Posted on 11/14/2006 10:05:58 AM PST by Checkers
As soon as the House and Senate GOP have their leadership teams in place, and soon after the lame duck session ends, the 250 House and Senate members should repair to a conference center somewhere for a long conversation on illegal immigration leading to a consensus position. Certainly there will be outliers, but an ongoing bloodletting over the issue is the only major obstacle in the path to return to majority status. An ongoing focus on the issue is found at Powerline, and though I am unwilling to simply credit Tamar Jacoby's take on the subject, she is generally correct that the issue of illegal immigration did not deliver a wave of support for GOP candidates who thought it would.
I have been a skeptic of the power of the issue based on last fall's special election in which Congressman John Campbell easily bested Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist depsite national focus on and support for Gilchrist by the anti-illegal immigration movement. Once the promise of border security was delivered via the fence legislation, the issue lost a great deal of its pull because border security is primarily what the center-right wanted. Regularization of the nation's millions of illegals along common-sense lines such should follow the fence's construction --or at least robust beginning of construction. If the GOP avoids plainly inequitable proposals such as the grant of social security benefits for the wages earned while illegally in the country or a path to citizenship for those who do not return first to their home countries, the comprehensive legislation can be worked out quickly.
And it should be, but the construction of the fence is a very big deal. It is a symbol of seriousness about border security, and also a symbol or responsiveness to the demands of the electorate. The fencing is something the voters want to see done, and done soon. Their demand was met rhetorically, and now it has to be fulfilled in reality.
I think many Republicans fail to understand just how significant the fence is, and of the crucial necessity that the Adminstration get it underway and soon. There should be a point man or woman at DHS --accountable to Secretary Chertoff-- and a very public, very transparent accounting of where the fence is going and how much has been constructed. Delays due to excessive planning will be interpreted as feet-dragging, and a bait-and-switch in the making.
Advocates of regularization should recognize this dynamic as well. If the fence goes up and genuine border security emerges, the public will support rational regularization. But if Democrats attempt to spike the fence or the Adminstration attempts to pass off 100 miles as a down payment on 700, the issue will flare again. "Virtual" fencing gets zero credit from the public. They have been promised the real deal, and seeing will be believing.
If the Adminstration cannot get a few hundred miles of double fencing in place in a matter of months, it will invite the sort of withering and constant criticism from the anti-illegal immigration absolutists that will drain support from a comprehensive approach. My conversation on the fence with Tony Snow on Thursday last was not what I expected, but hopefully the DHS is getting its act together quickly and will have the transparency in place soon.
Illegal immigration has been neglected for so long that it is now political suicide to oppose it.
The GOP will now fully embrace the abolition of the border and integration with Mexico.
There's not going to be a fence. No money, no fence.
Sad, but true.
The fence that won't be built --- not a REAL fence, anyway. Not with the present crowd in the White House and the Congress....
When and if we ever get a President and a Congress that want to STOP THE ILLEGAL INVASION, you will see a fence. Not until then.
The fence will not go up!......
"Alienating the Hispanic vote seriously damaged the R's during the last election."
Funny, most LEGAL Hispanics oppose Amnesty. Do a search here on FR and you'll see your spin is totally wrong.
Many legal immigrants (the only ones who can vote, after becoming citizens) oppose illegal immigration.
However, they have become sympathtic to illegals since the Left and the Media have made illegals into "victims."
The time to build the fence was rieght after 9/11, we had our chance, we blew it, now get ready for the hordes of illegals swinging even more elections to democrats.
The slippery slope towards socialism has begun.
What the hell good is a fence going to do? This article is in my local paper today:
Smugglers' paradise?
After Cuban refugees’ back-to-back landings, some fear more smugglers are beginning to favor SW Fla.
By Elysa Batista, Ryan Mills, Tim Richardson
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
While the back-to-back landings of 29 Cuban refugees in the Port Royal community of Naples on Monday and 17 Cubans on Sanibel Island on Sunday is unusual, officials from the U.S. Border Patrol and the U.S. Coast Guard said it does not appear to be a growing trend.
But one official from the Collier County Sheriff's Office's Special Operations Group said Monday that his agency thinks smugglers are beginning to favor Southwest Florida as an area to practice their illegal trade.
"The only thing we can say with relative confidence is that because of the situation in Cuba and because of the situation with (Cuban President Fidel) Castro, the dynamics of Cuban smuggling ... are changing," said Lt. David Johnson of the Collier County Sheriff's Office. "We could see an increase, in fact, we are seeing an increase in Caribbean smuggling from Cuba."
In 1994, back-to-back Cuban refugee landings that occurred in Port Royal and Wiggins Pass 11 days apart, spurred similar speculation that did not prove true.
The 29 Cubans came ashore at about 5 a.m. Monday.
A private Port Royal security company reported seeing about 18 to 20 Cubans walking along Gordon Drive at about 5 a.m. Officers dispatched to the area found 18 people walking northbound in the area of 16th Avenue South and Gordon Drive, Naples police Lt. Edward Traczyk said.
Port Royal Security owner Jim Granoff said one of his guards stopped the group walking north on Gordon Drive just after 5 a.m. The guard called police and went to the 7-Eleven on Third Street South to get the refugees some water. They did not try to flee, Granoff said.
"That many people walking down Gordon Drive at 5 in the morning is definitely out of the ordinary," Granoff said.
Through broken English, authorities learned that about 10 more people were walking south on Gordon Drive. They were found at the southern tip of Gordon Drive near Bay Road.
The group was made up of 20 adult males, eight adult females and one child, the Border Patrol reported. At the Pembroke Pines facility on Monday night, the boy's father, Osmany Gonzalez-Diaz, identified the boy as his 2-year-old son, Anjisan Gonzalez.
Naples officials said that Emergency Medical Services arrived at the scene and determined that everyone was in good condition. Officials from the Sheriff's Office, Border Patrol and Immigration and Naturalization Services assisted with the case.
The Cubans told authorities that they left Cuba on Friday, then apparently transferred to another boat that brought them close to the coast. The Cubans then swam to shore.
The group was taken to the Naples police department's Equipment Services Division building, where they were given food, water and blankets. Traczyk said they were wet from swimming to shore.
It was while the group awaited transfer that Police Officer Bill Gonsalvez took the opportunity to give the boy a teddy bear.
Gonsalvez said that it was the least he could do for the boy after his ordeal.
Boats and helicopters from the Collier County Sheriff's Office and the Coast Guard searched the area for up to four hours Monday morning, but were unable to locate either the smugglers or their vessel.
"We have found nothing at this point," Traczyk said Monday afternoon.
Petty Officer Tasha Tully of the Coast Guard said the search probably will not continue. "Unless we get more information, we won't reopen the search," she said. "We encourage people to look for any kind of suspicious activity in the area and report it to either law enforcement or the Coast Guard."
The 29 Cubans left the police building at about 9:55 a.m. on a converted Greyhound bus bearing the Department of Homeland Security logo.
They weren't allowed to speak to reporters.
The Cuban migrants were interviewed Monday at the Pembroke Pines Border Patrol station on Florida's east coast and then transferred to a clinic operated by the Florida Department of Health. At around 7 p.m. the first group of Cuban migrants arrived at the health department in Little Havan in Miami.
Friends and family had been asking about their kin since the news of the arrival spread Monday morning through Miami — and in one case all the way to Tampa — and the excitement grew as the first 12 refugees stepped off the bus.
When the second bus arrived an hour later, a group of more than 30 people were gathered outside the clinic. They cheered the remaining Cuban migrants as they entered the building.
Once they get the all-clear from their checkups, they are expected to be released due to this country's "wet foot-dry foot" policy. They then will be referred to local volunteer agencies for resettlement help as part of the Department of Homeland Security's Cuban Haitian Entrant Program.
Under the United States" so called "wet foot-dry foot" policy, most Cubans who reach U.S. soil are allowed to remain, while those intercepted at sea are generally returned home.
Despite the landings on Sunday and Monday, the number of Cuban refugees who come ashore in Southwest Florida is still relatively small when compared to the number who land on Florida's east coast or in the Florida Keys, Tully said. The landings on Sunday and Monday are thought to be unrelated, she said.
"It's odd for this area, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't constitute a trend," Tully said. "We don't believe that this is cause for us to change any type of patrol patterns or anything like that."
Victor Colon, the assistant chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol, said recent landings of Cuban refugees in Southwest Florida is a testament that smugglers will take whatever route they can to be successful, but his intelligence doesn't show the state's west coast becoming a hotbed of illegal Cuban smuggling.
In Southwest Florida, the Border Patrol is focusing on boats traveling south to Cuba to pick up refugees, Colon said.
"As far as Naples being a drop-off destination, I don't think that right now we're going to jump to that assumption," Colon said. "The west coast is an area where they do launch from, but in terms of dropping people off, they drop people off in the Keys."
Still, authorities said they are monitoring the area.
"We have the ability to move assets around," said Dana Warr, spokesman for the Seventh Coast Guard District in Miami. "If we felt that South Florida was going to be a place where migrants were going to be dropped off illegally, we have the ability to move those assets to deter illegal smuggling."
The Coast Guard reported that during fiscal 2006, which ended on Oct. 1, it made 2,810 interdictions of Cuban refugees at sea. As of Oct. 20, the Coast Guard had made 36 interdictions of Cuban refugees in fiscal 2007, down from 159 during the same period the year before.
During fiscal 2006 there were 3,076 Cuban maritime arrivals, the Border Patrol reported. So far during fiscal 2007, there have been 346 Cuban maritime arrivals compared to 364 at this time last year.
Johnson said local law enforcement agencies are diligently working with state and federal agencies to share information, open lines of communication and provide infrastructure and support. And though Florida statutes do not allow local officials to enforce immigration laws, the agencies do have a responsibility to protect the border and local residents.
"Sheriff (Don) Hunter has taken a very aggressive stand on illegal immigration for the simple fact of the high number of illegal immigrants that end up being involved in criminal activities," Johnson said. "We cannot allow complacency when it comes to coastal defense or border security, because there is the ever-present threat of domestic terrorism spawning from an illegal nexus into this coast by terrorists.
"That is our No. 1 concern. This doesn't have anything to do with the plight of the Cuban people...it has to do with the threat that this represents to the Southwest Florida coast."
Smugglers typically charge $8,000 to $10,000 per person to smuggle Cubans into the U.S., authorities said.
From Nov. 10-13, Border Patrol agents apprehended 102 Cuban nationals in six separate events, including the landings in Naples and Sanibel Island. The other landings occurred in the cities of Key Biscayne, Marquesas, Key Largo and on the Rickenbacker Causeway in Miami, the Border Patrol reported.
The 17 Cuban refugees landed on Sanibel Island at about 7:15 a.m. Sunday. Two suspected human smugglers in a 33-foot fast boat were detained later in the day by the Coast Guard at mile-marker 101 near the Caloosahatchee River.
In mid-August, 20 undocumented Cuban refugees came ashore at the north end of the Judge S.S. Jolley Bridge in Collier County. Monday's landing in Port Royal was not the first time Cubans have come ashore there. In September 1994, 11 Cubans landed ashore outside the Port Royal Club in Naples.
What fence? There's never going to be a fence. Nothing's been allocated to build it and now nothing ever will. we were played for fools. Better brush up on my Spanish.
You beat me to it. The legals and their children understand that this is a great country and they don't want it hurt.
I think the underlying import is that the Country Clubber Republicans, the same ones who call the Minutemen vigilantes and sniff at the idea of standing up to the racist bullies of the Left have helped them undercut the effort - this was a political play to mullify any effect the issue of illegal immigrants might have had on the elections.
Im beginning to think the states part of the southern half of the US need to declare war on the limp-wristed influence of the Northeastern Pubbies.
ping
Wrong.
Of the Republicans who lost in this election: only 6.7% of those losing were anti-immigration (in Tancredo's caucus)
34.9 % of those who lost, however, were pro-Amnesty and supported Bush's pro-Amnesty plan.
Conservative News conservativenewsnyc@yahoo.com
We have some very important information for you below. There is a ton of misinformation in the media, both by liberals (e.g. Pelosi) and neocons (e.g. Bill Kristol, Linda Chavez). They are being dishonest about the election and immigration. Every single exit poll shows that voters voted against Republicans in this election because (1) the war in Iraq (2) corruption and (3) (in some states) free trade
It had nothing to do with immigration. In fact, if the GOP had been more anti-immigration and did not have a President who cares more about amnesty than hard-working Americans, the GOP would have done better.
Of the Republicans who lost in this election: only 6.7% of those losing were anti-immigration (in Tancredo's caucus) 34.9 % of those who lost, however, were pro-Amnesty and supported Bush's pro-Amnesty plan. (These people received a grade of D or lower on their Immigration Report Cards)
It would sure end up differently this time. 8^)
"Funny, most LEGAL Hispanics oppose Amnesty."
EACTOMUNDO!
'You Don't Speak for Me' says Col. Al Rodriguez about the pro illegal immigration crowd.
Go here: >
"Funny, most LEGAL Hispanics oppose Amnesty."
EACTOMUNDO!
'You Don't Speak for Me' says Col. Al Rodriguez about the pro illegal immigration crowd.
Go here: >http://dontspeakforme.org/<
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