Free Republic

PHOENIX (Reuters) - For day laborers seeking work in a sun-baked parking lot on Thursday, defeat of U.S. President George W. Bush's plans for an immigration overhaul has set back their dreams of a normal life. The bill, which sought to give legal status to many of the 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, failed to get enough support in a make-or-break vote in the U.S. Senate. Workers standing around in searing heat outside a building materials store in Phoenix said hopes of an aboveboard life in this country of immigrants had crashed following news of the...

  June 18, 2007Setting the Record Straight: Illegal Immigrants Will Receive Welfare Under Senate Bill by Robert E. Rector WebMemo #1509  In criticizing recent Heritage Foundation research on the cost of low-skill immigration and amnesty, proponents of the Senate immigration legislation (S. 1348), including Administration spokesmen, have falsely claimed that the proposal would not give illegal immigrants access to the U.S. welfare system.[1] While provisions of the Senate bill would delay illegal immigrants' access to welfare for several years, over time nearly all amnesty recipients would be offered legal permanent residence and access to more than 60 federal means-tested welfare...

Now that the president has tried to revive the comatose Senate amnesty bill, at least as big a question as whether he can bring it back to life is why on earth he would want to? Sure, he wants a win because he hasn't had one lately. Sure, he wants a (gulp) legacy because it's that clock-ticking time in his second term. But why this particular attempted win, which his political base sees only as betrayal? Why this hoped-for legacy, which would eliminate him from any conservative pantheon? "It's a very emotional issue." That's what the president says by way...

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, all. Thank you. Thanks for coming. I'm proud to be with you, glad to be back with the Associated Builders and Contractors. I appreciate your organization. I didn't realize you were founded in 1950 -- about the same time a piano nearly fell through the roof at the White House. (Laughter.) Thereby causing Harry Truman to decide to renovate it. And for that, Laura and I are very grateful. (Laughter.) I am grateful for your organization, as well. I thank you for being builders, doers and dreamers. I thank you for being people who are willing...

On his radio talk show last Friday, dittohead in chief Rush Limbaugh was working himself into quite a lather. The subject? Immigration reform, specifically the controversial immigration bill now before the Senate -- or, as Limbaugh dubbed it, the Comprehensive Destroy the Republican Party Act. Though Limbaugh pummeled his usual targets on the left, complaining that the current immigration reform proposal was yet another Ted Kennedy-led scheme to destroy America, Limbaugh was also unsparing toward national Republicans: At the end of the day here, what we're talking about is the marginalization, if not the destruction, of the Republican Party. Look,...

RUSH: I was going to call in to the show on Friday and do some minor gloating and take a little credit here for the immigration bill being pulled, but right about the time I hit my third birdie on the front nine I said, "To hell with it, I'm going to keep playing golf." Besides, in all candor, it's not dead. It's still on life support. The president's going to meet with some people: Congress, GOP, probably Ted Kennedy, too, sometime tomorrow. It may even go up to the Capitol. The original meeting was supposed to be lunch at...

Its 790 pages of confusion. S. 1348, The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act is an attempt to bring impenetrable opaqueness to a subject that is already unclear.

When the immigration reform bill stalled in the Senate yesterday, President Bush may have been the most disappointed, having lost a chance at adding a signature domestic achievement to his legacy. Whether there will be a chance to salvage the effort is unclear — and so is the impact of all this on the presidential race. John McCain couldn't have been happy seeing the bill he co-sponsored hung up, maybe never to be resurrected. Throughout debates and testy campaign exchanges with his GOP rivals, McCain never wavered in his support for this particular reform. When party activists cried "amnesty," McCain...

An Ohio sheriff who billed the federal government for the cost of jailing criminal aliens and asked Mexico to reimburse him in his fight against Mexican-based drug rings says the Senate's failure to pass an immigration-reform bill is reason enough for states to target illegal aliens themselves. "It seems that maybe the 'silent majority' was heard after all by federal legislators," said Richard K. Jones, the sheriff of Butler County, Ohio. "No one I spoke with liked the feds' idea of watered-down immigration reform." Sheriff Jones, who called on state officials last week to issue a "resolution of nonsupport" for...