Posted on 06/12/2007 3:22:43 AM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007
Tony Snow is about to appear live on FOX & Friends on FOX News. The subject is Bush's push for immigration "reform".
It is fair. Like I said, if I trusted the government to do what it says, and if I trusted the illegals to follow along, then this bill would not be bad. But we all know that if you schedule anything “down the road” in the government, it’s not going to happen. It will be quietly gutted, maybe in the same Congress, maybe the next one.
The fact is, neither of those underlying premises—government ability or illegals playing along with the system—are true. I really think, from what I’ve seen, a majority of illegals will just say, “eh, screw paying $1,000 or $5,000 or whatever, I can keep going the way I am now, it’s not like I’m going to get caught.” It’s a decent bill in theory, but the theory folds like a tent in a tornado when confronted by reality.
If you’re going to put out a carrot, you need the stick too. And with this government, the only way you get the stick is to implement it first and separately, without conditions. And while you’re implementing strong enforcement, then you also work on a top-to-bottom revamp of ICE, to streamline it, and make legal immigration easier. I’ll take the risk of getting something “worse” down the road.
Look, I have sympathy for these people. But at the same time, I work every day with folks from halfway around the world who have uprooted themselves and their families and come here for the opportunities. They’ve navigated the hellish, capricious, bloated, incompetent bureaucracy of the American immigration system, where one undotted “i” or one tiny mistake can send you to the back of the line for years. There’s no way in hell that people who sneak into this country illegally should have the same opportunities as these legal immigrants do.
}:-)4
INS tried something called Operation Vanguard during the 90s in various meatpacking plants where they cross-checked employee SSN’s with IRS records.
It was effective so the employers complained and it was quickly halted.
Senator Hagel was instrumental in shutting the operation down—he went as high as the Justice Department, asking them to stop.
It’s examples like this that make me believe that if businesses find the new laws too much trouble, they’ll just ignore them and government will continue to abet them.
And then we’ll be doing this again in another 20 years.
Senator Byron Dorgan, an American Patriot.
Good luck collecting
That was one example.
I have gotten several e-mails and updates from KBH and Cornyn. Cornyn is up for re-election, so he is more in a position to need to listen.
No one seems to mention all the local governments who have declared themselves "sanctuary cities" or some such. If local gov'ts can defy federal law with apparent impunity, why should businesses feel any more bound?
“What I despised, deplored, and was disgusted by throughout all this was the way conservatives treated each other as it related to disagreements over this issue. There were strong arguments for and against this bill, but lost in all that was the need to “one up” the opposition, whether it was Senator Graham foolishly accusing the bill’s opponents of being “bigots”, the President wrongly questioning the patriotism of conservative critics”
Well there is that, then there is the lack of movement on implementing the border fence plan that passed the Congress when Republicans were in control of the House and Senate.
Then there is Ted Kennedy’s participation in writing this bill, the same Ted Kennedy who was behind the 1966 “Reform” that he “promised” “Will not change the culture of this country”.
Then there is 6 years of basically doing nothing of worth in dealing with this problem.
And of course, there is the ignoring of the social costs of this amnesty program, estimated to be 2 trillion dollars.
“He came into the WH after being a two-term governor of the border state of Texas, and it wasn’t exactly a secret that he was in favor of naturalization then, so the positions he’s taken on the issue of illegal immigration have not been a shock to me, nor should they have been to anyone else. To accuse the President of ‘betrayal’ on this issue when his position should have been well-known from the getgo is baffling to me.”
Baffling? How surprising, so president bush is in favor of legalizing the illegal, no matter the costs to the country, and to the Republican Party, and one is “baffled”? Is it surprising that the US public is 3 to 1 against this bill, and this causes consternation on your part when the public rightfully rebukes such an initiative?
“I can’t count the number of times over the years I’ve seen accusations towards the President of of “being in bed with the Mexican president” by other conservatives, calling the president “Jorge,” putting his face on the Mexican peso, assertions that the president is a ’sell-out’ and ‘apparently doesn’t care about national security’ which is total BS, because he’s taken a lot of crap from the usual suspects on the left about the Patriot Act, Gitmo, warentless wiretapping - you name it. Just about every measure the President has taken in order to reduce the chances of another attack on our soil”
Strange that one points to Gitmo, while at the same time there is an open and unobstructed path of entry for any Al Qaeda member who has 300 dollars for plane ride to Mexico, I’m afraid the lack of border security puts into question just how comprehensive our security scheme is, if Al Qaeda can learn to fly a jetliner, surely they can buy a plane ticket and walk 20 miles in the desert.
Sadly, Jorge is quite accurate, as is the president’s picture on the peso with illegals in the background, that is the appearance and the reality of today’s US-Mexican Border.
“If” the President had shown more resolve to deal with this issue over the previous 6 years of his term, he might have a bit more credibility when he asks the US public to “Trust him” on this issue.
“And as I noted earlier, if we don’t get this issue resolved soon, it may very well be in the hands of a Democrat administration to deal with. Which would you rather see? Have it resolved this year? Or under a Hillary or Obama adminstration? I shudder at the thought of any of the Dem nominees in charge of securing our borders and tackling the illegal immigration issue.”
Fascinating, so it is better to be hit from behind then from the front? A Dem admin is obviously opposed to any tightening of the immigration laws and enforcement, strangely so is president bush, the difference is many of the people who voted for president bush, who also have spent hours of their own time supporting president bush during his electoral campaigns, expected president bush to actually behave differently then the democrats on this issue, a sort real distinction was looked for, sadly, that hasn’t happened.
“The 1986 immigration bill Reagan signed into law (gosh, I guess he too was a ’sell-out’ and traitor to his country?) paved the way for the problems we see now, problems that Bush inherited when he was elected president. The president has essentially said when he talks about illegal immigration (and I agree with him) that it is not practical nor economical to arrest and deport the millions of illegals we have here. The cost to beef up law enforcement and build more jails to hunt for, arrest, and deport illegals would be astronomical and likely much higher than the cost it would be to keep them working here. Why not have them pay the fine and take the other steps necessary to become legal? Yes, I know that the fine would probably keep a lot of them from stepping up to the plate, but it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to have the ones who do want to step up to the plate, rather than go on an illegal immigrant round up that won’t yield the results we’d be hoping it would (as we’ve seen all too often over the last few years). Not only that, but then they’d become actual citizens of this country and they’d be paying their taxes and contributing to society just like everybody else instead of mooching off of it. That way, our law enforcement could primarily focus on more serious crimes rather than wasting their time in fruitless roundups.”
Purely pablum, we haven’t even tried to enforce the law, and now that president bush has ignored the problem for 6 years, the law cannot be enforced?
So President Bush, the highest Law Enforcement Officer in the land, is refusing to enforce the laws of the United States?
That would mean that he owes an apology to everyone who has been deported or refused immigration status, after all if the law is the standard, then if that standard is no upheld equally, then the person who is applying that standard as part of their job is doing so selectively, and that is repugnant to the rule of law.
The President seems to be saying through his support of this bill:
“I don’t like this law and refuse to enforce it, so write a new one that I do like then I’ll enforce that one?”
That is what Democrats do.
But mom and pop would have to hire the lawyers to support that.
I see, an employer must pass a federal "common sense" IQ test to become a law enforcement agent of the federal government? Anymore federal requirements you want to heap on employers to do business? How about we make employers responsible for deporting the illegals they find? If not I say so what...
The Secure Border Initiative (SBI) was a program created by Secretary Chertoff of DHS to organize the four operating components of border security: Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG). SBI has 3 main operating goals: improve border security, increase interior enforcement of immigration and customs laws, and implement a Temporary Worker Program (TWP).
The only commitment that DHS has currently made is to pay for a 28-mile pilot section of SBInet in the Tucson sector of the Arizona-Mexico border. The cost of this pilot section is estimated at $67 million. The value of Boeing’s three-year contract to build SBInet across both the northern and southern borders is estimated between $2 and $2.5 billion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SBInet
It will be quietly gutted, maybe in the same Congress, maybe the next one.
Neither of us knows that, and it's a risk. We all knew R's were in trouble in 2006 and it's fair that few conservatives anticipated the breadth of what actually ensued.
Unless we cut off the benefits.
I am in the national guard, some members in my brigade did some border duty. I talked with one of the guys he said they spotted some drug smugglers crossing(how did he know?) they call BP, they get no answer, one of the soldiers leaves his observation post to confront/stop the drug runners. By the time he gets there a BP agent has them stopped, the bp agent pulls his gun out on the soldier and told him to leave. They said the BP did not arrest those guys. this guy could be giving me a load of crap but the man never lied to me before.
When he’s not hiking up his ACLU rating
There is right and there is wrong, and there's no reason NOT to expect that we will get "right" from the government, and not "wrong".
There are things we need to compromise on, things that aren't easily broken into good and bad, right and wrong.
Other things there is a clearly correct thing to do, and compromise is to hurt people.
I support amnesty for long-term illegals, and I hate this bill because it is simply wrong, it's not fair to citizens, it's not fair to legal immigrants, it's not fair to those WAITING IN LINE expecting America to be a nation of laws.
Instead, it hurts all those people in favor of law-breakers, illegal immigrants who couldn't be bothered to follow the process, and instead broke into our country and live in the shadows, with no intention of assimilating.
Under this bill, a legal immigrant caught having not paid his taxes the past 5 years will be fined and deported, while the illegal immigrant caught not paying taxes will be given amnesty and allowed to stay.
Under this bill, the citizen who is caught as part of a gang will go to jail, while the illegal immigrant who is caught as part of a gang will be given amnesty and allowed to walk free simply by denouncing his gang.
Under this bill, a citizen who wants to go to a college in another state has to pay out-of-state tuition, while an illegal from another COUNTRY who wants to go to college in ANY state gets in-state tuition, for example if they manage to graduate high school.
Under this bill, people who are IN LINE waiting, who joined the line after 2005, including wives and children of LEGAL IMMIGRANTS waiting to come into the country, will be PUT IN LINE BEHIND the illegal immigrants who just snuck into the country in December of 2006.
Let me repeat that -- if you were a LEGAL IMMIGRANT, and put your family member on the list to enter the country in June of 2005, they would get in quicker if you had told them to SNEAK in last December than they will since you were a law-abiding legal immigrant.
So don't tell me about "compromise", and "not getting everything I wanted". I know I'm not getting what I want, I want partial amnesty, payment of back taxes, illegals in back of the line of EVERY legal, payment of yearly fees by those who have been here long enough and clear background and remain waiting for their turn to get legal papers.
I've expressed my opinion on this board many times, and almost nobody has called me names, or shouted me down, even though my position is much more "liberal" in their minds than what they would accept. Opposition to this bill is not the same as close-mindedness, in fact opposition to this bill is the only SANE choice.
Applause to you for your honesty, and laser-sharp observations! I am against illegal immigration, or the blanket “forgiveness” of lawbreakers, not just border-crossers, and believe in enforcement first. But your post really nails that the battle has become poisonous within our own party. Fear and the anonymity of the internet seem to have fueled the vitriol.
We can keep up the venom and remain the minority party in this country at all levels for a long time, while the rest of the world turns towards conservatism. Or we can restore logic and civility to the debate, like conservatives should, and you brilliantly demonstrated. Thank you.
There are some very valid points in there (e.g., nobody seemed to care about W's views on immigration when I spoke of them years ago, yet now people say he's "betraying" them), but there are some subtle mistakes in this piece. For example,
Just about every measure the President has taken in order to reduce the chances of another attack on our soil has been vilified by the left. He’s been accused of going ‘too far’ so let’s not kid ourselves by thinking that because he doesn’t take the typical conservative view on illegal immigration, that he’s not concerned about our national security.Something isn't "good" just because it is villified by the Left. These measures were all Big Government moves and--Democrat-like--skirt the main issue if you leave the barn door itself (the border) open. Support of these measures can be made only in the context of a full security package.
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