Posted on 03/08/2002 1:24:33 PM PST by sarcasm
Friday, March 08, 2002 - WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Tancredo takes credit for thwarting the Bush administration's last effort to offer partial amnesty to thousands of illegal residents, but Thursday the outspoken immigration foe said he may have been outmaneuvered by the White House.
President Bush has struck a deal with the House leadership to place legislation that offers an extension of amnesty on its consent calendar before Bush heads to Mexico for a state visit next week, the Colorado Republican said. That action should ensure quick House passage of legislation that Bush has repeatedly sought from Congress. It would allow an undocumented person to receive legal standing, such as a valid green card, by filing a declaration with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It presumably also would require the person to have been in the United States by a certain date and have filed a declaration with the INS from an appropriate sponsor, such as a relative or employer, and pay a $1,000 penalty. "The terms are still up in the air," said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration, a group that has been allied with Tancredo. "We've heard to the effect that the president wants something to bring down to Mexico." The initial Bush proposal, designed exclusively for Mexicans, once was high on the president's legislative wish list, but it was delayed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. However, as the president noted Wednesday in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, he now is pushing for the extension of the amnesty program known by the section of immigration law that covers it, Section 245I. The president hailed it as a way to reunite family, separated by the border. "If you believe in family values, if you understand the worth of family and the importance of family, let's get 245I out of the United States Congress and give me a chance to sign it," Bush told the chamber members. Tancredo, the head of a congressional caucus on immigration issues and proponent of halting virtually all immigration, said he had blocked a previous attempt by Bush to push an extension of the amnesty program through the House. But this time, he said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., had agreed to place the issue on the suspension, or consent, calendar, making it difficult to defeat the proposal. The Senate might be more favorable to the bill than the House, expanding the numbers of individuals who can apply, Tancredo said.
EBUCK
15 years seems like such a long time don't it.
EBUCK
I want the underhanded way they accomplish this recorded for posterity.
Major, good luck. They never show their hand unless there is something to gain. Nothing to gain on this one especially if they get to vote annon.
EBUCK
Are you completely forgetting about 9/11? We not only need to police our own borders from Mexicans but we need to police our borders from Muslims. Lets also not forget that most of those Muslims that killed our fellow Americans entered this country "legally".
I think the point was, that if Mexico was really our "friend", they would carry their share of the burden of policing our common border. They wouldn't be actively encouraging their own citizens to emigrate, and they would not be whining whenever we catch their citizens illegally entering our country or otherwise breaking our laws, nor would they be lobbying to get us to ignore or reward their citizen's illegal border crossing.
As to the 911 terrorists, some of them were here illegally, on expired visas. Nor should we discount the possibility of Muslim terrorists entering across the border with Mexico. There was a news report I remember (sorry, can't remember source) which talked about a fellow who was in trouble for selling phony ID's to some of the Muslims involved in some of the terrorist cells arrested/detained after 911; one of the Muslims he had sold a phony ID to had entered this country illegally across the Mexican border.
So we really can't talk about the border, immigration, and terrorism as though they were unrelated problems. Cracking down on the abuses in legal immigration, of course, is also a priority.
EBUCK
Cspan:
We are going to leave this now to take you to the US house where members are about to meet for legislative business, They will consider suspension bills,
That is legislation brought up on special expedited rules, no amendments are allowed and debate is limited to 40 minutes and a 2/3 majority is needed to pass the measures
4 suspensions are scheduled. They include the definition of born alive
Enhanced border security
College tuition for DC residents and
Recognizing the 100 anniversary of the censuses bureau
Recorded votes on any of those will take place at about 6:30 pm Eastern
Goes to the House: Speaker (Rep Cliff Stearns (R-Florida)
Pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20 the chair will postpone further proceedings today on each motion to suspend the rule on which a recorded vote where the yeas and nays are ordered or on which the vote is objected to under clause 6 of rule 20
Any record votes on postponed questions will be taken after debate has concluded on all motions to suspend the rules but not before 6:30 pm today
Sensenbrenner: Mr speaker... Chair: What purpose does the gentleman rise Sensenbrenner: Mr speaker I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill hr 2175 Infants protection act of 2002.......
What they are failing to realize, perhaps, is that between this outright invasion, "Rachel has Two Mommies", being frisked at the airport, having our medical records sent to the government, being watched closely by our banks as though we were drug dealers, while our borders are open, having our credit card companies report what we purchase to the government, having our kids drilled at the Peditricians office about gun ownership, the growing infringement of the government and the U.N. on private property ownership, attempt after attempt to outlaw gun ownership, the inability to do business on the phone because you can't find someone who speaks english, having your kids told to go back to Europe, your property devalued, your taxes wasted, and your Social Security dried up, learning to duck and cover in case of terrorist attack, while our borders are open, our comfort zone just isn't all that comfortable anymore.
EBUCK
Correction, if I may. They have set themselves against an armed people.
An armed populace, perhaps. But an armed people? Part of the preparation for physically disarming us has been a long but steady process of intellectual disarmament, which included convincing us that we were not a "nation" but merely an ideology masquerading as a nation-state - by which line of reasoning, someone from Asia or Africa could be "a better American" than someone who can trace his roots back to Jamestown or Pymouth Plantation.
In other words, we were convinced that an American was simply someone agreeing to whatever it is that constitutes the "American ideology" - because we are a "nation dedicated to a proposition". Once you accept this switch, it becomes impossible to distinguish between "American" as a distinct ethnic/national identity, and "American" as simply any featherless biped who happens to live within the territory of the USA, regardless of how he got here or what his legal status is.
Needless to say, once a sense of nationhood is sufficiently diluted, stripping away that nation's birthrights - including gun rights - becomes markedly easier. It will be packaged as a part of the "war on terrorism", but it'll happen, eventually.
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