New Immigration Bill Provides Amnesty
Let’s clear up one point. This new immigration bill in the Senate provides amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants in the US. President Bush this weekend tried to deny this:
CRAWFORD, TEXAS — President Bush on Saturday tackled head-on a key criticism of the immigration agreement pending before Congress, asserting it would settle the status of illegal immigrants without granting them amnesty.
… The legislation would offer probationary legal status to the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants who were in the U.S. before Jan. 1, 2007. Those who then met a series of requirements — including payment of $5,000 in fines and $2,000 in processing fees — could gain citizenship within an estimated 12 to 13 years.
In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush said the plan “will help us resolve the status of millions of illegal immigrants who are here already, without animosity and without amnesty.”
Nice try, but no cigar.
Any amnesty program has two parts:
1) If are in the US illegally, you may now stay with a legal status.
2) After jumping through some hoops, you can become a citizen.
Those that try to say that jumping through some hoops means it’s not amnesty, well that is pretty silly. Applying this logic means that if you simply filled out some paper work to become a citizen, then it’s not amnesty.
All of these proposals to give a path-to-citizenship to illegal immigrants are simply different ways to provide amnesty. It is only a matter of how many hoops they must jump through to become citizens.
May 20th, 2007 at 10:56 am
The republicans deserves to lose in the 2008 elections. They can’t even hold the line on cores issues like immigration. It is not clear that history will label the current administration as republican, givens it has done so many things that is contrary to basic values of the party. Out of the current crop of the republican presidental hopefully outthere, the only one that holds the line is Ron Paul. But he has no chance of getting elected.
May 20th, 2007 at 11:28 am
What do you think would be an apropriate solution? Can we avoid the fact that many of these illegals are (unfortunately) an intergral part of our economy? I live in the south (Florida) and have been to the southwest, and I have to say that illegals are everywhere doing every job that the rest of us won’t do. I’m no economist, but I see the loss of this cheap labor resulting in too many jobs, raising labor wages, and inflation possibly coupled with recession.
I certainly don’t want to give any others any more reason to come into this country illegally, but I gotta wonder how much of it is because of an amnesty program that is arguably a pain in the dick, or the fact that if you get into America, you have a chance. True, this whole amnesty deal is pretty disgusting, but whatever policy we enact, I think we really need to do our best to secure our boarders. If these means building a fence, then I say build a fence if it’ll stop a percentage of illegals from coming in. At least the illegals building the fence can know with the money they are making they can become a citizen in 12 years.
All I ever hear is the same rhetoric and quibbling from both sides anyway, fighting to keep me as uninformed as possible.
You gotta admit though, “…without animosity and without amnesty.” is some nice alliteration.
That’s a catch-phrase I can follow!*
*e-sarcasm
May 20th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
If the argument is about money, then the question is who benefits from the cheap labor. The people who are truly profiting from it want to public to believe that cheap labor translates to lower prices. What they forgot to say that it also means weaker wage support for many unskilled jobs for the people legally here. This is on the top of the fact that most of our labor force is already in direct competition to cheap labor abroad. Fox news was running a story where some fast food chains are outsourcing their pickup window ordering to India. Yes, the person taking the order is actually sitting in some cube on the other side of the world.
But those people are already here. If that is the case, why not keep the status quo? The cynical view would be to keep them illegal so the labor prices ramains low. There is something very wrong about the economic argument that the pro-immigratoin camps has been preaching. It just doesn’t add up.
There can be no honest discussion about immigration as long as profits and votes are at stake. The truth is way too ugly and both party have the hand in the cookie jar and they are more interested in their own short term gains than what is good for the country.
May 20th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
The most pertinent point of all is the PUBLIC’S WILL.
The Voting Electorate does not want anything that does not put up a militarized wall and system of fences behind it, replete with real razor wire, to stop more illegal immigration. The public is and has been ignored completely by Kennedy, McCain, Spector, and especially Bush.
I honestly think many in the public would consider a “earned amnesty” if they get a real WALL to stop MORE from coming. There are no real funding “triggers” in this bill to build a wall, so we are being lied to. The Senate is promising some kind of wall, but they have no intention of building one. Its a sham. You are getting open amnesty, with no stoppage in more illegal immigration.
The “elite” have simply decided to make an end run around our immigration policy because they dont like it, and want it to change, against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of people legally here in this nation……………..black and white.
Even if it WERE bad for the economy, doing what the public wants, especially when its something the public overwhelmingly wants such as this, is the right thing to do.
We are also not considering what all the illegals are doing to our own poor. This nation functioned very well in 1990, the year I saw my first Mexican in Tennessee. We filled all the jobs that needed to be filled. 22% of black males are in prision. How many of those black males might have been gainfully employed if the same jobs that illegals do, paid a little more money because the illegals weren’t here, thus making it worth DeMarcus’s while to get a job instead of turning to crime? Imprisoning so many black males costs us a fortune, and makes lawyers wealthy………………………..who could be for that?
One HUGE consideration we are ignoring also is technological innovation. In 20 years, robots might mow and trim our yards, many houses might be built in sections and moved to jobsites via trucks, robotic machines might be picking produce, robotic back-hoe-type equipment might be doing alot of our landscaping while being operated by a man sitting in a cab on his ass. We may not NEED all this cheap labor. What will the tens of millions strong army of cheap labor that we have brought in do then? What could they do? Many didn’t even reach high school and can’t read in Spanish, much less English.
We have a lot of high school drop outs now, there isn’t a “labor shortage” unless you are a contractor who just wants the cheapest labor possible so you make a killing for each house you build. Real economists will tellyou there is NEVER a “labor shortage”, and the market simply has to adjust wages.
I’ll make it very simple for anyone following the thread. Imagine that you live in an expensive gated community, and the “help” is given smaller houses in that community, and they all live in six or seven houses on the last street. You pay an extra five bucks an hour for help that looks like you do, but their kids are no trouble to yours, they stay out of your hair, they dont change the culture of the gated community, etc. Now imagine that someone has the bright idea of bringing in third world peasants to do the same jobs for five bucks less an hour, but they have tons of kids that ARE trouble, and form little gangs, and the newbies take more state service money that comes from the gated community in this example, and that their kids drop out of school many times as much as the old help’s did, and appears to not be so willing to work as the first generation did, and the “last” street on the bloc starts to drag down the property value of the rest of the gated community and even becomes a bit dangerous to be in and run down, the newbies drive drunk a bit more often, and cant/wont communicate with others in English. Most of the residents wanted to keep the old help, but the new manager, a tightwad despite the fact he overspent on a ridiculous expansion of the golf course, thinks he can save a little money, so he did it anyway. You are there, stuck with them them and a lower property value and higher neighborhood association fees to pay for the ridiculous golf course and the higher social services for the new folks on the “last street”, and didn’t have a say in it. ………………………………….That analogy can be extended to what might happen nationally Monday evening. We didn’t get to vote on this, and Bush wants to make damn sure we cannot. He wants to take the issue off the table so it doesn’t wreck McCain or Rudy’s chances, because they are very vunerable to it and Bush wants his neo-con legacy to go on.
If he gets this, the Democrats will know the nation will be theirs in a matter of time. Demography is destiny. Its why Rome overtook Greece, and why the barbarians overtook Rome, and why Ancient Egypt really fell from her glory. Its why the Holy Roman Empire first fell to Islam, and why Europe came back to fight off Islam and send it back to the mid-east. Simply demography. There is strength in numbers. We are bringing in people whose fellow ethnics voted 70% Democrat in the last election, and just think the party standard bearer hasn’t been a pol as skilled as a Bill Clinton lately……………………
May 20th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Quite honestly I think that any immigration reform needs to start with the incentives we have in place that make them want to come here. First, birthright citizenship unless a parent is a citizen needs to go. Second, welfare benefits including education and health care need to be reduced or even eliminated.
I don’t mind if someone wants to come here and work hard, make a living, but don’t ask me to pay for your health care, educate your children, pay for your retirement, or ask for any other tax-payer financed subsidies. You must pay for your own way.
Once you take away some of these tax payer funded incentives for them to come to the US we may have less of a problem. Most immigrants that came to the US prior to our evolving welfare state did not expect or even want tax-payer funded handouts . They worked hard and made a life for themselves on their own merits much like every other American citizen at that time.
Building a wall may help some but does not get at the heart of the problem and will likely only keep out the most deserving to be here. Giving amnesty without looking at the above two items will just lead to even more people wanting to come and soak up our tax-payer charity.
May 20th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
[...] Having said all this, I must admit that if I was convinced that the above items were truly going to be implemented in the near future, I would be willing to agree to some type of limited amnesty program. (But let’s stop pretending amnesty programs are not really amnesty programs.) Many of these Hispanic families have been here for many years. Their kids have grown up as Americans. For that matter - their kids are American citizens. [...]
May 20th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Just take a look at the meat packing plant ICE busted a few months ago and removed several hundred Mexican criminals doing work Americans won’t do. Now they are back to full staff with ‘legal’ workers. How much did they have to increase pay? Slave labor was maybe $8 an hour. Legal workers make maybe $9 an hour. Guess it’ll break them up since it didn’t cost them a penny, they just increased the price of their product a fraction of a cent and, bingo. $8 and $9 is just an example, bet it (increase) wasn’t more than that.
May 20th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
The word “amnesty” denotes “exemption from punishment.” If a bill imposes punishment (e.g., fines), then that bill is not “amnesty”.
May 21st, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Norman,
If you can move here illegally, pay a fine, and then become a citizen, you bypassed the whole process of applying for citizenship. So if you get to be a citizen - you beat the system. So you were handed amnesty (meaning you weren’t deported).
I would say that in general amnesty means that you get to keep what you were seeking illegally - even if there is some punishment involved to get what you wanted. But if you get to keep what you took illegally, then you were handed amnesty.
If any punishment means that it is not amnesty, then a $1 fine would mean that it is not amnesty. I would say if you get to become a citizen, regardless of the size of the fine, you have been handed amnesty.