Posted on 05/15/2006 7:42:23 PM PDT by JerseyHighlander
I cited additional statistics on OTM and court times.
You probably didn 't notice because you are so reactionary.
He could be poking holes in that barrel with his veto pen. The pen that never sees daylight.
You can see it from several viewpoints.
The current Senate is more responsible and less populist than the Hoover era Senate.
or
Bush has under his administration, performed less policing action on employers of illegal aliens than Herbert Hoover. Which is a loaded statement, but hard to refute.
or
McCarthy and William Randolph Hearst were more effective in highlighting the subversive leadership of the immigrant community during their time, the MSM has purposefully omitted any meanigful referecne to the organizations that organized the protest marches of the last few months.
or
We all better learn to get along because no one is going to be leaving the continent anytime soon.
So, I'd just like to see illegals removed from the welfare teet, let those who want to work work, but make them pay into the society from which their earn their family's income.
That pretty much says it all.. Doesn't It???
Bush has consecutively reduced discretionary spending in the budget every year he has been in office.
President Bush has threatened 39 vetoes of Congressional efforts to exceed his spending authorizations. Congress has backed down every time.
Bush's reductions in spending are now lower than inflation. His tax cuts have increased government revenue which is further reducing CBO deficit estimates.
Representations of Bush as not being fiscally conservative are FALSE.
Moreover, there are ridiculous arguments that portray Bush as having tyrannical powers over budget when the Constitution clearly gives congress control.
Bush has acted to reduce government spending.
OPERATION WETBACK. Operation Wetback was a repatriation project of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service to remove illegal Mexican immigrants ("wetbacks") from the Southwest. During the first decades of the twentieth century, the majority of migrant workers who crossed the border illegally did not have adequate protection against exploitation by American farmers. As a result of the Good Neighbor Policy, Mexico and the United States began negotiating an accord to protect the rights of Mexican agricultural workers. Continuing discussions and modifications of the agreement were so successful that the Congress chose to formalize the "temporary" program into the Bracero program,qv authorized by Public Law 78. In the early 1940s, while the program was being viewed as a success in both countries, Mexico excluded Texas from the labor-exchange program on the grounds of widespread violation of contracts, discrimination against migrant workers, and such violations of their civil rights as perfunctory arrests for petty causes. Oblivious to the Mexican charges, some grower organizations in Texas continued to hire illegal Mexican workers and violate such mandates of PL 78 as the requirement to provide workers transportation costs from and to Mexico, fair and lawful wages, housing, and health services. World War IIqv and the postwar period exacerbated the Mexican exodus to the United States, as the demand for cheap agricultural laborers increased. Graft and corruption on both sides of the border enriched many Mexican officials as well as unethical "coyote" freelancers in the United States who promised contracts in Texas for the unsuspecting Bracero. Studies conducted over a period of several years indicate that the Bracero program increased the number of illegal aliens in Texas and the rest of the country. Because of the low wages paid to legal, contracted braceros, many of them skipped out on their contracts either to return home or to work elsewhere for better wages as wetbacks.
Increasing grievances from various Mexican officials in the United States and Mexico prompted the Mexican government to rescind the bracero agreement and cease the export of Mexican workers. The United States Immigration Service, under pressure from various agricultural groups, retaliated against Mexico in 1951 by allowing thousands of illegals to cross the border, arresting them, and turning them over to the Texas Employment Commission,qv which delivered them to work for various grower groups in Texas and elsewhere. Over the long term, this action by the federal government, in violation of immigration laws and the agreement with Mexico, caused new problems for Texas. Between 1944 and 1954, "the decade of the wetback," the number of illegal aliens coming from Mexico increased by 6,000 percent. It is estimated that in 1954 before Operation Wetback got under way, more than a million workers had crossed the Rio Grande illegally. Cheap labor displaced native agricultural workers, and increased violation of labor laws and discrimination encouraged criminality, disease, and illiteracy. According to a study conducted in 1950 by the President's Commission on Migratory Labor in Texas, the Rio Grande valleyqv cotton growers were paying approximately half of the wages paid elsewhere in Texas. In 1953 a McAllen newspaper clamored for justice in view of continuing criminal activities by wetbacks.
The resulting Operation Wetback, a national reaction against illegal immigration, began in Texas in mid-July 1954. Headed by the commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization Service, Gen. Joseph May Swing, the United States Border Patrol aided by municipal, county, state, and federal authorities, as well as the military, began a quasimilitary operation of search and seizure of all illegal immigrants. Fanning out from the lower Rio Grande valley, Operation Wetback moved northward. Illegal aliens were repatriated initially through Presidio because the Mexican city across the border, Ojinaga, had rail connections to the interior of Mexico by which workers could be quickly moved on to Durango. A major concern of the operation was to discourage reentry by moving the workers far into the interior. Others were to be sent through El Paso. On July 15, the first day of the operation, 4,800 aliens were apprehended. Thereafter the daily totals dwindled to an average of about 1,100 a day. The forces used by the government were actually relatively small, perhaps no more than 700 men, but were exaggerated by border patrol officials who hoped to scare illegal workers into flight back to Mexico. Valley newspapers also exaggerated the size of the government forces for their own purposes: generally unfavorable editorials attacked the Border Patrol as an invading army seeking to deprive Valley farmers of their inexpensive labor force. While the numbers of deportees remained relatively high, the illegals were transported across the border on trucks and buses. As the pace of the operation slowed, deportation by sea began on the Emancipation, which ferried wetbacks from Port Isabel, Texas, to Veracruz, and on other ships. Ships were a preferred mode of transport because they carried the illegal workers farther away from the border than did buses, trucks, or trains. The boat lift continued until the drowning of seven deportees who jumped ship from the Mercurio provoked a mutiny and led to a public outcry against the practice in Mexico. Other aliens, particularly those apprehended in the Midwest states, were flown to Brownsville and sent into Mexico from there. The operation trailed off in the fall of 1954 as INS funding began to run out.
It is difficult to estimate the number of illegal aliens forced to leave by the operation. The INS claimed as many as 1,300,000, though the number officially apprehended did not come anywhere near this total. The INS estimate rested on the claim that most aliens, fearing apprehension by the government, had voluntarily repatriated themselves before and during the operation. The San Antonio district, which included all of Texas outside of El Paso and the Trans-Pecos,qv had officially apprehended slightly more than 80,000 aliens, and local INS officials claimed that an additional 500,000 to 700,000 had fled to Mexico before the campaign began. Many commentators have considered these figure to be exaggerated. Various groups opposed any form of temporary labor in the United States. The American G.I. Forum,qv for instance, by and large had little or no sympathy for the man who crossed the border illegally. Apparently the Texas State Federation of Laborqv supported the G.I. Forum's position. Eventually the two organizations coproduced a study entitled What Price Wetbacks?, which concluded that illegal aliens in United States agriculture damaged the health of the American people, that illegals displaced American workers, that they harmed the retailers of McAllen, and that the open-border policy of the American government posed a threat to the security of the United States. Critics of Operation Wetback considered it xenophobic and heartless.
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/OO/pqo1.html
Notice that it took only a few months to deport a million criminals and between 500,000 and 700,000 others deported themselves rather than get caught. And this operation was only conducted in the Southwest.
That is a pretty reasonable summary.
I agree.
Bull! Bush never has ever intended on controlling the border. The whole war on terror is now an official joke, because if Saudi Arabia where Mexico was, not only would there be a 100 foot high fence but it would be mined! He loves Vicenti Fox too much to want to hurt his little feelings.
Who referred to the minutemen as"vigilantes"??
Who gave the location of the minutemen to the Mex govt.??
Who refers to islam as the "religion of peace"??
Who grew govt. to the largest in history??
Who failed to secure our borders even after 9-11??
Who let Sandy Burglar steal top secret documents without any punishment?
Who pals around with the sink emperor and treats him as a hero of America??
I would think DU would love "W"!!
I appreciate you posting the evidence and that looks hopeful.
But to be honest, it does not approach 6 million. Nor does this program seem beyond the scope of current enforcement proposals by Bush.
The article honestly highlights the complexity of knowing what is going on with immigration because of the large border and large populations.
Congress gives him this much trouble when he signs whatever they pass. Imagine how much worse they'd be if he started vetoing their pork.
Bush is concerned about Republicans holding onto Congress. Republicans in Congress are more concerned about holding onto their seats than with advancing the Republican agenda.
In effect, this leaves Bush in the position of giving into the Republicans in Congress on most issues, in exchange for them not messing too much with his foreign policy. Or do you think Repubs in Congress wouldn't join the Democrats in derailing everything this President is doing in foreign policy, just to make sure they're pork projects don't get vetoed?
All this anger directed at the President is misdirected. It should be directed at Congress for not proactively addressing the issues on the conservative agenda. They throw us a meaningless bone from time to time, but give us no meat. The President on the other hand has done a lot more for us than the Repubs in Congress, and so what if he is a little more moderate than most of us would like. I'd take a moderate like him over a liberal like Kerry or Gore any day, and until we fix the misconception that Americans have of "conservatives", a more conservative candidate for President would've been impossible in both 2000 and 2004.
If you had paid any attention during the 2000 Bush - Gore presidential debates you would have known that for the last 6 years..
Gore and Bush were in agreement on 90% of the issues..
Most of the disagreement was on details and the rest was politics and name calling.
I don't mean to be derisive by saying that, it's just that it's always been pretty obvious to me, at least, that Bush was a moderate and has always been so..
He may be a Republican, but so is McCain..
He was never a conservative, republicans have just played on conservatives fear of a Democrat congress and presidency to get their votes..
From now on, I only vote for certified conservative candidates..
I held my nose and voted for Bush twice.. For the sake of the republican whiners and hoping for a principled, conservative congress and administration..
It won't happen again..
If you are speaking of the senate, I might agree..
However, House congressional representatives put forward a good, tough bill on immigration, and border security..
It's the President and the Senate that has done everything in it's power to derail legislation that actually voiced a will of the people.. ( That's what the house is supposed to do.. )
I have to disagree with your analysis of the situation, with all due respect...
Keep in mind that the article is written with a liberal slant and downplays the fact that although the operation didn’t start until mid July and ended in the fall it deported 1,300,000 criminals. And that was at a time when there were fewer criminals here to deport.
Were Bush to deport 1,300,000 criminals every six months, he wouldn’t have needed to give that speech tonight. Another point, President Eisenhower rounded up and deported 1,300,000 criminals who had already broken into the country. To come up with Bush’s 6,000,000 deported over 5 years, he has to include the ones caught crossing the border. He didn’t round up 6,000,000 criminals already here.
Yes, and most of them were Mexicans, who are processed after apprehension, then taken to the port of entry nearest to where they were apprehended, and sent acoss the border into Mexico, to try again the next day, and the next day, until they get past the Border Patrol, and escape into the interior of the Country.
Don't even think about telling me I don't know what I am talking about, I have seen it with my own eyes, and am repeatedly told about it by Border Patrol agents.
I do not say this to defeat notions of increasing border enforcement, but your observation is why stopping or ending illegal immigration is impractical. More than 3000 Cubans try to get in the US every year despite far more adverse conditions than anyone is imagining on the border. That is a very small number I know but when we look at the US mexican border with truck traffic and everything else, it is not going to be sealed.
People make these kind of extreme border arguments all over the world-- Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria.
Borders cannot be sealed. Canada let in a number of terrorist threats and they are hardly the problem Mexico is.
Increasing border enforcement is fine but thinking we could ever seal the border is absurd.
More importantly, Bush has done considerable efforts to increase border enforcement within his authority.
Did the President label the Minutement as "Vigilantes" or did he say that he didn't want "vigilantes" performing law enforcement actions on the border? As the Minutemen have proven, they are not performing a law enforcement role on the border, and thus aren't vigilantes. Thus, they aren't covered by the President's statements, as I read it.
As it turns out, the alleged revelation of MM locations to the Mexican government was a hoax. Never happened.
The President is responsible for winning the war on terror. One aspect of that war is keeping the rest of the Muslims in the world who are not engaged actively in a war against us from taking up arms. Keeping them pacified with "religion of peace" talk, while actively going after the terrorists and nations who have aligned themselves with the terrorists is more important and far more dire. Or do you propose rounding up Muslims around the globe and going all Hitler on them? I'd rather go all Patton on our enemies, and leave the non-combatants alone. Actions speak louder than words, and the President has proven that he isn't slacking when it comes to keeping us safe from terrorists. Keeping us safe from Muslims in general is part of the war on terror, and maybe... just maybe Islam will moderate itself as a result of a proactive war on its extremists. And if it doesn't, Islam is being defeated in detail, starting with the terrorists. But if you think all Muslims are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, I suggest you put on a white sheet and pillow case and form a club, so we know who the bigots are. While almost all the terrorists are Muslim, not all Muslims are terrorists. If the latter were true, we'd be in a heck of a bigger fight right now, and if you had your way - we'd be in a bigger fight already with no good reason for it except that you can't distinguish between a combatant and a non-combatant.
Size of government in this day and age? Most of the size increase was due to the establishment of the DHS, and the Federalization of security at airports, and an increase in resources necessary to combat the terrorists. The senior medicare RX assistance program remains to be seen if it is effective in reducing long term costs for senior care. It is already proving cheaper than predicted.
Unless you have information stating that our border is not secure against terrorist infiltration, I'd have to say that you're mistaking Congressional responsibility for lack of border control and Presidential fault. The President has done what is within his power to secure the border. The NSA program and other informational gathering programs, along with Federal tasking of the FBI to locate and observe potential terrorists within our borders is within his power, and already budgeted or the budgets were garnered via discretionary transfers from mother law enforcement programs. If you want a secure border that is secure against both terrorists and illegal aliens, blame Congress. At best, the President has been able to ensure with reasonable success that terrorists have a hard time getting across our Northern and Southern borders, and this via the tools that he has the discretion to use and task. But you should know that in tasking those tools, he utilizes resources from other tasks, and other programs suffer from reduced resources. Hence the "Do more with less" mantra. All in all, I think this President has done a decent job of keeping us safe from terrorists. If you want more, you'll have to ask Congress to spend more on projects and programs with that in mind, rather than on pork projects of dubious public benefit.
Sandy Berger is a complicated topic. Being a Clinton insider, prosecuting him might have gotten into indicting the Clintons, or indicting a former Presidential candidate. In the long run, Berger is a small fry, a blip in our history. However, prosecuting a former President or losing Presidential candidate is dangerous ground. While justified in Berger's case, and probably with the Clintons, once that Pandora's box is opened - you give that tool to the Democrats to use unscrupulously. And be assured they will, just as they're itching to impeach a Republican President. Clinton deserved to be impeached, and it was justified, but now that the cat is out of the bag - the Democrats are going to use it and the media is going to back them up. Democrats aren't too bright, and they'll risk the very stability of the country to get back at us for justifiably prosecuting theirs. If you think how they're going after Republicans now is bad, wait until after we throw one of their symbols into prison, and with the hostile press be prepared for the middle/swing voters to be deceived into believing the Liberal byline. After which, it is a short hop and a skip to a Socialist government, complete with extensive and intrusive police powers exercised arbitrarily by the office of the President... by a liberal.
The House has been better than the Senate, but if the President has yet to veto the Congress as a whole, he can hardly be blamed for not passing legislation that is the will of the people.
Congress is dysfunctional, and that is an indictment of it on the whole. However, it was designed to be dysfunctional because it wields the majority of the power over domestic policy and the purse. The President has outlined his position, but it is up to Congress to come up with a position, which it has yet to do.
(Congress, both houses, seem to dislike the President. This goes for both sides of the aisle, with only a few exceptions.)
It's amazing. President Bush looks at our current immigration problems and his solution is more Mexicans.
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