Tancredo doubts he can block amnesty-extension bill

Friday, March 08, 2002 - WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Tancredo takes credit for thwarting the Bush administration's last effort to offer partial amnesty to thousands of illegal residents, but Thursday the outspoken immigration foe said he may have been outmaneuvered by the White House.

President Bush has struck a deal with the House leadership to place legislation that offers an extension of amnesty on its consent calendar before Bush heads to Mexico for a state visit next week, the Colorado Republican said.

That action should ensure quick House passage of legislation that Bush has repeatedly sought from Congress. It would allow an undocumented person to receive legal standing, such as a valid green card, by filing a declaration with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

It presumably also would require the person to have been in the United States by a certain date and have filed a declaration with the INS from an appropriate sponsor, such as a relative or employer, and pay a $1,000 penalty.

"The terms are still up in the air," said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration, a group that has been allied with Tancredo. "We've heard to the effect that the president wants something to bring down to Mexico."

The initial Bush proposal, designed exclusively for Mexicans, once was high on the president's legislative wish list, but it was delayed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. However, as the president noted Wednesday in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, he now is pushing for the extension of the amnesty program known by the section of immigration law that covers it, Section 245I.

The president hailed it as a way to reunite family, separated by the border. "If you believe in family values, if you understand the worth of family and the importance of family, let's get 245I out of the United States Congress and give me a chance to sign it," Bush told the chamber members.

Tancredo, the head of a congressional caucus on immigration issues and proponent of halting virtually all immigration, said he had blocked a previous attempt by Bush to push an extension of the amnesty program through the House. But this time, he said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., had agreed to place the issue on the suspension, or consent, calendar, making it difficult to defeat the proposal.

The Senate might be more favorable to the bill than the House, expanding the numbers of individuals who can apply, Tancredo said.

Suppose YOU tell some of the friends of AmericanInTokyo who spent hundreds of dollars and waited months to legally emigrate to the United States, or who brought spouses from Japan and went through all of the legal channels, what they think of your friend Bush's victory today.

Everyone who used the correct legal channels to immigrate here and their sponsors should file a class action lawsuit against the US government (INS) for a refund of both filing fees and attorney's fees. If we can't make them listen to us, we'll force their hand.

Dane has a problem with the concept of the truth.

LOL! It looks like you have a problem with the truth that immigrants do jobs that most Americans won't do and seem to have virulent animus against the immigrants who bus tables and clean toilets.

BTW..I'm an Irish girl, 30 next week, qualified journalist with over 10 years experience, and quite conservative. Do you think Dubya's gonna hand me a work permit to get into your country? No.

Currently our government is busy giving away all of our engineering jobs, and putting American engineers out of work. Maybe in a couple of years they will start destroying the journalist profession in this country. Just give it time.

It looks like you have a problem with the truth that immigrants do jobs that most Americans won't do and seem to have virulent animus against the immigrants who bus tables and clean toilets.

That's right, Dane. Gotta have our Mexican slaves to scrub our toilets and pick our fruit. You're so righteous!

That's right, Dane. Gotta have our Mexican slaves to scrub our toilets and pick our fruit. You're so righteous!

Oh yeah we go into Mexico and chain people and force them to cross the border./sarcasm

That sounds chillingly similar to South Africa after the handover from the National Party to the ANC when a lot of South Africans lost their jobs to the ANC's version of affirmative action which to this day is a result of a brain drain of professionals out of SA.

Happygal, you can come to the US anytime you want. There are something like 10,000 special visas set aside just for the Irish. So far in the last year only something like 1500 of them have been filled. If you really want to visit us, come on over.

THE IMMIGRATION and Naturalization Service approved one of the men, Mohammed Atta, even though he had previously re-entered the country several times on expired visas and had appeared on an immigration “watch list” as a result.
The visa extensions were approved last July and August, but the letters notifying the school, Huffman Aviation in Venice, Fla., were not mailed until March 5, almost six months after both men died in the suicide attacks. The INS blamed a large backlog of data in old processing equipment.
The visa approvals staggered lawmakers who have called for the nation’s immigration laws to be toughened in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
“The fact that the INS sent out two letters regarding the student visas of two known terrorist hijackers — a full six months after the terrible events of September 11th — is outrageous,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told MSNBC.com via e-mail. “My fear is that it is still business as usual at INS even in the aftermath of the most devastating terror attack on U.S. soil.”
Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate judiciary subcommittee on immigration, said approval of the visas “clearly demonstrates the immediate need for improvements in the data systems and the visa operations at the INS through the Senate’s swift enactment” of legislation she has co-sponsored with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
APPROVAL MAILED LONG AFTER ATTACKS
The two men, Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, are believed to have been at the controls of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
Huffman Aviation received paperwork Monday notifying it that the INS had approved requests by Atta and Al-Shehhi to extend their M-1 student visas, the school’s president, Rudi Dekkers, said in an interview with MSNBC.com.
The visas are required for foreign nationals who are in the country to attend school but often were not treated as a high priority before Sept. 11. Dekkers said it was common for some time to elapse before schools were notified of such approval for their students, but he said a delay of 1½ years was unusual.
AVIATION SCHOOL SAYS IT’S CLEARED
Dekkers said no one from the INS had yet contacted him about the paperwork, which he said he was happy to receive because it laid to rest questions that had been raised about the school’s role in training Atta and Al-Shehhi.
“It shows we handled everything properly,” Dekkers said.
But the development does raise further questions about the INS’s policies on immigration visas. Approval of an extension for Atta apparently was granted even though he had already left the country and returned three times on an expired tourist visa. In addition, he studied at Huffman even though the school had not received the required student visa.
Officials have described Atta as a central figure in their investigation. Investigators say they have uncovered evidence that he met with Islamic extremists in Spain, conferred with an Iraqi intelligence agent and re-entered the United States despite being on the immigration “watch list.”
Once in the country, investigators said, he inquired about crop dusters in Florida and exchanged wire transfers of money with a suspected top aide to Osama bin Laden.

That was great! I'm with you, kiss my vote goodbye. I just listened to Simon on Michael Savage, and he said straight out he's against illegal immigration. Maybe we can get California, then the country, turned around again. Unless, like all the rest (after elected), he turnscoat!

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