Posted on 02/01/2006 7:38:50 AM PST by Reagan Man
Sadly, the President missed yet another great opportunity to correct his course on immigration reform tonight. The President should have clarified his plan and joined the forces in Congress holding the line against amnesty. Instead, Americans will have to wait and wonder where the President stands on securing our borders, while he pushes for guest workers.
The President must enforce our immigration laws before we consider any guest worker proposal. Until we bring law and order to our border anarchy, importing more workers into the equation is out of the question.
In 1986, Congress passed a blanket amnesty on the promise that border security would come later. We all remember the ’86 bait-and-switch, and we won’t be fooled again. There is no way to determine if we need guest workers, and there is no way to gain control of this broken system until we seal our borders and control our country’s interior.
A Gallup poll released this week showed that a mere 25 percent of Americans approve of President Bush’s handling of immigration—his worst approval rating of all major issue areas that were surveyed.
The House’s get-tough immigration bill is in the Senate’s hands, where it is in jeopardy of being dropped or – worse yet – turned into a blanket amnesty. From his bully pulpit, President Bush could have broken the Washington stalemate and secured the most significant immigration reform in a decade. But tonight we got more of the same—more stalling, more roadblocks, more lax enforcement with no action in sight.
Border security is not an issue from which President Bush should run away. An overwhelming majority of Americans demand that their government secure the border now, and if we restore law and order, Republicans will be the political winners. As the President does in so many other areas, he must not retreat but lead.
Bump
Guest workers have to leave when their visas expire and if they want to get citizenship, they have to go to their home countries and apply and go to the back of the line.
I'm not so sure. Jim Sensennbrenner who will head the House negotiating team has come out strongly against any sort of amnesty and made it very clear that it would be unacceptable but if you read his words carefully he all but endorsed a guest worker plan in the mold of Cornyn/Kyl that forces people to apply for guest worker status from outside the country.
Cornyn/Kyl is a world better then the McCainneddy Shamnesty because it does suppossedly require the guest to leave and it provides no path to citizenship for lawbreakers. But it has some really bad stuff in it too. Cornyn/Kyl is still an amnesty in the sense that it does not force people to leave for five years after it goes into effect. It allows UNLIMITED numbers of guests to come every year. And it throws EVERY AMERICAN JOB open to competition and it has no mechanism for protecting the prevailing wage so no matter what your job is you had better be prepared to take a pay cut or train your Indian guest worker replacement. Apparently there are those in the Republican Party who think every job is a job that Americans just won't do. And of course for it to work, it will be dependent on enforcement and our government has yet to demonstrate that they have the political will to make anybody go home.
My bet is that very few guests will ever be made to leave and that any guestworker plan will eventually evolve into an amnesty. I am therefore opposed.
I don't believe in Dale Carnegie garbage, I'm a firm believer in if half the people don't hate me I'll take a look at myself to see what I'm doing wrong.
I go out of my way to make sure liberals, democraps, and yes moderates hate me.
I won't do work for any of the above and tell them why.
"Guest workers have to leave when their visas expire and if they want to get citizenship, they have to go to their home countries and apply and go to the back of the line."
That sounds reasonable, but, and this is the key, it would have to be enforced. I would like to see some serious enforcement provisions instated before a guestworker program is set up, but that is just me talking.
I agree. An effort at enforcing current law would give the President a little badly needed credibility. As it is, he is just another in a long line of Presidents who has thumbed his nose at the Legislature and the American people. There is NO reason to believe that any enforcement provisions of a new law would be meaningful.
Stop right there! What makes you think they'll leave? How are we going to find them and round them up, Genius.
sw
Mexico has some spare change they could part with.
Mexico Remittances Reach $20 Billion In 2005
January 31, 2006
The Bank of Mexico reported Tuesday that remittances sent home by Mexicans living abroad rose to $20 billion in 2005, a 17% increase over the year before [$16.6 billion in 2004]. Remittances climbed by more than $5.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005 alone.
snip
Its only logical. Before there can be any legitimate guest worker program implemented, the borders must be secured. Otherwise its like putting the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse. No system is perfect and getting a handle on the problems of illegal immigration and open borders will assure pitfalls. Some businesses might have to suffer while the process makes progress.
Same here, I'm opposed to any guest worker program at this point, especially after seeing what H1-bs have done to the tech industry.
Most people who don't have a problem with one now will when their jobs get directly affected, and they can expect that to happen as the corporations are given free reign to send busses down to the border to get their cheap replacements.
Our hope in all this is Kyl\Cornyn won't pass either since the democrats aren't going to support anything that doesn't have amnesty.
Another thing I find curious is the Senate is pushing back debate, they know this is a hot potato and really don't want to deal with it. The closer we get to the election the less chance there is for any guest worker program passing this year.
I don't play golf but I do enjoy picking lettuce out of my garden. I also do my own yard work and house cleaning.
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
Why would they leave? Who is going to make sure they leave?
Workplace enforcement. Fine...who exactly is gonna do the enforcement, and how much is it going to cost. Try to get local California municipalities to go along with that.
Big fines for employers. Great...another way to hurt business...especially small ones.
Jail time for employers. Fine...build more prisons. Of course finding a contractor locally might become a problem.
Having the IRS/INS pursue those whose employee's names/SSNs don't match. Fat chance, how about just tracking down tax cheaters.
Make the online document check MANDATORY>>> . Sure that will help alot.
Build the wall. Will we be able to see it from space?
Just once, I would like to see something reasonable...just once.
Very true. It was supposed to start in February and Arlen Spinctor delayed it until March. I saw a blurb on a blogsite (FortheCause if I recall correctly) about a rumor that McCain and Frist were trying to come up with some lame excuse to push the hearings back until after the November election. I think they were going to use the NSA Eavesdropping hearings as an excuse. Real pillars of courage, those two! But it is probably good. I'd rather have a pissed off electorate and the status quo then another shamnesty.
Ditto.
I wonder if the following will do anything to speed up detaining and/or deporting anybody?
KBR Awarded U.S. Department of Homeland Security Contingency Support Project for Emergency Support Services
Jan. 24, 2006, 11:05AM
KBR announced today that the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component has awarded KBR an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contingency contract to support ICE facilities in the event of an emergency. KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton.
[snip]
The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.
[snip]
The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster.
[snip]
In 1986, Congress passed a blanket amnesty on the promise that border security would come later. We all remember the ’86 bait-and-switch, and we won’t be fooled again. There is no way to determine if we need guest workers, and there is no way to gain control of this broken system until we seal our borders and control our country’s interior.
Hammer meets nail.
If the Senate's goal is to ultimately pass amnesty then they can push it back all they want, I agree the status quo is far preferable to that.
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