Big Boycott on May 1st by Idiots...

[docbyers]

The hot debate lately has been over immigration or more specifically illegal immigration.  People that cross our border into the United States without the proper paperwork are illegal.  They are breaking the law.  They are NOT undocumented workers.  They are NOT day laborers.  They are illegal aliens.

If you stand up and say this, you are labeled as a racist.  Race has absolutely nothing to do with the opposition to people illegally entering our country.  I am all for immigration.  I understand why people around the world would want to come and live in the United States.  This continues to be the land of opportunity.  We have more freedoms and opportunities than any other nation on Earth.  We are a nation of laws as well.  We welcome people from any race, any nation, any heritage, any religion as long as you come here legally.

We all saw the protests.  We saw the Mexican flags waving.  We saw the signs.  The protesters did more damage to their cause than they did good.  The demonstration organizers are already feeling the backlash.  If there are more protests, don't be surprised to see American flags.  But I say it would be too little too late.  We already saw the true colors the first time and they were not red, white and blue.  They were red, white and green....the colors of the Mexican flag.

My  grandmother passed away years ago.  She was an immigrant from Germany.  She came here legally in search of a better life and found it.  What I never knew about her until her funeral was that she helped many other people come over here legally.  There were people at her funeral that I had never seen in my life.   I didn't know who they were until they got up and spoke.  One woman in particular stands out as she spoke.  She was giving her tear-filled thanks to my grandmother for helping to bring her and her family to the Untied States.  She evidently helped many people from her old country to come to this country.  She helped them learn English.  She helped them to assimilate to this country.  She helped them become Americans.  She was proud to be here and she was proud that she became an American.  She never forgot her heritage.  When she got mad, she slipped back to yelling in her native tongue.  She still continued to cook dishes from her native land.  But she also built a life upon her new country and it's heritage.

Too many people that immigrate to this country, especially illegally, make no effort to assimilate in to the American way of life.  They want the advantages that America offers but do not want  the responsibilities that go along with being in this country.  America loves immigrants.  This nation was built on immigration.  All we ask is that you come here legally and you assimilate to our way of life.  Do not expect us to assimilate to your way of life.  After all, if your country's way of life was so great, you would never have come to America in the first place.

[flew-da-coup]

Man Doc, where do you come up with all this great stuff?

[docbyers]

I shamelessly plagiarize from a host of sources.  You don't think I got this brilliant watching CNN, do you?

[flew-da-coup]

I know a lot of it has been quoted. I just can't find the could ones like you.

[docbyers]

SE PUEDE GET TWO YEARS TAX-FREE!
by Ann Coulter
May 31, 2006

If Congress adopts the Bush plan and gives amnesty to illegal aliens, Senate Republicans will be asking President Cheney for a pardon.

Bush wants to grant illegal aliens amnesty while sounding like he's really cracking down on them. It tells you where Americans stand on illegal immigration that Bush has to pull the Democrat trick of hiding from the public what he really believes when it comes to immigration.

The "path to citizenship" that Bush and the Senate are trying to pawn off on Americans requires that illegals pay huge fines and back taxes, with "huge" being defined as a $2,000 fine and taxes for three of the last five years. Even with the special "Two Years Tax-Free" package for illegals, this is about as likely as me paying my dad back the money I "borrowed" from him when I was in college.

We're told illegal immigrants are dying to pay taxes if only they can become citizens. Oh by the way, they also will have a panoply of government benefits available to them if they become citizens — in fact, even if they get green cards. They're probably unaware of this and are just dying to send half their paychecks to the government just like us shiftless, lazy Americans.

Inasmuch as most of these low-skilled immigrant workers are in the 0 percent tax bracket, this should be a real boon for the U.S. Treasury. Indeed, the government may end up paying the illegals money: "Let's see, Juan. According to our records, you owe us 0 percent for the past three years, and because you qualify for the earned-income tax credit, we actually owe you! Are 20s OK?"

The Senate bill also forgives illegal aliens who have committed identity theft by stealing American Social Security numbers to get jobs.

So in addition to the Two Years Tax-Free plan for illegals, they get one free felony. Also, illegal immigrants from Mexico qualify for affirmative action, allowing them to get into U.S. colleges with lower grades and scores than Americans.

What's the process for losing your citizenship and becoming an illegal alien?

However hardworking illegal immigrants are when they come here, the moment they become citizens, they will be immediately demagogued by Democrats into viewing welfare as a universal human right, just as they now view living in America.

Of course illegal immigrants will "work for less." They don't have to pay taxes at all now, and under Bush's plan they will have to pay taxes for only — at most — three of the last five years. Not only that, but illegal aliens don't require their employers to comply with OSHA regulations, overtime and minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, disability laws, the Family and Medical Leave Act, a slew of oppressive environmental regulations, and 4 million other ways the government has developed to make it extremely expensive to hire legal employees.

Instead of creating a separate class of citizens who are immune from oppressive government rules, how about relieving all of us — even us shiftless Americans — from the cost of government?

I thought all these trade agreements the free-trade fetishists have pushed on us over the years already allowed corporations to take advantage of cheap labor in other countries — countries that don't have the panoply of oppressive government regulations that make it so expensive to hire American workers. Doesn't NAFTA already allow us to buy inexpensive goods made by Mexicans in Mexico?

In addition to discriminating against American citizens in favor of illegal immigrants, Bush wants to continue our immigration policy of massively discriminating against immigrants who live farther than walking distance from the United States. America's immigration laws are applied only to immigrants who are separated from the U.S. by an ocean. But if they live near the border and can run across it, they're in.

Even if one accepts Bush's theory that we need more immigrants to do the jobs that lazy, shiftless Americans won't do, isn't it possible that Korean immigrants, Italian immigrants or Indian immigrants would work hard too? But they can't run across the border to America, so they're out of luck. (Unless you are spokesmen for the Taliban, in which case there's a seat waiting for you at Yale.)

Since when did conservatives start encouraging people to walk more? What are we, a bunch of Al Gores now?

COPYRIGHT 2006 ANN COULTER

[flew-da-coup]

This whole thing just pisses me off. My president just went libral on me and the Republican controlled senate is a libral institution now. What the hell is happening? The death to our economy is coming with this Amnesty bullcrap. I have a message for the Senate and the president: Up yours!!! you traitors!!!!!   

[docbyers]

Hoopty should copy this whole thread and email it to the White House; I really believe we reflect the opinion of the majority of Americans when we say "No" to amnesty; enforce the laws on the books, and build the fence on the border.  The President, and his advisors, have not thought the issue out all the way.  The economic impact of amnesty will have a ripple-effect for decades to come...  Not to mention that it's just not fair to the legal immigrants that have gone through the process, learned English, and know U.S. history better than a native...

This is not a liberal or conservative thing; it's not Republican or Democrat; it's common sense, and doing the right thing, and GWB and the Senate just aren't with the program...

[cobychuck]

Hell, I'll second that.  Send this thread to White House.  I don't want those freeloading criminals staying in our country.

By the way, where did you get that last article from Doc?  I've only read a little Ann Coulter, but I like her.

[docbyers]

Check out http://anncoulter.com/cgi-local/welcome.cgi

[docbyers]

Senate Immigration Bill Is Skunk in a Bow
by James R. Edwards, Jr.

The Republican House of Representatives should tell the U.S. Senate -- and the Bush White House -- to take a hike on immigration.

The GOP-led House has been handed a skunk wrapped in a bow. That stinking varmint, S. 2611, amounts to a liberal, Democrat bill.

Instead of obliging the cynical pansies of the Senate and the administration who keep pushing open-borders policies, the House should simply refuse to name conferees. That is, House Republicans should boldly snub their noses -- very publicly -- at their party's turncoats.

Otherwise, the GOP House faces a no-win situation in a conference committee charged with reconciling two immigration bills as different as night and day.

The best course for the House majority, if it hopes to retain Republican control this November, lies in shouting "No deal!" and slamming the door to bargaining behind closed doors. The House should stick to its guns and insist on its enforcement-only approach as the only thing worth discussing.

Enforcement is the true "rational middle ground" on which there's any agreement. But flacks for Big Business, Big Labor, Big Religion and the Far Left hold enforcement hostage. It's leverage to force acceptance of amnesty-guestworker schemes.

In the end, no immigration bill is better -- for the country, for conservatives and for the Republican Party -- than anything that could possibly emanate from a conference committee trying to marry up H.R. 4437 and S. 2611.

Why not attempt to hammer out a House-Senate compromise? For several reasons, but first consider some facts.

The Senate's Hagel-Specter-Martinez "compromise" amnesty bill is in fact a liberal product. While the vast majority of Democrats (38) voted for it, only about 40% of Senate Republicans (23) supported its passage.

Doesn't it tell us something when Teddy Kennedy enthusiastically supports this bill?

Nearly 60% of Senate Republicans (32) opposed S. 2611. Ten of the 14 GOP Senators who face re-election this year voted against the bill, and three of the four Democrats who cast "no" votes stand for re-election this time.

S. 2611 includes several amnesty measures. It legalizes some 85% of the 10 million to 12 million illegal aliens, even rewarding their lawbreaking with U.S. citizenship. It amnesties employers who broke the law by hiring illegal aliens. It contains a DREAM Act amnesty for illegal aliens under 18 years of age and a special amnesty for illegal farm workers.

The bill creates a new "guestworker" program in which the "guests" (some of whom are illegal aliens whose status it launders) will never leave the country. This is President Bush's "any willing worker" plan. It sets up a dynamic where no willing American could ever accept the artificially depressed wage rate being offered, so cheap foreign labor always gets the job.

Proponents unfailingly fail to mention that native-born American unemployment in the very job sectors with the most foreign workers (e.g., agriculture, restaurants, construction) is twice the national average. Millions more American workers have been forced from the labor market because they can no longer find employment in their fields.

When the average Mexican worker earns 1/12th the wage of the average American worker and 4.6 billion people in the world earn less than the average Mexican, that makes for a lot of "willing workers."

Further, S. 2611's enforcement provisions don't measure up to the House's. The immigration lawyers' lobby drafted much of S. 2611 (creating an "immigration lawyers' full employment act"). "Enforcement" sections actually tie the hands of law enforcement -- one provision even requiring the United States effectively to get Mexico's permission before building border barriers or taking enforcement actions.

So, what do these facts mean for House Republicans? They mean House Republicans will be outgunned in a conference committee. Everybody else -- House and Senate Democrats and Senate Republican conferees -- will gang up on the GOP House conferees. And the White House, while not formally part of the conference, will arm-twist for the open-borders, pro-amnesty side.

If Senate GOP conferees reflected the majority of Republican Senators, they would side with House majority conferees. But Sen. Bill Frist has already tipped his hand. He intends to name "Republican" conferees who mostly reflect Democrats' instead of his own party's views.

The very fact House Republicans are negotiating with the amnesty crowd will further depress the Republican base. The reputable polls all show the public overwhelmingly favors the House's enforcement-only approach and opposes amnesty-guestworker.

If they name conferees, it will appear House Republicans are selling out America. That will further depress turnout this fall by the voters the GOP desperately needs to show up on Election Day.

Midterm elections historically go poorly for the party that holds the White House -- and second-term midterms tend to be the harshest.

To keep the House in Republican hands, the key is for the House majority to hand back to President Bush and the Senate their amnesty-guestworker skunk.

[K-Rock]

You can't wall off immigrants
Fortified borders won't withstand the forces of supply and demand.

By Wayne A. Cornelius, WAYNE A. CORNELIUS is director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego

May 28, 2006


BOTH THE SENATE and House versions of an immigration bill to keep unauthorized migrants out of the United States rely on the construction of hundreds of miles of new physical barriers, high-tech gadgetry and more manpower along the Southwestern border. But from Western Europe to the Far East, the evidence shows that anything short of complete militarization of borders will not deter illegal entry by determined, economically motivated migrants. Partial militarization only rechannels illegal migration, it doesn't reduce it overall. If the probability of apprehension isn't uniformly high, migrants will continue to cross in areas where risk of detection remains relatively low.

The latest case is Spain. Since the mid-1980s, the country has become a major destination and transit country for Third World migrants, especially from Africa and Latin America. But illegal immigration only became a crisis last fall, when waves of sub-Saharan Africans began jumping the fences that separate Ceuta and Melilla, Spain's small territorial enclaves on the North African coast, from Morocco.

In response, the Spanish government doubled the height of the fences and installed high-tech monitoring equipment to create the world's most elaborate electronic border-surveillance system. It also diplomatically pressured the Moroccan government to mobilize its police forces to stop migrants from using the country as an exit point.

The assaults on the border fortifications in Ceuta and Melilla followed Spain's installation of advanced radar-detection equipment and stepped-up maritime patrols in the Strait of Gibraltar. African migrants were crossing the nine-mile strait in small, grossly overloaded rubber rafts that often capsized in the rough waters, drowning their passengers. Spanish officials boasted that the new technology and added patrols made the country's southern borders "watertight."

But almost immediately, prospective migrants and the smugglers who assist them shifted their efforts toward the Atlantic. Spain's Canary Islands became their new destination. This was a much longer and more dangerous passage — a voyage of 100 miles from the Moroccan coast in often heavy seas. When the Moroccan government moved to shut down this route, migrant departure points shifted south to Mauritania, a journey of 600 miles to the Canary Islands. After another flurry of Spanish diplomatic activity, Mauritanian authorities began cracking down, which pushed embarkations farther south, to Senegal, a 900-mile voyage.

Despite the perilous, eight- to 10-day ocean crossing in flimsy wooden boats, sub-Saharan migrants continue to sail for the Canary Islands in record numbers. About 8,000 migrants have been apprehended so far this year, nearly double the total in 2005. Humanitarian organizations estimate 2,000 more have perished at sea.

In the face of the African exodus, the Spanish government continues to focus on intercepting migrants before they arrive or making their journey as difficult as possible. Spain does not have a guest worker program big enough to allow for an orderly, legal flow of African workers into its economy. Although the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero last year legalized about 600,000 migrants who had been working in the country without authorization, there has been no systematic crackdown on employers who hire illegals, thus assuring that this workforce will grow again.

Spain is losing the battle for immigration control for two reasons. First, the real-income gap between Spain and sub-Saharan Africa is huge and growing, not so much because the migrant-sending countries are economically stagnant but because Spain's economy continues to outperform all other European Union countries. Unemployment has dropped dramatically since 1996, and native-born Spaniards overwhelmingly spurn the jobs done by foreign workers. Second, Spain is aging so rapidly that by 2030 its population will be the second oldest in the world, after Japan's, and replacement workers are urgently needed.

Spain's experience should be a cautionary tale for immigration reformers in the United States. Hardly anyone questions the efficacy of pouring ever more resources into border enforcement, which we have been doing since 1993, even as the population of illegal immigrants has nearly tripled.

The problem with fortifying borders is that it doesn't reduce the forces of supply and demand that drive illegal immigration. The Senate last week approved 370 miles of new double- and triple-layered fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers. In December, the House voted for 700 miles of new fortifications. If built, these new layers of protection will have no discernible effect on reducing the flow of illegal migrants from Mexico.

But these enhancements will enable smugglers to charge more for their services; divert crossings to more remote and dangerous areas, increasing migrant fatalities; induce more migrants and their family members to settle permanently here; and cause more crossings through legal ports of entry using false or borrowed documents.

The outcome might be different if we were prepared to accept the huge economic and diplomatic costs of militarizing 100% of our land borders with Mexico and Canada, as well as the Pacific and Gulf coasts, and the long-term expense of monitoring the fortifications. But polls say most Americans are leery of this approach. Even as part of a "comprehensive" immigration reform package, anything less than a full-blown Fortress America makes no sense, except as a symbolic reward to xenophobes.

[docbyers]

Very interesting!  The author makes some good, valid points...

I look at the fence issue this way:

Let's say I have a 1,000-mile border with no wall or barrier.  Let's say I have 1,000 border patrol agents guarding it.  If I construct a barrier fence for 500 miles, I can decrease the number of guards to, say, 750, with the majority on the 500 miles of un-fenced border, and the rest on the fenced portion.  The theory is I'll have less crossings on the fenced area, funnelling them more to the unfenced area where I have good staffing to watch for it.

It's an old ground force military strategem- force the enemy to go to the ground you choose.  If I have 500 miles of border that's a pain to guard because of terrain, for example, I'll wall that off so I can more easily guard the other 500 miles that's easier for me to manage.  If I want to stop a Cuban invasion I'll camp out in southeast Florida, not cover the whole coastline...

At any rate, I don't know how much good a fence will do, but it might slow them down a little, and force them to try un-fenced areas where we can increase the staffing without raising the border patrol budget through the roof.  The fence is, after all, a band-aid.  It doesn't fix the problem of why they come here in the first place- there's work and money here that they can't find in Mexico.  I agree with the author that fortified borders won't withstand the forces of supply and demand.

You don't see too many Canadians jumping over the border at night, because they actually have an economy in Canada, unlike our neighbors to the south...

[flew-da-coup]

I don't have a problem with the cubans. They are escaping a communist government. All the ones I know are stronger patriots than most born here in the U.S.

[docbyers]

Birthright Sale
by Thomas Sowell

Many stores held sales over the Memorial Day holidays. In Washington, the Senate immigration bill has been selling our birthright for a message of political pottage.

Far from "controlling the borders" as advertised, this bill reduces our existing control of the borders. Under a provision inserted at the eleventh hour by Senator Arlen Specter, the Senate bill forbids the federal government from building a fence without first consulting with the Mexican government.

In fact, state and local governments are also forbidden by this bill to take any border control actions without first consulting with their Mexican counterparts. In other words, if the city of San Diego wants to put up any sort of barriers, it would have to consult with the municipal authorities in Tijuana before doing so.

This legislation was never about border control. The laws already on the books at this very moment allow us to control the borders, to build any fence we choose, without consulting the government of Mexico.

The laws already on the books allow any illegal alien to be arrested and expelled. Those laws are simply not being enforced. If a Los Angeles policeman arrests an illegal alien and reports him to the federal authorities, it is the Los Angeles cop who will be in big trouble.

Border Patrol agents can knock themselves out capturing people trying to enter the country illegally but nothing happens to most of those people, even the ones organizing the smuggling of people and drugs into this country.

An Associated Press dispatch reports: "The vast majority of people caught smuggling immigrants across the border near San Diego are never prosecuted for the offense, demoralizing the Border Patrol agents, according to an internal document obtained by the Associated Press."

In other words, we have make-believe border control and the current Senate legislation will weaken even that, all the while talking about "tough" enforcement. That "tough" enforcement is a promise but legalizing illegal aliens is immediate and irrevocable and its consequences irreversible and lasting far into the future.

"Border control" is just political cover for legalizing illegal aliens. The two things are put together in a package deal that is like horse-and-rabbit stew, whose ingredients are one horse and one rabbit. Border control is the rabbit.

The word games played about "amnesty" deliberately confuse the issue of violations of American law with the issue of acquiring American citizenship.

The fact that the Senate bill has requirements -- described as "tough," like everything else -- for acquiring citizenship is irrelevant to the question of letting the violations of law go unpunished.

Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, who has over the years done some of the most incisive analysis of census and other statistical data, projects the actual consequences of legalizing the existing illegal alien population in the United States to extend far beyond the 12 million estimated to be here now.

These 12 million people are not test tube babies. They have parents and they will have children. Nor are their other family members likely to be kept out after the illegals are made legal.

Over the following 20 years, Dr. Rector projects that the real increase in this population living in the United States to be 103 million, not the 12 million that everyone is talking about.

This is one of the most reckless gambles with the future of this nation ever taken by supposedly responsible members of Congress. The idea that we must consult with Mexico before controlling our own borders is staggering -- and revealing.

The Mexican government has already shown its utter contempt for our laws by publishing booklets advising its citizens how to enter the United States illegally and how to take advantage of American welfare state provisions.

Mexican president Vicente Fox has even had the nerve to warn that his "friendship" with the United States is at risk if we pass immigration laws he doesn't like. Consulting with his government is truly putting Vicente Fox in charge of the hen house.

[flew-da-coup]

Screw the Mexican President ( Fox ). Mexico is a waste land.