Posted on 04/26/2006 5:20:12 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
President Bush generally favors plans to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at U.S. citizenship without leaving the country, but does not want to be more publicly supportive because of opposition among conservative House Republicans, according to senators who attended a recent White House meeting.
Several officials familiar with the meeting also said Democrats protested radio commercials that blamed them for Republican-written legislation that passed the House and would make illegal immigrants vulnerable to felony charges.
Bush said he was unfamiliar with the ads, which were financed by the Republican National Committee, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
At another point, Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other members of his party pressed the president about their concern that any Senate-passed bill would be made unpalatable in final talks with the House.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat, said the lawmaker who would lead House negotiators, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, had been "intractable" in negotiations on other high-profile bills in the past. Bush did not directly respond to the remark, officials said.
The Republican and Democratic officials who described the conversation did so Wednesday on condition of anonymity, saying they had not been authorized to disclose details.
Bush convened the session to give momentum to the drive for election-year immigration legislation, a contentious issue that has triggered large street demonstrations and produced divisions in both political parties. Senators of both parties emerged from the session praising the president's involvement and said the timetable was achievable.
"Yes, he thinks people should be given a path to citizenship," said Sen. Mel Martinez., R-Fla., a leading supporter of immigration legislation in the Senate.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
And, I'll add that this third world invasion is not limited to just the "Border States". I see it here in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York.
I can safely say that if it hasn't come to your state yet, it soon will. And, I'm waiting for my President to stop it but I'm running out of breath.
" Bush IS A MODERATE"
He's a one world socialist and with campaign finance, spending, no child left behind, medicare drugs, CAFTA,and wanting to legalize illegal aliens for starters all with the help of a left wing Republican Congress he has done more damage to this nation than any President since Roosevelt.
You don't think it's plausible that Bush wants the illegals to become citizens?
What has he said or done that would indicate his true belief is anything other than that?
Bush, senators agree on alien citizenship, shut out critics
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 26, 2006
President Bush and a group of senators yesterday reached general agreement on an immigration bill that includes a pathway to citizenship for many illegal aliens.
But left out of the closed-door White House meeting were senators who oppose a path to citizenship. The meeting even snubbed two men who had been considered allies of Mr. Bush on immigration -- Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican and chairman of the immigration subcommittee, and Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican.
Mr. Bush in brief remarks to the press said there was agreement to get "a bill that does not grant automatic amnesty to people, but a bill that says, somebody who is working here on a legal basis has the right to get in line to become a citizen." But senators, speaking afterward, said Mr. Bush was far more specific in the meeting.
"There was a pretty good consensus that what we have put into the Hagel-Martinez proposal here is the right way to go," said Sen. Mel Martinez, Florida Republican. "I think he was very clear [on] pathway to citizenship, so long as it goes to the back of the line, and he even opened the door here for something we've haggled back and forth on, that you can shrink the time for people to become citizens by simply enlarging the number of green cards."
And Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, said Mr. Bush "endorsed the concept of an earned citizenship."
That would represent a substantial change on the part of the Bush administration, which just last year said it opposed a path to citizenship for those currently here illegally.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the Senate Judiciary Committee in October the administration didn't support "a path through which they can get their permanent residence or citizenship," and Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao echoed that: "We feel that a pathway to citizenship would reward those who have violated our laws."
The Hagel-Martinez bill would divide illegal aliens into three groups. Most of those who have been in the country for more than five years would be granted access to citizenship, those here more than two years but less than five years would have to go home first but would also be eligible for citizenship, while those here two years or less would not have a path.
Even as Mr. Bush is moving in that direction, the House majority leader yesterday rejected it.
"This idea that was being kicked around the Senate about providing some sort of amnesty for those who have been here five years or more, I just think it was a very big mistake," House Majority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said yesterday. "You are just inviting more people to come."
Still, the senators in yesterday's meeting were thrilled with where the debate is, and the direction Mr. Bush is headed.
"He hasn't endorsed the Senate bill, but I think it's a big step forward in that direction and gives assurances that if we pass legislation of that sort, that we'll have support from the president when we get into conference," said Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Who happen to be americans
Your posts are just dripping
We have "gates"? Where are they? How many "gates" are there? Who "shut" them and who opened them? How many keys are there, and who holds them?
Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Broken record.
Excellent post.
Oh please
How GULLIBLE can people be?
You actually believe that the President met with Republican and Democrat senators, and during the meeting said he really secretly supported amnesty, but couldn't say it publicly because he'd upset the conservatives?
You must really think the President is stupid. Well, he isn't.
I bet some of those "conservative" senators were in that meeting, and came away with a different impression.
I've been called a Bush-bot simply for supporting, on the basis of my own interpretation of facts, things the president supports.
What name should we give to people who blindly believe that the president would tell Harry Reid something that he wanted to keep "private".
In the tri-state area of NY, NJ and Connecticut they estimate 2 million illegals but it's probably a lot more than that. And the bad news is it's just getting started.
Not really.
FEATHERING THEIR NESTS
Mexican Officials Line Their Pockets While Demanding U.S. Help
Contact: Prof. George Grayson, gwgray@wm.edu or (757) 221-3031.
WASHINGTON (April 2006) -- Mexican politicians continuously demand increased immigrant visas for their citizens, an expanded guest-worker program, and amnesty for their illegal aliens living north of the Rio Grande. But while Mexico expects the United States to solve its social problems by allowing the border to serve as a safety-valve for job seekers, its government officials enjoy princely lifestyles and spend little of the nation's wealth on education and health care, which are crucial elements in promoting social mobility.
In a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, ''Mexican Officials Feather Their Nests While Decrying U.S. Immigration Policy,'' William and Mary government professor George W. Grayson outlines the lavish salaries and benefits that Mexico's governing elite pays itself, as well as the minimal investments it makes in the country's social development.
The report, on line at http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back306.html , includes the following findings:
* President Vicente Fox ($236,693) makes more than the leaders of France ($95,658), the U.K. ($211,434), or Canada ($75,582).
* Although they are in session only a few months a year, members of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies make $148,000 -- substantially more than their counterparts in France ($78,000), Germany ($105,000), and congressmen throughout Latin America. At the end of the last three-year term, Mexican deputies voted themselves a $28,000 ''leaving-office bonus.''
* Members of the 32 state legislatures earn on average twice the amount earned by U.S. state legislators ($60,632 vs. $28,261). The salaries and bonuses of the lawmakers in Baja California ($158,149), Guerrero ($129,630), and Guanajuato ($111,358) exceed the salaries of legislators in California ($110,880), the District of Columbia ($92,500), Michigan ($79,650), and New York ($79,500).
* Average salaries (plus Christmas stipends known as aguinaldos) place the average compensation of Mexican governors at $125,759, which exceeds by almost $10,000 the mean earnings of their U.S. counterparts ($115,778). On average, governors received aguinaldos of $14,346 in 2005 -- a year when 60 percent of Mexicans received no year-end bonuses.
* In 2002 Mexico earmarked only 6.1 percent of its GDP for health care. Mexico trailed Argentina (8.9%), Barbados (6.9%), Brazil (7.9%), Colombia (8.1%), Costa Rica (9.3%), Cuba (7.50 %), El Salvador (8.0%), Haiti (7.6%), and Nicaragua (7.9%).
* Mexico devoted just 5.3 percent of GDP to education in 2002, behind Barbados (7.6%), Cuba (9%), Honduras (7.2%), and Uruguay (8.5%).
George W. Grayson is the Class of 1938 Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary. Random House-Mondadori has just published Mesias Mexicano, his book on Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the front-runner in the July 2 Mexican presidential election.
The judges wanted to let you know that this post has won the honors of "The Dumbest Post of the Day."
You win a seven-day, all expenses paid trip to Cancun, where Mexicans will cater to your every whim.
Kind of like the word conservative isn't it. You have your everyday run of the mill conservatives, the "true conservatives" and the "real conservsatives".
Therefore, I nominate this guy for U.S. President--- because he's willing to do the job an American refuses to do.
During a break, someone on FNC read off the numbers of all of the illegals prevented from crossing our borders, caught other illegals and sent them home ( something never seen here, nor in the MSM ) during the past 6 years ( and they are far higher than under Clinton ), which were in the many tens of millions.
Obviously, you'd much prefer to talk about what you imagine, rather than to deal in hard, cold, facts.
Well I can't tell you haven't been paying attention for the last 60 years
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