Posted on 05/19/2007 11:40:04 AM PDT by Pokey78
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Delegates to the state Republican convention unleashed a rare chorus of boos and hisses at U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss on Saturday, as he spoke up for a bipartisan immigration reform package unveiled in Washington this week.
Hear it for yourself by clicking here.
Chambliss had just finished emphasizing his devotion to border security provisions contained in the measure, and brought up agriculture’s need for temporary, foreign workers.
“We’ve got to face the fact that we’ve got to create a new, truly temporary worker program” — the boos started here, but Chambliss plowed on — “for that segment of our economy that need temporary workers.
“If we don’t have a meaningful, workable program, we’ll simply be dependent on foreign imports for food products, the way we’re dependent on foreign imports for oil products,” Chambliss said, finishing his thought.
After the speech, Chambliss said he took the crowd’s reaction as a lack of popular understanding of the shape of the current immigration system.
Both Chambliss and U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson spoke at a breakfast meeting, then before 1,200 or so delegates who gathered in the Gwinnett County Civic Center.
Isakson was first. He laid out the enforcement and border security aspects of the immigration bill, due to come up before the Senate this week.
His speech was short, and received polite applause. “We have the opportunity and a narrow window to change what has plagued our society for 21 years,” Isakson said.
The current bill does just that, he said, endorsing “citizenship the right way, the naturalized way, the speaking-English way.”
Chambliss, the state’s senior senator who is up for re-election next year, did most of the talking.
He explained that he and Isakson engaged with Democrats — after their attempts to change immigration last year were blocked, in a Republican-controlled Congress.
“Today is a different day in Washington. Republicans are not in control. The Democrats have decided that an immigration bill is coming to the floor.
“We could either sit on the sidelines and we could throw rocks, or we could become engaged and make what we knew was a bad bill, better,” Chambliss said.
But he promised that both he and Isakson were not inalterably committed. “You need to know, you did not elect two potted plants to the Senate,” Chambliss said.
But he also had a word for critics.
“We either come up with a comprehensive immigration package or we have the status quo,” he said.
“Please don’t believe what you hear or see on radio and TV,” Chambliss said. “We’re not asking you to trust us. But give us an opportunity to explain it to you.”
The issue of illegal immigration has the potential to create a serious split in the party, on a state and national level.
“If this gets categorized as amnesty, it could cause the party to split next year, particularly if the top of the ticket is viewed as too liberal,” said Mark Rountree, a political strategist who works with Republican candidates.
By liberal, he meant former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Rountree wants former Tennessee senator and actor Fred Thompson in the ’08 presidential race.
Immigration is yet another of those issues that where the fault line separates the business community from the ideological base of the party.
Supporters of the immigration bill backed by Chambliss and Isakson include Gary Black, a former candidate for state agriculture commissioner.
“We just can’t turn our heads anymore. We’ve got to find some resolution,” Black said.
He’s a member of a group formed only in the last few weeks, called Georgia Employers for Immigration Reform.
He just called his party delegates ignorant.
I read every word of your open letter twice. It expresses every thought that has been swirling around in my head. Thank you for the post.
No Saxby/Johnny, you can f-i-l-i-b-u-s-t-e-r.
These are my senators, they are throwing away my vote.
“I am so tired of hearing Americans don’t understand. What a crock”
Amen to That!!
I'm waiting for one of these Republican Senators to accidentally burst out with: "But guys, we've got to do this! Our bosses at Goldman Sachs will force our immediate resignations if we don't!" ;)
Get rid of welfare and all the other handouts, people will do these jobs then.
Re-write: Chambliss said he took the election results as Washington's lack of understanding of the effect of pissed off constituents.
What's wrong with hiring high school and college students like in the old days?
Every day is a different day in Washington.
Republicans are not in control.
Republicans were (spending) out of control and leaderless when they were "in control".
The Democrats have decided that an immigration bill is coming to the floor.
No, El Presidente decided to pursue this, along with RINO gang leaders, cheap labor whores, LULAC and La Raza. Isolating democrats as the only heavies is disingenuous and cowardly.
“We could either sit on the sidelines and we could throw rocks, or we could become engaged and make what we knew was a bad bill, better,” Chambliss said.
B.S. ultimately, El Presidente has veto power, forcing a congressional vote to overcome the veto if he would choose to use it, which he won't because HE and his cronies wants this to happen.
Stick a fork in it, the GOP is dead and our nation is in ICU with a toe tag labeled "EXPECTANT".
It's REAL simple, Senator:
ENFORCE EXISTING IMMIGRATION LAW AND DEPORT ILLEGAL LAWBREAKERS
FINE AND IMPRISON EMPLOYERS WHO BREAK THE LAW
BUILD A WALL. NOW.
"Can't never did".
“Don’t worry though, this will never pass the House.”
Don’t bet on it.
Ditto! Excellent letter ExTexas!
I can’t take any credit for that letter. It was posted here on FR yesterday as a thread. I have, however, copied it and sent it to most of my personal address book and asked everyone to send it to their elected moron and to send it to their address book. I urge everyone to copy it and send it in either via email or hardcopy. Congressional “in your face” arrogance is reprehensible.
At some point, the American people have to make themselves heard. This may very well be the hot topic to wake everyone up before it is too late. We are fighting for our children and grandchildren’s futures. What part of the word “illegal” do the airheads in DC not understand? If they’re that stupid, I say send them home ASAP. IMO, the current crop of idiots in DC are a disgrace to our American heritage.
Saxby is one of mine- used to think he was a good guy.
He just placed himself in the "I am a braying, elitist jackass" column, and I will move heaven and earth to see him replaced.
Even a dam' Democrat might be better.
The free trade/globalist GOP don’t care. The amounts of money they will make from globalism and cheap immigrant labor will more offset the costs of dealing with the Dems. Catering to the conservatives means they will never make the money they want.
Exactly. I don’t know why these tone deaf Pubs including W, just cannot do two bills. First, enforce the borders, train 18,000, use tech, drones , trucks , TV et al. Even bring home some European based troops to man the borders while training commences. Then two years from now, do the visa, sanctions bit. Bush is just so nice , it galls me. Charity begins at home not in Mexico.
Saxby Chambliss. One of the reasons enforcement stopped in the first place.
Why & When workplace enforcement of illegal aliens stopped
Politicians count on constituent ignorance and poor memory. Anything over a 30 second soundbite gets by most of us. And just because a politician says today that immigration enforcement is important, doesn’t mean he always felt that way.
Workplace raids by INS were frequent until the late 1990’s. A spring 1998 sweep that targeted the Vidalia onion harvest in Georgia, and Operation Vanguard, a 1999 INS operation on meatpacking plants in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota, provide case studies of how the immigration laws fared when confronted by a coalition that included low-wage immigrant workers and the industries that hire them.
The Georgia raids netted 4,034 illegal immigrants, prompting other unauthorized workers to stay home.
Instead of being applauded for enforcing the law, the INS came under attack from Georgia’s congressional delegation. Georgia’s two senators and three of its House members, led by then-Sen. Paul Coverdell (R) and Rep. Jack Kingston (R), complained in a letter to Washington that the INS did not understand the needs of America’s farmers. The raids stopped.
Sen. Paul Coverdell condemned the INS for its “military-style” raid “against honest farmers,” calling it “an indiscriminate and inappropriate use of extreme enforcement tactics.”
He then insisted the INS not raid Georgia agricultural fields and crafted a ‘temporary work’ program for the state of Georgia with the INS that allowed undocumented workers to stay ‘legally’ in the U.S. The same has happened in other states like Oregon, and Washington at the insistence of their elected representatives.
Top agency officials issued a memo to field offices nationwide, telling them that they had to give employers 24 hours’ warning before they launched future raids on their workplaces, and demanding that top officials in Washington be notified before any further raids were launched.
Before that incident, the INS had been arresting and deporting almost 1,500 illegal immigrants a month. By 2003 workplace arrests of illegal immigrants for the entire year totaled 445. In 2004, just three businesses nationwide were fined for employing illegal immigrants. In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies.
The Macon Telegraph described the episode, “ Farmers and immigration officials came to terms on migrant labor issues Friday morning, ending the siege on Georgia’s sweet onion fields. But a storm of criticism from the state’s congressional delegation of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s action is brewing on the horizon. Eight members of Congress signed an angry letter Friday afternoon to three of the Clinton administration’s top cabinet officers, blasting the INS for its timing”
“The opposition to enforcement was so great that it changed the direction the INS took,” said Gordon Hanson, immigrant expert and economics professor at the University of California-San Diego.
Said Doris Meissner, INS commissioner from 1993 to 2000: “Those things affect an agency’s morale. You go out of your way to make it work, then it comes to nothing. Very demoralizing.”
Operation Vanguard met a similar fate. Nebraska’s members of Congress at first called for tougher enforcement, recalled Mark Reed, then INS director of operations. But when the result shut down some plants, “all hell broke loose,” he said.
Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns (R), who was governor at the time, appointed a task force to oppose the operation. Former governor Ben Nelson (D), now a U.S. senator, was hired as a lobbyist by meatpackers and ranchers. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) pressured the Justice Department to stop.
Republican Rep. Jack Kingston has since stated “Employers in roofing and poultry and other areas will say, `Immigrants will work longer and harder,’ “ he said. Still, he has moved from being one of the 1998 defenders of the onion growers — “For us, it was just constituent work,” he said — to becoming an outspoken proponent of get-tough immigrant proposals.
Now, he said he believes businesses should be required to verify an employee’s legal status. He also is in favor of harsher penalties for employers who violate immigration laws.
He doesn’t, however, think such sanctions will be part of any new bill.
“The business lobby,” he said, “is too strong.”
Lobbyist and White house guru, Grover Norquist, a force behind the verification weakening, said: “The idea was that our job is to enforce the present rules that don’t work — rather than change the rules.”
Or in Norquist’s case, just do away with any border/immigration enforcement.
By 2000, according to INS figures, the estimated number of illegal immigrants had risen to 7 million, from 3.5 million in 1990.
http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-when-workplace-enforcement-of.html
Inspections of Vidalia onion fields of Georgia in May 1998 brought a rebuke from then Rep. and now Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), who accused immigration officials of using “bullying tactics” to root out illegal workers. Today, Chambliss is a leader of the get-tough-on-illegal-immigration faction of the Republican party, and argues that the US needs to step up both border and interior enforcement.
http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=1111_0_4_0
See post #36. And don’t forget that Newt was in that delegation.
And if we don't trust you, why should we believe anything you say? If the old law isn't enforced the new one won't be either.
That bears repeating. This was not a cross-section of constituents who get their facts from the top-of-the-hour news bytes. Chambliss either didn't grasp that or didn't care. Either way, it's a breathtaking display of what representative government has become.
They wish. The people understand exactly. What I can't figure is how *lawmakers* expect to have any power whatever as soon as they make open contempt for law acceptable. Because there are a few dozen pieces of legislation I can readily get 10-15 million people to flout, if they want to go that route. At the end of which they will be a useless debating society.
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