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If Bill Clinton were president and pushing this transform-America, impoverish-America immigration bill, freepers by the hundreds would be on this thread, howling in protest. But because the bill is pushed by someone with an R after his name, many freepers want to ignore it. Never mind that Kennedy is the sponsor. The fact that Bush has signed on means it mustn't be criticized. This is the kind of slavish "followership" that is more reminiscent of people in tyrannical countries; it's not way for free men and women to act. I'm an independent conservative - so, unlike Bushbots, I won't call Bush a conservative when he behaves like a liberal.

"Compassion?"

Compassion for whom? Certainly not the working class American. Certainly not the underclass Americans who must compete with illegal immigrants for social services & charity. Certainly not middle-class Americans who must shoulder the burden of excessive taxation to pay for the education of illegal immigrants.

Oh, you must be talking about compassion for the guy who doesn't want to mow his own lawn......or who doesn't want to pay payroll taxes.....or who doesn't want to pay workers comp.......

Yes, he really IS a compassionate conservative.....

The Senate CIRA bill is the *LEAST* compassionate thing you can do.

Leave aside that massive legalization-to-citizenship, aka amnesty, of 10 million or more
illegal immigrants, and the estimated (by Heritage) 60+ million legal immigrants to flow
from this legalization and expanded immigration quotas. Leave aside the negative consequences
to the rule of law of affirming illegal behavior, the incitement to further illegal immigration from
giving benefits to illegal aliens, the costs to taxpayers for additional burdens of low-wage citizenry,
and the unfairness to legal immigrants done by this act. Leave aside that, as
Ed Meese and Senator Grassley rightly point out, that this is the 1986 immigration bill
all over again, with the same erroneous thinking and the same results likely.

All that aside, we are left still with a host of tawdry, dangerous and foolish provisions in the
Senate bill, many special-interest-written:
- Going beyond mere amnesty with giveways like providing benefits for social security taxes
made on fraudulently used social security numbers
- The invitations to fraud by forbidding the use of applications in investigations, and allowing
for "difficulties encountered by aliens in obtaining evidence of employment", a signal
for wink-and-nod fraud in applications
- The loophole that forbids local law enforcement to hold people for civil immigration infractions,
making the opportunistic detention of criminal aliens harder ( a terrorist loophole)
- Provisions tampering with the immigration appeals courts, so they are less effective and more litigious
- An AgsJobs section with pitifully weak job requirements
- Allowances for self-sponsorship and for conversion of temporary guest worker visas to
permanant residency status, that make a mockery of the "temporary guest worker" label
- Over-regulation of wage and employment contracts, with Davis-Bacon rules imposed for some workers,
to the point where it risks creating complex new regulations in industries currently not covered
- An odious requirement to advise Mexico prior to building any fencing
- AgJobs has 'no immigration lawyer left behind' provisions: Provides for taxpayer-funded lawyers for
filing alien adjudication appeals, and requires lawyers to write applications
- An employment verification system that is simply unworkable; Senator Cornyn explained it in Senate debate as a
"system that is designed to fail"; it creates Federal liabilities opposed by DHS Secretary Chertoff,
requires an impossible standard of accuracy to be mandatory, and that won't be operational for years

The Senate immigration bill is a shocking mess of bad law. It out-does even "comprehensive"
Hillary-care in its sheer comprehensive awfulness. what pray tell, is compassioate about that?