`Fencing' in Bush on immigration

chicago tribune ^ | March 26, 2006 | Clarence Page

[Sharks]

WASHINGTON -- Question: Who has the most influence with President Bush on the volatile issue of immigration reform?

(A) The employing elites who are addicted to the cheap and docile labor pool that illegal immigrants provide?

(B) The working-class and middle-class voters, including many legal immigrants, in the Republican Party's base who are frustrated with the lax controls on illegals?

(C) The mostly minority backlash voters who, if Congress passes the sort of a tough, enforcement-only immigration bill that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) suggests, could cost the Grand Old Party support in Florida and Southwestern states for years to come?

As with the recent attempted sale of some American seaport operations to the United Arab Emirates, the president's happy talk about his proposed guest-worker program is facing hard midterm election-year questions from Republicans in Congress, prodded by nervousness and outrage from their political base back home.

"Guest worker" means that foreigners would be allowed to gain legal status in the U.S. for a set amount of time to do specific jobs, then return home without the automatic path to citizenship that true amnesty would provide.

But Frist, who may be weighing his own presidential ambitions, surprised many by proposing an alternative bill that tightens border controls without creating the guest-worker program that the president wants.

Already passed in the House is Rep. James Sensenbrenner's (R-Wis.) radical proposal for a 700-mile system of Berlin-style walls along the Mexican-U.S. border. The idea, you may remember, was widely ridiculed as "Patrick Buchanan's spite fence" when the conservative columnist proposed it during his presidential campaigns in the 1990s. It is a sign of our times that the House approved it overwhelmingly in December.

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E-mail: cptime@aol.com

[trubluolyguy]

Question: Who has the most influence with President Bush on the volatile issue of immigration reform?

(A) The employing elites who are addicted to the cheap and docile labor pool that illegal immigrants provide?

(B) The working-class and middle-class voters, including many legal immigrants, in the Republican Party's base who are frustrated with the lax controls on illegals?

(C) The mostly minority backlash voters who, if Congress passes the sort of a tough, enforcement-only immigration bill that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) suggests, could cost the Grand Old Party support in Florida and Southwestern states for years to come?

---

I choose;

(A) The employing elites who are addicted to the cheap and docile labor pool that illegal immigrants provide

[StAnDeliver]

"facing hard midterm election-year questions from Republicans in Congress, prodded by nervousness and outrage from their political base back home."

Yea, they're shaking in their boots given Madame Cankles wants la migra more than anyone else in the Senate, Clarence

"Clearly, we have to make some tough decisions as a country, and one of them ought to be coming up with a much better entry-and-exit system so that if we're going to let people in for the work that otherwise would not be done, let's have a system that keeps track of them." -- Hillary Rodham Clinton

[upchuck]

Great comment! If I might expand on it a little:

Bill Frist
Jim Sensenbrenner
Jon Kyl
Tom Tancredo
et al

Doing the job President Bush refuses to do

What a great protest sign :)

[WatchingInAmazement]

Please check out what Frist is actually proposing. Here it is according to Bay Buchannan. Take it for what it's worth.
There was another source explaining this last week on FR.


Here is the really bad news. While Senator Frist’s bill has little to no
amnesty in it, it is NOT an enforcement only bill. It more than doubles
green cards—it would take our legal immigration numbers from 1 million to
over 2 million a year!!

If you take the two bills out 10 years, Kennedy/McCain/Specter would
legalize 25 million foreigners during the next decade and Frist would
legalize over 20 million! And the Frist bill goes on forever with those
huge annual numbers.

Both bills would be disastrous for a country!!

And these numbers don’t include the increase in H1B visas and the like.
Kennedy’s bill wants to take the 65,000 that come in today and increase it
to 165,000 annually—a 100,000 more a year! That’s nothing compared to
Frist’s plan. He wants to increase these visas by 400,000, so nearly
500,000 foreigners could come take American jobs every year!!

baybuchanan@teamamericapac.org

[Dialup Llama]

That’s nothing compared to Frist’s plan. He wants to increase these visas by 400,000, so nearly 500,000 foreigners could come take American jobs every year!!

I can assure you that there are definitely not nearly that many "extra" IT jobs. The BLS figures show declines in IT. In fact, it is not easy to get a good job in IT, although it is possible (while for many months after 9-11 and Iraq it was impossible).

Its like as soon as the IT job market rises above rock bottom, the elites and CEOs want to flood the job market with programmers.

[Dialup Llama]

Frist also went wobbly on fetal stem cell cloning, so he is no longer considered a pro-life candidate. Frist can't lean on the support of cultural conservatives.

[WatchingInAmazement]

I can assure you that there are definitely not nearly that many "extra" IT jobs.

I understand.

[Mogollon]

"could cost the Grand Old Party support in Florida and Southwestern states for years to come?"

That will not be the case, especially in Florida.

No I don't think so most of the legalized hispanics also want immigration reform. Prop 200 passed in Arizona with almost 57% of the vote and over 50% of the legal citizen hispanics voted for it. (Prop 200 makes it mandatory for all voters to show valid ID at the polls).