Posted on 04/04/2006 7:42:56 AM PDT by SmithL
Washington -- California history haunts the Republican civil war raging over immigration that is scheduled to come to a head Friday in a Senate vote.
In 1994, California's Republican Gov. Pete Wilson won a tight re-election race by backing a popular anti-illegal-immigrant measure known as Proposition 187, and he lost his party's grasp on the nation's biggest political prize by alienating Hispanic voters.
The alarm now gripping many in the party, not least the White House, is that history could repeat itself in the teetering red states on which GOP victories depend: Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and others with fast-growing Latino populations.
Washington has its own version of Prop. 187, known as the Sensenbrenner bill after its author, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. It passed the House in December and would, among other things, make illegal immigrants felons and build a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.
This week Senate Republicans -- including at least four potential presidential hopefuls, evenly split on the issue -- may decide whether to allow that measure to represent the party's position on immigration or to embrace a bipartisan Senate bill that takes the opposite approach, offering an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants the chance to obtain permanent U.S. residence and allowing upwards of 400,000 more to do so each year under a guest worker plan.
"This is a defining moment for the Republican Party," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who supports the Senate bill, said over the weekend. "If our answer to the fastest-growing demographic in this country is that 'We want to make felons of your grandparents, and we want to put people in jail who are helping your neighbors and people related to you,' then we're going to suffer mightily."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I don't even like the whole "legal hispanic" term; it implies that all hispanics are immigrants, even if our families have been here for 200 years.
And yes, Bush and Fox are markcing in lockstep on this issue, among others.
And I never said that the words "The Minutemen are vigilantes" escaped President Bush's mouth.
My point is that there is no way to parse his words in which the "vigilantes" he is referring to are not the Minutemen.
And Bush-bashing-as you inartfully describe criticism of his horrendous policy on this subject-is absolutely called for.
No matter what the fault of Congress-and they share partial responsibility for the disastrous situation on our So. border-it is up to the president to send an unambiguous message that he will enforce the law.
That he will not allow anyone to abrogate our laws in any way whatsoever.
By encouraging illegal immigration at every opportunity all he does is erode his administration's credibility on this issue.
I took Bush's comments to mean that he would not support a mission by the minutemen that went oustside their mission statement. He did not call the minutemen or what they were doing vigilantes. He did say what he thought vigilantes actions consisted of. You can take it to mean something else if you want to.
Some here have and do claim that W said something he did not say. On this issue there is plenty of firepower to bring to bare against W's position. There is no need to augment anything. Claiming W called the minutemen,or what they are doing, vigilante is simply inaccurate. It is needless augmentation.
Vincente Fox is not for ANY kind of border enforcement. He did say not all that long that these folks were not illegal in any way, simply that they were migrant workers that remained undocumented.
W understands the flow has to be legal or not at all. He understands that border enforcement needs to and will happen. TO claim Fox and W are on the exact same page about this is more augmentation. Do they agree on some stuff? Sure they do. Hardly lock step IMHO.
I blame congress for drafting so many laws that pertain to this issue ( and that get tied wrongly to this issue by trial laywers) For the bulk of the problem. It is an extension of trying to gain what you want by producing inaction.
Example: Laci's law. You know, the law passed so that a person can be charged with two murders if he kills a pregnant woman? Some immigration lawyers instantly tried to make the case that this applied to Illegals.....making their unborn into americans citizens....engame being avoiding deportation.
Congress does not need the president to pass laws. The president however does need the congress to do that same thing.
I stand with you in the notion that W could do a whole lot more. I stand aside of you when you claim it is all on him ( or any other president).
Ronald Reagan pushed thru an amnesty that was supposed to end this problem once and for all. Congress dropped the ball afterwords. Keep in mind some of the folks there at the time are still there now.....hint hint hint......for things to change......congress has to change. Either they get off their butts and do something about this or we vote them out.
The Bush/Kennedy/McCain/Hillary American voters
Not totally sure on this but I think Jimmy Carter & co. had a big hand in coining the term "hispanic".......I know he was a big advocate of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights some years ago and I think they needed an all inclusive term to pump up the propaganda machine and start the process of dissolving our borders.
I can "take it" to mean exactly what he intended when he made those statements, and accepted the premise of the White House press corps, which was under no illusion that President Bush was referring to anyone but the Minutemen when he summarily castigated "vigilantism."
Vincente Fox is not for ANY kind of border enforcement.
Yes, and that is precisely why him and Dubya are best buds, because they are in complete accord on this subject.
W will see border controls soon, as they come out of congress. Fox will see them too. Difference is that W will accept them ( as he will not veto) and Fox will not. Regardless of how long Fox stays in office.
Now you accept your right to assign what meaning you want to without the words to support your conclusion. Do you accept my right assign a meaning using his actions as my support? My guess is you don't...imagine that.
To make such a strident point a person needs a bit more than a weak inference as you bolster like it is the holy frail.
You go ahead and read between the lines of what W says, I see no need to do so.
You wanna accept the premise of the whitehouse press corps...LMAO you go for it. Helen Thomas LOVES YA!
Tell Waffling RINO's : No Amnesty!
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=13155
Wrong Way Whino's (RINO's)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1607789/posts?page=475#475
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
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Signs of hope in Senate --- You are starting to win --- Keep up the pressure | ||||
DEAR FRIENDS, Just a quick note in between all the dashing around DC today. At the moment the news around Capitol Hill is filled with cautious optimism that the Amnesty Senators can't seem to get the 60 votes it will take to pass the Specter Judiciary Committe bill or any other blanket amnesty that is being considered. Obviously, we could lose at any minute, so the burden of responsiblity weighs heavy on all of us not to let up in our phoning, visiting Senators' local offices and in faxing. But .... The inability of the Amnesty Senators to get 60 votes right now is an incredible victory. I was talking with Rosemary Jenks (our Director of Government Relations) awhile ago just as she was leaving another interview at CNN. She says there is only one explanation for why this vote is deadlocked right now .... .... The relentless pounding that you American citizens have given these 40-plus Senators who are holding out against all the money and power of the national corporate lobbies, the national religious lobbies and most of the national media. THAT must be the explanation. Now, some of you may think me a naive optimist to be glad about a situation in which it appears that more than 50 (half) of our Senators are willing to give away our country so easily in supporting these amnesty bills. But what I am is a realist who knows how just how terrible our situation has been for years in the Senate. We are all pinching ourselves to see if we are in a dream because all practical signs three weeks ago suggested that a blanket amnesty would easily pass the Senate. As we nearly always do in the face of the impossible, we rallied ourselves and all of you to try to beat the amnesty that looked inevitable. Now, it looks like we just might have a chance! I want you to take a moment to understand the context of all of this so you can appreciate how effective all of your actions have been. I know that many of you have been writing me that despite all your phoning and faxing your Senators still make terrible choices and that you should just give up on them and work on somebody else. But we will never win unless a lot of people who were once -- or are now -- thought hopeless come around to our side, at least on some things. We can't stop working on any of these people. You never know when you will be the straw that breaks the camel's back and causes your Senator to pull back even slightly from his/her pursuit of flooding our communities with wage-depressing foreign workers. And that slight pulling back, combined with incremental changes in other Senators may just make the difference. In a battle, no army can afford to have individual soldiers to stop firing because he doubts that his participation is not making any difference, or that his target is hopeless. The fact is that most of our allies in the House and the Senate the last five years have resisted bringing major immigration reform legislation to the floor because they said that once anything got to the Senate it would be turned into the most ugly open-borders legislation you could imagine. Well, they were right. We never could have imagined any legislation as bad as the one the Judiciary Committee passed last week:
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Are you joking?
The only bills being debated in Congress right now are ones that will erase the distinction between illegal aliens and American citizens even further.
These proposed laws will give illegal aliens valid driver's licenses, give them a fast-track to citizenship, and allow 10-20 million of their "close" relatives-i.e. anyone even peripherally related to them by blood-into the country.
No one is even debating controlling our borders.
At least, no one in Congress or in this administration.
If immigration laws were enforced there wouldn't be a growing hispanic community. As far as I'm concerned this is an admission that illegals vote.
Soapbox doesn't seem to be doing much, either.
The three calls I made (and have until it became clear it was futile to continue in such actions):
Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
David Dreier (R-CA, 26th District)
I can't think of three elected officials who care less about illegal immigration at any level of public office.
I am not joking and neither is Tom Tancredo. I have faith in him and his position.
I guess Tancredo isn't in congress now?
You might think this is not going to happen but I offer to you that it is going to happen.
It will end up a bit of both sides and we will see movement on this issue. Have faith.
To claim that Bush despises Tancredo-and almost everything he stands for-and yet embraces the vision of the Minutemen Project is what I call cognitive dissonance.
BTTT
The claim this whole started over was that Bush said that the minutemen were vigilantes. That was never said. Somehow now you have morphed this into being about Tancredo and Bush.
W does stand for freedom of speech and the right to protest as I stated. His actions show that to be self evident. How about you accept that I have not defended the Bush position on immigration. Accept that I have stood firm for truth aside of political affiliation.
Are you really going to claim here that W is against Tancredo having the right to the position he does and has acted to stop him from any of his activites? Has W tried to stop Tancredo from speaking?
Give it up. Please.
I never said that W embraces the vision of the minutemen, You make a mistake saying that I have. I think you do so intentionally. I said that W supports their rights to do the things they are doing...and he does! I have said that he stated his opposition the actions of vigilantes, which are not the actions of the minutemen. Both of those statments are true.
Maybe you need to assess what it is I am actually pointing out and then maybe you could see that what I am saying to you is the truth. Let go of the ideology that has become nothing more than your blinders. I have tried to be as clear as I can be and you simnply attempt to assign meaning,regardless of facts, to me just like you did to W. If you cannot see where errors come into play when you do such things......then that is your trouble and not mine.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1609137/posts
Have you seen this? Free houses for illegals and one freeper says they've been there since 1995!
What kind of garbage is going on?
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