Posted on 04/10/2006 4:40:53 PM PDT by Dubya
WASHINGTON - When the U.S. House passed a bill in December making it a felony to be in the country illegally, the ''get-tough'' message became the flash point that has drawn millions of protestors into the streets.
With the Senate failing last week to finish a bill that would have rejected some of the harshest language in the House version, Republicans are expressing regret that the punitive House measure stands as the most recent congressional action on immigration.
''There are demonstrations all over America, and the House bill is the only bill out there,'' complained Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. His comprehensive border enforcement and worker visa program bill served as the framework for the Senate bill that got derailed in a partisan procedural fight.
House GOP leaders defend their decision to limit their bill to border enforcement and harsher penalties against illegal immigrants and those who hire them or give them aid. Many House Republicans also oppose President Bush's call for temporary work visas until the borders are made more secure and illegal immigration is curbed.
House sponsors wanted to erect new legal barriers to illegal immigration.In a recent letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, three House leaders defended the proposed penalties on those who give aid or counseling to illegal immigrants as a way to crack down on human and drug smuggling operations.
''We need to have the tools to be able to prosecute and put in jail the coyotes,'' said House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., referring to people who smuggle Mexicans and others into the United States.
Critics argue that anti-smuggling laws already are comprehensive and that Sensenbrenner was intent on cutting off humanitarian assistance to illegal immigrants.
''I would call on him to be honest and say that's what's happening,'' said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
While not giving in on that point, Sensenbrenner conceded that a provision to turn illegal immigrants into felons was ''overkill.'' But he blamed Democrats for blocking his efforts to lessen the penalty.
After the bill was sent from committee to the full House for a vote, the Bush administration realized the felony aspect could lead to an unprecedented demand for jury trials for illegal immigrants, swamping federal courts and detention facilities.
If the felony penalty becomes law, it would make an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants , including those who overstayed their visas, subject to arrest and jailing for up to a year for ''unlawful presence'' in the United States.
The White House asked Sensenbrenner to reduce the proposed violation to a misdemeanor, with a six-month jail term. But a vote to cut the penalty failed at the hands of law-and-order Republicans, as well as Democrats, who wanted to show that the GOP was being mean-spirited.
The Senate version would make the violation a misdemeanor.
gebe.martinez@chron.com
Many Americans are now, possibly for the first time, learning one of the basic laws of nature: A man can keep his life only if he, or someone else, is willing and able to defend him from those who would take his life. A man can keep his family safe and secure only if he, or someone else, is willing and able to defend his family from those who would do them harm. A man can have a country only if he, or someone better than he, will defend his country from those who would readily take it from him.
The basic law of nature, simply put, is that a man can only keep what he is able and willing defend, and any man who is not willing to defend what he has does not deserve to have it. Our country was invaded, and we did nothing. Maybe we no longer deserve to have a country. If we keep electing the same type of incompetent leadership we now have, we certainly won't have a country much longer.
Some more on Ms Piggy er Butterball er Butterfield:
...few members of mainstream organizations have worked closely and openly with terrorist groups, like Jeanne Butterfield (search), director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (search).
The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the immigration bar's equivalent of the American Bar Association.... Jeanne Butterfield is, in some sense of the term, the nation's head immigration lawyer...
To understand Ms. Butterfield's history is to understand the newer and downright irresponsible positions taken by AILA. Before she was elected director of AILA, Jeanne Butterfield was executive director of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the group that acted as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in much the same way that Sinn Fein acted as a representative of the Irish Republican Army -- but without participating in electoral politics and representative government as Sinn Fein has.
...In 2001 alone, the PFLP exploded seven car bombs, a bus and motorcycle bomb, and several bombs placed near high-pedestrian traffic areas, like malls across Israel. In October, 2001, it assassinated Israel's Minister of Tourism as he walked to his home in a quiet neighborhood.
The March-April 1989 issue of Palestine Focus (search), the national newspaper of the Palestine Solidarity Committee -- which features Butterfield on the masthead -- lists among its goals "to stop U.S. intervention in the Middle East and to cut off U.S. aid to Israel."...
It's baffling that a person whose early career was spent apologizing for terrorism has risen to director of a mainstream, national professional organization whose members testify on Capitol Hill...If Ms. Butterfield had been a leader of another group that advocated hate and violence, such as the Ku Klux Klan, she would not have the credibility or trustworthiness to find work as a bank teller, let alone lead a national, mainstream legal organization.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (search) said that in American life, there are no second acts. Jeanne Butterfield proves, provided your politics are acceptable to some, that that's not always so.
...
This immigrant competition has hit black Americans especially hard. A recent New York Times report pointed out, "In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20s were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts."
Old civil-rights groups avoid debate on immigration
...
Yet, many blacks soft-target illegal immigrants for the crisis and loudly claim that they take jobs from unskilled and marginally skilled blacks. Black fury over immigration has cemented an odd alliance between black anti-immigrant activists and GOP conservatives, fringe anti-illegal immigration groups and racially tinged America-first groups.
Most likely because he thought it was the right thing to do. I agree with him. I know you don't, so let's leave it at that. The fact still is, as I heard it this afternoon, the Pubies did try to take that out and the Dems blocked it.
Me too. The song "Feelings" come to mind. Whoa, Whoa, whoa feelings.... Boo Hoo. I am fed up with people calling me and my stance on this issue as racist. Thank god for the likes of Tancredo and Sensenbrenner and if the others stood by their SOUL. I believe we would prevail. Ugh. (pissed off)
Under current enacted law, doesn't being and illegal become a felony after you have been deported and caught a second time? The difference is really insignificant when you consider we currently don't enforce the laws we have.
Immigration is an economic and law enforcement issue. These clowns are just going to dork it up worse.
He admitted that this was one of his objectives in editing the paper, on the occasion of his former editorial-page editor's retirement in order to go to work as a publicist for Mayor Bill White of Houston. His own paper reported on the going-away party, and printed his own remarks.
How'd that happen?!
The main thing to remember about any story the Chronicle does on immigration is that they slant, they pander, and they lie.
HR 4437 is not even going to be taken up in the Senate.
I don't think either side really wants a bill.
(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.")
Where's that pic of the squirrel with the "cajones".....??? That's what the Pubbies need right now....sheesh......seems they are letting the ILLEGAL ALIENS run our policies.
I'm confused, was it Republicans or was it McCain expressing regret that the House bill was the most recent action?
I haven't seen the vote, but one of the Sunday shows said that 190 Democrats voted to make it a felony, so it sounds like a poison pill interjected largely by them for their own propaganda purposes.
Bull. This guy's an idiot. The protestors didn't respond to any specifics in the bill. They thought Bush was against them.
Well i've congratulated the Dems on the Felon removal block before and at least this article mentions the history.
Fact is, the Senate hasn't finally spoken. There is no "final word" for congress or either party.
My opinion: Frist needs to put the Sessions/Nelson bill/amendment on an up or down vote. Democrats and MSM have so far kept silent that one of their own sponsored such a law.
You're right. This whole "piece" is a puff of smoke and spin.
LOL! Then the idiot congress would create a wet foot dry, foot policy......Oy!
I am beginning to believe it is not lack of backbone so much as they actually are leftists disguised as conservatives.
What is wrong with it being a felony?
Bleeding hearts and plantation owners please clue me in.
"In Congress, GOP regrets that harsh bill was last word"
One would hope, AT SOME POINT, that the Republicans in Congress would press the OFF BUTTON on their TV remote controls and actually talk to real humans.
If the Republicans are willing to let the MSM dictate to them what their constituents think, then what's the point of even electing them.
(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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