Posted on 06/29/2007 7:08:06 AM PDT by sickoflibs
The Senate majority that voted yesterday to crush what is almost certainly the last opportunity to fix America's broken immigration system for at least two years was responding to constituents with unreasonable expectations. Flogged into a fury by talk-show agitators and Internet provocateurs, thousands of people called, wrote and e-mailed their senators to protest legislation they believed would do nothing to stop the flow of illegal entry into this country, would forgive millions of illegals already here and would burden taxpayers with the cost to schools and health care.
No one is going to round up 12 million people here illegally, kick them out of the country and lock the door behind them, as some critics of the reform measure propose. Even if there were a will to do it, there's no practical way.
Impoverished people will continue to find a way into the United States for the economic opportunities. Changes in the law intended to make it more difficult for workers to be hired using phony papers will die along with the rest of the bill. And while the 12 million undocumented foreigners living in the shadows won't get the purported amnesty that offended so many Americans, they will continue to be part of American communities, contributing to and drawing from their resources, in a limbo status dubbed "silent amnesty" by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Unlike the House of Representatives, the Senate was designed to be more resistant to demagogic passions. But angry voters didn't appreciate the value of that procedural courtesy and deluged the senators with such a protest that only 46 senators voted yesterday in favor of another procedural question that would have positioned the bill for a final vote today. Sixty votes were needed.
Doing nothing, though, is not a fix.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Stop their jobs and they will walk home.
Amazing how liberal, elite, smug, nobler-than-thou, omniscient, annointed DBM types can write two sentences together that illustrate their monumental stupidity.
"THEY" will always find a way!
"BUT" this bill would have stopped them.
We win. You lose.
“No one is going to round up 12 million people here illegally, kick them out of the country and lock the door behind them, as some critics of the reform measure propose. Even if there were a will to do it, there’s no practical way.”
Then how do we enforce an abomonation of a tax code off on 300 million people. What if we all stopped paying taxes? How do you enforce the tax code then?
Then how hard could it be finding and punishing 12 million law breakers.
The will is alive and well, and of course, where there's a will....
It's the feds that lack the will. The states can handle this, but the shamnesty bill would have pre-empted effective state action. Makes you long for the good old days of real federalism, that does.
Little county I grew up in used to have the local sheriff’s picture in it “Busting up a still he discovered through good police work” in the month before an election.
Fred “the beetle’ barnes and Mort Kondrake both supported the bill. They were both upset that in went down last night and all three members of the “all-stars” were convinced that this is going to hurt the GOP.
I missed the exchange and don't know if Mort supported the bill, but 'beetle' is a reference to Fred Barnes. "The Beetle" was John McLaughlin's nickname for him, when Barnes appeared on "The McLaughlin Group": "Freddy 'The Beetle' Barnes"...
Yup, dying Old Media whining about the emergence of New Media.
Fix America’s broken immigration system - fire Chertoff, build the wall, enforce the law, jail violators.
Ha!!!
Quick! Someone call the Whambulance!
I’m mulling over this whole “fairness doctrine” thing.
Why not go along? Other than FR, a few other sites and talk radio, we aren’t bringing much to the table.
By demanding equal time—”fairness”—on the 20th century lib propa-venues, from the NYT to NBC, `Air America’ & DU to NPR, we could give them a little push into the tar pits.
Talk radio and FR wouldn’t lose anyone. 198whenever, when the doctrine was revoked under Reagan, and 2007, in terms of telecommunications are like the difference between 1900 and 2000 in terms of travel.
I don’t know where they get this “in the shadows” BS. Just go to Walmart for a few minutes on Saturday. Looks like a Mexico family reunion. You can’t even get down the isles for them standing there with all 4-6 kids visiting with another family of the same numbers. We avoid going there on weekends as if there was plague loose in the place. The city park is the same way. So don’t tell me about people in the shadows.
The “fairness doctrine” provisions do not apply to TV or to print media.
What happened to “government of the people, by the people and for the people”? Liberal elitists can never understand that!
I hear the Mexican president is unhappy with the vote too. Perhaps someone should translate Mexico’s immigration statutes into US English legalese, and enact them here. He could hardly complain about us copying Mexico in this regard. LOL
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journals’ view of the results:
Immigration ‘Victory’
June 29, 2007
Immigration reform died in the Senate yesterday, a victim of populist anger on the right and political cynicism on the left. We hope the victors are prepared to live with the immigration status quo they purport to hate, because that is what they have now guaranteed.
As a matter of policy, this is far from the worst outcome. It would be better to bring some rationality to the reality of North American labor movements, and bringing illegals into the open would be good for national security. But the 12 million or so immigrants who are here illegally will continue building homes and cleaning hotel rooms, and more will arrive or leave depending on the job opportunities. At least the feds won’t have more authority and money to harass more innocent employers who hire illegals owing to the ease of forging government documents.
Perhaps now, too, reformers can rally around more modest reforms, such as an expansion of H1-B visas for skilled immigrants. Either the U.S. will accept more of these workers, especially from American graduate schools, or more U.S. companies will outsource more high-tech jobs to Ireland and India. A left-right coalition might also be able to agree on an expansion of visas for agricultural workers, who are now in short supply. Here, too, U.S. companies will either grow vegetables in America harvested by foreign workers, or the U.S. will import foreign vegetables harvested by foreign workers. Restrictionists can’t have it both ways.
As for the politics, the press will call this a defeat for President Bush, but he deserves credit for trying. This late in his term and with his low approval rating, he simply lacked the political capital to persuade Republicans spooked by talk radio and cable TV hosts. Mr. Bush was also trying to do his fellow Republicans a favor by forging a new relationship with Hispanic-Americans, even though he’ll never be on another ballot. We look forward to seeing how GOP candidates win elections as Democrats grab a larger share of America’s fastest growing voter bloc. Perhaps Lou Dobbs has some campaign tips.
As for Democrats, their cynicism has rarely been so obvious. Senate Majority Harry Reid pulled the bill earlier this month when GOP leaders wanted only another day or two for amendments. Then when he brought the bill back to the floor, he doomed it with faint support and by letting his party add amendments he knew would drive Republicans away. Now he and his fellow Democrats will tell Hispanic voters that they could have passed reform if not for those bigoted Republicans.
Mark it down: Chuck Schumer will use this against GOP Senators next year. And should they win more Senators and the White House, Democrats in 2009 will be in position to pass their own immigration reform that will be far less restrictive than this one. The conservatives who “won” this week will deserve much of the credit.
Baloney.
It won't be done precisely because there is no political will to do it. It's simply a matter of cost and time, neither of which presents an impenetrable barrier.
If deportations sent illegals to the southern-most tip of Mexico, rather than 20 miles across the border, it would greatly increase the deterrent effect.
Only six things are needed to effectively address the illegal immigration problem. Only minimal legislative changes need to be made, certainly not "Comprehensive Immigration Reform". None of them involve mass deportation of millions of people.
There sure was a “practical” way to ship all the Japanese into internment camps during WWII.
I think this is where the American people can help. We need to make it our business to find and expose every business that employs illegals and insist on the law being enforced. Surely there are enough patriots to do this. The gov. says they can't send 12 M people back to their home country. Well, American citizens can do it. Lobby your city/county officials to check the businesses in your town/county for illegals. We can do this one county at a time.
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