Spokesman for President Bush Posts on Free Republic About Immigration Bill

A spokeman for the Bush administration sent an e-mail to Jim Robinson and myself confirming the authenticity of a post on Free Republic this afternoon regarding the immigration bill currently before the Senate as having been posted on behalf of the White House.

The spokesman, Nicholas Thompson, works for the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. The Politico reported yesterday that Thompson and Kerrie Rushton, associate directors in the Office of Strategic Initiatives who work under Karl Rove, would be engaging the blogosphere on the immigration bill.

Thompson's e-mail to Free Republic included a brief introduction and the text of his posted comment:

I just wanted to let you know that I just posted a response to the post "Penalty Mitigation in the Immigration Reform Bill."

Response:
I would like to point out that the Secretary is authorized to reduce or mitigate penalities against employers who in good faith are trying to comply with the law. Certainly, we understand that not all employers knowingly hire illegal immigrants; this will remain the case, especially before the bill’s new secure documentation requirements are fully phased in. We do not seek to wrongly penalize honest employers who unknowingly hire illegal immigrants, therefore we reserve the right to reduce or mitigate their penalties if the employer can show good faith compliance in following the law.

For those employers who do knowingly hire illegal immigrants, please know that we intend to penalize these employers strongly, and the Administration has already stepped up these penalties in the last couple of years. For example, a 2005 program, “Operation Rollback,” assessed $15,000,000 in civil fines to employers, an amount greater than the sum of administrative fines collected in the previous eight years and was the largest worksite enforcement penalty in US history. In the first quarter of FY07, criminal and civil forfeitures have totaled $26,700,000 for employers.

As a reminder of what’s in the bill, fines for hiring an illegal worker are $5,000 maximum per illegal worker for the first offense, $10,000 maximum per illegal worker for the second, $25,000 maximum per illegal worker for the third , and $75,000 maximum per illegal worker for the fourth. In addition, the bill increases the maximum criminal penalty for a pattern or practice of unlawful hiring twenty-five-fold, from $3,000 to $75,000, and would impose a prison term of up to six months. This represents a significant increase in fines for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

Just in case the White House monitors these threads:

There is REAL LEGITIMATE reason for American citizens to be agitated that their tax dollars are going to people who are not legal residents. There is also a huge reservoir of anger at the fed for letting this mess to get to where it is. You are just have to work through that.

HOWEVER,
It is NOT true that the howling loon contingent on the freeper immigration threads speak for the majority of the conservative movement. They do not even speak for the majority of free republic, although they would like to believe they do.

Specificially:
There are many freepers who literally despise the snotty, stupid, imbeciles who post the kind of hateful bigoted crap you sometimes see in FR immigration threads. These people are liars about being bigoted, and can barely cover their prejudice long enough to type TANCREDO '08. They are poisoned shriveled up contemptuous and contemptible fascists, who will happily surrender all freedoms to the fed and approve draconian police state laws in order to expel 12 -20 million people. These champions of liberty could give a rip if the sudden dislocation were to create untold human misery. After all "we didn't ask them to come here." They will NOT be satisfied until you FIRST "enforce the present laws, which means not more or less than expelling the millions of good hardworking people who are here illegally. Again, they are absolutely unconcerned about the toll of human tragedy this would cause, and cynically sneer about the "CNN crybabies" who would doubtless focus their cameras on the trail of misery this would cause. Finally, it has never penetrated the fat surrounding that one pulsating ganglion in their skulls that the fact that we have unemployment UNDER 5 per cent and 20 million illegals that we might have a labor shortage if they left. They deny this vehemently (math was never their strong suit). Finally with this bunch (and you know who you are as you read this), they are so farcking brain dead stupid that ANYTHING less than wholesale expulsion to these neural ciphers is termed "amnesty." The idea of a person paying for the crime of jumping the border and falsifying papers to get a job by anything but donning a sombrero and trudging with his 8 kids back to the border is unthinkable to these intellectual colossi.

After all that, if you point any of this out to them, they are like the arab's camel. The stupid thing is too brainless to know that the camel driver is NOT the cloak, but the camel thrashes away at a cloak the driver lays in front of it. It snorts. It hoots, it bawls what can only be camel imprecations and thrashes the cloak mercilessly, lashing out in its righteous fury at the driver, who stands by watching. In the same way, these dromedary wannabees will call you a "liberal" a "du refugee" a "wetback" a "socialist" a "traitor" and anything else that that pea sized ganglion we euphemistically refer to as a "brain" can kick out. Talking rationally about the need for a wall/fence (we need one) and a plan to bring them "above ground" and integrated (we need one) is so frustrating because of the general din of vituperation that belches forth from these dunderheads that it is hardly worth the time.

So, my advice to president Bush is to listen to the legitimate gripes of ALL conservatives. Yes, ALL conservatives, and not just the piddleheaded dimwits on FR threads who hear the word "hispanic" and immediately begin baying the moon.

Most of us would be happy with: A bunch of us are mad because of the contemptuous nature of pushing a program that demands neither accountability nor security in return for a wholesale admission (even back taxes were off the table). You should not even have backed such a bill, much less alienated your base in doing so. In like manner, turning around does not mean turning your policy over to the lunatic fringe. Mass expulsions of people here illegally would be just that, lunacy.

Fine - here it is without the last line - I apologize for posting in a pique - but the fact that the White House refuses to listen has driven a lot of us to this point.

Nicholas - tell the White House thank you for making the effort to communicate.

But the White House is far too late. To give anything you pass on from them any amount of serious consideration, they must first APOLOGIZE for calling their supporters racists, bigots, nativists, vigilantes, and anti-American. You will have found no greater patriots and defenders of the White House than on Free Republic, and for the President to demonstrate to us that in his world view the only loyalty worth having is one that rises up to him is to beg for excoriation and denouncement. Apparently Mr. Bush is extrapolating from his father's sneer about 'voo doo economics'; loyalty apparently does not trickle down from the top in return. I cannot tell you that debasement of the Broken Glass Republicans who have been faithful in supporting President Bush's foreign policy will have its vengeance over his domestic policy. Hell hath no fury like a grassroots scorned. And President Bush and his blue blood Country Club elitist cohorts have been scorning us an awful lot.

You pass this on to that All Hat No Cattle George Bush: shame on you for selling out our children's future as an American to the slave class you want to install. Shame on you for trading my daughter's future to groups like La Raza and MeCHA, who would sooner take your daughters as well as mine and use them up like so much tissue. You are disingenuous, craven, elitist, too proud, and too swayed by venal haters to have my support any more. I gave you my vote THREE times and was proud to do it and what do I get in return? A criminal overthrow of all that I grew up to hold dear. That's right, President Bush - I see you trying to overthrow my government. MY government that my forefather's fought for - YOU want to sell out to tin-pot dealers who scream lies about our nation's history. You are no Texan.

Nicholas, you can just take what I say for what its worth and understand that I have a hell of a lot more to say, but I respect JimRob too much to poison the waters here.

I like my amnesty plan!
Please call them INVADERS and don’t compare them to people who are legal aliens!
IF you aid and abet CRIMINALS, you are a criminal!

President Bush has been great on most things except for our border.
He has been great on the war on terrorists.
But on the border he is a gross failure.
He acted fast and correct on the 3,000+ people murdered at the world trade center.
He ignores the many rapes, murders and robberies which might be larger than the murders and money loss at the world trade center.
More Americans are abducted on the border of Mexico than in Iraq!

Start building the fence.
It should be made a felony for Criminals who overstay their visas and Invaders.

I believe we should give amnesty to these poor CRIMINALS or INVADERS.
This should be a 2 week amnesty to get the heck out of our Country.
The ones who ignore this amnesty should be buried in a tent city jail and fined $10,000 or buried elsewhere.
All aiders and abettors of these CRIMINALS or INVADERS should get 1 year in a tent city jail and a $10,000 fine for each CRIMINAL aided.
Those in government should be the first ones charged.

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