Posted on 06/13/2007 3:17:00 AM PDT by conservativecorner
In a rare visit to Capitol Hill, President Bush pressed Republican senators yesterday to resurrect the compromise overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, but many of the senators instead demanded that his administration first show a more determined commitment to border security.
The visit was the first time in five years that Bush had come to the Capitol for the Republican senators' weekly policy luncheon. He and senior administration officials painted the meeting -- coming five days after the collapse on the Senate floor of the tenuous compromise on immigration -- as a rescue session. Bush made an impassioned plea for the legislation, saying "the status quo is unacceptable."
"Now is the time to move a comprehensive bill that enforces our borders and has good workplace enforcement, that doesn't grant automatic citizenship, that addresses this problem in a comprehensive way," he said after the lunch.
Although senators described the meeting as cordial, even jovial, they also said the president's efforts to rally GOP support did not win any converts. "We're off the bill. We ought to stay off the bill for a while," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), one of the bill's sternest critics.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) marveled at the president's passion and commitment. But, he added: "We didn't expect anyone to stand up and holler that they had an epiphany."
And, apparently, nobody did.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This could be a new way to solve the border problem.
Immigrants run gauntlet of dangers in quest for better life
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 06/12/2007 12:00:00 AM MDT
Mari, 33, started her journey to the United States with a simple dream: that her daughters in Mexico would have a better life than she had. As a child, Mari was forced to quit school and work for poverty wages and later was left to fend for herself and her children by a philandering husband.
“I immigrated so that my daughters won’t have to come here,” said Mari, who asked that her full name not be used because she is an undocumented immigrant.
She did make it to the United States late last year, but her dream stayed behind. While crossing into El Paso, a train rolled over her left foot, leaving her maimed. She spent several months recovering at a migrant shelter Downtown before leaving last week to continue her trek to the interior of the United States.
Stories of dead migrants fill the news but those permanently injured in their travels don’t register in official statistics.
Other tallies from nongovernmental agencies, rehabilitation facilities and the Mexican consulate show migrants have been left handicapped by car accidents,
Advertisement
Click Here!
train accidents and falls from international bridges more often than one might think. Staff at Precision Prosthetics in El Paso, which helped Mari after her amputation, said that they have cared for three migrants who lost limbs in the past six years.
Train accidents are most unforgiving.
Last year, 530 people died and 466 people were injured while trespassing on railroad property around the nation, according to statistics by the Federal Railroad Administration.
In the El Paso area, the last case of immigrants killed by trains took place in 2005, according to the Border Patrol and the Mexican Consulate. Officials at Annunciation House, the shelter where Mari stayed, said they see about one migrant per year who’s been seriously injured by a train.
Some were trying to board trains; others were walking or even sleeping on the tracks, believing erroneously that it would protect them from snakes.
Mari, a short, stout woman with braided hair and thick, curled eyelashes, did not mean to be on railroad tracks last December. She just wanted to cross the train yard and carry out a plan set in motion months before.
Fateful calculations
Mari comes from a small town in Central Mexico called Amecameca, population 25,374, nestled at the foot of volcanoes. The picturesque setting does not shield residents from poverty, however.
Mari’s husband had left her for another woman and Mari was living with her mother and her two daughters, ages 13 and 15, Mari said. Mari worked at a stocking factory, making 800 pesos, or $74, a week.
This was fine when the girls were small, but now that the oldest was in preparatoria, or high school, the fees were adding up. Each week she had to pay $23 for transportation and $7 for attendance fees. Soon, her youngest daughter would be in high school as well and her oldest daughter was already talking about going to medical school. Mari’s wages just weren’t going to be enough.
For months, the family discussed the possibility of Mari going to work for a while in the United States. Mari’s sister had done so eight years earlier. She said it was easy, that she had just walked across the river holding her husband’s hand. She offered to help Mari with the smuggling costs and to find her a factory job in the Midwest.
On Nov. 15, 2006, having paid $400 upfront to a smuggler and promised another $2,000 when she started working, Mari boarded a plane to Juárez. The plane ride cost $112, but Mari didn’t want to waste time and money on buses, hotels and thieves on the way. She wanted to get to the border fast.
She landed the same day and took a taxi to Downtown Juárez to a safe house. That night, she tried crossing the Rio Grande for the first time. With hearts beating, Mari and other migrants waded through the ankle-deep water and hid to wait for the Border Patrol SUVs to pass them. But they were spotted and ran back to Mexico.
The trains
The group tried to cross seven times, sometimes going far into the valley of Juárez, sometimes staying closer to Downtown. Five times, Mari was caught by the Border Patrol, fingerprinted and returned to Mexico.
“There were children in the holding cells. I felt horrible, I was thinking of my family,” she said.
Before their final crossing, Mari made a pact with another female immigrant.
“You know what? This is going to be the last time I’ll try,” she told her friend. They agreed to return home if they failed.
But that day, Dec. 4, 2006, they finally made it to El Paso. Their guide pulled a chain link fence up and they snuck under.
On the other side were trains.
They were in a Union Pacific rail yard, probably in Downtown El Paso. They ran under one parked train, then started under a second one. That’s when Mari’s loose pants got caught on the rail. She frantically pulled on the fabric as the train started rolling. The wheels rolled over her ankle, crushing it.
“I sat down. I saw how my feet were. But I didn’t feel anything,” Mari said.
The guide disappeared. Another migrant called the police and an ambulance took Mari to Thomason Hospital. Her last thought before passing out was “I can’t walk. How am I going to help my daughters get a better life,” she said.
Since 1994, almost 6,500 people have been killed while trespassing on railroad rights-of-way and property, according to the Federal Railroad Administration.
“Sadly, we do have a problem — the railroad industry in general. It’s a challenge for us.” said Joe Arbona, Union Pacific regional director of public affairs.
Last year, 64,000 people were escorted out of Union Pacific property nationwide, including 40,000 people who did not have identifying documents. Many of them could be immigrants, Arbona said.
People may think they will be able to get off the rails on time, but “Trains are not as loud as they used to be. They don’t have that clickety-clack sound,” Arbona said.
It takes a train a mile and a half to stop, Arbona said.
Two undocumented immigrants were killed by trains near El Paso in 2005, one in Fort Hancock, and one in Santa Teresa, Border Patrol officials said.
But not all of the trains’ victims die.
In 2002, Pablo Umaña, a 16-year-old from Puebla with a pregnant girlfriend, crossed into the United States near the Asarco copper smelter. He fell asleep on the train tracks and lost his left leg, officials from the Mexican consulate said. Officials said Umaña thought it would be warmer to sleep on the tracks. After treatment, the teenager returned to Mexico.
Walking again
When Mari woke up at Thomason Hospital, she found herself in a hospital room with her leg bandaged.
“They said I lost my foot. I already knew it,” she said.
Mari’s leg had been amputated below the knee, the most common type of amputation, representing more than half of the amputee population, according to the American Academy of Orthotists and Prosthetists.
Her care at Thomason Hospital was paid for by the hospital’s indigent care fund. The Mexican Consulate paid $1,500 for her foot prosthesis, done by Precision Prosthesis on Arizona Street. Her prosthesis was fitted in February and Mari had to learn to walk again with a contraption that rubbed painfully against her stump.
During one of her weekly visits to Precision, prosthetist Bryan Humble tried to reassure Mari, whose eyes kept overflowing with tears.
“Don’t worry, it will all be better,” he said.
Humble said amputees grieve over their lost limbs and that some go through serious depression.
Most amputations are due to vascular diseases, most often the result of diabetes. Only 23 percent come from accidents. Because accidental amputations, like Mari’s, tend to happen to younger people, they have a greater degree of recovery. And because Mari still had a working knee, she would one day walk in a natural fashion, Humble said.
The walls of Precision’s offices are plastered with photos of amputees in high-tech prostheses zooming down ski slopes and jumping hurdles, muscular and healthy.
But Mari didn’t seem to see them through her tears.
Walking was not what she was worried about.
She worried about being able to work and provide for her daughters.
She often thought about the accident, she said. Had she known it would happen, she would have stayed in Mexico, she said. But now that she lost a foot, going home was unthinkable.
“I can’t go back like this, all defeated,” she said.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_6117884
The tree of liberty is looking dry these days, like it desperately needs watering...
Where's it going to be? Here - or Mexico?
On a hillside in Oaxaca.
Since the democrats agree with the Amensty wing of the GOP, switching to the democratic party probably won't get their attention.
Switching a 3rd party, however, would get their attention.
Since the democrats agree with the Amnesty wing of the GOP, switching to the democratic party probably won't get their attention.
Switching a 3rd party, however, would get their attention.
Sessions should tell the President to go elsewhere. Maybe appear somewhere on behalf of his buddies, McCain or Lindsey Graham. I can not imagine anyone going to the Sessions rally that would be moved to contribute to his campaign due to the presence of GWB.
And that's only possible if you cost-shift some of the benefits -- like health care costs via the emergency rooms -- to the taxpayer.
The bigger problem is that the real costs of illegals already cost more than legal workers. The industries that in the illegal immigrant racket are passing their costs on to the taxpayer.
When an illegal comes in and offers to work for $3 less an hour then that sounds like a bargain. The problem is that the illegal will have children that will burden the public school system at an average cost of around $6000 per year per child.
The illegals will also not have health insurance and will have to use the emergency room as a general practice physician substitute. This costs the hospitals huge amounts of money and many just end up closing their emergency rooms.
But we have a law from 1996 which requires the government to set up both an entry and exit tracking system. We don’t have the exit system set up yet, which is why we don’t know people overstayed their visas.
The Bush administration seems to have failed to implement that law.
Well, the other 60 percent of illegals apparently enter illegally, so border security would put a damper on that.
Meanwhile, Chertoff, you have said DHS cannot track overstays nearly six years after 9-11.
So do us all a favor and resign, so maybe someone else can spend more time doing their job and less time whining about being unable to do their job as "proof" that we need this abomination of an immigration bill.
When the DHS was created I had serious concerns. I feared that it would just turn into yet another ominous alphabet agency that sucked up taxpayer dollars and really did nothing but erode the rights and liberties of the People.
We have too many agencies as it is. Let the FBI, NSA and CIA share info and we don't even need the DHS. The same with the TSA.
ROFL. My first laugh of the day!
McConnell could be playing a public relations game. It’s hard to read him, but he’s done really well so far on other issues, and made Reid look really bad, so I think we should give him a little slack but keep up the pressure.
The same old red herring lie. It doesn't give automatic CITIZENSHIP, but it does grant automatic Z-visa LEGAL STATUS FOR LIFE, with full access to health, education, welfare for the anchor babies etc etc etc etc etc. FOR LIFE, and the lives of the extended familias.
.jpg)
Fred Thompson is far more conservative than McInsane.
During the eight years that Thompson and McCain served together, they cast votes on 102 CQ-defined key votes and agreed on 83 of them - or 81.4 percent of the time. They disagreed 18.6% of the time, that’s pretty high considering that both are Republicans and both are considered relatively conservative. Just as an example from one year, among the instances in which Thompson and McCain differed were votes in 2002 to effectively extend a repeal of the estate tax beyond 2010, to authorize oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and to postpone tougher automobile fuel efficiency standards. Thompson voted “aye” and McCain voted “no” in all three cases.
Thompson was also the lone holdout in several 99-1 senate votes. He was against mandatory seat belt laws and mandated
blood alcohol levels in two of the votes.
I think Bush had this planned all along. When he was running for re election in 2004 he told his campaign people that illegal immigration was, “off the table.”
I think he left the borders open until the numbers were overwhelming so he figured that the only thing to do is legalize all of them. Way to go Rove. You really screwed up this time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.