Reid: Immigration reform a top priority

[Amianthus]

Wednesday, November 29, 2006
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Calling illegal immigration reform the "most perplexing issue that faces America," incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told CNN Espanol Tuesday he plans to introduce a comprehensive immigration bill at the beginning of the 110th Congress.

Reid said his bill will include boarder security initiatives, a guest-worker program, a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States, and sanctions against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

Reid said Congress cannot afford a delay on passing immigration reform. "I think we have no choice -- we must address this most perplexing issue that faces America, it's something that must be done, it's something we will do," Reid said.

"We have to have comprehensive immigration reform -- it would be bad for the country to go for two years without doing something about this."

-- CNN Espanol Correspondent Juan Carlos Lopez
Article

[sirs]

If it's ANYTHING resembling that prior Senate bill as what the Dems consider "reform", one can only hope that Bush didn't lose his Veto pen, or we're screwed       

[Plane]

How diffrent will it be from what George Bush wanted when he was first elected?

[sirs]

How diffrent will it be from what George Bush wanted when he was first elected?

Sadly, Bush was leaning towards signing what what coming out of the Senate, before it was squashed in committee.  Hopefully he's had time to contemplate the egregious ramifications that a similar bill would facilitate

[Universe Prince]

What would the egregious ramifications be?

[sirs]

What would the egregious ramifications be?

I'll get back to you on that tonight, if you promise not to make this out as me being against immigration in general.  Deal?

[Universe Prince]

Sure. Whatever.

[sirs]

What would the egregious ramifications be?

Where to start. 

- 1st and foremost, it's an Amnesty Program

- there is no continuous work requirement for amnesty

- It would have allowed illegal immigrants to ask anybody to attest that they have been employed, inviting rampant fraud, as the government cannot realistically investigate all these cases

- It would have restricted the ability of Citizenship and Immigration Services to share information on illegal alien guest worker applicants who are criminals and/or terrorists  (for exanple, if an illegal alien writes in their applications that they are related to Osama Bin Laden, then our government cannot use that information.)  and what's worse, if a federal agent does use information provided by an illegal alien in an application for amnesty the agent would be fined $10,000.  This is five times more than the alien has to pay to get amnesty

- Illegal Immigrants would have the option to only have to pay three of their last five years in back taxes, and the total amount of the "fine" is preposterously low ($2000) when you consider how many years they have to pay it.

- Illegal Immigrants are allowed not only to become citizens, but also to legally live and work here while they wait, unlike all the other immigrants that went thru the process legally

- Illegal Immigrants are not prohibited from getting credit for the money they’ve put into the Social Security system if they’ve worked in the U.S. illegally and using a bogus SS#

- There was no serious enforcement in the bill.  Who's going to enforce that they learn English?  What are the repercussions if they fail to pay their back taxes?

- Businesses that hired illegal workers would have gotten off scott-free from paying the taxes that they owe the government.   In addition to not having to pay their taxes, employers are also off the hook for providing illegal immigrants with records or evidence that they have worked in the U.S

- Currently, the State Department requires most applicants to submit to interviews, and waives them only for children and the elderly.  Under the Senate bill, illegal immigrants in the 2nd tier who are required to leave the country can re-enter the United States on a visa. but not be required to be interviewed

There are many more examples of how egregious the senate bill was, but these were many of the biggies to start off with.  Of course I'm confident how you'll torpedo many of the measures in a mode of painting me as so uncaring, so unsympathetic to those "who just want to come to america and work".  Sarcastiscally declaring "Yea, how dare we consider retroactivly giving them credit on SS taxes"...... when they illegally used bogus SS#'s.  Or "ea, how dare we allow them to work here as their immigration status goes thu the process".....when legal immigrant applicants didn't have such a luxury.  Which is fine, as you're perfectly entitled to that opinion, as tweaked as it may be.  I love this country, and the immigrants that made it what it is.  And I love what makes it great, or at least what made it great.

To quote JD Hayworth, "The idea that this plan would be onerous for illegals is insulting, especially to legal immigrants who have patiently gone through the laborious process of lawfully coming into this country."

[Universe Prince]

To quote JD Hayworth, "The idea that this plan would be onerous for illegals is insulting, especially to legal immigrants who have patiently gone through the laborious process of lawfully coming into this country."

My great-grandparents immigrated to this country without a laborious process other than essentially checking in at the door. And not so long before that there were effectively no regulations about immigrating to the U.S.A. And I think what is insulting is that people who are so desperate to make a better life here that they are willing to risk their very lives to get here and willing to risk jailtime just to get work with crappy pay because it's better than what they had, are to be despised and thrown out of this country. The insistence that doing away with laborious process of legal entry would be insulting to those who went through it is nothing less than adult male bovine excrement. To stop doing something we should not be doing in the first place is not mean or insulting to those who had to suffer through it. Is it insulting to someone who had to struggle through meeting onerous government regulations to start and run a business if those regulations are reduced and the next person doesn't have to struggle to start and run his business? No, of course not. The insult is in the onerous regulations, both in the business example and in the immigration issue.

So while you may lament the "egregious ramifications" of the proposed law, I think it does not go nearly far enough. We don't need to fix our immigration laws. We need to scrap them altogether and start again with something not xenophobic, onerous or insane.

Yes, I know. You're not xenophobic. You're not opposed to immigration. You just support the laborious process we have now out of the goodness of your heart, a fine sense of patriotism, and a desire to keep out undesirables. What was it you said... you love this country and "and the immigrants that made it what it is." Then why don't you support going back to the sort of immigration policy we had in, say, the late 1800s, when the immigrants most of us think of as making this country great were coming to America? People were making the same complaints then as are made now about poor, uneducated immigrants coming to America not assimilating, taking low paying jobs and sending money out of the country. Prior to the Civil War, some folks feared that Irish immigrants were going to prove ruinous to the traditions of democracy and Protestantism. And when folks from places like Poland and (gasp!) China started pouring in, well something just had to be done. And when poor people immigrated here to find that the streets were not paved with gold (and in many cases not paved at all) they could at least go to small communities where they could speak (gasp!) in their native language. These immigrants contributed to making America what it is today. And what little entry process they had took 3-4 hours. Not years, not months, not days. Hours. And before you start talking about criminals and terrorists, back then there were supposedly communists and anarchists who were going to come sabotage our country, and immigrants were blamed for crime as much then as they are now. Somehow America still survived and prospered.

What made this country great was not strict control of immigration or closed borders. What made this country great were open borders and freedom of opportunity. We harm ourselves if we turn our back on that in the name of a security we can never genuinely have.

So with all due respect to Congressman Hayworth, the idea that we need a laborious and onerous process to control immigration to this country is an insult to those who are trying to come here now and to those who have come before us. And, if I may speak idealistically, it is an insult to the very foundation of this country, a foundation both of people coming here to this land to make a better life and the principals of liberty.

[_JS]

What made this country great was not strict control of immigration or closed borders. What made this country great were open borders and freedom of opportunity. We harm ourselves if we turn our back on that in the name of a security we can never genuinely have.

So with all due respect to Congressman Hayworth, the idea that we need a laborious and onerous process to control immigration to this country is an insult to those who are trying to come here now and to those who have come before us. And, if I may speak idealistically, it is an insult to the very foundation of this country, a foundation both of people coming here to this land to make a better life and the principals of liberty.

Very well said.

I might add that the good Congressman Hayworth will soon be out of a job.

[Universe Prince]

Thank you, JS.

[Xavier_Onassis]

It is fine and dandy to say that the 13,000,000 illegals that are probably in this country do not deserve to be here, and should be sent home, or at the very least be detained and interviewd and then deported if they are not deem,ed to be worthy additions to the USA. It is entirely logical to say that those who went through the annoying and humiliating and expensive process of doing it all legally should feel like utter saps for not just busting through the fence.

But the reality is that there are 13,000,000 of them. Thirteen out of 300 million. A huge number of people. Imagine deporting Illinois.
The government has no way to detain or interview that many people.
If they sent back all the illegal Mexicans to Mexico, the results would be far worse than anything that an amnesty would produce.
Neither party can resolve the immigration mess, and I don't think that even working together that any rational solution is likely.

They are right about step One, which is close the border as much as possible, as soon as possible.
 

[Universe Prince]

They are right about step One, which is close the border as much as possible, as soon as possible.

I'm curious as to exactly what you think that would achieve.

[Plane]

And I think what is insulting is that people who are so desperate to make a better life here that they are willing to risk their very lives to get here and willing to risk jailtime just to get work with crappy pay because it's better than what they had, are to be despised and thrown out of this country.


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I enjoy your adept turn of phraise , god job.


What is makeing the USA such an attractive lamp for all the world?

We are just humans here and we are breathing the same atmosphere.

What is makeing the parts of the world that these immagrants are leaveing so repellant?


Or in other words , if this is causeing such problems , why can't conditions in Mexico , China or wherever improve enough to staunch the flow?

[Universe Prince]

Or in other words , if this is causeing such problems , why can't conditions in Mexico , China or wherever improve enough to staunch the flow?

Excellent question. The answer is they can improve, but multiple things need to happen for that to occur. The two primary ones would be a reduction of trade barriers (including subsidies) and recognition of property rights. The former we can do something about, at least for ourselves. The latter is a more difficult matter requiring change with in the governments and political structures of other countries. However, I think America, both in business and in government, could campaign and even put some pressure on other countries to begin to recognize property rights. If we did those things, I think we would see conditions in Mexico and other countries begin to improve to the point that immigration to this country would become much less of an economic issue. But then, of course, people would complain because international companies would make use of workers in those other countries, the way they do in places like India and Taiwan, but that is another issue.