Renewing the American Dream: The Real Rational Middle Ground on Immigration Reform

guess Phyllis Schlafly is too then

I don't want to speak ill of an old woman so I will not comment.

Once again the "middle ground" gives away more than it retains!

Give away a little more with each compromise, until one side of the discussion has everything, and nothing remains to the other side.

This is a non-starter with me if the felony provisions for illegal entry are not retained.

Give the illegals a short window of opportunity to exit the U.S. without penalty. The bill sort of does that, but without the felony provision it lacks real teeth.

After that date has passed any illegals found here get a felony conviction, anything of value they have is forfeited to the state and Fed. Gov., then they are deported, with a one year prison sentence to be served if they return to the U.S.

Any "Guest Worker" that remains in the U.S. for SIX YEARS will be here forever, guaranteed!

If they were serious about having "guest workers" instead of uncontrolled migration the work period would be limited to no more than six months at a time, with a required minimum three month stay in their country of origin between U.S. working periods.

This would also help to motivate employers to find American workers, who can stay on the job as long as they are needed.

Employer's must also be required to post as a bond for each worker, if the worker decides to go underground the bond is forfeit, ICE gets the funds to defray the expense of tracking down the scoff-law "guest worker" and deporting them.

The bond would help to ensure that the back-round checks performed are legitimate, employers would not want to lose several bonds due to poor or phony back-round checks not being reliable.

"Guest workers" working time in the U.S. would be limited to three years employment in aggregate, with their total U.S. employment window limited to no more than a five year stint as a "guest worker".

Since the wages they make in the U.S. are so much more than they can make in their home country, they should have to make room for others to share the opportunity.

This is similar to the original motivation for Social Security, to get the older Americans to leave the work force and make room for the youngsters.

How SS devolved is another subject.

Speaking of SS, it must be stated as a part of the program that "guest workers" and illegals will NOT be enrolled in, or eligible for, ANY SS benefits.

Any bonus, profit sharing, etc. that they may qualify for may ONLY be paid in their country of origin.

It might be a good idea to have some percent of wages withheld, to be paid ONLY in their country of origin, as an incentive to fully comply with the program and not "drop out" at the end of their employment window.

The corporation that processed them as "guest workers" can be responsible for making that payment.

It also needs to be mandated that any children of both illegals and "guest workers" are NOT citizens.

"Guest workers" must be single, or leave their families and spouses (significant other's?) at home.

They are to be TEMPORARY workers, so there is no reason for them to be allowed to establish a too comfortable long term existence here.

NO "Path to U.S. citizenship" for illegals, former illegals, or "guest workers", AT ALL!

There are hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants from all over the world already patiently waiting in line, illegals must NOT be rewarded in any way for jumping past them!

Anyone who came to the U.S. illegally should automatically have forfeited any chance of ever gaining U.S. citizenship.

The overall language needs serious clean up as well, as written it proposes and accepts the myth that all "guest workers" and illegals come from Mexico.

That is far from the truth, we have illegals here from all over the world.

This proposal does not cover illegals from, say, China equally.

It is not so practical for a Chinese, Hungarian, African, Australian, Englishman, etc. illegal to return home to apply for a "guest worker" card.

I personally have no problem with the illegals of distant origin being excluded from the program, if genuine enforcement is practiced against them. (Good bye thousands of Russians!)

But I expect the courts will say that the proposed law must treat all illegals equally, if not it may be shredded by the courts.

"Mexican" is not a "Race", but assuming the "guest workers" are all Mexicans would be hard to defend as anything but a racist preference.

So maybe make it open to anyone from the American continent, Mex., Canadian, Brazilian, Argentine, etc.

But if all the above, and more I have missed, is not part of the program, it will be nothing more than a green light for uncontrolled migration, and the destruction of America as a first class country.

Ideally, ALL immigration would be suspended for the next five years while this program is being established and perfected, but no doubt that is too much to hope for.

Once this program is perfected there would be little or no need for future immigration!

Not to mention that the employer who illegally hired the illegal to begin with and has gotten away with not paying all the appropriate taxes etc on their wages to not be fined is outrageous!!

So in effect it's amnesty for the employer.

As the worker self deports (I like the sound of that) who will enforce the "employer has tried everything to employ an American at FAIR wages" and how will that be enforced?
And if that were true than the employer would have had a legal worker to begin with and the employer would have paid all appropriate taxes etc to begin with. And would have paid a fair wage to begin with. So how will this all be enforced and in a weeks time, first of all where are these so called centers at the border? Will they need to be built first? There are a zillion ques I can see coming up which will take another year or so to answer meanwhile the employers are still hiring illegals and they are still flooding in.

A rebuttal to the Shamnesty crowd from Polipundit:

Strawman, Mexican Migrants = Natural Republican Voters

I am extremely thankful that fellow guest blogger knighthawk has enlightened myself with the yesterdays elections in Mexico. That knowledge has allowed myself the ability to finally throw a match on our friend “Strawman” and turn him into a pile of smoldering ash.

On this blog, and others, there has been an undercurrent among the open borders faction that providing a path to citizenship to the 11 million migrants would be a boon to the Republican Party. They do this while ignoring the fact that Bush was only able to gain 40% of the overall hispanic vote, which included the huge amount of legal Cuban support in Florida that Republicans in general enjoy.

Here is a comment from this site made months ago, though there are similiar comments in the threads of many other blogs:

But anyone who knows Mexican immigrant families or has been to an inner city Catholic church in the last decade can see that they are natural conservatives. Dumb to push them away.

In the election on Sunday we learn the following from the liberal USAToday:

The two candidates were separated by fewer than a half-million votes, with more than 36 million counted in a preliminary tally. Conservative Felipe Calderon had 36.46% to leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s 35.41%, according to results from 95.9% of polling places

So, we have Republicans that are stating “Mexican immigrant families…….. are natural conservatives” while at the same time one third of the Mexican population goes to the polls and votes for a President that is described by USAToday as a “leftist.”

Path to citizenship for 11 million illegals = End of Republican party

I agree with the President that a rational middle ground can be found between amnesty and mass deportation, but I disagree with the President that amnesty is the middle ground.

So by your standards, Mike Pence thinks that President Bush is "full of crap", right?