Just taking a moment to thank you for doing all of this work. My personal benchmark, or litmus test, is how the deal works for the illegal immigrants compared to what is being done for/to the LEGAL immigrants. So far it looks like the LEGAL immigrants are coming out ahead, so I've not rejected the plan outright.

I can't say I support it, after all the Bill hasn't actually been written yet; we're all researching opinions and memories about an agreement made between Professional Politicians. I will reserve opinion until such time as an actual Bill is written.

Sadly, that means that I cannot intelligently make up my mind whether to support this particular Bill until AFTER the Bill has been voted on by the Senate! Voting on the Bill before it can be vetted is in itself fairly suspicious to me... providing a Bill to vote on in the Senate before the Senators get a chance to inspect it or the Public get a chance to weigh in on it. The floor debate as scheduled leaves a whopping 90 minutes to be shared between the parties for debate. I think they allow more time than that for those little One Minute Speeches across the building in the House of Representatives...

We only have time now to address our personal beliefs on the issue, and so I truly understand, and in many ways support the boys who cried 'amnesty!' and their 'cosmic background radiation' on this issue. It seems that when we are not allowed to address a Bill before a vote, we have to be heard on the issue in General... and making enough noise by calling 'Amnesty' is noise that makes the Senate and House notice our beliefs and opinions.

Again, I thank you for doing all of this work, I personally find it VERY valuable and have sent links to these posts to my friends around the Country who are trying to make sense out of this by just listening to the evening news (poor guys). But I'm sad to say that the bleating by Malkin and Hewett is necessary when we aren't given time enough to make input on the actual legislation.

Just as an example, the 370 new miles of fencing is meaningless since they haven't funded the 700 miles from last year.

I like the comparison to J. Wellington Wimpy of Popeye fame: "I will gladly give you Enforcement tomorrow in exchange for Amnesty today."

Tell you what, Dafydd. When they enact the border fence (all of it) and prosecute employers relentlessly for two full years, maybe I'll have recovered enough trust after 1986 to think about changing the process for coming in.

SDN:

Tell you what, Dafydd. When they enact the border fence (all of it) and prosecute employers relentlessly for two full years, maybe I'll have recovered enough trust after 1986 to think about changing the process for coming in.

SDN, I think you have the mistaken impression that Republicans are in the driver's seat. We lost the election. We are in the minority.

You do not have the luxury of demanding everybody wait for two years while you recover your courage. If Republicans kill this bill by filibuster, or if the House kills it with primarily GOP votes, then in 2008, it will be the Democrats, not the Republicans, who run on border security.

They will argue (rightly) that they offered a bill that would beef up border security, and the Republicans spurned it because we didn't get everything we wanted. We will lose the election, big time. We'll have to deal with an even more Democratic House and Senate, plus a Democratic president.

And then, of course, you'll blame Bush.

SDN, this is it. This is the bare bones of the only deal we'll get. It's not our job to kill it, prance around like loons, and chant "we killed the Patriot Act!" Whoops, I meant, "we killed immigration reform!" It's our job to make it as much better as we can by negotiating with the Democrats.

Hold your nose if you must, but you cannot simply brush the Democrats aside; they're the ones driving now -- you are a passenger; and if you're not careful, you'll be a pedestrian, wondering where everybody went.

Our only option is to buckle up and negotiate as good a deal as we can get within this outline... no matter how much you hate John McCain and Ted Kennedy.

Dafydd

Coyotes charge Mexican nationals a $1,500 smuggling fee, according to law enforcement officials and immigration activists. For people south of Mexico, the fee ranges from $3,000 to $5,000.

They must pay a $4,000 fine in addition to the $1,000 fine paid to get the provisional Z-visa, for a total of $5,000

So it will just cost them twice as much to enter the country illegally.

Some deterrent

There going to be any penalties for anyone entering illegally AFTER this legislation is in place?

Or do we just repeat this process every generation.

If this is the best we can get we might have to hold our noses and swallow it.

If we can correct just one thing in this bill, it has to be to make the "coming forward" MANDATORY, and the only way to do that is to vastly increase the penalties for employing someone who is not a legal resident, giving businesses 6 months or so (however long it takes to get the ID system up and running) to verify the citizenship of every new AND EXISTING employee. Then, you probably have to actually prosecute a few of them.

The reaction of conservatives to the immigration bill has been predictably swift. As usual, however, it's hard to know what the "conservative" position on immigration is. At times, it looks as though nothing short of the immediate and mass deportation of 12 million people will satisfy their anti-amnesty call. But let's take it more slowly. We should not be in a hurry to let National Review, Hugh Hewitt, and even the venerable Rush Limbaugh tell us what the conservative position on immigration ought to be.......

linked and excerpted at Rovinsworld

vastly increase the penalties for employing someone who is not a legal resident, giving businesses 6 months or so (however long it takes to get the ID system up and running) to verify the citizenship of every new AND EXISTING employee. Then, you probably have to actually prosecute a few of them

We also have to provide businesses with a means to do this WITHOUT ending up in Court on discrimination charges.

Personally I would think multiple with holdings for the same Social Security Number should be probable cause for detainment and/or investigation.

Why would an illegal pay 5000 dollars for something they are getting for free now? Why would a "sanctuary city" do any more to detain illegals after the law is passed than they are doing now? This law is just a more tricked out version of the one passed during the 80s. Why wouldn't the Republicans say that this law will not make the border any more secure than it is now? Holding your nose doesn't make the garbage smell better.

Dafydd,

I think you might be wrong about being in the drivers seat. Ive heard a lot of blowback from Democrats, not just Republicans, when it comes to border enforcement.

It might just be that this bill and any subsequent bill will get killed and keep getting killed because of the electorate, who, it seems to me, would like to see enforcement enacted first, before we trust the government to do anything else.

I could be wrong about this but our bosses at work force us to keep the television on CNN and there has been a lot of people on CNN speaking out against this bill. I usually watch Fox News and am not familiar with CNN but to see a bunch of folks talking this down on CNN makes me think Republicans aren't the only folks who want to see enforcement first.

As for me, i'd like to see both things done but do not trust my government to enact any enforcement provisions unless they have some incentive to do so. And if the people demand enforcement first, before they will listen to any other compromise, we might just see some enforcement.

Baggi:

If they keep killing bills nothing will happen. Everyone will just go on yelling at each other.

The problem is that even if this bill passes, "nothing" will happen. Just like the last amnesty bill, there was almost no incentive for illegals to give up their no-tax, free-benefits existence, and nothing requiring that they do so. Most didn't. That's the one change that must be made, here, along with the willingness to deport the millions who do not "measure up" to these requirements.

My complaint all along is that, for a large percentage of illegal immigrants, the border crossing is only the first of their crimes. Others might include false ID, tax evasion, theft of government services, voter fraud, and conspiracy. Seems to me that "amnesty" on these charges is as serious, even moreso, and should not be granted.

well then snochasr your answer is to do nothing. just ignore the situation. if that is true, why even bother complaining?

Dafydd:

They will argue (rightly) that they offered a bill that would beef up border security

You misspelled "wrongly". The bill does not beef up border security in any way beyond a few token gestures. It does not mandate completion of fencing; it does not require that enforcement provisions actually be shown effective.

Should Democrats try to argue that they offered a bill to beef up border security but petulant Republicans killed it because they didn't get everything they wanted, Republicans can rightly say that the supposedly beefed-up border security offered by the Democrat bill was a sham, and that sham enforcement coupled with regularization would have been an unmitigated disaster.

Brett:

Should Democrats try to argue that they offered a bill to beef up border security but petulant Republicans killed it because they didn't get everything they wanted, Republicans can rightly say that the supposedly beefed-up border security offered by the Democrat bill was a sham, and that sham enforcement coupled with regularization would have been an unmitigated disaster.

Of course; the argument that worked wonders November last.

Dafydd

Dafydd:

That argument was not made November last, inasmuch as there was no comprehensive reform bill on the table.

Your basic argument appears to be that, because Democrats will propose and possibly pass an immigration bill, Republicans ought to try to work to make it as non-horrible as possible, lest they get crucified in the media and the polls. You're categorically ignoring three things:

(1) Republicans will get crucified in the media regardless of what they do.

(2) The electoral viability of the GOP is nothing I give the slightest damn about if the GOP refuses to serve its constituents (i.e., people like me).

(3) The status quo is preferable to the least-bad bill that could emerge from this Congress.

Brett:

I don't "categorically ignore" them; I categorically disagree with all three positions.

Dafydd

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