Posted on 12/06/2005 6:28:53 AM PST by GOPGuide
In a bid to bypass critics, the Senate will pass the plan and then merge it with a House bill, observers say.
Washington - Republican leaders will try to pass President Bush's controversial guest-worker proposal without putting it to a direct vote in the House.
Observers say the new GOP strategy that begins today is for the House to deal only with the more politically palatable issue of increasing border security and clamping down on employers. Republican leaders then will let the Senate pass some form of a guest-worker plan.
After that vote, senators and House members will merge the House's border security bill with the Senate's legislation in closed-door meetings.
The House will then vote on the final package, which will include some guest-worker provision, according to a GOP aide familiar with the plan, a Colorado lawmaker and other observers.
The strategy is designed to avoid a divisive debate and contentious vote in the House.
"There is a widespread expectation that that is how it's going to play out," said Tamar Jacoby, immigration expert with The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. "I think it would be hard to pass in the House without the Senate going first."
The legislation that is likely to be the core of the House's immigration bill is expected to be introduced today. Sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., it tightens border security and forces employers to verify workers' citizenship. It does not address guest-worker issues.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., the biggest opponent of the president's guest-worker
proposal, said the strategy limits his ability to challenge the measure. "They're doing it this way because they know in the House they'll run into a buzz saw and maybe my name's on it," said Tancredo, who heads the 92-member Immigration Reform Caucus in the House.
Sensenbrenner's bill is expected to be voted on within the next two weeks. That allows House members to visit their districts for the Christmas break and say that they passed immigration reform, Tancredo and Jacoby said.
But the House members will be aware of the plan to build in a guest-worker program through the conference committee, said Grover Norquist, a Republican strategist who often serves as an informal liaison between Congress and the White House.
"The president's made it clear he wants both (border security and a guest-worker program)," Norquist said.
See reply #40.
You keep saying that, but our misleaders don't give a RAT's Arse (No pun intended). The writing is on the wall. GWB is a joke of the worst kind. He feeds us some crumbs than hits us below the belt over and over again.
I am sort of glad he is lame duck since it will make it harder for this shamnesty to go through. He is one to blame for this, not Cigar Boy, not Regean, not his father. After 9/11 the country would have supported locking down the borders and throwing these bums out.
It was only a matter of time.
So you're saying Bush's pets WILL be raped and his children eaten?
That about sums it up.
BTTT
Uh, no you did gilly, per your reply #5.
Sensenbrenner is one of the best people in congress. He has done the heavy work while all the rest bitch.
To: ConsentofGoverned
Correct.
It's not Bush's pets that will be raped and children eaten.
We are just an annoying inconvenience they seek to rid themselves of.
5 posted on 12/06/2005 6:58:27 AM PST by the gillman@blacklagoon.com (“Don't let anyone tell you we can't control our borders,”)
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Stop spamming threads with pictures of your dreamgirl.
Take your thorazine, there's a good boy.
Not at all
The kookstitutional party can have you.
Nancy Pelosi is more than welcome
You and the rest of the ReDemocrats have fun in Washington screeching at each other.
Non Socialists are leaving the station and the 2 professional jackass parties can have it.
Uh no, moonbat nancy is Itzy's dreamgirl, per Itzy's reply #49.
Yes, it would work, and there are several reasons why neither political party in the USA will do it.
For the Democrats, it's obvious enough: Hispanics vote Democrat by a 60/40 margin, owing mainly to economic issues and not social morals (Hispanics are mostly Catholic and socially conservative, but pocketbook issues trump abstract social concerns for the poor). There are 11 million illegals in the US. Their children are citizens, and Democrat voters by a 20% margin. American population growth is robust, but driven heavily by Latino immigration and increase. Result: a relentless buildup of Democrat votes.
If there were ever an amnesty, the Democrats could expect to pick up 7 to 8 million voters at a pop, versus 3 or 4 million for the Republicans. And that would make the Democrats a permanent majority.
For the Republicans, it's a bit more difficult to see. There are three pieces driving them.
The first is economic on a business scale: big agriculture and big retail and construction, all three Republican ecomomic strongholds, rely on illegals to keep costs dirt cheap. The bottom line drives it.
The second is that suburban middle-class Republicans (and Democrats) work long hours and need/want domestic help for yardwork and day care. Latinos are generally more available, more malleable and cheaper than poor Americans. Further, there is an unspoken truth that suburban whites are much more willing to trust Latinos and Latinas into their homes and on their properties to do menial work and take care of their kids than they are to trust poor American blacks from the ghettos - the other available menial domestic labor pool. Given the high proportion of suburban and well-to-do people who have personal interaction with Latino/Latina domestics, there is considerable sympathy for them in that class of people - and these are the people who contribute money to political parties and are active in local politics. Take a step down the socio-economic ladder, and less well off working Americans who DON'T have domestic help are much more hard-minded about illegal immigration. But, of course, they're not the folks who man and operate the party apparatus.
Nowhere is the sense of closeness and even "family" made clearer than among the Bushes themselves. There are family members MARRIED TO Latinos. There is knowledge of these issues within the family. To the Bushes, the Latinos are not this foreign, invading race. They're related by blood and history and ties. American elites, Republican and Democrat, are more sympathetic in general to Latino immigration and Latinos in general than the folks further down the ladder. Politically, the suburbanites and elites will talk a good enough game to keep people from positively rebelling and walking out of the party, but they have no will or desire to really enforce any rules or do anything radical. Just give it time, and there will be so many Latinos that they CAN'T be excluded.
The third reason is a political calculation. Republican margins of victory are not huge. They are the majority party, but barely. Democrats get the Latino vote, but Republicans get the votes of third and fourth generation Latinos more and more. Since a very heavy Latino percentage is the future of the United States, actively undertaking policies that would alienate an electorate that Republicans NEED in order to hold onto their majority would not be wise.
So, the Republicans are riding a tiger.
They're not going to build a wall.
They will talk about it enough and take cosmetic public actions sufficient to keep the nativists on board for 2006 and then 2008, but they will never do anything effective. Anything truly effective will mean that the Latinos start voting for the Democrats 80/20 instead of 60/40, and that means a Democrat House, Senate and President Clinton.
You're such a laugh riot.
Sorry I can't stay and make sport of your dementia any longer today.
Maybe you could ping Laz. He's usually got a few charitable moments for you.
Yep ~ I keep saying it and you keep complaining about it.
It isn't personal and remember that we get the government that we deserve.
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
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