Bush Campaigns for Immigration Bill

[Joanne98]

Source: Hispanic Business

President Bush and his administration are unleashing a final push behind a broad-ranging immigration bill as senators head back to Washington from a weeklong break, loaded with plenty of advice from their constituents.

Supporters of the 627-page bill are guardedly optimistic. But they concede that the battle is far from over as they prepare to confront more potentially destructive amendments that could dismantle the measure.

The Senate is scheduled to resume debate Monday, with Democratic leaders hoping for a final vote by the end of the week. A bipartisan group of senators managed to beat back most attempts to seriously reshape the bill during the opening week of debate before lawmakers left town last weekend.

Tensions over the issue flared throughout the recess as some Republican senators aligned with the bill confronted boos, protests and angry phone calls from conservative supporters who oppose legalizing up to 12 million undocumented immigrants.



Read more: http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/newsbyid.asp?id=66526&cat=Politics+News&more=%2Fpolitics%2F

[Faux pas]

1. Now I know for sure that I don't want her for the cic....

By now you've heard of the deal cut between Senators Kennedy, Kyl, McCain and others to try and push through comprehensive immigration reform this year. The White House is also supporting the "compromise" deal.

While language has not been finalized for large parts of the bill, we do know that some of the worst proposals from last year's immigration debate did not make it in this time around — including expanding expedited removal and the wrongly named Fairness in Immigration Litigation Act.

But the bill does contain a lot of really bad provisions that undermine American values and the Constitution. Almost all judicial review of any DHS errors in reviewing a person's immigration status would be eliminated or greatly limited. Further, the Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) would require every person in America to carry a hardened Social Security card containing biometric information (such as fingerprints, retina scan and DNA) about the cardholder — essentially a national ID, and present a Real ID-compliant driver's license to get any new job.

EEVS also creates a vast federal database to verify the work eligibility of all job applicants in America — including U.S. citizens. The system would contain extraordinary amounts of personal information on everyone who seeks or holds a job, all of it keyed to a person's Social Security number. If this bill passes, we will all have our eligibility to work in the U.S. approved by the Department of Homeland Security every time we apply for a job. If you think looking for work is hard now, just wait until you are stuck in a DHS bureaucratic nightmare trying to get that little holiday second retail gig or become a schoolteacher in the town you've lived in all your life. No one will be able to work in the U.S. without DHS approval. And, if DHS makes a mistake, you'll have virtually no way to challenge the error or recover lost wages because the bill essentially forecloses judicial review of government errors.

Certain triggers will have to be met before immigrants are able to apply for permanent residency, such as the completion of a mandatory detention system, the hiring of 18,000 new border patrol agents and the construction of 370 miles of border wall.

There is a lot of opposition to this deal coming from both the right and the left, so the chances that the bill will pass remain unclear, but the ACLU is very concerned about the bill. Nancy Pelosi is already saying that changes are going to have to be made to get the bill through the House of Representatives.

The current immigration system is clearly broken, but we must not fall into the trap of seeking immigration reform no matter what the cost. That is why the ACLU is working vigorously to ensure that any comprehensive immigration reform legislation passed by Congress respects due process, protects privacy, and adheres to the values of our country and our Constitution. This "compromise" cannot be allowed to compromise our values.

http://blog.aclu.org/index.php?/archives/181-Immigration-Bill-Compromises-on-Values.html

And from another site:
http://pressesc.com/01180202266_eevs

[High Plains]

2. I want to support a comprehensive immigration bill...

...but the devil is in the details, isn't it?

Okay, to hell with it--let's just do nothing. Because that will be the result if this bill goes nowhere. No immigration legislation this year.

No skin off my nose. I'm not a construction worker, nor am I an undocumented worker. And I like all those new Mexican restaurants opening around here...

I support regularizing the status of the 12 million undocumented, but if it comes at such an Orwellian price, well, maybe it's better to just stay in the shadow.

[Faux pas]

3. The Devil is truly in the details. I don't want to give up any of

my freedoms just to make some illegals legal. The employers shouldn't be getting a pass for hiring the undocumented and the undocumented shouldn't be punished unfairly just because they were trying to make a living. I would check the tax rolls. If someone has been paying their fair share for all the time they've been here, cut them a break. Those who haven't shouldn't be cut any slack (two crimes for the price of one). This is a huge mess and anything signed into law should be looked at long and hard. Compromise is a dangerous word.

[athebea]

4. No skin off your nose...

... right.

Do you want to live in a country of net downwards social mobility ? Do you want to live in a country with steady downwards wage pressure ? Do you want America to be Brazilified with el padron living behind fortified walls surrounded by slums ? And if you are a white collar professional has it dawned on you that the same interests that want unlimited illegals want unlimited H1b's ?

[High Plains]

7. No skin off my nose...

As I noted above, I'd like to see comprehensive immigration reform. There is a bill. It has problems, but it's the only thing that has any chance of passing. If that bill dies, we are right back to the status quo. Is that what people want?

I say regularize the undocumented and integrate them into what's left of the labor movement. I think Hispanic labor is already driving the few unions that have any dynamism.

I'm not so hot on guest workers, but as a Midwesterner, I've seen migrant farm workers from Mexico and points south all my life. Somebody needs to pick those crops.

As for "securing the border," I think that's a pipe dream. We've never had a "secure border." On the Mexican side, it's 2,000 miles of tough terrain; on the Canadian side, 5,000 miles. Then there's the seacosasts. I'd rather have a North American Union like the EU than a Fortress America hiding behind police state measures.

[athebea]

9. Will glutting the labor market strengthen workers bargaining power ?

No, it will not and that is precisely the intention of the Wall Street Journal editorial page types who are behind this. It is the corporate globalist policy of glutting the labor market by illegals and H1b's and outsourcing that is destroying the bargaining power of American workers and you are falling for it.

They know perfectly well that organizing 12 million workers is meaningless if 30 million more strike breakers are pouring across the border.

American workers have never historically favored high levels of immigration. Tight labor market = wages rise. Glutted labor market = wages drop. You don't need to be a PHD in economics to understand that. Many on the left are embarassed at the thought of being 'anti-immigrant' because this basic socioeconomic common sense has been expressed in some pretty repulsive ways historically. They would rather side with the Wall Street Journal editorial page than be called "Know-Nothings" or "nativists" or "xenophobic". Well, I am of the opinion that the left does not have the moral right to demand that working Americans pay the cost of liberal guilt.

So those crops went unpicked before illegals ? It wasn't like this before. Twenty years ago this was a manageable problem. Now it is getting completely out of control. The border most definitely can be secured. It is just not in the interest of corporatist elites to do so.

[David__77]

5. NO to this bill!

Enough said!

[fasttense]

6. If the bushes are for it, you know it's a give away to corporations. n/t

[AzDar]

8. Precisely. n/t