Is a Amnesty Good for the economy!

[get_involved]

-delete

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - dey comin' across the border an' the gubmint ain't makin' `em move back...

Rand Paul: ‘De facto amnesty’ already here
3/21/13 - Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday that the nation’s current immigration policies are “de facto amnesty,” hitting back against his conservative critics — including Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh — who say he’s supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants.

“I’ve got a news flash for those who want to call people names on amnesty — what we have now is de facto amnesty. We have 11 million people here that have been here, some of them for a decade or more. No one is telling them to go home. No one is sending them home,” Paul (R-Ky.) said on Fox News. He continued: “I would say [to illegal immigrants] if you want to work, we’ll find a place for you but that doesn’t mean that you get special privileges. It just means we’ll get you a work visa. Work visas, really we have plenty of work visas to give every year. We’re not giving them out because the process is too onerous. So we need to make the facility of getting a work visa much easier.”

Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer had asked Paul to respond to critics like conservative radio host Limbaugh who have criticized Republicans that have signaled they’re willing to work with Democrats on amnesty.

Conservative commentator Coulter said Saturday during a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that “if amnesty goes through, America becomes California and no Republican will ever win another national election.” “People like Coulter and Limbaugh say that people like you are being suckered into an agreement here and what they argue is that conservative principles should not be sacrificed here,” Hemmer said.

Earlier this week, Paul gave a speech in Washington where he seemingly endorsed aspects of a pathway to citizenship, without ever saying that phrase. Paul later Wednesday explained that his plan would be to give work visas to undocumented immigrants in the U.S., and he was “open to debate” on what to do next on the issue.

Read more: Rand Paul: ?De facto amnesty? already here - Kevin Cirilli - POLITICO.com

See also:

Senators close in on immigration deal
Mar 22,`13 WASHINGTON (AP) -- A last-minute dispute over wages for lower-skilled workers flared Friday as senators scrambled to sketch out a deal on a sweeping immigration bill before Congress takes a two-week recess.

The public clash between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO underscored the high stakes involved in legislation that would dramatically reshape the U.S. immigration and employment landscape, putting 11 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship while allowing tens of thousands of new high- and low-skilled workers into the country. The chamber and AFL-CIO, negotiating through the so-called Gang of Eight senators, had reached significant agreement on a new visa program to bring up to 200,000 lower-skilled workers a year to the country. The number of visas would fluctuate according to demand, and the workers would be able to change jobs and could seek permanent residency. But the AFL-CIO was pushing for higher wages for the workers than the chamber had agreed to so far.

The dispute remained unsettled into the night, with chamber officials finally saying talks seemed to have stalled. Senators hoped to keep the disagreement from derailing negotiations on the overall bill. The eight senators in the negotiating group, including Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz., were aiming to finalize as many details as possible before leaving town so that the recess could be devoted to drafting the legislation, which would then be made public when the lawmakers return in April. "We're close," Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., another member of the group, said after one round of meetings Friday. "The biggest issue has always been the future flow" of workers. Flake said there were only "a few minor items" left to deal with apart from the Chamber of Commerce-AFL-CIO matter.

If that can't be resolved in a way the two sides can agree to, the expectation is that the senators would come to their own agreement on the issue and include it in the bill, and hope the chamber and AFL can live with it or modify it as the bill moves through committee and Senate floor action. The AFL-CIO argued that the Chamber of Commerce was trying to pay below median wage for any given group of workers, but the chamber said it would pay about the same as American workers get.

MORE