Posted on 04/12/2007 9:42:14 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - The terms of the immigration debate have turned less friendly for illegal immigrants as lawmakers and the Bush administration struggle to reach a deal in the next few weeks.
The landscape for an immigration overhaul has turned upside down in only a year, with a different party in control of Congress and new political realities for President Bush and the chief congressional negotiators.
Bush — in search of a domestic legacy — has morphed from cheerleader on the sidelines to broker in the fray, dispatching Cabinet members for lengthy daily meetings with senators on Capitol Hill.
Last year's GOP point man, Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) — whose moderate stance on immigration defined last year's approach — is hanging back, wary of angering conservatives while he struggles to keep his presidential run going.
And while Republican divisions were highlighted last year, this time it's Democrats — eager to show they can lead — whose fissures are on display.
In an ironic twist, the outlines of a potential deal have moved to the right — toward a more difficult road to citizenship for the nation's roughly 12 million illegal immigrants — even as the power in Congress has shifted to Democrats, who overwhelmingly favor a more permissive approach.
The White House has floated a proposal that would require illegal immigrants to pay fines as high as $10,000, face long waits and return to their home countries in order to be eligible for citizenship — far tougher conditions than in a bipartisan measure passed by the Senate last year and backed by Bush. The immigrants also would be denied a right to bring family members to the United States.
A bipartisan House measure introduced earlier this year would add a new mandate that undocumented immigrants go home before gaining legal status — a requirement that many Democrats and pro-immigrant groups have decried as "report to deport."
The changes reflect a new political calculus for Republicans, who fear that any plan passed by the centrist Senate will become more permissive toward immigrants in the more liberal House and during final Democratic-dominated negotiations.
Democrats, in turn, recognize that any immigration plan must have substantial GOP support in order to have a chance of being signed into law, so they are considering tougher measures. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., has told Bush he must deliver 70 Republican votes before she will attempt to pass any immigration bill.
The White House said the proposal floated recently was part of an effort to find an immigration plan the president's party could agree on.
"Those were discussion points on which consensus was beginning to build among Republican senators," said Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman.
As Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., his party's point man on the issue, huddles with Republicans and Bush's team in search of a deal, other Democrats are impatient to pitch their own, more immigrant-friendly plan. Many advocates of an overhaul, including immigrant advocacy groups, business interests and organized labor, are adamantly opposed to the framework under discussion.
"This is the kind of gut-wrenching moment that happens before a deal is about to be cut and before legislation is about to start moving," said Angela Kelley, the deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, a private group pushing for an overhaul.
Bush and Democrats regard the tricky issue as one of their few areas of potential compromise during a year dominated by partisan clashes on the Iraq war. Strategists in both parties say the 2006 elections — which punished many vocally anti-immigration candidates — showed that voters support action on the issue.
But the clock is ticking on attempts to compromise, with the Senate set to debate immigration next month and most insiders seeing August as a deadline for action by both chambers.
"There are plenty of Democrats who would rather just walk away and say the Republicans are racist, and the Hispanics will vote for us, and then we'll do something" after the 2008 elections, said Tamar Jacoby, an immigration expert at the conservative Hudson Institute who has consulted with the White House and Republicans on the issue.
Last year's effort collapsed as House Republicans revolted against the Senate-passed measure, calling it amnesty. They rejected Bush's call for a "comprehensive" deal that included both a temporary guest worker program for new arrivals and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here. Many conservative Republicans, particularly in the House, still are adamantly opposed to any such measure.
Now GOP leaders have tapped Sen. Jon Kyl (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona, one of those who hung back from the comprehensive approach amid a tough re-election fight, to lead negotiations on a compromise.
McCain's office, meanwhile,denies that he has scaled back his once-prominent role.
"The more members that are involved the better, but he is thoroughly engaged and totally committed to finding a solution," said Eileen McMenamin, McCain's spokeswoman.
Privately, senators in both parties and strategists on the issue say he has faded from the forefront of immigration negotiations — leaving his staff to track them and a confidant, Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record) of South Carolina, to mediate — while he waits for the right moment to weigh in.
"He'll be there if they emerge with a bipartisan bill — he'll be there standing with everyone else — but it didn't pay for him to be the lonely guy," Jacoby said.
That witch ought to burned at the stake.
The trick is in the implementation.
Overall, what you offer doesn’t sound unreasonable.
Unfortunately, so many folks are now here that shouldn’t have been, it may be undoable or seen as such by those who care more about votes than the jobs you mentioned getting done by what is perceived as “cheap labor”..
This is only so much bullshit and political posturing, they think we are fools.
It is an imperfect world and you have to break a few eggs and a few laws to get by.
We let quite a few Nazi rocket scientists do a lot of good work for us and I'm glad we did. I imagine our CIA has murdered more than few and that is probably a good thing.
Besides, were not most of the founding fathers considered to be criminals by England ?
The implementation is what our politicians (both parties) keep getting backwards. If you don’t secure the border first, you aren’t fixing the problem.
Yeah, let's have 12 million of us just not pay our taxes. Will Bush then come out and say "it's too hard to prosecute them all, we need Comprehensive Tax Reform."
Somehow I think he can figure out a way to prosecute the laws that he wants to. His attack dog Johnnie Sutton sure finds time and money to prosecute law enforcement officers who try to enforce the border.
It’s a tough nut to crack, no matter how hard ya nail it.
One of the big Wall Street firms puts the number of illegals closer to 30 million. Since they aren’t playing politics in their calculation it’s probably a much more accurate estimate.
12 - 20 million is an awful lot of eggs. And do we really want to send the message that “we don’t respect our laws” to millions of people in this country that are here illegally? Once we’ve surrendered our borders, we’ve surrendered our soverignty. Do we really want to become “Northern Mexico”? Yes, that’s an exaggeration, but by how much?
Besides, if you look at it rationally, who suffers the most from the open borders? Mexico. If they can shuffle their poor over to us, then there is no incentive to grow or straighten out what many see as an overly corrupt government system.
The fact is that we really can’t deport them all. However, if we enforce the laws responsibly, we can discourage others from coming over and probably get many that are already here to leave on their own.
Ya, but I’m in MT skiing 7/7 ‘till the end of the season. Gnurdiness only goes so far.
Skiing? Make that doing the Gravity Research and Friction Science that other Americans won’t.
President Bush can’t say that he’s truly for the total GWOT to the best of abilities when he also continues to have porous U.S. land borders, full protections along both U.S. ocean coasts continues to be questionable, he doesn’t pardon those two border agents from jail, he doesn’t make English the official language of the U.S., and he refuses to create “full law enforcement only” legislation that truly deals with each and every illegal throughout the U.S. and U.S. territories to the best of abilities for now and for always. The U.S. needs to get rid of all of the incentives that cause all of the illegals to come into the U.S. in the first place!
One step at a time... first, they learned to use the American flag instead of the Mexico flag. Next, their signs will be red, white, and blue!
Oh, they are such good criminal invaders Americans!
“To start to wake up now seems so disingenuous. He knew the truth before. What’s changed for him?”
November 2006 happened. It wasn’t the only issue to be sure, but it sure as hell didn’t help.
If you enforce the law many will return on their own. After we passed Prop 187 in California you could see this happen for awhile, until Judge Pfaelzer colluded with Gray Davis to void it (much to the relief of the open border wing of the GOP).
If you show that you have no intention of enforcing the law, as George Bush has demonstrated, they not only won’t return they will tell their friends and family back home to come join them, that there is nothing at all to fear about breaking American immigration law because no one enforces the law, ever.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.