforcement of the immigration laws is non-protection of Americans against those who would do them harm.
Third, Republicans have to begin taking enforcement seriously. It's ridiculous and demoralizing to toss aside cabinet nominees like Linda Chavez over alleged immigration violations while winking at massive law-breaking by private industry--or to regard immigration violations as so trivial that they can be used as a face-saving excuse for the dismissal of a nominee damaged by other allegations.
Fourth, skills shortages in the high-technology and health-care industries are genuine problems that have to be addressed--but they should not be used as an excuse to void immigration enforcement. Republicans can say yes to using immigration law to attract global talent, while saying no to companies that systematically violate immigration law to gain an advantage over their more scrupulous rivals.
Fifth, Mexico should not be allowed to sever the migration issue from trade and investment issues. Mexican political stability is a vital national-security issue of the United States--and just for that reason, Americans should not allow Mexican governments to use migration as a way to shirk the work of economic and social reform.
Finally--and most important--Republicans need to recognize that they have a political vulnerability and must take action to protect themselves. An election victory as big as 2004 can look inevitable in retrospect. But it wasn't, not at all. The Democrats could have won--and could still win in 2006 and 2008--by taking better advantage of Republican mistakes and making fewer of their own. And no mistake offers them a greater opportunity than the one-sidedness of the Bush immigration policy. The GOP is a party dedicated to national security, conservative social values, and free-market economics. The president's policy on immigration risks making it look instead like an employers' lobby group. That's the weak point at which the edge of the wedge could enter--and some smart Democratic politician is sharpening it right now.
Thus winker's frustration at a neo-American national socialist solution,IMO, although, IMO, hillary and her minions are goading them on rhetorically and maybe even finacially to post on FR.
Exactly correct, I own a bar in Texas and talk polictics with blue collars workers all the time. I score points when I point out that the Democrats are the party of anti-America preverts and baby killers. I get my clock cleaned trying to defend GOP economic policy. In fact I gave up trying to defend it, you can't. Normally we all agree that both parties suck for diferent reasons.
Indeed, See Post #260. Fatalis blew it. Illegals have to return home under Bush's plan in order to get a renewal, contrary to her claim.
"In other words, they oppose President Bush's plan because they know it will work. They know that illegals will register under that plan and that employers will then hire less and less of them due to the wage incentive disappearing."
Hogwash. A retired INS agent disagrees with you, plus about 85% of the public. They are not going to give up free public services to start paying taxes!
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0412/28/ldt.01.html
Well, my next guest is concerned about a guest worker program that would legalize millions of illegal immigrants working in the country. He says the current proposals are not practical and pose a security risk. Michael Cutler is a retired 30-year veteran with the Immigration and National Service. He spent most of his career as a criminal investigator and intelligence specialist. And thanks very much for being with us, Michael.
PILGRIM: Why is this proposal not practical? Many think it is practical, get everyone registered, know who's here. It seems very practical.
CUTLER: You won't know who's here because of the crush of humanity showing up at immigration we're going to wind up having to process millions of applications and basically the people at that desk are going to have to take the person's words for who they claim to be. My concern is they are going to wind up giving false names and possibly even circumvent no-fly lists and watch lists at borders so they can enter the United States even though if their real identities were known, they'd be barred from entry and be barred from taking airplane flights.
PILGRIM: So what's your suggestion? We shouldn't register them at all, just let them stay, or register them back in their own countries? What's a more practical solution to this?
CUTLER: In a matter of speaking, we should register them back in their own countries. And this would discourage illegal immigration. If ultimately decide we need guest workers, and I don't know that we do, then we should have them file the applications from back home where we could more properly screen them and discourage people from running the border in the hopes that if they get here, they'll be able to stay.
The other problem we have is right now we're not able to prevent employers from hiring illegal aliens because you've only got 2,000 agents to lend integrity to this process. How do we plan to lend integrity to a guest worker program where these folks are supposed to leave after three years? We don't have the manpower to go out and attempt to make them leave. And we won't even know for certain that they're showing up on the jobs that they claim they're coming to go to work at.
PILGRIM: Michael, we don't have the manpower to actually supervise what's going on now. And you've been in this so long, for so many years. Do you have a solution that you can come up with?
CUTLER: Well, I think, again, that if we do a guest worker program, we need to have these folks apply from their home countries. You know, when the president gave a speech back in January, he talked about a guest worker program, and that translated the next day, according to the border patrol, in a surge of illegal aliens running the border. So the reality is all this does is to encourage more illegal immigration.
And the bureau that's charged with adjudicating these applications have massive problems right now. Mr. Aguirre, who runs the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, that's an arm of the Homeland Security Department, has said that each day, his people have to adjudicate 30,000 applications and issue 20,000 green cards. And right now they have a backlog of over 4 million applications. How do they plan to deal with this tidal wave of applications that are sure to hit the immigration offices around the country?
PILGRIM: Here's what President Bush said recently. We want our border patrol agents chasing crooks and thieves and terrorists not good-hearted people coming here to work. He seems to say, we should focus on people who are trying to come into this country illegally who are terrorists. Do you not think that's a good approach?
CUTLER: I think in principle, it's a great idea. But the problem is, what does a terrorist or bad guy look like? You know, I often like to ask people, what do you think a terrorist does two days before an attack? More than likely he goes to the job he's been holding down for the past five years or attending the school that he's been going to for the past three or four years in an effort to hide in plain sight. We don't know what someone's intentions are when they show up claiming that they're here looking for work.
You know, I wish we had a crystal ball or some kind of a machine that would enable us to see into somebody's heart. And it's all well and good to talk about wanting good-hearted people. But making it reality is something entirely different, then I would challenge anyone that thinks we can do that to show me by what process we can know what somebody intends to do.
PILGRIM: With all your years of experience, we certainly take what you say to heart. Thanks for joining us this evening, Michael Cutler.
Yup, we have many allies in talk radio, and in conservative columnists. I didn't know where Buckley cam down on this.
Some would return home, maybe, and some...
# Fair and Meaningful Citizenship Process: Some temporary workers will want to remain in America and pursue citizenship. They should not receive an unfair advantage over those who have followed the law, and they will need to be placed in line for citizenship behind those who are already in line. Those who choose the path of citizenship will have an obligation to learn the facts and ideals that have shaped America's history.
# Reasonable Annual Increase of Legal Immigrants: A reasonable increase in the annual limit of legal immigrants will benefit those who follow the lawful path to citizenship.
The stipulation against receiving an unfair advantage is wordplay. Legalized illegal aliens would have to get "behind those who are already in line" for citizenship, after jumping the line for guest workers.
We can't track down 8 million anonymous criminals currently. We *can* track 8 million registered criminals.
Ergo, it makes sense to figure out some sort of incentive plan (e.g. a plea bargain) that convinces illegals to voluntarily register themselves. In the process, lets register their employers while we're at it.
OK time to dig in and google.
Illegalize illegals: Time for showdown in open frontier
HoustonChronicle.com ^ | Dec 15, 2004 | William F. Buckley Jr.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1302935/posts
Assuming there is a right to but one renewal, what we have is a program, where the illegals get to work for six years, in the meantime having gotten in the queue for a green card, and if still in the queue at the end of six years, then they need to pack their bags, and wait for their turn elsewhere. Is that really workable? Is that what will really happen?
Uh duh, tell that to a vast majority of the FDR generation, and you will get a finger in your face and vitriol that would make Mother Thresa say, they can go to hell, IMO.
See post 264
Does a lie suddenly become "truth" to you if enough people repeat it to you?
Perhaps some of those Congresspeople you opine about are simply incapable of knowing the difference between a "plea bargain" and an amnesty. For them, they simply need a little education. For the rest, they need to be called: liars.
Instead, it offers illegals a three-year temporary work permit.
But this temporary permit would be indefinitely renewable and would allow illegals a route to permanent residency, so it is reasonably predictable that almost all of those illegals who obtain the permit will end up settling permanently in the United States.
This is the most assinine, lame brained preposterous idea the President has had to this point.
If allowed to be birthed before a radical dilation and cutterage procedure as with aborting this crazy Vicente Fox hypnosis of President Bush this country will not recover to resume its journey to our manifest destiny.
Hey, Mr. President wake up and smell the future!
You omitted an important clause from your emphasis.
A requirement that guest workers return "to their home country after their period of work has concluded" hardly means they have to return home to renew.
If they renew their period of work would not be concluded.
Hillary is easy ? I'll bet that's what you thought in 1992 and 1996. Face facts. Clinton-hatred is an obsession confined to the hardcore GOP base.
Tell me, is your agenda to so overwhelm public services with illegals that state governments collapse into bankruptcy ? Kinda sounds like what Newsom did in San Francisco. He broke the law in the hopes of forcing his agenda on America and you are advocating breaking the law, too, to force your agenda on America. If you want to reduce public spending, do so with democratic consent of the government, not through encouraging rampant lawlessness. That's "ends justify the means" radicalism, not conservatism.
Are you more loyal to Mexico than America ? Apparently you view Americans of the Southwest as "birth controller/snowbird/pro-abort and lavenders" whom you would welcome seeing ethnically cleansed by Mexicans.
If you're Irish, are you planning to restart the San Patricio Battalion ?
Do you also kid yourself that our existing system won't let them get driver's licenses and Social Security cards, too?!
I spent the late 60s and early 70s being a state chairman of Young Americans for Freedom. Preserving your socialist programs to preserve your "lifestyle" is not a form of conservatism I have ever heard of. Identifying crimes not as crimes with perpetrators but as crimes with perpetrators of specific ethnic origins is a problem. If more burglaries were committed by blacks than would be proportional to theior numbers in society, it does not make burglary a "black" crime.
All the whining about crime on immigration threads is baloney since plenty of us are not too squeamish about "forgetting" unreported income when filling out those forms on April 15. So get off the phony high horse. Stupid laws are stupid laws. Often they die by being ignored. Immigration laws have always (since the 1880s) been enacted to control which races and nationalities get to enter the US in which proportions. To suggest otherwise is to be ignorant of history.
You would not know "conservative" if it jumped up and bit you.
Oddly, we can track all of the illegal aliens who would be eligible for legalization under the President's plan, through the workplace verification program. Those we can't track would remain anonymous anyway.
What will their response be to the Bush plan? What is the President's plan to deal with the millions of illegal aliens who would not be eligible for his guest worker plan.
Just want to say Sam(George Stepahanopolis), Welcome to FR.
Or are you Donna Brazile?
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