Posted on 08/23/2006 2:43:28 PM PDT by Shermy
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho (AP) -- A town hall meeting with Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, dissolved into angry shouts and walkouts when Craig began discussing the controversial issue of immigration.
"I am sick of listening to these lies," one woman said, interrupting Craig as she left the Tuesday meeting, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported.
Stan Hess, candidate for the North Idaho College Board of Trustees, screamed at Craig as others booed. Before leaving, Hess yelled at a woman, his face inches from hers, as several people tried to separate them.
Craig planned eight town hall meetings in three days during a swing through northern Idaho that ends Thursday.
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He's promoting a plan that would allow some of the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to apply for citizenship if they meet certain requirements, including having been in the country at least two years and having paid taxes.
"The reality is that there are 2.5 million jobs here that Americans won't do," Craig told the 60 people at the Coeur d'Alene meeting. "For 20 years, immigration laws have failed. We know there's a problem and we're working on it. The first step is securing the border and we're doing that."
Craig asked people to listen to the proposal, but some said they wanted illegal immigrants deported immediately. Others said Craig wasn't doing his job.
The senator is accustomed to spirited town hall meetings, said his spokesman, Sid Smith.
"It's fair to say it was pretty confrontational and at some point looked like it was about to get kind of ugly," Smith told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "But we weren't really thinking about calling the police. I was there and talked to all our staff who were there, and they agreed it was ugly, but not that ugly.
"It certainly isn't the first time it's been a very spirited and emotional town hall meeting," Smith said. "I would say (Craig) wasn't surprised or disappointed in that."
Craig also held town hall meetings in Sandpoint and Bonners Ferry on Tuesday, which Smith said were more subdued.
Yeah, white people never work in construction or production plants. In fact, until the illegals came around, we all lived in tents and hunted for our food.
(vomit)
Too many Republicans are in the pockets of their business cash cows. It is expected that they'll deliver protection for those businesses in D.C. That kind of elitism is exactly what defeated Murkowski in Alaska last night, and quite a few other big business Republicans will lose this fall. The "little people" have had it on the illegal immigration issue, and the GOP will pay the price for their stubborn allegiance to big ag and big corporations.
Don't marginalize these people by calling them "libs."
You aren't fooling anyone.
I haven't sanded sheetrock, but I have bussed tables and cleaned toilets and sometimes bussing tables was more disgusting. People are pigs at reastaurants and today I try to makes the bussers job easier by cleaning up crumbs and arranaging the plates to make the bussers job easier.
Also I am not going to berate a restaurant owner over the people he hires to clean up after some piggish people, as you seem to do.
Oh those evil businesses. Hillary is that you posting?
Show me a post of mine where I've done that.
Just one.
I bet you can't.
One time I went to a room to pick up the luggage of 4 Long Island princesses in Florida for spring break. The room was a mess. You could not see the rug on the floor becuase the whole room was covered with beer cans. The hispanic housekeeper came to make a cursory check of the room and her eyes glazed over basically saying "oy vey". I felt sorry for her, so before you go berating people, maybe you should take a job as a housekeeper for a day.
LOL Marvin looks like I feel about a whole bunch of issues.
The Senate was allowed to amend the supplemental spending bill because the House had previously amended the bill with Real ID and the San Diego fence.
The Senate didn't want to hold the bill hostage but they wanted to have a "test vote" to see if the Senate had the will to pass a immigration reform bill. In fact, Kennedy and McCain had completed their bill but would not introduce it until there was a test vote. The 60 vote requirement was established because there was definately not 60 votes for the bill.
As a stand alone bill, AgJobs was not viable since it dealt with ag workers only but it was sutible as a surrogate for McCain-Kennedy since both bills had the "path to citizenship" language. It was introduced and recieved 53 votes(40 dem and 13 pub)
The second test vote was an amendment by Sen Chambliss which was AgJobs with all the "path to citizenship" language removed. This was the surrogate to the Bush Plan. It recieved 22 votes, all republican.
Which people am I berating?
Yet another rash accusation on your part, totally unfounded in fact.
I've also worked construction outdoors at 113 degrees F.
I would much rather have been picking up beer cans, no matter how many, in an air-conditioned hotel room.
I'm not baiting anyone, just pointing out that the people who rail against immigration the most usually sit behind a desk or microphone and berate and pontificate against people who own businesses and the people they hire.
Glen Beck said tonight that he wants to choke businesses basically becuase of the people they hire.
He sounded hillaryish with the venom coming out about basically people who are farmers or own evil janitorial services.
A lot of the illegals are bypassing the agriculture and day-labor jobs in favor of more lucrative construction and jobs done for homeowners.
So who's going to fill those other jobs? Why, more illegals of course.
Craig and the GOP are out to lunch on immigration and deserve to get the Bronx cheers.
Welcome to FR!
How the hell did this country ever survive without being overrun by illegals?
I hope the voters throw the bumb out! I'm tired of politicans not listening to the people who put them in power. We don't live in a dictatorship, but many in congress and the senate are acting like it!
Exactly.
Until the flow of fresh illegals is stopped, there will always be somebody that can afford to work cheaper than somebody paying taxes and that an employer can skip benefits, etc. Once any of the current illegals become in any way "legal" they will also become more expensive to the employer -- probably with the result that they end up unemployed and added to the welfare rolls.
The whole idea of legalizing any of these people and them still filling the low-wage niche is just nonsense. Can't happen. Instead, they'll just become eligible for all the welfare-state goodies and vote Dem. Republican politicians supporting such amnesty or increased immigration plans are just signing their own political death warrants.
don't you remember? we had other minorities to grow our food on the plantation.
[When employers can hire legal workers for what the employer thinks they're worth, and fire them whenever they are no longer wanted or needed, many employers will eagerly do so.]
Yes. And if an actual shortage of legal workers should cause the wage to rise well above the current minimum wage, that's fine too. Maybe producers will look to innovation again rather than the quick fix of cheap labor.
I'd rather see many of these manual labor jobs disappear and be replaced by automation than see us rely on uneducated, unskilled workers who can never really participate in our society.
He also supports in-state tuition for illegals, and driving privilages.
I'm amazed to see just how stupid our "leaders" are. Their "cheap labor" will end the day they become "legal" because they WON'T work for low wages. We already know they protest and DEMAND more rights when they're not even citizens. All our idiot congress critters are doing is taking cheap labor away from the corporations they are trying to help, and they're too blind to see it. The unions are already working with illegals and they will teach them how to demand higher wages and more benefits when they become legalized. Btw, welcome to Free Republic!
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