Postmortem On The Immigration Bill

"St Jerome and the Angel" by Simon Vouet 1620s, National Gallery of Art, Washington

 

Do you have that heavy headed feeling this morning? Like the one you may have experienced after a little too much to drink the night before...

Well that is how this postmortem on the Immigration Bill feels to write about. I have gone around the block and back in my assessment of this issue, and during my trip, so many points have come up clouding my judgment, that quite honestly taking a migraine pill may do the trick. Perhaps I'll simply start writing, and pray for some clarity. I certainly shan't get it from the left, who are busy with their own agenda.

Prior to the conference committee slamming it, and this actually never getting to end up on the President's desk, let's look at what we have:

The Senate yesterday approved legislation that would trigger the biggest changes to U.S. immigration policy in decades, by strengthening border security, establishing a guest-worker program, and providing the means for millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the country and possibly become citizens.

The product of a tenuous bipartisan coalition that faced tough conservative opposition, the measure calls for 370 miles of triple-layer fencing along the Mexican border, a complicated three-tiered system for determining who can stay and who must leave the country, and more jail cells for those awaiting deportation. It would declare English the country's national language, a gesture that many advocates found insulting but accepted in hopes of helping millions of undocumented workers achieve legal status.

The Senate bill passed 62 to 36, with 23 Republicans joining 38 Democrats and one independent in one of the few displays of bipartisanship on a big piece of legislation in years. The President won one of his very few acknowledged victories, and yet the complications I see coming forth are plentiful, despite the passing of Binghaman's Amendment limiting the total number of aliens, including spouses and children, granted employment-based legal permanent resident status to 650,000 during any fiscal year. Heh

Gen. Edwin Meese, who served as Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan, cuts through the chase in his New York Times column, and points to the similarities with the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which granted amnesty, in the present climate a dirty word.

Beyond this, most illegal immigrants who could establish that they had resided in America continuously for five years would be granted temporary resident status, which could be upgraded to permanent residency after 18 months and, after another five years, to citizenship.

Note that this path to citizenship was not automatic. Indeed, the legislation stipulated several conditions: immigrants had to pay application fees, learn to speak English, understand American civics, pass a medical exam and register for military selective service. Those with convictions for a felony or three misdemeanors were ineligible. Sound familiar? These are pretty much the same provisions included in the new Senate proposal and cited by its supporters as proof that they have eschewed amnesty in favor of earned citizenship.

The difference is that President Reagan called this what it was: amnesty. Indeed, look up the term "amnesty" in Black's Law Dictionary, and you'll find it says, "the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act provided amnesty for undocumented aliens already in the country."

John @ Powerline shares with us Bob Cunningham's view on the issue, adding that "Bob speaks for most Americans and the overwhelming majority of Republicans":

Here's what they're missing, and it is the principal reason, in my opinion, WHY the anti-ILLEGAL forces are so upset -- and so powerful.

It has to do with the bad faith, calculated deceit, Orwellian propaganda, dishonest sophistry, misdirection, arrogance, presumption, indifference to, and, indeed, contempt for the beliefs of huge numbers of ordinary Americans -- including LEGAL immigrants and Hispanic natives! --- on the part of political/media elites.

Let's recognize that the political process has --- democratically --- designated the illegals AS illegal. Why? Because we, as a nation, decided that their presence -- NOT themselves per se (as the false attribution of racism would have it) --- but their presence in such numbers for such purposes (the phony Jobs Americans Won't Do/Jobs Americans Are Not Doing) is undesirable. There are perfectly reasonable grounds for that judgment. When did we vote for the Mexification of America? ANS.: NEVER....Indeed, going back to the 1965 immigration "reforms", assurances were REPEATEDLY given (Kennedy) that such reforms would NOT lead to an influx or demographic change. And guess what? The burden of proof is NOT on the nation to justify this stance.

Period. Full stop. End of discussion.

Since these elites don't like that decision now they want us to accept a fait accompli..and more! They feel perfectly justified in collaborating in the subversion of our democratically enacted immigration regime --- with crass, narrow, economic special interests and with others having perhaps more sinister designs. Their objectives --- open borders, a free flow of cheap labor --- are plain now for all to see. Some no longer even bother to pretend otherwise.

Given that, there is NO REASON to believe ANY of their promises --- the "wall," enforcement of "tough" conditions for a "path to legalization/citizenship" or limits in a "tough and smart" "temporary" "guest workers" indentured servant-helot program. We also know that the very underlying rationale itself for "temporary" "guest workers" (the economically illiterate JAWD/JAAND) is in DIRECT CONTRADICTION to ANY arbitrary "limits"....Indeed, the very claim itself that deportation is "impossible" renders the enforcement promises self-refuting! We should all ignore the false promises and intentional non-feasance in the past?...and do I even have to mention the Simpson-Mazzoli fraud? "This time it's different"?....we REALLY mean it now?....

The ultimate retort of the immigration celebrationists --- let us call it the "immigrants are good people" argument --- is totally beside the point. It is an assertion that no one would disagree with, but it is also an argument that has NO internal LIMITING PRINCIPLE. There is, on its own terms, no non-arbitrary basis for excluding ANY ONE of the 6 billion non-Americans. Other than criminal disqualification, most of them, are, indeed "good people"....so what?

Well, we already decided the question of numbers and limits...and the political/media elites, in conjunction with the scofflaw employers, do NOT have standing to subvert the democratic decision made, upon deliberation, several times in reliance on what we now can see were plainly false promises.

Never again.

Well after all that if you need an injection of positivity go immediately to Gary Cross and read Tony Snow's interview with Rush Limbaugh, giving some excellent exchanges on the legislation and the very issue of immigration. I knew I was right when I visualized Tony Snow's resolve. Good man.

Comments

[Kenny Pierce]

Alexandra,

I think the biggest problem the Senate has is this idea that they have to solve the whole problem now. They do not.

At the very least, I think the following are nonnegotiables:

1. You can't give illegals a better deal than you give citizens.

2. You can't give illegals a better deal than you give people who go to the immense amount of trouble and inconvenience required to respect our immigration laws by following the legal procedures.

3. You can't give the corrupt and despicable government of Mexico anything remotely resembling input into our policies for dealing with their massive refugee problem.

4. You can't offer non-citizens net government benefits at the expense of people who are citizens and are here legally.

I think by far the best thing to do right now would be to tighten up the borders and the employer enforcement dramatically, including a fence from sea to sea, and to make it a federal offense with mandatory jail time for any state or local officials to adopt sanctuary policies of any form. I would add further that it becomes a requirement in any criminal case for the residency status of the criminal to be established, with automatic deportation and permanent ineligibility for immigration if a person is found to have committed a crime while here illegally. But I would not go to a lot of trouble to hunt down those who are here -- I would just make it clear that if we happen to find you here illegally, we kick you out and you don't ever get to come back.

After waiting a year or two to see what effects this bill had, I would proceed greatly to reduce the barriers to legal immigration of low-risk persons, but with the caveat that no transfer programs (welfare, etc.) nor tax exemptions (earned income credit, etc.) would be available to persons who are not citizens. You would be welcome in this country as long as you were going to pay your own way.

After giving ourselves some more time to learn from the real-life consequences of that legislation, then I'd get serious about hunting down and kicking out the illegals who were still here.

I would not support, under any circumstances, legal residency for people who had arrived here illegally unless they went back home and went through the legal process along with everybody else. However, because the current process is insane and amounts to cruel and unusual punishment for the grave crime of respecting our laws, I would NOT aggressively pursue deportation of quietly law-abiding (in other respects) illegals until the legal immigration process had been very dramatically reformed indeed.

Still forming these views, as you know...

[Ptrriot Watch]

RE: GRINGOMAN WARNING
To give you the benefit of any doubt is to say that you have no idea what you are dealing with here.
Wedeen is French, not Canadian, and is working with a french broad left coalition for the seperatism of Quebec from Canada. The PQ has granted him residency despite anglo-canadian pressure to deport him. He is spearheading a campaign seeking support and funding for Quebec seperatism in latin America by exploiting the catholicity and left politics. His aim is not to create an independant Quebec that is not under French control.
Your friend Edwards is an attorney now representing the group of 71 spanish and francophone nations, funded by Chavez, in an effort at the Hague to have the POTUS branded as a war criminal. Married to the daughter of one of Mao's most trusted generals, Edwards sucessfully argued in Madrid for the extridition of Pinochet. More recently he convinced the Spanish High Court to call for the arrest of certain US troops in connection with the death of a spanish journalist. Now he had the audacity to host an anti-american fundraiser for leftists in Mexico and France, including the mexican socialist candidate for president Lopez-Obrador, in exchange for left political solidarity in seeing Bush tried in europe as a criminal. All of this took place in Mexico within 50 miles of the US border. Wedeen brought The head of PCF from Paris, Olivier Besancenot while Edwards hosted a who's who of South Americas left at his Baja villa,
Edwards also teaches law in Chile and Mexico. He is a scholar on translation of spanish latin literature into english and he maintains close ties with academia worldwide.
It strains credulity that these commies would just land on your blog unless you are in on their clever campaign or unless Gringoman was part of the action. In fact, readers of the GRINGOMAN.COM blog can see where Gringoman was invited to these meetings both in Mexico and in Chile.

[gringoman]

Patriot Watch to Gringoman:

WARNING! We suspect the GRINGOMAN.COM website to be a fifth column. Gringoman stakes out outlandish positions which appear conservative. However he acts as a foil for a anti-americans, one French and the other from Argentina. These two run intellectual circles around the Gringoman in order to ridicule the decency of our movement.
Gringoman also posts homoerotic portraits which he paints and he has posted photos of his own vacation encounters graphically under the name of GRINGOLANDIA.
These three leftists have been mocking US values for some time and your readers should not be fooled.
A consevative blogger "AMERICAN PRINCESS" has caught on and banned GRINGOMAN and ordered the he drop his link to her site.
This GRINGOMAN is a real COINTELPRO operation.

Posted by: Patriot Watch | Friday, May 26, 2006 at 10:10 PM

Gringoman to Patriot Watch:

Frankly, you don't seem worth it, but in deference to Alexandra's fine site, I'll bother to reply to your stupid rant nevertheless.

1. Try to remember: Allthingsbeautiful is an adult site. If you want to do a "hit" on someone and be taken seriously, do it seriously. Save your evidence-free spittle like "This GRINGOMAN is a real COINTELPRO operation" for places like DU or The Daily Moulitsas. The kidz there will appreciate it.

2. I won't follow your tack of making charges without proof or evidence. So I won't call you a lefty playing righty, or vice versa, or whether you do it for free or not. Maybe you're simply exactly what you come on as: a steamed-up nasty half-wit. Let your screed speak for itself.

3. You say "We suspect...." Who and what do you mean by 'we'? By 'we' do you mean you and that other being in the mirror?

4. As for your idiotic reference to the two "anti-Americans" who comment at my weblog, I can see that you've been doing some homework. Unfortunately, your reading skills aren't up to the task. If they were, you might have understood the polemics going on between myself and the two lefty legalniki who I call "The Comradely Couple" i.e.. the Chilean Edwards I call "Professor Comrade Eduardos" and his frothy-mouthed Canadian bud I've dubbed a "Cana-kook." ( Incidentally, FYI, the anti-American Cana-kook has already been immortalized by Alexandra as "Phillip Weezel.") Maybe you need more than just remedial English. You seem to be sucking your oxygen in an irony-free zone.

5. Thank you for the unwitting compliment about my so-called "homoerotic" painting, but you really should be directing it to the master of the greco-roman original. I trust you're referring to the illustration for "Is George Bush Over?" Did you miss the advisory for that illustration? It suggested guidance for minors and morons. (Tip: Allthingsbeautiful is not the best place for you to knock a painting as "homoerotic" rather than focus on matters like the modeling, the chiaroscuro, the tones, the space, the brush work etc etc. Unless, with a handle like "Patriot" (phoney or otherwise) you wish to come across as a boobus conservatatus.)

6. As for "American Princess," your involvement here does make me wonder whether you do this for free. I mean, it indicates that you've done a little follow-up work--just enough to add slander to your stupidity. The young lady you try to use is very bright and writes well too. I had been posting at her site for a while, although never that frequently. Then I stopped for about two months. Suddenly some issue came up, and I dropped in a comment, adding a little filip about somebody's "invention" etc which I said would not have been by her (AP). Apparently she took it the wrong way. It must have offended her sense of secure, competent adulthood. She immediately emailed me that I was not "welcome" at her site. Now it was my turn to be offended, since it came out of the blue, with no warning or explanation. At which point I let her know, politely, that she needn't worry, that I never ever post where I do not feel welcome. Anybody who knows me would know that. She never "ordered me" (in your lying words) not to link to her blog. Neither of us ever mentioned it. In fact, I kept the link up for about a week afterwards, and then decided to take it down. (If you have any evidence for your stupid slander, why not produce it?)

6. In fact, since you're presenting yourself as an excited expert on what is phony and who is politically correct (either from the left or from the right) why don't you give the folks a little look on what you are or who you or what you do on the Internet. That way you might allay the suspicion that you're nothing but a cheap drive-by troll who is clearly out of his depth.

[Patriot Watch]

WARNING! We suspect the GRINGOMAN.COM website to be a fifth column. Gringoman stakes out outlandish positions which appear conservative. However he acts as a foil for a anti-americans, one French and the other from Argentina. These two run intellectual circles around the Gringoman in order to ridicule the decency of our movement.
Gringoman also posts homoerotic portraits which he paints and he has posted photos of his own vacation encounters graphically under the name of GRINGOLANDIA.
These three leftists have been mocking US values for some time and your readers should not be fooled.
A consevative blogger "AMERICAN PRINCESS" has caught on and banned GRINGOMAN and ordered the he drop his link to her site.
This GRINGOMAN is a real COINTELPRO operation.

[gringoman]

X to Gringo:

The previous comment is the most disgustingly, hypocritically nihilistic thing I have ever heard a right-winger say.

Gringo, are you a John Bircher?

Posted by: x | Friday, May 26, 2006 at 01:26 PM

Gringo to X.

No, are you a Soros worker? And do you have anything of substance or analytical to say, something that might suggest elementary brain matter? Or do you just screech from the troll playbook?

[rich]

WHAT ABOUT MINORITY PREFERENCES?

One item that has not come up in discussions of the immigration bill is how 12 million new hispanic citizens will affect minority preference programs across the United States.

Twelve million new citizen hispanics will either make minority preference programs more competitive, denying present american minority citizens their chance to participate in the american dream, or it will expand those eligible for minority preference by 12 million, requiring 12 million majority citizens to defer their opportunity to participate in the american dream. All for persons who were not in the USA and therefore could not have been subject to american discrimination.

The issue of whether illegal immigrants who are minorities should be eligible for minority preference programs is another part of this issue that has not been discussed.

Make no mistake, these 12 million new hispanic citizens will not be required to go to the end of the line when it comes to minority preferences.

Minority preferences pervade all areas of our society: education, jobs, government contracts. Minority preferences for the new citizens should be addessed.

As to what can be done, it is difficult to see anyone up for election that voted for this bill. They knew better. But someone should pay for this travesty. One thing that can be asked of those in the Senate who are up for election is for them to pledge to replace Arlen Specter as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Specter is proud to be responsible for this bill. He should be held accountable and removed.

[x]

The previous comment is the most disgustingly, hypocritically nihilistic thing I have ever heard a right-winger say.

Gringo, are you a John Bircher?

[gringoman]

While the White House has shown more interest in guarding Iraq's borders than our own (with stellar performance in neither); while cheap-vote Dems, lackadaisical liberals and cheap-worker GloboPubs unite for the coming BalkAmerica (after a grand funeral for Old Glory, attended by CFR and UN dignitaries in their Chinese limos)) and the mullahs and the Beijingers and the guevaranomes look at such infidels and observe what used to be a national will, even gringoVision---in flashes of non-pessimism---would like to be proven wrong when entertaining the query, "Is George Bush Over?" and the assertion that he is "Our First Mexican President."

[RL]

"Mexifornia" by Victor Davis Hanson

"It's deja-vu all over again." Yogi Berra

eye-opening, interesting, and sobering short-films on this topic(illegal hispanic immigration) at the following links,

onthefencefilms.com
immigrationwatchdog.com

i hope that the House of Reps. doesn't allow the disaster that has happened to beautiful southern California(bankruptcy, in more ways than just the State's financial-variety), to happen to the rest of the border States.

God Bless you Alexandra.

"It Never Rains in Southern California" Tony Toni Tone