I think it's entirely possible, that next year at this time, there'll be a stampede by all the candidates to have their photo taken with Gen. Petraeus, if not yet with the President.

It's definitely a Ned Lamont moment for the right roots. Maybe Ace can take a nap now. A several week long temper tantrum has to be taxing.A few immigration round ups before a couple of big harvests would put Hillary in the White House. I can see the evening news now, a camera pans across a couple thousand acres of rotting unpicked fruit or vegtables, "with lettuice reaching $6 a pound, thousands of acres rot because of the mean republicans".Oh,I forgot Hawkins, Malkin and the Powerline guys will install sprinklers and pick fruit.

Dafydd,

Once again you bring common sense and the ability to look forward to what is important to conservatives who are especially concerned about our future. While I did not agree with the immigration bill,(as presented), it is important to embrace and clarify so much that our president has accomplished-----namely the security of this nation and our strong economic growth that has been the backbone, and still our strength.

Great Post!

Rov

Dafydd,

I think that in a week, and especially with Bush claiming executive privilege against Pat Leahy over NSA and US attorney records, people will start to forget about this brouhaha and focus on other issues. The whole "running against Bush" notion was just a side effect of this heated battle, and its continuation (like over at The Corner) today is just a little bit of gloating. Now that the war is about to come to center stage again, people who just this week called Bush a traitor will remember all over again why they liked him to begin with.

The only question left is can the immigration opponents muster the same level of energy to fight the liberals on War on Terror issues that they could muster against their own President on this immigration issue. If they can't, then at least we know where their true priorities lie, and we will have inagurated the age of the "September 10th conservative".

Dafydd, you're right about everything. I am willing to do my part and honor the cease fire. I saw the mob gathering and heading over the cliff in 2005 and it's been sheer agony watching the disaster unfold in slow motion ever since. Even if everyone participates in a cease fire beginning now, the casualties are severe and I think it will take a miracle to mitigate and regroup into a successful enterprise.

I notice you've used an unusual number of qualifiers like "might" and "maybe" tonight, and that has sent more chills up my spine.

Yeah, while Dean, and the guys at The Corner are all slapping themselves silly over this tremendous victory the question I have is, now that they demonstrated that they can defeat the Republican President on at least two important occasions, maybe they can now put their power to good use and defeat some Democratic proposal.

Greg Marquez
goyomarquez@earthlink.net

I work with a lot of immigrants, I am married to a South American immigrant, and I know a lot of democrats. No one liked the bill as finalized in the Senate. Even more, people disliked the ham handed, closed door, take it or shove it attitude around the bill.
There was a lot of merit, in principal, in the bill. As I read the reality of it, it was not going to achieve its goals.
The fence/adequate border security was in no way assured. The instant legalization of millions was a de jeur amnesty, worse than our defact amnesty of today.
The weakness of the chain migration reform, the weakness of the job classifications, and the fact that Kennedy, who is infamous for undermining national policy was leading this, all made me conclude it was unworkable.
I only wish the President would have pushed for winning this war as hard as has this unworkable over sized idea.

Thank you for saying this Dafydd, and I agree with you on most points... except the part about Conservatives running against George W. Bush.

First, I see myself as a Conservative. I was very much against the Comprehensive Plan... not because it WAS a comprehensive plan, but because nobody really knew what was in the plan they were trying to ramrod through the Senate. Past history has shown that when that kind of thing is tried, it is because the plan in the works does not agree at all with the plan in the promise.

And once again it showed to be the case here. Conservatives, myself included, disagreed with W very strongly... on this issue. On a few others, truth be told. But that is a sign that we are actively engaged in the direction of the Country, not sheep to be led by a President. I would hope that you don't think Republicans should agree with the President 100% just because we elected him... not gonna happen. We'll support his ideas when we agree with them, we'll work against his plans when we don't agree with them. I support the man as President, I support this Presidency. I'll defend it in debate. But I'll still disagree if I think he's doing something wrong; and I'll work hard to block him if I think he's doing something dangerous.

Our President is a man of strong moral beliefs, and if his heart is set on a path because he thinks it is just, he will stay on that path. I respect that. In this case I disagreed with him, I thought he was proposing something dangerous. I had to act strongly to oppose him in order to do what I think was one of the most important acts of the year, politically.

Now it is time for the Conservatives to distinguish themselves from the Democrats: We have prevailed on the issue of this one piece of Legislation, but there STILL needs to be reform of immigration policy, enforcement, and law.

I'm going to work just as hard to get the Senators to reform LEGAL immigration, protect the border, and enforce the Laws on the books. It won't happen in a comprehensive Bill, but emphasizing the applicable existing laws and supporting those goals CAN be done this year. Getting THAT done will show whether the Conservatives have what it takes to lead our Country. If we can do it, we deserve a shot at running the show. If not, then we'll have to settle for voting a Moderate of some kind into office.

...as long as it's not McCain.

I'm with you Dafydd. I don't think George Bush is a bad man. I honestly think he's a great man, by my own definition -- in trying times, he rose to challenges of monumental proportions. As Frank at IMAO says, he's batting 1.000 when it comes to terrorist attacks on US soil after 9-11, and that says a lot.

I think what you're seeing is case-in-point that people are people the world 'round; the nutroots is a title that can just as easily be applied to the legion of armchair warriors that happen to support the right. Some of the vitriol that people spew on the net is unreal -- from both sides.

And as for Dale Gribble, don't be so theatrical. You're just as bad as the folks who hyperventilate about global warming. Capitalism doesn't let a market that is acting out of sorts stay "sick" for long, be it an inflated market due to lack of workers or a deflated market due to illegal or subsidized work. Take a breath.

Besides, as everyone has so vehemently told me, deportation and "round ups" are impossible under the current law, right?

I don't think you'll see many conservative bloggers, including Michelle, Ace, Allahpundit (well, maybe Allahpundit) or the NRO gang display any long term BDS symptoms but the Republican nominee next year will have to be someone who's willing to say that George Bush has made some mistakes. John McCain was already on thin ice over the BCRA and and the Gang of 14 deal; whatever chance he might still have had of being nominated vanished when he joined forces with Ted Kennedy on a fiasco of a bill that never should have seen the light of day. Sen. Brownback wasn't a serious contender to begin with but if he had been he wouldn't be now. (That last minute vote switch after he realized cloture was going to fail didn't fool anyone who was paying attention.)

Aside: I just finished a great COL Bud Day bio (There's an ad on my sidebar) a few days ago and came away truly admiring John McCain for the way he handled himself as a POW. He was a man of principal then and he still is but that doesn't change the fact that the same new media crowd who killed the amnesty bill isn't about to let someone who supported it run at the top of the Republican ticket.

There's no denying something needs to be done about the immigration situation and I sincerely hope Michael Chertoff follows through on his promises (see my blog for links) to get serious about enforcement for the remainder of his time at DHS. If he does the anti-amnesty crowd will be a lot more willing to talk about "normalization" by the spring of '09 than they are now. Assuming, of course, that the management of the House and Senate have sense enough by then to move in reasonable size steps and send things through the normal committee process, not straight to the floor like Bush, Kennedy, McCain, et al tried to do this time, and that by then there's someone in the White House they trust to continue enforcing the law.

I added link to your post to my 2007.06.29 ¡¡La shamnistía es muerta!! Roundup. Yes, I'm celebrating. That doesn't mean I won't be right back in W's corner the next time the Dims try to declare defeat in the Mideast.

I am with you Dafydd.

I have been so disappointed in the right over this. There are blogs I will not go to, people I no longer listen to on the radio, cable news shows I will not watch.

It began with Miers, but this last debacle with immigration has really made me wonder if there are people on the right who want to ruin the Republican party or if they are just in denial.

The idea is that in a compromise bill, there will always be things that people do not like. But there is a process involved, this bill plus a house bill plus conference...and instead we have people who use misinformation, prejudice and just plain hatred to not only kill the bill, but stop the process.

Unless they get what they want, when they want and the way they want it, nobody gets anything. And then they claim success, attack the president and say this is a good thing because no one liked the bill anyway. Needless to say they have nothing resembling a viable alternative to offer in its place.

But people expect their government to be able to deal with difficult problems and sooner or later it will dawn on people that it would be a lot easier to do that if the Democrats were running everything.

And that is not a good thing.

And to say this was a secret or closed door or anything else is ridiculous. Good God people have been hyperventilating about it for weeks, how much more open could it have been?

I think this is the greatest problem: there are people on the right who do not want to solve the problem of illegal immigration, they want to demagogue the issue for their own political use. And it could very well back fire on them.

I know they have just about lost me and I am not a Democrat.

Dafydd,

As always, you are a voice of reason and measured expression.

We can be sure of this, Republicans will suffer at the polls in 2008. The hard liners have not succeeded with Hispanics (see the J. D. Hayworth example) and all Republicans run the risk of being tarred with the same brush. The WSJ is absolutely right on the potential impacts (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010263).

What I find so sad about all this is the hateful expressions towards George Bush coming from "the Right." Dean Barnett, Michelle M., J Lo ("I'm so over him!") all seem to forget the great things that GWB has done for the nation, and what a man of principle he is. I appreciatted the spirit of what "Mr. Michael" said, above ("Our President is a man of strong moral beliefs, and if his heart is set on a path because he thinks it is just, he will stay on that path. I respect that. In this case I disagreed with him.") That spirit was so profoundly lacking in the immigration debate, and in the Harriet Miers events. It saddens me. Like Truman, GWB is profoundly unpopular at the end of his presidency. But, I suspect history will treat him well.

One more thought. In "killing" the comprehensive bill, it seems to me that "the Right" got nothing on increased border security either! Nor will this issue be taken up again any time soon (if ever). There goes the baby sailing out with the dirty water.

Maybe Murdock will help level the playing field before the 2008 elections, if he lands the WSJ deal. (He’s basically made an ‘offer they can’t refuse’.)

President Bush has been hammered on since he took office, i.e. blamed for stock market drops, a recession, the 911 attacks, etc., all during just 2001, and many of the problems had started in 2000, some before that. It got worse after that, with just a brief reprieve from late ’01 and early ‘02. He must have a ‘thick-hide’….

I didn’t like his Education plan with Kennedy, his Medicare plan, his Immigration plan, nor his spending habits. Still, he did a great job with the economy and the WOT. He tried to reform Social Security (wished he had tried harder) which is a bigger problem than immigration, and the nation rejected his plan without even offering a counter to it. He managed to get two Supreme Court Justices appointed. He’s done a great job with the WOT, even with the nation not standing behind him. President Bush will not be easily replaced, and certainly not by any of the candidates now being offered by both major parties. With that said, we’re looking at a disaster in the making, if the Democrats get more power in 2008.

And to say this was a secret or closed door or anything else is ridiculous. Good God people have been hyperventilating about it for weeks, how much more open could it have been?

Terrye you should look into the senate procedures used to try to pass this bill. It didn't go through normal channels; it was secretive and closed door. They were debating a 400 page bill that hadn't been written completely which they only were given one night to read. How is that not closed door?

Here, here Dafydd!!! Good work, voice of reason as usual. Same as Terrye, I've cut out most of the pot bangers from my reading and watching list.

All I've heard in this hysteria from the right is 'no amnesty', but I have not heard any (other than Dafydd) reasonable proposals of how to deal realistically/constructively with the existing issue.

I was against the bill for two major reasons:

1. Border enforcement since Reagan's '86 bill has been feckless at best and abysmal at worst under 3 Presidents. There is no reason to assume the enforcement provisions in the new bill would be any better. (Had the President stepped up this enforcement, a logical response, after 9/11, I believe the bill could very well have passed).

2. As a loyal American, I believe anything that is cobbled together in a back room and then subjected to arcane procedural tactics to ensure a restriction of debate and exclusion of effective public involvement to be anathema to our interests. We have a historic distrust of government in this country and our representatives should have that fact before their faces at every turn, the better to focus their more service-minded impulses. They didn't in this case till the very end.

If I were to see 3-4 years of effective border control
(enough to form the habit in the INS bureacracy and, so, somewhat insulate it from changes in administrations), I would be more than happy to support legalization (sans "anchor babies","chain migration", etc.)under a point system.

I also keep in mind your suggestion that the one thing that everyone should be able to agree on would be to deport the criminals in our jails. They apparently couln't even agree on that.

I am primarily disgusted this morning with the MSM meme that the majority of the nation was against the bill is because the conservative blogs and talk shows told them to be against it.
A more arrogant and condescending attitude would be hard to imagine.

All I've heard in this hysteria from the right is 'no amnesty', but I have not heard any (other than Dafydd) reasonable proposals of how to deal realistically/constructively with the existing issue.

I know it was a different time, but Dwight Eisenhower managed to remove over 1 million illegals over the summer of 1954. We have the political capitol with Mexico to do it, but it would take a lot of flexing. The status quo is too beneficial in Washington for anyone to do the required heavy lifting.
---------------------------------

Off topic. Tip for Dafydd Re: Buqaba. It seems things are clearing up there quickly.

Terrye,

There are blogs I will not go to, people I no longer listen to on the radio, cable news shows I will not watch.

I am the same way. I have been listening to country music on the way to work for several weeks now. I can no longer tolerate the talk radio.

Bush is the one whose leadership has been desultory and weak. I back him, I voted for him, and I still give to the Republican Party.
It is up to the leader to get his message out.
He did not sell Miers, who likely would have been a very good SCAJ, he allowed Schumer and Savage to lie about and hoodwink the nation on the Dubai Ports, and he totally misreads to this day the desire of Americans of all party affiliations to *SECURE THE BORDERS*. We do not need a massive amnesty. We need ICE to enforce vigorously the laws on the books.
The fence funding was last year. They have built squat. they have been totally unimpressive and indecisive on the fence. If the fence had been under vigorous, measurable and enthusiastic construction. if border security tech was being obviously applied, none of this firestorm would be occurring.
And now the idiots are responding by what? Endorsing censorship of the public square?

Hunter, don't panic yet. McCain, Lott and Kennedy won't be introducing their comprehensive omnibus solution to the talk radio/blogosphere problem for at least two weeks. It'll take at least that long for their staffers to get together in a secret location and write something up that they expect the rest of the Senate to approve without reading first just because they're such trustworthy likeable guys and they know what's best for the country.

Bill,
I understand the frustration. I have a feeling Sen. Lott is not actually backing censorship. I notice he was pretty quiet on FNS on the issue - I am still hoping he was quoted out of context and in frustration. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Sens. Kennedy and McCain and Kerry and Durbin and Feinstein.

A few Quick thoughts on the Immigration bill and then I will get to something that was mentioned in the post

(1)I hear a lot of talk about process and how dare they etc etc. Funny, I didn't hear this same concern as to the Dubai Terminal lease deal and the process. There was much talk about killing it at all cost. Including putting a provision on the Troop funding supplemental. Despite the plaes from American Business and the military to hear them out. So needless to say I find this crying a tad dishonest. Further, I think we all know that if the reason people wanted this to go to committee was to kill any chance of legalization of status for illegals. I mean these are the same people that are screaming BACK TAXES BACK TAXES but are fully aware that the conservative were going to try to "blueslip" it in the house becuase of that provision. Also would there not have been endless debate and House committee questioning? The strive act was very much like the Senate bill in many ways

(2)The Economic arguments used by conservatives against the bill might cause a lot of damage. It seemed to kill it conservatives that should have known better used the economic populism of Lou Dobbs. I don't think we have a clue yet of how bad that might be as to non immigration issues. The Social Security arguement was laughable. I mean heck lets just stop all immigration then legal or otherwise. Which in fact is what FAIR NUMBERSUSA and others want. Lets keep abortion legal because all those folks that would be born would add to the Social Security roles

(3)The anti immigration groups such as Fair and NumbersUSA and other Tanton groups won. I would feel a lot better about the opposition to this bill if they would divorce themselves from these groups. OVer two years the deabte is turning from being against illegal immigration to being against against most legal immigration. I fear FAIR, Numbers USA and others far more than La Raza

Now on the point. You mention we need to get 30 percent of the hispanic vote. Well how do we do it. THe GOP hopefuls are ignoring today the Conference of Latino elected officials in FLorida that has Republican hispanices livid. THey pretty much ignored going to the Hispanic Evangelical conference as couple of weeks back in DC. Our natural allies.

So, how do we repair the damage.

Big Lizards is one of my regular blog visits. It's usually a fount of interesting information and opinion. But, on this issue I find myself squarely on the other side. The recenty defeated immigration proposal was an elitist concoction with no hope of either (1) reducing illegal immigration or (2) setting a feasible agenda for dealing with the millions of illegals already in the U.S.

The CBO study showed that the late, and I guess, lamented, immigration reform bill would have reduced illegal immigration by just 25 percent, to say nothing of the "guest workers" who decided to overstay their visits. The Heritage Foundation study, inadequately refuted by the White House, showed the fiscal consequences of this bill would have amounted to $2.6 trillion. But hey, with Medicare and Social Security in such great shape, what's a few trillion extra among friends.

Now we have some time to go back and try to get it right. Let's have a bill which focuses first on actually securing the border. Triggers cannot be set against miles of fence or numbers of border guards, but by actually independently confirmed, hold tight, reductions in the number of illegal entrants crossing the border. Until there is a verifiable reduction in this number, no guest worker program, no Z visas, no nothing (sic) regarding the "regularization" of current illegals is considered, or should I say ex post legalization of criminal behavior, thus making a mockery of the Rule of Law.

I'm sorry to see the original post and a lot of the comments sounding like Democrats, i.e. it's all about gaining political power. No. For me it should be all about what's good for the country, and this monstrous (thanks to Truth Laid Bear for the comparative Bible vs Immigration Bill comparison) piece of legislation was not going to accomplish anything except assure a new supply of Democrat voters and cheap, unskilled agricultural and construction workers for Big Business.

Or maybe we can wait for fertility rates in LA to continue to fall (Mexico's has now dipped to 2.1, the replacement rate) thus reducing the population pressure leading to migration. Bush is old news. A conservative presidential candidate who can present a simple plan for effective border control will have a winning issue in 2008. The polls are pretty clear on that point.

I am sorry, I still think the whole secrecy nonsense is just nonsense. Back room my behind, how many people ever read an entire bill, any bill? And yet I bet more people talked about this bill, got details on this bill, heard debate on this bill than any legislation in recent memory...to say that there was some back door stuff going on is just silly. There is always back door stuff going on. Don't you think there was all kinds of back door stuff going on with the last Iraq funding bill etc?

It has got to the point that this is just a constant refrain, the Democrats claim that Bush is too secretive...all the while classified intel shows up in the Washinton Post and the NYT on a regular basis.

Now we have people who have obsessing about every little real and even some imagined details about this bill are whining about secrecy.

It is absurd.

John Sal:

The CBO study is still a political study. They figures they came out with on the Drug Pescription Plan were entirely wrong. There were all kinds of figures. Not long ago the government also relased numbers on the positive impact of immigration in general, if I remember correctly Dafyyd posted on that. But a great many people on the hardline side of the debate just blew those figures off.

So, it seems the veracity of a study is larger in the eye of the beholder.

But there is one thing that can not be ignored, the people who killed this bill have not produced a viable alternative and what is more they show no indication that they ever will.

Hunter:

The fence funding was last year. They have built squat. they have been totally unimpressive and indecisive on the fence. If the fence had been under vigorous, measurable and enthusiastic construction, if border security tech was being obviously applied, none of this firestorm would be occurring.

Hunter, you are demanding compliance to a completely unreasonable standard. The security fence is a federal government project; that means it's subject to a bewildering array of regulations that must be satisfied before a single foot of dirt can be broken.

Once the filings are out of the way, as a government project, open bidding must take place (and the winning contractors then have to use illegal immigrant construction workers to meet the absurdly low bids they offered; go figure). Then Congress takes over and switches it all around via earmarks to their favored in-state contractors.

Once it finally gets rolling, government regs prevent it from rolling very fast. This is not unique to the fence; it's the norm for all government projects. Look how long it took to build SLC-6 (pronounced "slick-6"), the Shuttle launching facilty at Vandenberg AFB that was under construction for a total of eleven years, counting two separate construction phases -- before being abandoned (for Shuttle launches). Eventually, the Air Force and some contractors (LockMart, Boeing) began using the pad for other purposes.

(Inside scoop: A friend of mine who has been a top House and Senate aide on space matters told me that Slick 6 was abandoned because it turned out that, due to corruption, the wrong concrete was poured for the pad; fixing this problem would have cost billions of dollars, and NASA decided to abandon it instead.)

But despite all that, five separate sources on Medved's and Hewitt's radio show -- some administrative, others legislative -- have all agreed that about 80 miles have been constructed so far. This is not "squat," Hunter; this is your government and how it works, not just for the security fence but for everything else as well. And now that the many months of preliminary scutwork is over, construction will proceed at a much faster pace.

It is completely absurd to demand that the federal bureaucracy cease to be bureaucratic. There is no way around the bureaucratic nature of anything done by government. And if your standards won't allow you to accept any bill that allows the bureaucracy to be bureaucratic, then we may as well dissolve all government and head back to the trees.

Dafydd

JohnSal:

Now we have some time to go back and try to get it right. Let's have a bill which focuses first on actually securing the border. Triggers cannot be set against miles of fence or numbers of border guards, but by actually independently confirmed, hold tight, reductions in the number of illegal entrants crossing the border. Until there is a verifiable reduction in this number, no guest worker program, no Z visas, no nothing (sic) regarding the "regularization" of current illegals is considered, or should I say ex post legalization of criminal behavior, thus making a mockery of the Rule of Law.

JohnSal, how do you plan to get Democrats to vote for this proposal?

Dafydd

Eisenhower??? That was a half century ago and the system has changed radically since then. BTW, the US Government used to regularly remove people who turned out to be American citizens, that is one reason the system is more complicated now. But hey, a million people in a summer, that would be about three hundred thousand people a month, that would be about 10,000 people a day. How did he do it? Cattle cars?

Hey, jump in there, go ahead, load up a million people in cattle cars and run them over the border.

It will look great on the evening news. Especially when the mothers get seperated from their kids and people start crying and screaming etc.

I tell you what, about 47% of our Ag labor would fit this category, so why not go to the fields and round them up? They are right out there. I am sure Americans will be more than happy to take their places.

And then of course there are the tens of thousands cleaning up the Gulf, put them on barges and ship back to wherever...once again I am sure Americans will jump at the chance to do that work.

After all, FDR locked up all the Japanese without concern for their civil rights or what some silly lawyer would say.

And back during the Depression Hoover used to round up Spanish speaking people from southern California and pretend they were Mexicans so that the government could ship them over the border and make room in the fields for the Okies. After all they had no voice or recourse.

But those days are over. Eisenhower could also build an interstate highway system without worrying about what the EPA had to say about it.

AJ has been blogging on this and while he is more strenuous than Dafydd in his criticism of the hardliners in this debacle, he had an interesting post and comment, concerning the much repeated just enforce the laws canard:

I forgot to add: It must be part of that diabolical Democrat plan to destroy the GOP that made these people mislead everyone - right? Credibility is fundamental in politics. A lot of loose cannons just shot the hell out of the GOP’s credibility and got us - NOTHING!

Update: Folks, I strongly suggest you read the comments. The hypochondriacs are now changing their stories. They knew all along existing laws would not work. Now one claims it was lack of paperwork to congress which drove him to stop the progress and another now says it was never going to work. But the best comment is from reader Crosspatch, who notes that this IS the legal process on the books. THEREFORE, any immigrant who is in this process IS LEGAL!

Yeah, been trying to tell people for a long time that there really is no law to enforce. There is no penalty for being here against regulations UNLESS you have already been deported and come back again by clandestine means. THEN it is a crime. But a person remaining here on a legitimate visa (about 50% of “illegals”) faces no penalty other then *possible* deportation and that usually hinges on them waiving their hearing process. If they go through the hearing process, it can take years to be deported or they might simply be allowed to stay, particularly if they have children who are US citizens.

Legal process makes them legal. And since this is an unending process they can be here indefinitely. Ladies and Gentlemen - it was all a sham! The far right lied to you. We cannot do ANYTHING by simply enforcing the laws. It was a PR slogan.

What? A PR slogan????

I just found this website, I wish I had long before now. I can understand disagreeing with the President on this bill, but the things that have been said about him on various blogs and talk radio were over the top.

There seem to be at least two different battles over this bill.

One is the battle over whether we, the citizens of the US, have the right to create a law that protects our borders.

Many supporters of this bill have seemed to assume that we don't have that right--that is, it's OK for us* to nullify any such law we ever had.

*Meaning some minority of people who know better than the rest of us.

That is the thing that really p***es me off. I suspect that the majority has been angry about just the same thing: our will being ignored. It is undemocratic.

Hi Dafydd. Long time no "see."

You said:

The security fence is a federal government project; that means it's subject to a bewildering array of regulations that must be satisfied before a single foot of dirt can be broken.

Once the filings are out of the way, as a government project, open bidding must take place (and the winning contractors then have to use illegal immigrant construction workers to meet the absurdly low bids they offered; go figure). Then Congress takes over and switches it all around via earmarks to their favored in-state contractors.

Also, according to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, the SECDHS has to ensure that operational control is achieved over both borders by NLT eighteen months after the Act was passed (October 26, 2006), if I understand the language correctly. That means that there are eleven months left. I don't think that they're going to meet the deadline. Not a first, of course.

This is interesting, it is from a speech given by Robert H. Clancy , Republican Congressman from Detroit, on April 8, 1924. The subject was a restrictive immigration policy he found to be unAmerican:

Since the foundations of the American commonwealth were laid in colonial times over 300 years ago, vigorous complaint and more or less bitter persecution have been aimed at newcomers to our shores. Also the congressional reports of about 1840 are full of abuse of English, Scotch, Welsh immigrants as paupers, criminals, and so forth.

Old citizens in Detroit of Irish and German descent have told me of the fierce tirades and propaganda directed against the great waves of Irish and Germans who came over from 1840 on for a few decades to escape civil, racial, and religious persecution in their native lands.

The “Know-Nothings,” lineal ancestors of the Ku-Klux Klan, bitterly denounced the Irish and Germans as mongrels, scum, foreigners, and a menace to our institutions, much as other great branches of the Caucasian race of glorious history and antecedents are berated to-day. All are riff-raff, unassimilables, “foreign devils,” swine not fit to associate with the great chosen people—a form of national pride and hallucination as old as the division of races and nations.

But to-day it is the Italians, Spanish, Poles, Jews, Greeks, Russians, Balkanians, and so forth, who are the racial lepers. And it is eminently fitting and proper that so many Members of this House with names as Irish as Paddy’s pig, are taking the floor these days to attack once more as their kind has attacked for seven bloody centuries the fearful fallacy of chosen peoples and inferior peoples. The fearful fallacy is that one is made to rule and the other to be abominated. . . .

In this bill we find racial discrimination at its worst—a deliberate attempt to go back 84 years in our census taken every 10 years so that a blow may be aimed at peoples of eastern and southern Europe, particularly at our recent allies in the Great War—Poland and Italy.

Jews In Detroit Are Good Citizens

Of course the Jews too are aimed at, not directly, because they have no country in Europe they can call their own, but they are set down among the inferior peoples. Much of the animus against Poland and Russia, old and new, with the countries that have arisen from the ruins of the dead Czar’s European dominions, is directed against the Jew.

We have many American citizens of Jewish descent in Detroit, tens of thousands of them—active in every profession and every walk of life. They are particularly active in charities and merchandising. One of our greatest judges, if not the greatest, is a Jew. Surely no fair-minded person with a knowledge of the facts can say the Jews or Detroit are a menace to the city’s or the country’s well-being. . . .

Forty or fifty thousand Italian-Americans live in my district in Detroit. They are found in all walks and classes of life—common hard labor, the trades, business, law, medicine, dentistry, art, literature, banking, and so forth.

They rapidly become Americanized, build homes, and make themselves into good citizens. They brought hardihood, physique, hope, and good humor with them from their outdoor life in Sunny Italy, and they bear up under the terrific strain of life and work in busy Detroit.

One finds them by thousands digging streets, sewers, and building foundations, and in the automobile and iron and steel fabric factories of various sorts. They do the hard work that the native-born American dislikes. Rapidly they rise in life and join the so-called middle and upper classes. . . .

The Italian-Americans of Detroit played a glorious part in the Great War. They showed themselves as patriotic as the native born in offering the supreme sacrifice.

In all, I am informed, over 300,000 Italian-speaking soldiers enlisted in the American Army, almost 10 percent of our total fighting force. Italians formed about 4 percent of the population of the United States and they formed 10 percent of the American military force. Their casualties were 12 percent. . . .

Detroit Satisfied With The Poles

I wish to take the liberty of informing the House that from my personal knowledge and observation of tens of thousands of Polish-Americans living in my district in Detroit that their Americanism and patriotism are unassailable from any fair or just standpoint.

The Polish-Americans are as industrious and as frugal and as loyal to our institutions as any class of people who have come to the shores of this country in the past 300 years. They are essentially home builders, and they have come to this country to stay. They learn the English language as quickly as possible, and take pride in the rapidity with which they become assimilated and adopt our institutions.

Terrye, that excerpt is breathtaking and really quite eerie to read in the year 2007. Thanks for the link, because the rest of the speech is just as powerful. I am proud Clancy was a Republican, and only sad he's not alive today to speak for me or maybe have his own talk radio show. I will say that parts of the speech echoed remarks I recall made by Sam Brownback and Lindsey Graham.

Reading it gives me heart and encouragement and a fair amount of pride that I resisted the mob elements of the current tide of extremism.

Sally Vee:

Not many Republicans who sound like that anymore are there?

An absolutely perfect piece of unadulterated common sense and wisdom. I disagreed with you 100% about the Immigration Bill, but you have summarized the aftermath and future electoral implications faultlessly.

Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)