"Immigration" Bill Is an Attempt to Expand

[Stephanie]

RUSH: Now, folks, as I say, I've got all this figured out, and when I told you this wasn't about immigration, I was right; and when I told you that what this is really all about is the Democrats wanting and needing some new victims, I was right; and when I said this was all about politicians, particularly Democrats wanting new voters, I was right. But I was not a hundred percent right. I was close. To sum this up -- very simply -- what this bill is, this is not an immigration bill. What is being done here is being done under the guise of immigration reform. What this is, is a huge attempt by certain politicians, mostly moderate and liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans, to expand the federal government, to increase the numbers of people in poverty in this country by importing them via this immigration bill, which will set up the need to expand the "social safety" net in this country, which will then empower those who believe in big government.

It is also designed to provide a free flow of cheap labor for businesses that want to access it, and with the few limits on legal immigration that this bill imposes, we're no longer talking just about Mexicans. We now can import workers from all over the world who want to come in for the purposes of achieving and accessing the American dream, and believe me, if certain American businesses want to get labor cheaper than what they have to pay Mexican immigrants, they want to get them from Ethiopia, they want to get them from Sudan, here's an opportunity to do it. It really is no more complicated than that. I mean, you cannot read this bill and conclude anything else. This bill is senseless.

This bill is absolutely worthless. The reason everybody is going nuts here is because there's no common sense in this bill when you look at it within the framework of immigration reform, and I'll tell you what else is going on. You guys in the House -- I don't know if you're able to listen right now because you're locked down. Well, some of you House members are not even in Washington. You've taken your recess early. I want you to listen to this very carefully because what's happening here. Listen to Dingy Harry. Grab audio sound bite #1 and this will set up what I'm going to warn you people in the House about.

REID: Dark clouds are forming on the horizon. Influential members of the House of Representatives and the Republican leadership are still pushing for the bill that they passed, a bill that makes felons out of millions of [illegal] immigrants and those who assist them, like a member of the clergy, a healthcare worker, social worker.


RUSH: All right. Now, let me translate this for you. What's happening here, the Senate's passed their bill. Dingy Harry is warning members of the House there are dark clouds forming over the beautiful Senate amnesty horizon, and these evil House Republicans could ruin everyone's day, and if the House doesn't go along with this, and if the House doesn't accept this abomination of a piece of legislation called an immigration reform act, then what's going to happen is that conservatives, the moderates in the Republican Party and the liberals in the Democratic Party will blame conservatives for standing in the way and blocking immigration reform.

If they can't come to an agreement in the conference with the Senate, moderates are going to blame House conservatives for this failure. I think what's happening here, in addition to all that I've said, is that moderate Republicans are trying to destroy conservatives and conservatism. By moderate Republicans, let me give you some names: John McCain, Arlen Specter. We'd have to throw Senator Lindsey Graham in there now, and some of the Republicans in the administration, some of the Republicans in the White House. I think they have been steaming over the conservative wing taking over the Republican Party. The elites in the Republican Party we've heard from on this debate, and they are trashing all of you as a bunch of unsophisticated boobs.

Me, too, and I think there's a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party going on right now, and the conservatives who are largely the majority membership of that party are under assault. I think that it is perfectly clear, at least to me, that that's what's happening. You can look at this this way. Let me make it easy. We're back to 1976. This is Ronald Reagan versus Gerald Ford. This is Barry Goldwater versus Nelson Rockefeller. This is the compassionate conservative Republicans -- i.e., the moderates -- versus the conservatives. That's all tied into this. There's so many things being done here at once, and this whole immigration bill is simply a rubric to disguise the true intent.


the rest of the transcript.......http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_052606/content/america_s_anchorman.guest.html

 

[Annie]

and it may well get ugly:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWEzMzc2ODg3N2U2MWNmMzgxYjQ3ZTEzNDYwMGFlYjA=

Friday, May 26, 2006

CIRA=Corruption, Ignorance, Recklessness, Arrogance [John Derbyshire]

The sheer staggering awfulness of CIRA (the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, passed by the U.S. Senate yesterday) is just beginning to dawn on me. Heritage's Robert Rector, who knows what he's talking about, called it "the worst bill I have seen in 25 years." The only thing to question there is the 25. This might easily be the worst bill ever.

I've been following immigration issues, in a not-very-attentive way, for 30-something years. I've held five different residence statuses myself (B-2, illegal, H-1B, Green Card, citizen). There are people like Mark Krikorian who have been really following the issue for years — working the facts, crunching the numbers, doing the extrapolations, arguing the issues, every working day. God only knows how Mark must be feeling: for the truly breathtaking thing about CIRA is that it is built on a foundation of sheer ignorance. All that research, all that work, all those arguments might just as well not have taken place. How's it feel, Mark?

Ignorance, and indifference. There seems to have been no consideration of CIRA's impact on:

—-our legal system

—-our economy

—-our bureaucracy

—-our local-level public services

—-our looming entitlements crisis

The cost estimate of $54 over ten years is a joke, like all cost estimates in Congressional acts. Educational costs alone will be ten times that.

Take a school district at random — say, mine. Here are the percentages of Hispanic students as you go down the age scale in this quiet suburban community 1,400 miles from our nation's southern border:

High school (17 percent Hispanic)

Junior High (16 percent)

Intermediate (28 percent)

Elementary (31 percent)

Check out the numbers for your own district. When, exactly, did the U.S. people ask for this huge burden to be placed on their local services & tax base? When did we ask our lawmakers to open the nation's doors to tens of millions of low-skilled immigrants, paying low levels of tax, and making big demands on our welfare services? When did we insist that people who have come into our country illegally, and stolen the Social Security numbers of citizens in order to get work, be eligible for Social Security benefits based on those stolen numbers? (Yes, that is actually in CIRA.) And that, just as the social security funding system is heading into major crisis? When did we ask for legal immigration numbers to be tripled? When?

Good grief. One hardly knows where to start.

With Arlen Specter, perhaps, who at the very last minute slipped in an amendment to give the President of Mexico veto power over our border security arrangements! Here is Specter on some earlier issues:

"Not so, said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, in a rebuttal to weeks of debate. 'They have to pay a fine. They have to undergo a criminal background check. They have to pay back taxes, they have to learn English and they have to go to the back of the line,' he said, referring to illegal immigrants who would apply for citizenship."

Let's take it slowly, folk.

—-"They have to pay a fine." Less, in many cases, than what they paid the smugglers to bring them in.

—-"They have to undergo a criminal background check." Don't worry, folks, we have complete access to the criminal justice databases of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. .... Which, by the way, are scrupulously maintained. We have their governments' assurances on that. Oh, and we have the several million federal investigators needed to carry out those background checks already under training, and their salaries and expenses all appropriated in Congress.

—-"They have to pay back taxes." Based on their own, unverifiable statements about how many crumpled dollar bills were pressed into their hands at the end of each day's work. (Are they allowed to deduct the cut they pay to the jefe? Come to think of it: is the smuggler's fee tax-deductible?) And note, note well, poor citizen: They only have to pay taxes on three of the past five years. This is a deal YOU CANNOT GET. "IRS" now stands for "Immigrant Relief and Sustenance."

—-"They have to learn English." No they don't. They have to show they have signed up for an ESL (English as Second Language) course, that's all. They don't have to, like, attend. Test of proficiency? There's supposed to be one already for citizenship. Friend, I have attended two citizenship ceremonies (me, wife). There were people taking the oath who could barely manage "Hello." One of the new citizens could not understand any of the Marshal's instructions; fortunately he had a relative at hand to translate them into Cantonese for him.

—-"They have to go to the back of the line." What line? The only line that matters to illegal immigrants is the one for lawful U.S. residence. (You know, the one Filipinos wait 24 years on, sitting back home in Manila.) And even that line doesn't matter to them any more because THEY ARE ALREADY HERE. Citizenship? Eh, maybe... mañana. The kids got it by birth, that's the main thing. And jury duty is, you know, a real drag.

There, in fact, you have what is perhaps CIRA's most glaring weakness: its utter failure to take any account of immigrant psychology. Given this particular set of sticks and carrots, how will immigrants behave? Nobody in the Senate, so far as I can see, has given a moment's thought to this. Lots of illegal immigrants, for example, will rationally choose to remain illegal, trusting—surely correctly—that business groups will swiftly gut the employer-sanction provisions, as they did after 1986, and that by being illegal, a worker can undercut the wages of legal residents. As they do now.

Similarly with employer psychology. Which, among other things, may mean Adios, Mexicanos! If a sweatshop employer cartel can bring in planeloads of workers from Indonesia, Bangladesh, or Ethiopia, for half what Mexicans cost, do you think they won't? They will. Current GDP per capita in Mexico—-around $6,000. In Ethiopia—-around $100. You want "willing workers"? We got 'em.

I'm just scratching the surface here. The stupidity and rottenness of CIRA is really beyond the ability of a single human mind to encompass it.

And for Republicans, the most shocking, most shameful thing of all, is that this act to vastly swell the number of future Democratic voters, to bring about "the greatest expansion of the welfare state in 35 years" (Robert Rector), to kick working-class Americans in the teeth, to render meaningless the very concepts of our nation and our citizenship — in fact, to shove U.S. citizens off the sidewalk so that foreigners can be awarded special privilieges not available to us — this appalling monstrosity was cheered through by a Republican Senate at the urging of a Republican president. For shame, for shame, for shame.

I will not vote for any politician who helped pass this bill; I will not vote for any politician who says so much as a word in its favor — make that a syllable — and I will not even vote for any politician who agrees to go into conference on this horror. How big are Capitol Hill garbage bins? That's the only place this heap of dreck belongs.

[Kathryn: I didn't sugar the pill too much there, did I?]
Posted at 9:53 AM

 

[Annie]

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmZiYTc0MTQxNDM2YjU5ODA4ZDMzMTQ2MWFhMzRhNmQ=

Friday, May 26, 2006

Undocumented Status for All! [Mark Steyn]
Derb's post below is absolutely right - not the one on Sheena Easton, the one on immigration (though he's right on Sheena, too). But how about some of you natives piling on? I assumed NR's transplanted British Empire wallahs were steamed about this because we were foolish enough to check the wrong box and come here as legal immigrants - which, believe me, is a mistake I wouldn't make again. But this bill moves not just legal immigrants but U.S. citizens to the back of the bus.

The undocumented guys only have to pay taxes for any three out of the last five years? How come Americans can't get a deal like that? Meanwhile, any attempt to enforce the border requires "consultation" with Mexico. Vicente Fox has just got his own permanent Security Council veto in the Department of Homeland Security.

I think it's very hard for conservatives to support a Congress that would pass such a bill. Aside from the entitlement explosion and the national security issues, this bill is a cynical corruption of the integrity of US sovereignty and citizenship.

My wife and the kids had their Green Cards stolen the other day. Cost of replacement of legal permanent resident cards: $1,040. Fine for 20 years of law-breaking within the United States: $2,000, less Social Security and EITC entitlements. Hmm.

I told the missus to hold off filling in the form for the replacement card. Having been rendered inadvertently undocumented, she may at last be in the winning category.
Posted at 3:08 PM