Posted on 01/04/2007 5:32:40 AM PST by Mount Athos
Five years into the war on terror, most Americans desperately hoped 2006 would be "the year" for solutions to the long national nightmare of intentionally unsecured borders and the resulting illegal immigration crisis. For many, the dream was that at a minimum, we would begin to see border security and immigration law enforcement similar to what Mexicans still living in Mexico enjoy. It didn't happen.
According to a report released in late 2006 by the House Committee of Homeland Security, up to 10 million people entered the United States illegally and un-inspected last year. Georgia watched as its population of illegal aliens increased by 114 percent - the highest rate of growth in the nation.
Now, 2007 is being touted as "the year." The word in Washington all over the country is that "comprehensive reform" - a repeat of the 1986 "one-time" path to citizenship for illegal aliens who come mostly from Mexico - must happen before official campaigning begins for the 2008 elections.
Happy New Year!
It seems that the party taking power in Congress is more in line with the president's ideas on how to treat the resentful illegals and the vast black market labor-addicted employers.
Even as it became clear on election night in November that the Democrats were taking over the House, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow remarked that the election results presented "interesting opportunities" for "comprehensive immigration reform."
For something that the "do-nothing" Congress accomplished, I point to stopping the McCain/Kennedy/Bush amnesty of 2006. To the GOP House: Gracias.
The solution to the illegal immigration problem coming from Washington can be boiled down to this: Make everybody "legal." Give them - again - the path to citizenship they demand, and whatever you do, don't mention the "A" word. The present voters are on to the amnesty swindle, but hold on, we have millions of potential new voters right in front of us!
Happy New Year!
"They might be unlawful aliens but otherwise lawful citizens," was how U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales described the millions of identity and wage-stealing illegal aliens in remarks during his Senate confirmation hearings in January. Happy New Year!
Having happily endorsed the re-writing and translating of the American national anthem, in the spring of 2006, millions of screaming illegals marched in America waving the flag of Mexico in a demand for "dignity," "justice" and amnesty for all. In Chicago, about 75,000 marching illegals were led by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez.
"This is our country and we are not leaving!" was Gutierrez's rallying cry.
Gutierrez is busy now helping write the House version of "comprehensive immigration reform." Happy New Year!
Imagine the headlines of "intolerance and racism" if Americans were to march by the millions in a demand for secure borders and requiring that illegals be punished along with their employers.
An effort to preserving the common language of our grandfathers, laws making English our official language were angrily ridiculed as "racist" by - among many - U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, (D-Nev.).
Does anyone remember the outrage of 1999 when El Cenizo, Texas, not only resolved to grant safe haven to all illegal aliens from Mexico, but made Spanish the town's official language? Me neither.
Reid is the incoming Senate Majority Leader. Happy New Year!
Here in Georgia, taking time out from lobbying against passage of the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, Jerry Gonzales, executive director of the Atlanta-based Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, joined marchers outside the CNN Center carrying signs calling CNN's Lou Dobbs a racist.
Dobb's offense? His must-see daily television presentation of the consequences of illegal immigration.
Beware: The open borders lobby, designed to create a climate of fear for Americans tempted to speak out in defense of their nation against amnesty-again, will be in high gear in 2007. On illegal immigration, the president has found new friends.
Happy New Year - or as we may be saying next year if illegals are rewarded with a path to citizenship again - Feliz Ano Nuevo.
I don't know what it would take to fix this mess, but the following excerpts demonstrate the truth of your statements.
I.N.S. Shredder Ended Work Backlog, U.S. Says
Jan 31, 2003
Tens of thousands of pieces of mail come into the huge Immigration and Naturalization Service data processing center in Laguna Niguel, Calif. One manager there had a system to get rid of the vexing backlog, federal officials say.
This week the manager was charged with illegally shredding as many as 90,000 documents (American and foreign passports, applications for asylum, birth certificates and other documents supporting applications for citizenship, visas and work permits).
The manager, Dawn Randall, 24, was indicted late Wednesday by a federal grand jury, along with a supervisor working under her, Leonel Salazar, 34.
SNIP
The Laguna Niguel center handles paperwork for residents of California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam and is one of four immigration service centers around the country operated by private contractors under I.N.S. supervision.
The four document processing centers are operated under a $325 million contract with JHM Research and Development of Maryland, which in turn subcontracts the operations to two other companies.
SNIP
Contracting Firms Pay Over $1 Million to Settle I.N.S. Shredding Allegations [Salazar and Randall got probation]
June 21, 2006
Los Angeles, CA - The three outside contractors hired by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to handle mail receipt and data entry at the California Service Center (CSC) in Laguna Niguel have paid the government a total of $1,040,552 to resolve allegations that their employees or temporary workers intentionally shredded, rather than properly filed, thousands of documents submitted by immigrants during a three-month period in 2002.
JHM Research and Development, Inc.; SEI Technology, Inc.; and Datatrac Information Services, Inc. did not admit wrongdoing, but paid the $1 million settlement to avoid civil litigation over the matter.
My comments: slap on the wrist payments:Previously, Leonel Salazar, a Datatrac supervisor in the CSC file room, and Dawn Randall, the manager of the CSC file room employed by SEIT, were convicted of unlawful destruction of government documents. Salazar was convicted after a jury trial in 2003, and his conviction was affirmed on appeal. Randall pleaded guilty in 2005. Both defendants were sentenced to probation.SEIT – $494,262.20
JHM - $52,027.60
Datatrac - $494,262.20
NOTE: Ms. Randall and Mr. Salazar were each charged with conspiracy and five counts of willfully destroying documents filed with the I.N.S. The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison. Each of the other counts can bring three years in prison.SNIPTheir subordinates were not charged because they were low-level workers acting on instructions, the government said.
DANE SAYS:"why did voters vote in nancy pelosi and the democrats and that 1/3 of the GOP of Tancredos's immigration caucus, lost."
How do you get away with these constant LIES. You know you are lying, and we all know it as well! Fewer of "Tancredo's" 100 immigration caucus lost than the open border advocates of the GOP.
Every time you lie about this, one of us is going to call you on it.
Since 80% plus of the American public want illegal immigration stopped, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they didn't vote people out because the candidate wanted the same thing.
Good Grief!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1759649/posts
The Great Illegal Immigration Myth of '06
Human Events ^ | 12/27/06 | John Hawkins
Posted on 12/28/2006 5:14:01 PM PST by WatchingInAmazement
Since the election, you may have heard pro-amnesty Republicans or liberals saying something like this, "The 2006 election proves that being tough on illegal immigration doesn't work as a political issue. Look at J.D. Hayworth, John Hostettler, Randy Graf and Henry Bonilla. After that debacle, the GOP is surely going to cave on illegal immigration now."
Well, as someone who followed the election very closely and did a better job of calling winners and losers than almost all of the political pundits out there (My final predictions: five Senate seats lost and 22-29 seats in the House lost. Final numbers: six Senate seats lost and 30 House seats), I can tell you that being tough on illegal immigration didn't hurt the GOP in 2006. Now you may be skeptical of that because it doesn't square up with the conventional wisdom that you've been hearing, but let me make a case to you.
First off, let's hit the candidates that get mentioned over and over.
John Hostettler was an incumbent congressman who supported the House illegal immigration bill, but he was also an odd bird when it came to fund raising. Essentially, he didn't do it. In the end, despite the fact that everyone knew he was in trouble for months, Hostettler only raised $586,314 compared to the $1,728,054 that his opponent raked in. That's the biggest reason why Hostettler lost. His position on illegal immigration had nothing to do with it.
Randy Graf, a tough on illegal immigration conservative, who was attempting to retain a seat held by Rep. Jim Kolbe, was torpedoed by the Republican Party. The Republican National Committee spent more than $200,000 supporting his opponent, Steve Huffman, in the primary. Then, after Graf soundly defeated Huffman, the RNC threw a tantrum and refused to support him against his extremely well funded challenger, Gabrielle Giffords. Additionally, Jim Kolbe also refused to endorse Graf. This allowed Giffords, who had a massive fund raising advantage, to successfully portray Graf as a candidate who was too extreme for his own party and that, not his position on illegal immigration, led to his defeat.
J.D. Hayworth's loss was particularly noteworthy because unlike the other candidates being mentioned, he could fairly be called one of the leaders of the "tough on illegal immigration" crowd. However, what you will never hear amnesty fans mention about Hayworth's loss is that his opponent, Harry Mitchell, actually tried to run to his right on the illegal immigration issue. For example, on October 24, 2006, here's a message that was posted prominently on the front of Mitchell's web page:
I’m proud to show you the second television spot of our campaign which highlights an important issue to all Arizonan(s): securing our border and ending illegal immigration.
My opponent likes to talk tough about immigration, but the truth is he and those in Washington have failed in their responsibility to secure our border.
The number of illegal immigrants in our state has increased 400% during his tenure in Congress.
My opponent has rewarded illegal immigration by voting for amnesty four times. Just last month, he voted against 12,000 additional Border Patrol agents and against implementing the border security recommendations of the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission. In his 12 years in Congress, J.D. has given us a lot of rhetoric, but not a lot of results.
Now, after reading that, does it sound like J.D. Hayworth had problems because he was "too tough" on illegal immigration? No, it doesn't.
Last but not least, we have Henry Bonilla, who may be the only candidate in the entire nation who was actually hurt by his tough stand on illegal immigration. Of course, he also ran a terrible campaign and came within 1% of winning the election without a runoff. Had Bonilla spent more of his huge war chest (He had $1 million in the bank when the first election occurred), there never would have been a runoff and he would have been re-elected. And that's even though after the Texas redistricting, Bonilla ended up in a district that was 65% Hispanic.
So, now we've discussed four Republicans who lost in 2006 and were opponents of amnesty. But, what about all the Republicans who were soft on illegal immigration in 2006 and lost as well? Percentage wise, being soft on illegal immigration was much more dangerous to the political health of Republicans than being tough on illegal immigration. These statistics from Roy Beck at NumbersUSA certainly seem to support that conclusion:
* 9.6% with an A grade lost * 25% with an F grade lost * 9.2% with a B grade lost * 6.4% with a C grade lost * 9.5% with a D grade lost
In other words, about 9.6% of the tough guys on illegal immigration lost, while 25% of the amnesty crowd went down to defeat. Along those same lines, these numbers from the same article seem to be rather compelling:
* 11.5% of all Republican seats in Congress were lost as Democrats took back control of Congress * But only 6.7% of the members of Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus lost their seats.
If being tough on illegal immigration is supposed to be such a killer, then how can it be that the members of Tom Tancredo's Reform Caucus outperformed the rest of the House? The question answers itself.
But, what about the Hispanic vote? Didn't the GOP lose some Hispanic voters because of their illegal immigration stance? Yes, but the numbers related to illegal immigration were undoubtedly fairly small. Now, that's not what you'll hear from amnesty proponents. They'll point out that the percentage of Hispanics voting for the GOP dropped from 44% in 2004 to 30% in 2006. However, what they don't mention is that 44% was an all-time high for the Hispanic vote and that the support for the GOP dropped in almost every demographic group in 2006.
For example, GOP support from Jewish voters dropped from 22% in 2004 to 12% in 2006. Support from Independent men dropped from 51% in 2004 to 41% in 2006. Support from women without a high school diploma dropped from 48% in 2004 to 30% in 2006. In comparison, is the drop in Hispanic support really all that large? No, not really. Moreover, if you compare the numbers from the last off year election in 2002 to the numbers in 2006, the drop in Hispanic support for the GOP is even smaller. It goes from 38% in 2002 to 30% in 2006. That's actually a percentage drop of 1% less than that of white males over the same period (63% in 2002 to 54% in 2006). So, did the illegal immigration issue hurt the GOP with Hispanics? Maybe a little, but even if illegal immigration hadn't been an issue, it seems likely that the GOP would have probably still dropped 8 to 10 points with Hispanics in 2006.
Furthermore, if you look at how the 2006 elections played out, it'll become obvious that the amnesty plan being pushed by the Senate was not a popular policy. All during 2006, across the country, local governments passed laws designed to make life tough on illegal immigrants. Moreover, in competitive races in the country, the voters were almost always given a choice between a candidate that was genuinely serious about securing our border and a candidate that just pretended to be serious about securing the border for political purposes.
So while candidates on both sides of the race aired commercials talking about how they were the real choice for people who were serious about stopping illegal immigration, almost nobody ran any advertisements promising to allow illegals to become citizens or promoting amnesty. That tells you a lot about how popular comprehensive illegal immigration reform is when you get right down to it. Additionally, percentage wise, tough on illegal immigration Republican candidates won more races than candidates who had a poor voting record on the issue.
What it all adds up to is that the GOP had a lousy year across the board for a lot of reasons, but being "too tough" on illegal immigration wasn't one of the problems that they had.
If anything, the miserable performance of George Bush and the Senate GOP on the issue made it impossible for Republicans in the House to be credible when they told their constituents that they could trust them to stop illegal immigration. In other words, the GOP suffered more from being "too soft" on illegal immigration than from being "too tough."
DING DING DING DING!!!!
folks, we have a winner. The fact is, that our social systems, rather than being "strained" by illegals (there are legit costs that are hurting us as in school bond costs in some areas as well as the ER services in local hospitals), the illegals are actually propping up our FICA and income tax systems. They pay in to get the work (they have to , their employer is required to be the fed bagman) and don't file for any of the return money. It is the perfect scam. Mexico exports its poor, rather than develop its economy. We employ the poor, but pretend like we don't. Such a deal!
ZZT! Wrong. The Senate shamnesty program, as I recall, will give illegals already here a path to both citizenship AND social security - with credit for taxes already paid in.
I don't know Dane, being new here but s/he is simply saying what seems to be common sense to me....., many conservative Republicans think that simply building a wall is not a solution at all, nor is it the best thing for us, nor is it particularly intelligent, if we do not reform our immigration policies.
I don't understand the venom, either. Did she turn you down for a date or something? It is just a discussion, after all.
Dane didn't make that differentiation.
I don't understand the venom, either. Did she turn you down for a date or something? It is just a discussion, after all.
Dane repeatedly plays long and fast with the facts, and in this case she got caught lying - she has been making the claim on thread after thread that a third of the Tancredo caucus got the boot when that is nowhere near the case, in order to make a dishonest slime attack on that grup. She is not an honest poster - and such people deserve all the derision they get.
But nice job of impunging my motives rather than deal with the fact that Dane got caught in a bald-faced lie. But that's pretty typical of the tactics from your side.
The "War on Drugs" is truly stupid on any front.
I'm not a she, but a he. That tactic by the Tranglogidites(Tancredo supporters) has been going on for years on FR, but what the hey it makes the Tranglogidites feel all warm and fuzzy inside and feeling so superior, akin to nancy pelosi today.
Why crash their egotistcal party.
Care to address your lie in post #8, Dane? Or are you just gonna pretend it doesn't exist?
And they'll get it. And pretty much anything else they're willing to pay for. Our Congresscritters stopped representing the People a l-o-n-g time ago.
Uh dirty I humbly corrected my mistake in reply #35 of this thread.
But you go ahead and berate me, I've seen your type of ego before and how you think you humanly walk on water.
You did no such thing. You spun your previous lie without admitting you were lying. You have been running around for almost two months claiming that a third of Tancredo's caucus lost. Are you going to go around and correct that misconception?
But you go ahead and berate me, I've seen your type of ego before and how you think you humanly walk on water.
Try your nonsense on someone who is willing to buy it. Most freepers see right through your nonsense on this subject.
Uh Dirt in my reply #35, I said "excuse me" and admitted and corrected my mistake.
But you go right ahead and berate, since you omnipotent human one have the greatest knowledge of all.
Dane, "excuse me" is not a clear admission of an error. I sure as heck didn't read it as such. You got caught LYING - a lie you've spread for two months - and then you try a feeble mea culpa. And then you whine like a liberal about the mean conservative who is holding your feet to the fire of truth.
I forgot, excuse me, that to get forgiveness from the almighty Dirtboy one must prostrate himself to the deity called "Dirtboy" on FR.
Heck dirt, you might as well covene with ahmidijad in Iran. Seems like you both have the same type of egos.
How about you instead make it clear on immigration threads that your statement you've been spewing for months was wrong? Instead of just transitioning to your next talking point in hopes that no one notices?
Heck dirt, you might as well covene with ahmidijad in Iran. Seems like you both have the same type of egos.
You sound just like Dan Rather and Mary Mapes when they got caught. Blame those who catch you in a lie, instead of making a mea culpa.
And what is wrong with stating that 1/3 of the democrat pickups from the 2006 election in the House came from the Tancredo immigration caucus.
Should I behave like a Pravda journalist from old soviet Russia to appease you.
Thus far only one US President has granted an amnesty to (approximately 3 million) illegal aliens, Ronald Wilson Reagan in 1986.
The ugly side of Republicanism is feeding the globalist corporate trough with cheap foreign labor.
What is wrong is you were claiming that 1/3rd of the Tancredo caucus lost. Until I challenged you to back up your claim.
Should I behave like a Pravda journalist from old soviet Russia to appease you.
How about you quit acting like Dan Rather when caught in a bald-faced lie? And be enough of a person to issue an unconditional correction since you've spread that misconception for some time?
Nah, rail at the people who call you on your misstatements. It's the liberal way.
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