Posted on 05/25/2007 1:26:11 PM PDT by Politicalmom
I hope this is not representative of Kingston's stance on the Senate's immigration deal.
It’s hard to tell which way Kingston may flop. He seems to straddle the fence. Here’s what he had to say about one of his less than smart moves.
[snip] Instead of being applauded for enforcing the law, the INS came under attack from Georgia’s congressional delegation. Georgia’s two senators and three of its House members, led by then-Sen. Paul Coverdell (R) and Rep. Jack Kingston (R), complained in a letter to Washington that the INS did not understand the needs of America’s farmers. The raids stopped.
Sen. Paul Coverdell condemned the INS for its “military-style” raid “against honest farmers,” calling it “an indiscriminate and inappropriate use of extreme enforcement tactics.”
He then insisted the INS not raid Georgia agricultural fields and crafted a ‘temporary work’ program for the state of Georgia with the INS that allowed undocumented workers to stay ‘legally’ in the U.S. The same has happened in other states like Oregon, and Washington at the insistence of their elected representatives.
Before that incident, the INS had been arresting and deporting almost 1,500 illegal immigrants a month. By 2003 workplace arrests of illegal immigrants for the entire year totaled 445. In 2004, just three businesses nationwide were fined for employing illegal immigrants. In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies.
The Macon Telegraph described the episode, “ Farmers and immigration officials came to terms on migrant labor issues Friday morning, ending the siege on Georgia’s sweet onion fields. But a storm of criticism from the state’s congressional delegation of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s action is brewing on the horizon. Eight members of Congress signed an angry letter Friday afternoon to three of the Clinton administration’s top cabinet officers, blasting the INS for its timing”
Said Doris Meissner, INS commissioner from 1993 to 2000: “Those things affect an agency’s morale. You go out of your way to make it work, then it comes to nothing. Very demoralizing.”
Republican Rep. Jack Kingston has since stated “Employers in roofing and poultry and other areas will say, `Immigrants will work longer and harder,’ “ he said. Still, he has moved from being one of the 1998 defenders of the onion growers — “For us, it was just constituent work,” he said — to becoming an outspoken proponent of get-tough immigrant proposals.
Now, he said he believes businesses should be required to verify an employee’s legal status. He also is in favor of harsher penalties for employers who violate immigration laws.
He doesn’t, however, think such sanctions will be part of any new bill.
“The business lobby,” he said, “is too strong.”
Lobbyist and White house guru, Grover Norquist, a force behind the verification weakening, said: “The idea was that our job is to enforce the present rules that don’t work — rather than change the rules.”
Or in Norquist’s case, just do away with any border/immigration enforcement.
By 2000, according to INS figures, the estimated number of illegal immigrants had risen to 7 million, from 3.5 million in 1990.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1836717/posts
Zig Zag Zell is a career flip-flopper who didn't "discover" the pro-life cause until he was 70 years old and convinently not running for re-election anymore. Holding these new-found "values" after he left office gave some extra cash to sell books and make speeches to gullible conservatives about his "principles". His voting record was far less reliably conservative than Chambliss or Isakson. If you like federal "hate crimes" laws and McCain Feingold, then by all means, put Zell back in the Senate.
Sounds like Zell Miller. Yeah, I'm sure his sudden pro-life conversion after 40 years of being a staunch pro-abort had to do with the birth of his "great-grandchild"... and not anything to do with the fact he wasn't running for re-election as a Dem and needed to make some cash on the lecture circuit as a "conservative Democrat"
Bingo on all that.
The idea that Vernon Jones could even come as close as that poll, is absurd. He’s got a pile of negatives he’s created in the last couple of years, if anyone bothered to take a look.
>>Of course, that didn’t exactly work out the way he planned, because everybody was so mad we organized and dumped Billy McKinney (yes, Cynthia’s dad) out of office.
So I take it you’re JOOOOOOOOish?
;-P
I’m an Honorary Goyische Yiddische!
There was a reason why we called Miller "ZigZag Zell" when he was our governor.
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.