"Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican"
Posted on 11/29/2005 5:25:04 AM PST by conservativecorner
Yesterday, George W. Bush strode to a podium in Tucson, Arizona (I love Tucson!) and against a backdrop of law enforcement officers, announced his latest plan to crack down on illegal aliens. There was nothing in his speech we haven't heard before, and his new immigration policy is just as contradictory as the old one. Among the initiatives announced:
We should build more jail cells to hold illegal aliens. Good idea. The speeding up of deportations, a crackdown on fraudulent identity papers, and a hardening of the border with more surveillance. So far, so good. Then the nonsense started to flow. The president urged Congress to pass his guest-worker amnesty program and repeated the nonsense that the illegal aliens are here "to fill jobs that Americans will not do."
Same old, same old. It is impossible to stand there and say you're going to crack down on illegal immigration while at the same time say that you are going to reward people who broke our immigration laws. The president says it's not amnesty. Ok, now we've finally caught the president in a lie. OF COURSE it's amnesty! When you tell someone who has broken the law that you are not only going to ignore their illegal conduct, but you are actually going to reward them for it, then you have more than plain old garden variety amnesty, you have amnesty with perks!
As for the oft-repeated line that the illegal aliens fill jobs Americans won't, that's also a load. Companies may not be able to fill those jobs with Americans at the same low wages they pay Mexicans, but there are plenty of people in this country that would do the work at the right price. OK .. so the price of headless chickens, landscaping and construction might go up, but at least the people receiving those paychecks would be law-abiding residents of this country, most of whom would be citizens. There is something wrong with the idea of celebrating lower home prices when those lower prices are brought with disrespect for the laws of our country. It gets worse than that. We are threatening our very security by singing the praises of illegal aliens in our workforce. Just two weeks ago we were interviewing a Texas congressman who was telling us that U.S. intelligence agencies have knowledge that Al Qaeda terrorists have moved to Mexico, adopted Hispanic identities, learned the Spanish language, and then moved right into the United States across our porous borders.
George Bush failed to address the problem appropriately yesterday, but this isn't strictly a George Bush issue. There is absolutely no willingness on the part of either political party to crack down on illegal immigration. There are simply too many votes to be had in the Hispanic community. So as a result, our security as a nation is threatened and our cities and states are overrun with illegal aliens.
I'm sure representatives of Al-Qaeda are preparing to apply for their guest-worker permits as we speak.
A few weeks back I was visiting some friends in the area. While driving through their neighborhood, I saw a sight that caused my jaw to drop, pull over and stare. It was a white kid mowing a front lawn.
You literally never see that anywhere in this area anymore.
:) Well, this is like any hot issue, will be emotional for valid reasons! like if your job is threatened, or your wages depressed, etc. But I believe, we ALL KNOW IT deep down... this has be dealt with, probably in a way, that no one will be completely happy with... BUT, it must be dealt with!..it must be!.
By the way, I subscribe to building a wall! That is in fact the first move, the foundation of ANY Immigration reform in my view and I think. We should all be in agreement on this one. Built the wall, fence, or secure it, whatever and then, we can start talking.
I understand that bill/plan's already been signed, I thought in 2004.
Now please allow me to don my flame-proof suit before I hit the post button. OK, I'm ready for replies...lol.
I understand it was signed also but hasnt gone to Congress yet...
And nonsense it is. There are over 600,000 illegal aliens incarcerated in the U.S. for committing violent crimes (and only God knows how many millions of violent aliens have thusfar escaped any jailtime at all). Much of Mexico's criminal class is now north of the border.
oh, okay...then there's still a chance to twist arms?
I would suggest that any guest-worker plan begin with the names that are at the top of the current list, long backlogged, I'm sure, of those foreign nationals who have been patiently waiting their turn in line to get in to work in the U.S.
I would also suggest that, besides physically closing the border, than any illegal alien picked up in the U.S., as a matter of course during any crime they've committed, be deported on the spot.
In this way, there is no "extra" expense involved in trying to "round" up "ALL" the illegals; many will be picked up while they commit additional crimes while being illegally in the U.S.
True.. Actually it is a crime to NOT enforce them.. The non enforcers should be indited.. The non enforcment of immigration laws is of secondary importance to the NoN enforcement of voter fraud laws.. Massive wide spread voter fraud is a non issue to current federal republican officials..
Foggy Bottom stinks.. its not just the democrats anymore..
The drain field is backed up.. its very hard to flush a Senator.. or President.. After all the known reasons to flush Clinton he was indited or accused of/for a sex crime..
Foggy Bottom pretty much is beginning to SMELL like Vinnie Fosters casket..
Yea it looks like there's evidence of Tyson employing illegal immigrants. Tyson has a total of 120,000 employees. They are the kind of company that makes campaign contributions and bribes.
However, administrations have changed, new people came into office. There is also the issue of the considerably larger donations by unions that are working against illegal immigration.
Companies seek to hire inexpensive labor. If they have to pay more for labor, they raise their prices, and we pay more for goods. It may effect their margins some, but we're talking about companies paying very low wages even without illegal immigrants. One of these huge companies may even save one or two hundred thousand dollars a year by hiring illegal immigrants. However, if they were unable to do so and their competitors are also unable to do so, they really don't lose a competitive advantage by having to pay more and charge customers more.
So how much are they going to spend bribing politicians and risk going to jail and paying huge fines. Executives that are making millions of dollars a year typically aren't going to risk jail to make their company an extra hundred or two hundred thousand dollars.
Their are unquestionably some stupid and greedy executives that would do unethical things for even smaller sums of money, but they usually do enough stupid things that they aren't running large companies or the companies don't remain large for long.
However, the agriculture industry may be in a position where they may have a reason to hire illegal immigrants beyond saving an extra dollar an hour on wages.
If you look at unemployment figures there really isn't a large pool of unemployed people they can hire from. They're facing tough competition from imported goods, so they really can't pass on the costs of a more expensive work force to consumers and still stay in business even if they could find enough workers without illegal aliens.
Those companies may be in a situation where they are willing to take the risk of hiring illegal aliens because they really don't have a choice. It's still wrong for them to do so. They should lobby for the governemnt to increase the immigration limits, not hire illegal workers. However, I can see how some unscrupulous employers would prefer illegal immigrants who don't complain to OSHA or the department of labor to legal workers who have that option.
In that particular market, which is likely the largest sector of the economy in which illegal aliens are employed, I can see how it might make sense that larger companies are willing to take the risk of hiring illegal immigrants.
Since their real competition is from imports rising employee costs don't just shave a little of their profits in the short run, but threaten the viability of their company. That's enough to make illegal immigrants sould like an acceptable risk to some greedy employers.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were lobbying for poor enforcement as well.
However, the overall policy issue is still the same. We don't have enough legal workers in the US, and we have a bunch of illegal workers here.
Not having enough workers is very bad for the economy.
Having illegal workers here is bad for national security, bankrupts the government through entitlements, and tends to import more criminals into our country.
The soulution would seem to be to locate and deport the illegal aliens. We also need to secure our borders.
We then increase legal immigration and allow in desirable workers.
I didn't mean to infer by my comments that big businesses aren't involved in the issue or that no big businesses are hiring illegal immigrants. However, I still don't think that it's a large number of large compaines doing it, and blaming the impass on illegal immigration on bribes by big business concentrating on one small aspect of the issue and ignoring everything else.
This isn't a new problem. We've had more jobs than legal workers in the US for a long time. We alievated the problem in the tech industry some with H1B visas, which some claimed were horrible, but in my experience allowed our company to hire some tallented people for a while. However, when our company hit some rough times, every last one of the people working on a H1B visas was layed off.
We have the unions that do not want legal immigration increased.
We have the bleeding heart liberals that don't want immigration restricted.
We have racists that don't want immigration increased.
We have isolationists that don't want immigration increased.
We have businesses that want to stay in business and need workers to do so, yet there aren't enough workers.
We have people that are making money exploiting illegal immigration.
It makes for a complicated problem, especially since a lot of those involved in it have no interest in dealing with the issue honestly and openly.
Theres one other reason why I'm skeptical about the contributions from big business being a major factor.
Unless a political decision harms the economy, it may hurt one company but it will help another company at the same time, so the only time corruption really seems to play a big factor is in an industry that is heavily regulated, because the heavy regulation makes it so that acts by corrupt officials can more easily change the nature of the business.
The issue of immigration, both legal and illegal is a very contentious one, but it's not going to be solved by narrowminded attacks on big business or by ignoring that we do need more workers than what our declining population growth among legal Americans is providing.
The solution is legal immigration of desirable individuals who will contribute to our society.
They don't contribute or they become a burden on society, deport them. If they prove their worth to our society over time, grant them citizenship and welcome them as part of America.
As a matter of fact this is one of the arguments against a blank amnesty plan which I am OPPOSED TO,... that you are rewarding the ones who broke the law... and penalize those who waited, or have been waiting patiently for years through legal channels.
Guess what, this will not be easy to solve... but it must be solved somehow.
That's what I once thought when I lived down in So. Cal, but after much travel I observed that the same jobs you spoke of were taken by American citizens in many other areas of the country. Sure, you gotta pay 'em more, but that's to be expected.
The idea of rounding up and deporting millions of people is also completely impractical and would be politically suicidal for the administration and the GOP.
Agreed. ....it's never going to happen. So the best plan is to persuade the illegals to deport themselves by cutting off all public (taxpayer) benefits and fining employers who hire them. ....in addition to securing the borders to the best of our ability, of course.
So, short term preservation of a party's political power is more important than national security, American jobs, and our borders, language, and culture? Forgive me if I'm not drinking that Kool-Aid with you.
I agree; do anything else is rewarding bad/illegal behavior; the result will be to encourage more, with each individual rewarded, and to others as well, as it sets an example for continued bad/illegal behavior, with the anticipation they will be rewarded, as well.
Something HAS to be done. But the right thing must be done. Rewarding those who have waited in line paitently is one such step.
Actually Clinton was impeached by the House, he was not convicted by the Seante.
The believability plummets, however, when he tries to play grown-up, stammering through his teleprompted policy speeches, demanding we believe nonsense like the notion that limitless legalization isn't amnesty, or that such an amnesty will somehow bring the enforcement he couldn't be bothered with for five years.
You are catching on.
Illegals are screwing our kids out of entry level jobs. They are screwing taxpayers by making it more attractive to live "on the dole". The illegals and welfare loafers are consuming tax revenues via "entitlement" programs.
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