Posted on 11/19/2004 8:57:23 AM PST by Independentamerican
Last week, President George W. Bush finally signaled his intention to push for the immigration reform plan he unveiled nearly one year ago. That’s good news for a proposal that offers a creative solution to a long-standing problem. The plan, designed to grant temporary legal status to millions of undocumented aliens working in the United States, met a chilly reception when it was announced in January. Bush did little to promote it during the presidential election.
( SNIP )
The measure is certain to face intense opposition. Republican members of Congress have argued Bush’s temporary worker program rewards — and therefore encourages — illegal immigration. Members of both parties see immigration as a security threat in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world. Some unions believe immigrants will undercut U.S. workers.
-SNIP-
Concern that immigrant workers compete with U.S. workers for scarce jobs is equally mistaken. Most immigrant laborers fill positions that U.S. workers pass over — retail and service-sector jobs that pay low wages and require little skill.
-SNIP-
The Bush proposal takes a more enlightened approach. It sees immigration as a net gain for the economy and ties temporary legal status to gainful employment. It wisely stops short of amnesty by requiring immigrant workers to eventually return home
(Excerpt) Read more at mndaily.com ...
There's a difference between nukes and illegal Mexican immigrants, although you wouldn't know from the overheated rhetoric of some on this forum.
Unless we deal with this realistically, we're never going to be able to deal with it at all. Are you wondering why this plan is going ahead? It's because it's the only possible one, but virtually no one here makes any constructive suggestions. It's all hatred and bile.
Tancredo's plan will fail also.
One question:
Why would any employer hire an alien with a guest worker visa and pay the additional costs, when that same employer can continue to hire the illegal aliens for cheaper.
It's going ahead, because Bush and his idiot advisors and bill payers think this will get the Republicans more votes.
What they have failed to realize is all guest worker programs are doomed to fail, without total immigration system reform.
Bush is about to create a bigger mess then the one we have.
How is passing a guest worker plan going to change that when the federal government has PROVEN for decades its open contempt of enforcing its own laws? What am I missing here? You think Tom's Guest Worker plan is some kind of silver bullet?
Here's how it is going to come down IF we go down this road: A guest worker plan (Tom's or anyone’s) will be passed with renewed promises of border protection, enforcement of immigration laws, blah, blah, blah. Shortly after implementation, the borders will remain open and there will be little to no enforcement of the promises made. Now we have an open ended guest worker plan on top of the usual chain immigration, anchor baby amnesties and chaos we have today.
Did you catch my drift that I don't trust the words and promises of the federal government yet? And if you think that the Democrats with the RINOs assistance won’t do their level best to undermine the rules and operation of the Guest Worker Program you have another thing coming…they most certainly will.
Let's see how it plays out.
Tancredo's plan would halt efforts to create a guest worker program that is really an amnesty for the foreseeable future. Also, implementation of Tancredo's guest worker program is dependent on better enforcement on the border and in the interior, including against employers.
Even in the worse possible case, a guest worker program without better enforcement, we're better off than we are now because the wind will be out of the sails of the amnesty lobby.
Why would any employer hire an alien with a guest worker visa and pay the additional costs, when that same employer can continue to hire the illegal aliens for cheaper.
Some wouldn't, but some would. More would if the requirement to verify workers' right to employment was made mandatory.
There is no downside. Illegal aliens will be much less sympathetic if there's a legal avenue for imported labor. Tancredo's BE REAL Act is a good first step toward steering our immigration policies in a more positive direction.
If those who are opposed to illegal aliens fail to support Tancredo in this, what incentive do other politicians have to oppose amnesty?
Right now the law is unenforcable because verification isn't mandatory. You do know this, don't you?
If a better check is used, they'll have to use better fake identification, or pay more of them off the books. It catches more and disuades more. It's likely a good idea, but it's not enough to have a large scale effect.
How do you know that until it's been tried?
On the other hand, legalizing illegal aliens has been tried on four previous occasions, and the result has always been more illegal aliens than at the outset. The Bush plan is more of what's failed in the past.
Why would they leave voluntarily when they have nothing to go back to. Leaving takes away their livlihood. I like Tancrendo's plan with te exception of requiring all illegals currently in the US to return home. I just don't think there's a realistic chance of it working with that stipulation.
Again, Tancredo's is the only guest worker oprogram that doesn't repeat the failed mistake of legalizing illegal aliens. We know that approach doesn't work, so why are you fired up to do it again?
Illegal aliens will leave because their previous employers will be less willing to keep them on, when there is an increased risk of prosecution and a legal source of inexpensive labor as an alternative.
Self deportation will work, the only question is how much, and what will need to be done to enhance the effect a few years down the road.
What kind of incentives can we offer for them to leave? The only thing we could really offer is a quick return as a guest worker, while barring them if we catch them here illegally.
Yes, that's it exactly.
On the other hand, the Bush plan rewards lawbreaking, with no guarantee that the very people who don't enforce the law now will enforce it in the future.
While you have only speculation about the possibility for success of self deportation, there is ample experience that the Bush plan will only encourage more illegal aliens.
Do you really think that tossing these people out with no concern for how it effects them will fly in the US?
Yes, it will absolutely fly, because they will be given ample warning to leave and a means of getting in line to enter legally.
The Bush plan rewards illegal aliens and gives them advantages over law abiding guest worker applicants. Do you really expect that to fly, especially knowing that legalizaing illegal aliens always always exacerbates the problem?
I have absolutely no objection to an effective program that encourages self-deportation. Show me a plan that offers illegal immigrants something that will convince them to self-deport, and I'll be happy to support it.
You've been shown.
Why do you prefer legalization, which is guaranteed to fail?
That is an excellent question and I've never hear a good answer for it aside from the usual "this time around we really really really will enforce our immigration laws... Really." The market for illegal labor in America is secular, well-entrenched and backed by big money. The idea that a guest worker program will end the illegal labor market is naive in the extreme. Especially when our president babbles on in an oxymoronic way about "safe, secure Open Borders".
The only way out of this crisis is for the federal government to enforce its own laws and constitutionally bound duties to defend the nation from invasion. All the rest is just disingenuous blather.
There currently are many legal avenues for imported labor. Any guest worker program will just duplicate those programs already in place.
A guest worker program won't stop the flow of illegals across the border and it won't add any interior enforcement.
Do you know why we have no interior employer sanctions?
It's not because Washington does not want it; it's because of lawyers and judges. The INS gave up fighting lawyers and judges. Even if Congress enacted new laws, the lawyers and judges would shot down any attempt to enforce those laws.
Employers know we can't enforce those laws, so there is zero incentive to hire a more expensive legal worker over an easily disposable and easily replaceable illegal worker.
All of these guest worker plans are doomed to fail and cause more problems.
See above.
No, I think I know all to well why it is going forward.
It's because it's the only possible one, but virtually no one here makes any constructive suggestions.
There has been so many constructive options on this forum it is impossible for me to list them. None of them require amnesty. Prop 187 in California, and Prop 200 in Arizona are good starting points.
What we are doing is Insanity, plain and simple.
...
The only way out of this crisis is for the federal government to enforce its own laws and constitutionally bound duties to defend the nation from invasion.
LOL! But they aren't, are they?
Nevermind, sit on the sidelines, hold your breath, turn blue, and hang Tancredo out to dry. You'll have much more to complain about for all the good doing nothing will do.
Doing more nothing is a problem. There is going to be a big push this year to get an immigration reform bill passed. If no alternative to the Bush-McCain-Cornyn plans is offered, the best you can hope for is defeat for those and more of the status quo. Or, even worse, we could find ourselves with an amnesty.
No one on this thread has offered a compelling criticism of Tancredo's plan demonstrating that it would make the situation worse, only that they don't think it would work, or wouldn't work that well, or they don't want a guest worker program at all. A game is about to be played, and if opponents of illegal aliens want to get in, they need to unball their fists and get behind Tom Tancredo.
>protect the borders....That is a battle no one dare face, that is, until it's too late<
It would have been expedient and reasonable to station troops along both upper and lower borders immediately after 9/11, and limit any immigration for a period of time, say five years, to see how things went in the ME.
I thought that was what Homeland Security and the National Guard was supposed to be all about.
>Bush is about to create a bigger mess than the one we already have<
How could this program be administered with all the greed and corruption out there? Let's stop making any more laws until we learn to adhere to the ones we already have. In fact, it's time to sunset so many we no longer need.
If it succeeds, this program will just make another huge, new government agency that won't operate correctly anyway.
Insanity indeed!
Once such a system is developed and in place, you can them prosecute employers for not checking.
Currently, everyone that we try to prosecute just claims ignorance. There is no way to check immigration status and they are not fraudulent document experts, and even a bad lawyer can get them off the hook. That is why there is no enforcement now. INS (now ICE) has spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to prosecute employers and they always lose.
Once an easy system is in place and enforceable, then we can prosecute and only then will employers be motivated enough to hire legal aliens.
Any guess worker program that happens before the above will fail, as very few or no employer will hire a person that cost them more to employee and has other rights over a person that is cheap, has no rights and is easily replaceable.
Sure I have. See above for more.
My first inclination was to say "YOU DREAM", or "IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT USUALLY IS", but after reading your bio I want to thank you MI for your service,
and with your experience, I'd like to see you somewhere high up in the program if it is adopted. Gods speed.
I disagree with Tancredo on this. Unlike you, I don't believe that bribing our politicos with the support of a guest worker program, especially when one is not needed, to get them to do their job is going to work.
Look at what happened with Reagan's amnesty in 1986. It was SOLD to the public with the promise that it was going to be the LAST amnesty to end all amnesties and forever thereafter immigration laws were going to be enforced diligently. Guess What? Before the ink was dry on the bill, the amnesty provisions were already coming apart and an amnesty that was supposed to only apply to 300,000 illegal aliens turned out to apply to 10 times that number WITH NO enforcement on any of the provisions.
If you believe this time around the horn will be any different when our politicians have proven time and time again not to be worthy of our trust I have some land I'd like to sell you. An excellent foreshadowing of how any Guest Worker program would end up after special interests get through with it, can be witnessed in congress, right now as we speak. There they are busy gutting (under the pressure of the administration) the immigration provisions of the house intelligence bill that were specifically recommend by the 911 commission to make it harder for Terrorists to get drivers licenses, cover and other IDs.
What a sorry hand wringing spectacle! LOL. Now if the Administration and Congress can be so derelict in putting the cheap labor lobby’s interests ahead of common sense security reforms to protect the American People what does that tell you about how Tom’s guest worker program is going to end up IN PRACTICE
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