WH Backs New Immigration Plan

A White House plan devised with Republican senators would grant work visas to undocumented immigrants but require them to return home and pay hefty fines to become legal U.S. residents.

The draft immigration legislation is the first stab ... to address the presence of 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants ...

Under the plan, undocumented workers could apply for three-year work visas, which the plan dubs "Z" visas. They would be renewable indefinitely but renewal would cost $3,500 each time.

The undocumented workers would have legal status with the visas, but to get a green card, making them legal permanent residents, they'd have to return to their home country, apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate to re-enter legally and pay a $10,000 fine.

The plan also tries to make border security a priority by requiring 18,300 Border Patrol agents and 370 miles of physical fencing be in place, as well as electronic monitoring of the southern border ongoing before a temporary worker program could start.

The plan is far more conservative than the one the Senate approved last year with bipartisan backing and support from President Bush. That plan, whose principal architects were Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., allowed illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S., work and apply to become legal residents after learning English, paying fines and back taxes and clearing a background check.

Kennedy appeared at a news conference in support of immigration reform with evangelical leaders, including Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty. The leaders said they plan to exhort their congregations to push lawmakers ...

Lou Dobbs Tonight/Broken Borders aired 3/22/07

These are the LEGAL foreign workers, etc. we allow in now.

There's a lot of distortion here. I think it's important to get these facts out.

Two million people legally admitted to the United States each year. In addition - 14 percent of those, by the way, those people given permanent residency are from Mexico. Two million people legally admitted to the United States. Four hundred thousand skilled foreign workers and their families receive H-1 visas each year.

Nearly 900,000 other legal foreign workers are admitted on some type of employment visa.

Six-hundred sixty thousand student visas are issued every year.

And 455,000 people given temporary employment transfers.

Help me out. What are we trying to do here? I mean, we have a lawful immigration system that brings in 2 million people a year, plus all of these other workers that overwhelms any other immigration system in the world. All of Russia, all of the European Union combined can't even come close to matching our immigration levels. And that's a population 40 percent higher than our own. Help me out.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0703/22/ldt.01.html

My plan requires those with less than 5 years to leave the country and wait until their turn comes up. It allows those 5 years or more to pre-register and be pre-screened. If they pass screening, they can pay a yearly fee to stay while they wait in the back of the line for citizenship.

Your "plan" is unworkable. How do you propose ensuring compliance to get those millions who have been here less than five years to leave and get to the back of the line. What incentive do they have? The way we grant immigrant visas to the US involves background checks, police checks [US and host country,] physcials, etc. What are the "sticks" for non-compliance. Why would someone who was concerned about not meeting the standards, leave the US and put himself at risk for not getting back in? How long do you think they should wait in the back of the line in their host country? What do you mean by the "back of the line?" There are millions of cleared, legal immigrants today waiting in line overseas because there are annual caps on their particular categories of immigration. Would these illegals go ahead of these people?

The fact is that we don't have the administrative resources to handle what we are supposed to be doing now. Adding another 12 to 20 million people to this process is not possible without a massive increase in USG employees. And it would spawn a huge brueaucracy. I can also imagine the legal challenges that would arise from groups like the ACLU and La Raza should we try to deport any families, and the Dems would demagog the issue.

So they might become citizens, but only after everybody who followed the legal procedure are served, and then only under the quota system, not an automatic right like the democrat's plan.

Living and working in the US under a legalized status is reward enough. Would you allow them to bring in their wives and children so their families could be reunited?

The republican plan seems to NOT grant automatic citizenship to all the illegals. It could be the basis for something that is tolerable. At LEAST read the plan and consider it in light of the alternative before rejecting it and essentially chosing Kennedy's bill. Cut of your nose to spite your face if you like to torture yourself, but do it in an informed way.

It has less to do with citizenship and more to do with legalizing their status. We are permitting them to stay and work here. And given the impact of chain migration, granting millions more that privilege. Passing such legislation without demonstrating that we can secure our borders and enforce existing immigration laws is a prescription for the destruction of the US. We can't continue to assimilate these kinds of numbers and to take in the poor and undeducated of Latin America. Eventually, the life boat gets swamped and we all go down with it.

Charles, I beg you to read what the Latino movement REALLY wants from us. Nothing less than total and complete amnesty.

On May lst, another protest march and boycott will take place. Listen to the message being sent to the US people. THEY are going to again, demand what they perceive to be theirs. No borders, and no such thing as a person being an illegal.

Nothing short of this, not even your plan will satisfy them untill the two Nations are blended as one. NOTHING!

Prove me wrong, Charles.

"The plan also tries to make border security a priority...."

That's the problem exactly. We have been "trying" to seal the border for many years but don't have the will to really do it.

>>But if the Kennedy bill gets passed, the illegals are all getting amnesty, they will never have to leave....<<

Under the Bush plan they don't have to leave either, as long as they pay money.

OK, imagine I am an illegal from Aguascalientes. I work in the USA and I go back to see the family once a year. Since I would have to pay coyotes more, and I run the risk of getting robbed or shot if I go with the coyote, I don't mind paying $3500 for 3 years at all.

Also, all my cousins in Aguascalientes are coming to live in the USA, because we know that it's only a matter of time until we will all get some kind of legal status. I expect that all our children and grandchildren will come too when they are old enough.

>>We did the "no compromise" thing last year, and now we have a democrat congress to deal with so it's no likely we'll get what we want. And if we push republicans to throw out their plan, the democrats will PASS their plan.

This isn't like an election where two years later you get to go again with the right candidate. If the democrats pass their immigration bill, we will NEVER get to pass another one.<<

This way of thinking worked out really well for Czechoslovakia in 1938. "If we don't give up the Sudatenland, Hitler will take the whole country." It seems to me like very wishful thinking. We have 15,000,000 illegals now, but in 10 years, when we have 25,000,000, we will be in better shape to pass another bill to fix the problem?

I will study what the plan says, but Bush's recent actions have turned me from a loyal supporter to one who very strongly distrusts him.

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