Obama to Push Immigration Bill Despite the Risks
While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.
He said [during the campaign[ that comprehensive immigration legislation, including a plan to make legal status possible for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, would be a priority in his first year in office. Latino voters turned out strongly for Mr. Obama in the election.
The president wants to give mass pardons to people who:
1. broke our immigration laws
2. broke our labor laws
3. broke our tax laws
4. broke our perjury laws
5. and did I mention that by "broke" I mean "are continuing to break up until the day they get this mass pardon."
We will fight this again and we will stop it because Americans don't want this. The elite want it but we do not.
Our immigration system is not "broken." Our laws are just not being enforced. Remove the incentive to break into our country, strengthen security at the border and this problem is solved.
Legalizing what is currently illegal does not solve any problem. You can stop the high rate of arrest for unathorized use of a motor vehicle if you make car theft legal... but the people whose cars are stolen won't be any happier.
19 comments:
Mm. How 'bout a different example. Seatbelts, perhaps. Say we've got ten million people in this country who just won't wear a seatbelt when they drive. (I'll also preempt the nitpickers by supposing we have a national seatbelt law in this scenario.) It is understood that these people have knowingly chosen to break the law, but the fact is, they're doing it anyway.
Now, frequently, people get drunk, go driving, damage some property, maybe kill some people. Predictably, many people who drive drunk also don't wear seatbelts. Even though they constitute only a tiny fraction of non-seatbelt-wearers, Lou Dobbs and Oregonians For Seatbelt Reform make the classic mistake of correlation-is-causation, and engage in screaming for non-seatbelt-wearers' blood. Meanwhile, the fact that their chosen enemy commits further crime at a lower rate than the rest of the country somehow fails to penetrate.
A few ironies, too, for your consideration.
"They're corrupting our culture!" says the country that eagerly gave rise to Britney Spears and 50 Cent. Our culture is not better than theirs. Our culture is not more worthy of protection. This may be a bitter pill to swallow, but our culture is destined to adapt and diffuse with other cultures. So has gone every "culture" in the history of the world. The difference is that America did (and largely still does, I'm pleased to say) pride itself on being an internationally welcoming society. Embracing the common bonds of humanity is how we better ourselves. It promotes free trade. It stops wars. It improves values and promotes progress over time. I wish you wouldn't be afraid.
"They're polluting us with drugs!" says the country that is providing South American drug runners with the most consistent and exorbitant demand in the world. I agree with you wholeheartedly that what we need to solve this problem is to eliminate the incentives that drive people who want to live here so badly that they go around the legitimate immigration system. But locking up ten million people is simply not going to do the job when it hasn't even worked for domestic citizens. We imprison more of our own people than any country in the world, and most of it is for drug-related crime. If there is any shred of pragmatism in your political platform, you need an answer to this simple empirical observation: it doesn't work.
"Laws don't matter?" asks the party who had not the slightest problem with torturing terrorists, telling the United Nationa to STFU for eight years, and organizing vigilante gangs to patrol the Mexican border. I assume you would be the first to agree with me that legality should not trump morality. If that's the case, then you could really benefit from taking a moment, putting the gun down and considering the merits of our immigration and drug legislation, not just blindly (and hypocritically) crusade against their violators on the juvenile, knee-jerk basis that It Is The Law.
Your summary of our illegal immigration problem is right on. It is ridiculous that many of our elected officials choose to pander to Hispanics to draw more votes. They do this by selling out our country's laws. Nancy Pelosi is typical of this group she does not want workplace raids or other enforcement of immigration laws.
A fair path to legalize these illegals would be to send all their asses home. Now.
plus stop the suffering. by that I will use an example of a friend of mine whose daughter has a teenage friend that was brought here when she was very young by her parents from Mexico.
Both parents are illegal and of course that makes her illegal.
she is very frightened of being deported to a country that she does not know and very worried about her future because of her legal status.
By allowing illegals to come here and not enforcing the laws is the reason that children like her are forced to suffer the consequences of their parents irresponsibility.
The argument about "breaking up the family's" by deporting a family member would not even be an issue if we enforce the laws already on the books, instead, we look the other way for cheap labor and the PC crowd.
Daniel, I don't recall your "Bush: Laws don't matter" headline during 2000-2008. Maybe you could point to it for us?
Plus Daniels point, we are teaching our children that breaking the law is okay if enough people don't follow the laws.
Like Kaelri's example about seat belts. I use them, don't like them. a lot of people don't like them, so why should we use them.
It's the LAW!
So!
Big deal!
Millions of people cross our boarder and now there are too many to enforce the law.
so using that logic, lets all just stop using seatbelts.
in fact, lets fire our law makers.
if were not going to follow and enforce the laws, then why would we need to pay people to make laws.
then in that case, look at all the money we can save by not having a court and jail system.
don't need them. laws don't mean anything.
and so on, and so on...
Kaelri, Open Border apologists like you should stop with the Baloney as no one with 1/2 a brain is buying it any longer.
Our immigration system is the most generous on Earth as over 2 Million people a year, mostly from Mexico, come here Legally evey year. This continues even when we are losing over 1 Million Jobs every other month. (www.dhs.gov, Immigration Fact book 2008).
We did Amnesty in 1986 and look where that got us, rewarding bad behavior gets more bad behavior.
Many of us were divided on the War in Iraq and the Stimulus bill but, no other issue is a more glaring example of the Elites in DC ignoring an issue we are NOT divided on - Illegal immigration/Drug & Human trafficking as most Americans want it to stop, by a huge margin, in every Poll/Survey taken in the last decade.
OBAMA keep it up and you'll be gone in 2012. Isn't he supposed to represent Americans and not Criminal Foreign Nationals?
OFIR also want to point out that this Monday 4/13 @ 1:00 in the Capitol, there will be a Hearing on a Bill to give in-state Tuition ($13,000/yr.) to ILLEGAL Aliens only, not Americans in other states and not even Legal immigrants, only to reward Illegal's on the backs of Parents that follow the rules.
Soooo, when can the other 200Million plus in Mexico, C.& S. America come here also? How about those suffering in Communist China as well? And the 1/2 Billion starving or dying of AIDS in Africa? Can they come also?
So they didn't sneak in so too bad then?
I recall seeing tens of thousands of Americans of all political persuasions marching against the war in Iraq. Funny, but I do not recall seeing more than a couple dozen, at most, at one of your anti-immigration rallies. With all this alleged consensus on the subject, Rick, I'd think you guys could manage at least a couple hundred guys. What gives?
The reason why is Rick drives all members and potential members away with his stupid backwater rhetoric. I mean look the way the guy writes. He looks like a complete moron. It is one reason I quit attending and won't ever join in or donate again.
I think this anti-mexican garbage is the thing that lost us the election. I know my whole family is sick to death of it. Time to move on. Time to lose the dead weight of these hateful heathens and start fixing our party.
Anon 10:57 PM, if you are part of the Republican party, I don't want you in it. If you cannot understand the rule of law, you must be a liberal. At least Rick is doing something. He may not be the best educated, but he tries. What the fuck are you doing?
I guess you would rather belong to some slick sophisticated organization like ACORN. The group that has committed massive felonies and is getting billions of dollars that our children will have to pay back. I'm sorry, I cannot belong to such a criminal organization. Since your family is tired of the anti-mexican garbage, I will assume you are a mexican and you have illegal aliens in your family. That is why you condone mexicans committing such a large amount of crimes. I don't give a fuck if you are from Mars, as long as you are here legally.
You see, I don't hyphenate different Americans. I see red, white and blue. You see different colors. I do see a large group of people from mexico breaking our laws. I think you have some latent racism and bigotry. I recommend you move to mexico. They are very racist and you will fit right in.
It wasn't the anti-mexican thing that lost the election for Republicans. It was the massive fraud by the democrats (involving ACORN) and McCain. I personally was not going to vote until Palin was put on the ballot. McCain is a lying piece of shit. He would have shoved amnesty down our throats as soon as he was sworn in and congress would have followed. He is not an inspiring leader. Americans were also tired of the uncontrolled spending and other shit that the Republicans did while they were in power. I dislike Bush very much for the love for illegals he had and the uncontrolled spending.
I also see people voting in the same garbage like Reid, Pelosi, Barney Franks, Dodd, and Kennedy. Most voters are uneducated to what is actually going on. They are too well fed and entertained.
ANON 10:57 PM
LOOK AT THE WAY YOU WRITE. YOU ARE ANY BETTER THAN RICK. LOOKING AT THE WAY YOU WRITE, I NOW UNDERSTAND WHY YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. YOU ARE UNEDUCATED! YOUR EDUCATION WAS STOLEN BY A MEXICAN WHO JUMPED OUR BORDER.
CORRECTION: YOU ARE NOT ANY BETTER THAN RICK.
I may make mistakes, but I correct them.
Dave ZERO I would rather have an illegal mexican in this country than a legal you. If anyone should be deported it is racists like you. Maybe Obama and the Congress can get to work on that.
Robby, what have I said that is racist? Is that all you can do is call me a name? I'm not sensitive like most people are today. You think I'm a racist because I'm against illegal aliens?
Maybe you like the illegal mexicans because they like to rape and murder young girls. Remember Dani Countryman. It is part of their culture. I recommend you turn yourself into the local police department. You probably like to rape little girls too.
Kaelri- As you know I have often stated my respect for your eloquence in stating your often opposing opinions but I am saddened to see that you really feel our culture is not worthy of defending. If this were true then I have a problem understanding why the U.S. is the world's largest magnet for people from all corners of the world seeking freedom and opportunity. Your use Britney Spears and 50 cent to represent our culture is a cheap shot as I guess I could use the murdering rampages of the Mexican drug lords to represent Mexican culture. Of course you would fail to mention that most of us that are against the illegal immigration are also the ones that argue against the excesses of the modern entertainment offerings.
While Multicultural education has it's merits, inculcates tolerance and provides a perspective on our own traditions and values, it must not be allowed to supplant or interfere with our schools responsibility to insure our children's mastery of American literate culture.
You might think that traditional culture is classbound, white, WASP, racist, sexist and excessively western, Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson pointed out that mainstream culture is not the province of any single social group and is constantly changing by assimilating new elements and expelling old ones. National iterate culture is the most democratic culture in our land. It excludes no one, it cuts across generations, social groups and classes. To withhold traditional culture from the school curriculum in the name of progressive ideas is in fact an unprogressive action that helps preserve the status quo.
While your lesson on circuitous logic is interesting it is apropos to the illegal immigration debate. It only shows your contempt for those of us that do not share your world view. I would venture that most of us that don't want illegal immigration and do not respect the U.N. also don't endorse torture or the violation of human rights. We also are against Bush's attacks on our constitutional rights and power grabs. One of the rights we do endorse is the right of independent nations to establish and enforce borders just like every other civilized nation in the world.
You have also included hyperbole that consider beneath you. No one is advocating locking up "ten million people" and the "vigilante gangs", which I assume you are referring to the Minute Men, have been brought together as desperate attempt to help the Border Patrol do their job. Perhaps we can refer to them as "Community Organizers" in the future.
The Congressional Delegation in my state supports legalization.
It is people like DAVE01 that make hiring undocumented immigrants necessary. Heavy winded and not too bright. I would rather have a foreigner papers or no papers working next to me than an American that thinks the way DAVE and Rick do.
Paralyzed roofer's case raises legal debate over rights of illegal immigrants hurt on job
http://preview.tinyurl.com/cn4bpe
"His bill at St. Mary's is climbing quickly toward $500,000. No one is paying that bill. "
Well, we are.
Anon 2:48 PM
Of course you would not want me working next to you. If you are breaking the law I would turn you in. I am curious to see the list of laws you are breaking. An illegal alien would not turn you in for fear he/she would be caught for the laws they are breaking. Criminals generally don't turn in criminals.
So, what laws are you breaking?
Robby, I'm still waiting to see what I have said that is racist. I think you are full of shit and can only call names behind the anonymity of the internet.
I'm part Irish. There are over 50,000 illegal alien Irish in our country. I want them booted also. I guess I'm racist against Irish too.
I guess criminals are the new race and we law abiding citizens are racist against criminals now.
That is too funny.
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