He would have supported the NAFTA super highway and Bush. The North American Accord was the gipper's opening shot when he announced his presidential candidacy in 1979.
Now Bush can show his true colors: he's no Conservative.
I supported the President in 2004 because I was truly afraid of Kerry as Pres. Now I know that was the *only* reason.
I think Bush should be impeached for that reason alone. I know it won't happen and now more than ever Bush is a useful idiot for the Democrats.
Unless Bush does a major about-face, he will so badly tarnish the Republican name that it could take years for Republicans to come back. A disastrous war, huge spending, open borders. With that kind of legacy, Bush can only be remembered as a real loser.
The terrorists posing as illegal aliens are licking their chops. This country is in serious trouble.
I KNEW this was next...
He would have supported the NAFTA super highway and Bush. The North American Accord was the gipper's opening shot when he announced his presidential candidacy in 1979.
Sorry. I did a search but it didn't come back as having been posted.
Illegal immigration was/is a wedge issue. The fact that the WH sided with the Dems on this issue hurt us badly in the midterms. I watched many of the debates on C-SPAN and the immigration issue was raised time and again. The Rep security first approach was trumped by the Dems who said they agreed with the McCain and Bush approach.
In the real world, traditional Dem constitutencies like union workers and blacks feel the impact of illegal immigration more than most. Add to that the environmentalist wackos who see these contributors to population growth to be a threat.
I see this issue causing a real split in the GOP. When Duncan Hunter runs in 2008, I see the issue coming to the fore as never before. There will also be a major fight on the GOP platform on this issue. It could even cause the formation of a third party.
Look for a increase in illegal immigration from Mexico as illegals look to get into the US before the passage of the new law.
I'm glad the pandering has begun in earnest. Take 'em for granted blacks and Christian conservatives are no longer needed, apparently, by the two parties. It's all illegal aliens, all the time.
Last night I heard Dick Morris say that 60% of Hispanic voters went Democrat on Tuesday.
It seems to me that President Bush's immigration plan (as awful as it is) was meant to bring Hispanic voters into the Republican fold. I, too, hate the plan, but if Hispanics (the largest growing minority) become a solid Democrat voting block, then it will be hard for any Republican to be elected...ever. It's just a matter of numbers.
It might take a Million Conservative March on Washington to prevent this.
Bush is purely in Legacy Repair Mode now. He is no longer a Republican folks.
A good article that was overlooked with all the election news.
from the November 06, 2006 edition The Christian Science Monitor
After the Amnesty: 20 years later
In 1986, the US government offered amnesty – legal status – to 3 million illegal immigrants. Here are seven of their stories.
By Luis Andres Henao | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Twenty years ago Monday, Congress passed the largest effort to date to curb undocumented immigration to this country. Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), employers were sanctioned for the first time for hiring undocumented workers. The bill also called for tighter controls along the Mexican border. But the bill was a compromise: Enforcement was balanced by an amnesty provision.
Under IRCA, undocumented immigrants who had lived in the United States prior to 1982 and those who had worked as seasonal agricultural workers before May 1986 could seek legal status and eventually US citizenship.
Nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants were granted legal residence under the amnesty. Most of them were Mexican (more than 80 percent) and lived in the Los Angeles area. Salvadorans, Filipinos, Haitians, Poles, and Vietnamese also benefited from the program.
But two decades later, illegal immigration is still a hot-button issue and amnesty is a dirty word to some. Private-citizen minutemen and National Guardsmen have rushed to the Mexican border. This spring, millions of undocumented immigrants and others marched in the streets of US cities to protest federal legislation that would criminalize illegal immigrants.
It's an issue that may reignite if a new Congress picks up the debate this coming January.
Amid the shouts of today are decades-old echoes from the IRCA.
Critics say the bill set a damaging precedent for future amnesties. IRCA supporters say the word "amnesty" mischaracterizes the bill's intent.
"An amnesty cleans people who have broken the law," says former US Rep. Romano Mazzoli (D) of Kentucky. He and former US Sen. Alan Simpson (R) of Wyoming were the primary architects and cosponsors of IRCA. "But in our bill, you had to prove that you were a law-abiding person who honored the institutions of our country.... So you can take your pick of euphemisms, but if you use the word 'amnesty,' people will get angry, throw their hands up in the air, and scream: 'They're rewarding people for misbehaving!' "
Today Mr. Mazzoli defends the bill as the best way to combat illegal immigration at the time. The six administrations that followed, he says, are to blame for not enforcing tighter restrictions. And now, "It's déjà vu all over again," Mazzoli says. "These are the same issues that we had 20 years ago."
William King Jr., was the Western regional director of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and responsible for carrying out the amnesty program. He says that he had hope that the legislation would work at first. But IRCA was a three-legged stool, he says. One leg was employer sanctions, another was increased border security, and the third was the amnesty program. "In truth, only the amnesty program became a fact," he says, and the effort failed.
To John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group that wants tighter immigration controls, IRCA was well intentioned - but implementation was lacking. "There was a half-hearted attempt at immigration control by the late '80s and early '90s by the old INS," he says, but political pressure brought that to a "screeching halt" by the middle of the decade.
One of the big problems with the IRCA amnesty was all the counterfeit applications, especially from seasonal agricultural workers. Economists Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny studied the effects of amnesty programs on undocumented immigration and presented their findings in the August 2003 issue of Demography magazine. They say that the number of seasonal workers qualifying for amnesty was about 300,000. But in the end, more than 1 million applications were granted. "Most people agree that there was substantial fraud because the document requirement and the residency requirement were quite low for that part of the program," Ms. Zavodny says.
"I don't think anyone says that it deterred illegal immigration," says Cecilia Muñoz, vice president of The National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Latino advocacy group. "But it succeeded in legalizing 3 million people. Their wages went up, and they're fully integrated into American society."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1106/p13s01-ussc.html
"I believe everything happens for a reason," Tancredo said. "The Chinese symbol for problem and opportunity is the same?what I think needs to happen is that we need to tell our base that there is a reason to support Republicans."
Tancredo concluded his speech with a remark that caused the crowd to react louder than they had to anything else the congressman said.
"We will continue the good fight and we will prevail," Tancredo said before walking off the stage.
ping
You know, I really don't believe that Bush is secretly a Democratic party operative, put into his office as a Trojan Horse. I honestly don't think that he intended for both Chambers of Congress to fall to the Dems. And it'd be crazy to think that this was all a grand, decade-long conspiracy to destroy the GOP from within.
But it's hard to imagine how things would be much different if that WERE true.