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you don't think the INS/police don't know where to find 10M illegals if they wanted to find them?
20,000 people march in LA.
Where the was the border patrol for that ?
you don't think the INS/police don't know where to find 10M illegals if they wanted to find them?
That kind of stuff just pisses me off.
I don't get it? What's the point in having an immigration process, restrictions, offices, laws... and so on... if you're going to literally allow thousands of people to walk into your country everday, cir venting all this? It's a freakin' joke!
People want to cross the border illegally, set up residence in a country illegally, and then when the government tries to do something about it, they claim racism and that they have a right to be there. Bull !
Witj all of these thousands of uneducated, unskilled, poor people flooding our country every single day is not good.
There shouldn't even be a debate over this crap. You are in the country illegally, who ever gave you the right to be her? Since when is that a right? By that logic, do I have a right to live in any country in the world that I want, without having to go through the immigration process? That's not a right.
I sympathyze with the situation many of these people are in, but at some point, you kind of gotta say enough is enough. Am I right?
I agree with you totally. If you want to come into the country do it legally.............
check again 500,000 ppl on the streets. we own the streets!
it should be up to the head of the party that is rumored to have control of the three branches of governmentIt's a freakin' joke!
or the liberal media...
March 26, 2006
A G.O.P. Split on Immigration Vexes a Senator
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
HOUSTON — The telephone lines in the unassuming offices of Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, have been sizzling here in recent weeks as anxious Republican voters call to find out precisely where their tough-minded senator stands on illegal immigration.
Mr. Cornyn is a former state attorney general and a fiscal conservative, a Texan who wears cowboy boots with his pinstripes and prides himself on his 100 percent approval rating from the American Conservative Union.
But as the Senate prepares to wrestle the week of March 27 with the question of legalizing much of the illegal immigrant population, Mr. Cornyn, like many Republicans, finds himself squeezed by warring factions in his own party.
[President Bush kept up the pressure in his weekly radio speech on Saturday, a day after protests in three cities by immigrant rights advocates.]
Mr. Cornyn has been criticized on conservative talk radio and labeled a "sellout" on some Weblogs for promoting legislation that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to remain here for five more years. The proposal would also create a temporary worker program that would allow those immigrants and hundreds of thousands of foreigners abroad to work here legally for up to six years.
At the same time, business groups have been pressing him to go further by supporting legislation that would put their illegal workers on the road to citizenship.
[On Friday, supporters of immigrant rights took to the streets in Phoenix, Los Angeles and Atlanta to urge such action. At least 25,000 also rallied in Los Angeles on Saturday, The Associated Press reported.]
The legislative battle has pitted Republican against Republican, with conservatives deriding guest worker programs as an amnesty for lawbreakers and calling for a wall to be built along the border with Mexico, and with business leaders pushing for legalization of the illegal workforce and the admission of thousands of foreign workers.
With the Senate expected to start voting on legislation as early as March 28 and Congressional staffers negotiating furiously over the fine print, some lawmakers are struggling to find middle ground.
[In his radio talk, Mr. Bush acknowledged the difficulty that lawmakers faced. "This is an emotional debate," he said. "America does not have to choose between being a welcoming society and being a lawful society. We can be both at the same time."]
But finding that balance has been enormously difficult. When asked how he felt on a recent day when he had shuttled from a telephone interview on Fox News Radio to a luncheon with business executives, Mr. Cornyn said, "In between."
"I have people come to see me who say, 'The wall is the answer,' " Mr. Cornyn said as he settled into a leather couch in his office here. "I hear others say we ought to be sympathetic, we ought to just let them stay and call them legal and declare an amnesty. And I don't think either of those alternatives are possible or viable.
"Sometimes they end up yelling at me," he said of his conservative cons uents. "But my job, and our job in Congress, is to see the whole picture and to come up with a realistic consensus."
Mr. Cornyn acknowledged, however, that it would be difficult to reach given the deep divide within his party. "It's the hardest thing," he said. "I honestly don't think we'll know the outcome until we get there."
The rift emerged in 2004 when Mr. Bush first urged Congress to create a program that would legalize illegal workers and allow for foreign workers to come here in the future. Both groups would be required to return home after a period of time.
The proposal was hailed by the United States Chamber of Commerce, typically a staunch Republican ally and a formidable political force. But it fueled a revolt among some conservatives in the party who demanded tighter border controls to stop the waves of illegal immigration that they view as a threat to American culture, jobs and security.
In December, the Republican-controlled House defied Mr. Bush's call for a temporary worker program. Instead, the House passed a tough border security bill that would, among other things, make it a federal crime to live in this country illegally, turning the millions of illegal immigrants here into felons, ineligible to win any legal status. (Currently, living in this country without authorization is a violation of civil immigration law, not criminal law.)
Meanwhile, many business leaders have thrown their weight behind legislation sponsored by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, that would grant permanent residency — and ultimately citizenship — to the 11 million illegal immigrants believed to be living in the United States. To qualify, immigrants would have to pay a fine and back taxes, learn English and work here for six more years.
Mr. Cornyn has tried to build a middle path: sponsoring legislation that would deal with illegal immigrants and the needs of businesses for foreign workers while trying to avoid being tarred with the amnesty label by requiring both groups to return home after a certain time. Under his plan, people could only apply for permanent residency from their home countries.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Mr. Cornyn is a member, is trying to cobble together elements of both pieces of legislation to produce a bill for the vote. Any legislation that passes the Senate will have to be reconciled with the House bill.
"Amnesty is off the table," Mr. Cornyn has said repeatedly.
But Republican hard-liners here and on the Judiciary Committee scoff at efforts to distinguish temporary worker plans from Mr. McCain's more liberal proposal. Many fear participants in such a program will simply vanish when it is time for them to go home.
"You say it's not amnesty, but it is," Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa said of temporary worker proposals. "If it looks, acts and smells like amnesty, then in my eyes, it is amnesty."
The issue is so politically explosive, particularly with Congressional elections looming, that some Republicans on the Judiciary Committee avoid discussing it. Senators Mike DeWine of Ohio and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, who have favored immigrant rights in the past, both declined interviews to discuss their positions publicly. Both are up for re-election this year.
And Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who supports legalizing illegal immigrants, warned fellow Republicans that they could expect little more than criticism for their labors.
"A lot of people, particularly on our side, don't want to have a debate about this," Mr. Graham said. "Even if you debate it, you're wrong. Even if you're open-minded about compromise, you're wrong."
Mr. Cornyn, however, has thrown himself into the fray with enthusiasm.
He recently entered into negotiations with Mr. Kennedy in an effort to build some consensus on a temporary worker program. He appears regularly on conservative talk radio and meets with a host of competing cons uencies like conservative leaders, business executives and Hispanic lawyers. Members of his staff have also been in regular contact with the White House.
"Coming from a red state, one that has a large Hispanic population and one that's a border state, makes it easier to bridge those divisions among Republicans and find common ground with some Democrats," said Mr. Cornyn, who has close ties to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser.
His efforts were welcomed at a luncheon at the InterContinental Hotel here, where business leaders gave him a standing ovation. But even some of those executives said they were optimistic that his position might shift a bit.
That was not the view of a group of about 25 conservative voters protesting recently outside of Mr. Cornyn's office.
Leslie Wetzel, who organized the protest, dismissed Mr. Cornyn's balancing act as more "mixed messages." "He professes to be a conservative, but like so many other Republicans he's not a true conservative," Mrs. Wetzel said. "They say, 'Oh, it's not amnesty; it's guest worker.' Well, I don't care what kind of spin you put on it. It's rewarding people for breaking the law."
With conservatives turning up the heat, Mr. Cornyn issued a flurry of press releases, emphasizing again that he opposed amnesty. Some Congressional staffers in Washington said they feared he was backing away from a compromise with Mr. Kennedy.
But business leaders said they were still hopeful. "There's a lot of pressure on him," said Laura Reiff, a co-chairwoman of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, which represents hotels, restaurants, construction companies and other service industries. "He's put in a position now of really having to soul search and figure out where he's going to be."
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
I think Dubya needs to explain guest worker better.
Call it GREEN CARD. Easier for everyone to understand. Just take the Alien Worker off.
It's really not the Mexican's it's the Central and South.. gang and drug lords. Because Mexico has ZERO souther border. I.E. you can from Guatamala or uh.. Saudi Arabia right up the tailpipe with no one looking.
A wall won't fix it but it can't hurt. Hire Mexican contractors to build it.. then they won't protest.. (cold cash talks). Then some heat seeking guns haha JK. (the guns would be with proper warning of course).
You know why it is called racism/classism? Because the truth is that the United States needs these people for economic survival but it chooses to use them as political pawns whenever it can.
I agree, I do not want people coming into this country illegaly because it represents a large security issue, but the fact is that those people are a very intergrated and important part of our economy and you cannot remove them. There is a reason that the laws are ignored.
But they are stealing the jobs we don't want anyway!
The point is to placate enough people into thinking that they actually care about border security, so that nobody notices that they're in the pocket of big business. Big business isn't about to give up its low-cost, easy-to-exploit labor supply.
People are noticing now. They just still haven't figured out the right play. We'll get back to that.
Well, apparently they're here to work. It seems that the ones here to collect welfare are clustered close to the border.Witj all of these thousands of uneducated, unskilled, poor people flooding our country every single day is not good.
There's a debate because there are 11 million undo ented aliens working in the United States, and there is no feasible logistical way to deport them. Also, they are entrenched in their niche in the economy, and extracting them would be painful.There shouldn't even be a debate over this crap. You are in the country illegally, who ever gave you the right to be her? Since when is that a right? By that logic, do I have a right to live in any country in the world that I want, without having to go through the immigration process? That's not a right.
I sympathyze with the situation many of these people are in, but at some point, you kind of gotta say enough is enough. Am I right?
The hypocrisy of our immigration policy is that we go years and years with just a token effort to impede illegal immigration, *wink wink nudge nudge,* so that these folks end up being here for years working, but then when an election year comes up and somebody wants a wedge issue, woo hoo here comes a new tough immigration law! They aren't taking the issue seriously at all.
Clearly if we have millions and millions of people working here for years outside of our immigration system, the system is broken. We aren't allowing enough people to come here legally to meet the demand for labor. But that's not going to be fixed anytime soon because nobody has the political will to do it, except seemingly the President, and all his political capital is gone.
It's illegal for "big bussiness" to employ them, and easy for them to get caught.
I would venture to say that very few "big bussinesses" have undo ented workers working for them.
They are mostly employed by small bussinesses, individuals and in agriculture where the risk/reward for the employer is a little closer to even or weighed on the side of employment.
Since when is agriculture not big business?
For sure there are large agricultural corperations, however it is a of a lot harder for one of those companies to have an illegal on their payroll than it is for a small bussiness.
Big bussinesses also have a of a lot more to lose if they employ illegals.
After all... it is ILLEGAL to employ them and results in HUGE fines if you get caught.
How huge?
And do you really think migrant workers are hired dierectly by big ag companies to pick crops?
The penalty for felony harboring is a fine and imprisonment for up to five years. The penalty for felony alien smuggling is a fine and up to ten years' imprisonment. Where the crime causes serious bodily injury or places the life of any person in jeopardy, the penalty is a fine and up to twenty years' imprisonment. If the criminal smuggling or harboring results in the death of any person, the penalty can include life imprisonment. Convictions for aiding, abetting, or conspiracy to commit alien smuggling or harboring, carry the same penalties. Courts can impose consecutive prison sentences for each alien smuggled or harbored. A court may order a convicted smuggler to pay res ution if the illegal alien smuggled qualifies as a victim under the Victim and Witness Protection Act. Conspiracy to commit crimes of sheltering, harboring, or employing illegal aliens is a separate federal offense punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 or five years' imprisonment.
Wal-Mart was recently fined for hiring illegals for their cleaning crews. That's about as big buisness as you get these days.
I'm not saying that some don't get hired. I never did.
I'm saying the majority are not employed by big bussiness.
This is the new law, right?
Sounds like the old law. The new law also criminalizes/fines for providing medical/hospital care, which is, you know, oh so Repug/Samaritan/Bible-based humanity.
Wow, with such large fines, you'd think no one would ever have hired an illegal - especially small businesses. It would be nice to know some data on the enforcement of the current law, if that is it.
Oh yeah... base law on christian beliefs but don't allow religion to be in public school.
You are such an idiot.
The problem with the current law is that it basically gives employers carte blanch to hire anyone so long as they get a Social Security #.
They arent required to check up on it or anything.
If they do get caught with an illegal on the payroll, they just say, here we have the information that he gave me... etc.. I did my best to determine that he was legit.
Of course...
Tax Crimes
Employers who aid or abet the preparation of false tax returns by failing to pay income or Social Security taxes for illegal alien employees, or who knowingly make payments using false names or Social Security numbers, are subject to IRS criminal and civil sanctions. U.S. nationals who have suffered intentional discrimination because of citizenship or national origin by an employer with more than three employees may file a complaint within 180 days of the discriminatory act with the Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices, U.S. Department of Justice. In addition to the federal statutes summarized, state laws and local ordinances controlling fair labor practices, workers compensation, zoning, safe housing and rental property, nuisance, licensing, street vending, and solicitations by contractors may also apply to activities that involve illegal aliens.
This is a link to the US code hosted by a MN website...
http://www.mnforsustain.org/immigrat...om_us_code.htm
Last edited by Sec24Row7; 03-27-2006 at 12:45 PM.
umm, I think he was being facetious
"base law on christian beliefs but don't allow religion to be in public school."
you are in stupid.
Christians, and religionists, don't have a monopoly on virtue or heaven or humanitarian principles. Laws can be humanitarian and compassionate without having the slightest whiff or taint of Christianity.
The Bible-toting, Bible-spouting, evangelicial-pandering Repug s in Congress throw their bogus "Christianity" out the window whenever the corps/lobbyists pay them to, and/or when their seats are at risk.
"religion in schools" is nothing but a wedge for Christian/Bible indoctrination in schools, like intelligent design (another word for creationish) is nothing but a wedge for creationism.
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