The 844-page Immigration Reform bill was dropped on the public late yesterday.
There will be a rush to a vote as on just about every other legislative behemoth in the past four years.
David Frum, so far, is one of the clearer heads on the immigration charade known as the Gang of Eight. What the Immigration Compromise Reveals:
Economists use the term “revealed preference” as a technical substitute for “watch what we say, not what we do.”
Here’s what is revealed by the Gang of Eight immigration compromise:
1) Republicans want to postpone voting rights for illegal immigrants as long as possible. Unlike some of the more gullible right-wing pundits, congressional Republicans hold few illusions about how the present-day illegals will vote. Under the deal, voting rights wouldn’t begin to arrive until 2027.
2) Nobody important much cares about the impact of immigrants on the wages and employment of the native born. The deal immediately opens every category of employment to present-day illegals. Today, large, visible, low-wage employers like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s take care to avoid employing illegal labor. Tomorrow, their labor pool will hugely expand, with resultant downward pressure on wages….
3) It’s good to be an employer. Not only is full implementation of e-verify delayed for ten years (inviting lots more illegal migration over the next decade), not only are illegally employed agricultural workers eligible for special legal status but there will also be a low-wage guest worker program….
4) Non-Mexican illegal immigration is fine…. The proposed agreement has a lot to say about hardening the US-Mexican border, but allows ten years to implement monitoring of visa-holder exits. Combine that with the ten year delay of e-verify, and the message surely is: if you are a middle-class Pakistani or Ghanaian who has ever aspired to live in the United States, buy an airline ticket, apply for a student visa, and come now – in time to be well settled before the next amnesty which surely will follow this one. [My note — anyone can fly here, btw.]
5) The word “amnesty” is very unpopular; the thing, not so much…. The price of life in America has been set at $500… Marco Rubio uses the figure of $2,000, but that refers to the cumulative 10-year total of the fines on the way to a green card. $500 is the immediate price for provisional rights – but they’ll prove permanent enough.
What could go wrong?
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Comments
I think that it’s time for a coup…
Nothing in the current scheme of things appears to consist of any logically developed conclusions and the consequences will be far reaching.
Impeach ’em all!
Impeachment is too good for them.
In the interests of accuracy, this “immigration reform” bill should be renamed “The Destruction of the U.S.A. and its Sovereignty” bill.
BTW, beware so-called “conservative” sites providing phony “facts” about the bill. The WSJ has a piece up now which claims that the bill limits chain migration rights — in fact, the bill expands chain migration rights by enlarging the definition of “immediate family.”
If you have not yet done so, call your Senators and Congresspersons and demand that they vote NO on this horrible bill. They need to hear from us, loudly and repeatedly!
Speaking of Walmart, I was just out shopping in a California Walmart last week. I needed something in the store so asked a clerk.
The clerk not only did not know where the SHOE department was in the store; she also DID NOT SPEAK ENGLISH.
She appeared to not understand one word I said, much less have the ability to respond.
The GOP as a party is basically a party now without a constituency.
Just who is donating money to them at this point? Could it be the likes of George Soros? Think about it. It’d be a great investment for a leftist.
Just who is donating money to them at this point?
The special interests which wanted Romney as President.
People like Utah’s “Republican” Huntsman clan whose head endorsed Jim Matheson against Mia Love.
And I wonder who supported him, if you dig deep enough?
Rubio is toast as presidential timber. Too bad. He had such potential.
He and those wacko birds Graham and McCain really know how to fire up the base though, you’ll have to admit. (Just not necessarily in the preferred manner. lol)
Could someone please clarify? To which agency may one report the crime of Theft of a Political Party?
1. Per Angelo Codevilla, the political class—and much/most of the US power structure, not just the political class—is corrupt across the board. They prosper by undermining the public whose interests they have sworn to represent.
2. Pat Caddell has said that America is in a pre-revolutionary condition, ready to explode. If it isn’t, it should be.
3. Hey America, look over there! An abortion! A homosexual marriage! An assault weapon! Hate speech!
Back to your regularly scheduled black-and-white, take-no-prisoners, no-compromise brawling. Plenty of candidates and activists will tell you
what you want to hearthe snicker truth.You have the government you deserve.
5. I’ve posted before that a nation which refuses to control its borders does not deserve to survive, and won’t. Sooner or later its luck, like the dodo’s, will run out.
3. Hey America, look over there! An abortion! A homosexual marriage! An assault weapon! Hate speech!
Back to your regularly scheduled black-and-white, take-no-prisoners, no-compromise brawling. Plenty of candidates and activists will tell you what you want to hear the snicker truth.
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You know, for someone who natters a lot about coalition-building, you are really NOT a great example.
You know, for someone who natters a lot about coalition-building, you are really NOT a great example.
0. My point is that hot-button issues are used to distract Republican and Democrat voters from things like immigration: things which benefit only the power elites and hurt ordinary citizens of both parties. Now, since you mention coalition-building, you give me an excuse to get a few things off my chest:
1. Afaic my comment was quite explicit in decrying corruption and irrational partisanship throughout the political spectrum. I am more concerned that my side has gone off the rails than I am about the factions that I disagree with.
2. Some months ago I suggested that the conservative position be to defederalize social controversies, i.e. to leave them to the states. Without taking time to go into detail, I note that the suggestion was received venomously by a some commenters here while few if any people took it up constructively.
3. Subsequently I have come to think that the conservative movement has participants who have no interest in the give-and-take of coalitions. If virulent absolutists have a lock on the movement irrespective of electoral reality, that situation needs bringing out.
4. Increasingly my benchmark for LI comments is How would a wavering Democrat react to this? By that standard, way too many comments here are electoral poison for the Right. I am beginning not to mince words about that.
I wish our host would police comments accordingly. If that resulted in some raps on my knuckles, so be it for the greater good. Sometimes weeding and pruning are necessary before a garden can continue to grow.
5. Another Bill, Buckley, enunciated the criterion that the most viable conservative candidate deserved National Review’s support. He also realized that conservatism could not advance unless the Birchers et al were expelled from the movement.
6. The shining city on a hill has fallen into serious disrepair while its leading citizens line their pockets. Way too many politically active citizens are on a dry drunk (a dry drunk manipulated by the ruling class: “managed hysteria” if you will), brawling in the forum and the streets. Way too many other citizens, understandably, decline to participate in deliberations that have become debased. Meanwhile, enemies infiltrate and gather before the gates.
7. I’m a fatalist but will continue speaking my mind as long as the fancy strikes me and Bill puts up with it. If I must have enemies, the occasional commenters who write they don’t want me around are exactly the enemies I would choose. I draw a distinction between them, and the people of good will with whom I disagree—and with whom I welcome dialogue.
8. The country seems hellbent on ruining itself, but I take a precarious refuge in the distinction between I see no hope and There is no hope.
Ummmm, the first unit of anything being counted it 1 not 0. 0 indicates the absence of units to be counted.
-1. Yo Rags! If you think I’m not a great example of coalition building, you should see the stuff I type but decide not to post.
0. Well, there’s this, for example.
1. Maybe I prepended an afterthought and didn’t feel like renumbering?
2. It’s a miniscule technicality, not the thrust of my comment.
Re: 2 – I advocated the same thing at another forum and was also shouted down for it.
Re: 3 – I’m not sure that the way people post online, anonymously, is an accurate reflection of whether they would support a bill that satisfied many of their positions/values while requiring they give ground on others (compromise). Some folks take every post they make very seriously, others not so much, yet others go back and forth between the two. However, I am 100% sure that every political movement “has participants who have no interest in the give-and-take of coalitions.” The majority of online posters I read, those you describe as absolutists, are advocating for absolutism on certain basic human values, rather than toe-the-line, my party right or wrong no matter what absolutism, although there are a few of those about as well. Coalition building is currently extremely difficult because of the extent of political polarization extent in the US today.
Re: 4 – Please clarify, I may be reading this wrong, but it sounds like you’re requesting our host censor posts and ban posters based on whether they opine in ways that may offend independents or centrist Democrats. If he did so, the LI comment section would be self-consistent poster to poster and post to post, and perhaps more attractive to those not already part of the choir, but it would also be a manufactured farce, entirely artificial, a clay model molded by our host. I ask for clarification in case I’ve read it wrong, because this does not sound like you at all.
Re: 5 – Buckley lived before the term ‘RINO’ emerged. I’m sure there were RINOs back then, but not nearly as many so ready to play possum for personal political gain. Imagine ’conservative’ John McCain running against ‘conservative’ Scott Brown (both have been described thus in the past) in some imaginary GOP primary. Too often there is no conservative available, let alone most electable conservative. The GOP is running from conservatism like bunnies from a forest fire. This speaks to the overall pervasive corruption in our system. For context, I consider myself a conservative, but I am registered to vote as ‘unaffiliated’ in NC. I’ve never registered as a Dem or GOP.
Re: 8 – Agreed. Personally, my experience of the current socio-political turmoil is that it is nothing compared to my salad days of the late 60s and 70s – followed less than a decade later by the Reagan administration.
Going full-on liberal in the 60s/70s didn’t help the Democrats (McGovern???) and the media-escorted ascension of liberals to power with the Obama administration will ultimately bring them down. And yet, the newly risen GOP will eventually screw up and the whole thing repeats itself.
I’ve posted before the idea that American politics is inherently pendulous, forever swinging back and forth, left to right, right to left, politically speaking. I predict that it is about to swing back to the right, prompted in part by the total circus that will be the failed attempt to implement Obamacare in the coming couple years and fueled by a public I believe is becoming increasingly disgusted and weary of the constant political battling, regardless of whether it is heartfelt or kabuki theater for the masses.
Thanks for your response, Henry. I haven’t seen your byline lately. (Btw it’s waaay too long since NC Mountain Girl posted. While I didn’t necessarily agree with her, I always felt better off for having considered her opinion.)
Re: 2 – I advocated the same thing at another forum and was also shouted down for it.
After November’s debacle I’m no longer willing to be shouted down.
Re: 3 …The majority of online posters I read, those you describe as absolutists, are advocating for absolutism on certain basic human values, rather than toe-the-line, my party right or wrong no matter what absolutism, although there are a few of those about as well. Coalition building is currently extremely difficult because of the extent of political polarization extent in the US today.
A Martian observer might be perplexed to see Americans demanding diametrically opposite policies on behalf of claimed “basic human values”.
Coalition building was hard when Reagan did it, too. What sends me up the wall is the obliviousness in much of the Right about even the necessity of forging coalitions.
Re: 4 – Please clarify, I may be reading this wrong, but it sounds like you’re requesting our host censor posts and ban posters based on whether they opine in ways that may offend independents or centrist Democrats.
Perhaps I went a bridge too far and perhaps also you exaggerate my attitude.
It remains true that, although my fairly sensible lefty friends show stirrings of buyers’ remorse, I would not like them to read some of the comments here.
This is an activist blog, not a (purely) wonky one. The proprietor and much of the community try to get candidates elected. The extremes in the comment section strike me as counterproductive to that end. (To be told I’m wrong is one thing; to be told I’m evil and stupid is another.)
Re: 8 – Agreed. Personally, my experience of the current socio-political turmoil is that it is nothing compared to my salad days of the late 60s and 70s – followed less than a decade later by the Reagan administration.
Apparently we’re roughly of an age. Afaic the shaking was greater in the 1960s than it is today, but the foundations were stronger. What alarms me nowadays is the sense of drift: that the elites don’t know what’s going on, don’t know what they’re doing, but continue to spew corruptocratic bullshit while they aggrandize themselves at the expense of the country.
I’ve posted before the idea that American politics is inherently pendulous, forever swinging back and forth, left to right, right to left, politically speaking.
Maybe more like a nonlinear pendulum that never exactly repeats a trajectory.
An obvious danger is that it will swing out to a point of no return. Another danger is that it will snap back instead of swinging back. Either scenario could involve a man on horseback. The longer that the voters do not perceive common-sense competence anywhere in the political spectrum, the greater those dangers become.
How frustrating that after a few responses the Reply button disappears. Wherever this post comes out, it’s a response to gs’ response to my response to his response to Rags’ response to… oh hell.
Anyway… “Perhaps I went a bridge too far and perhaps also you exaggerate my attitude.”
Well, no. I was being polite. Please reread your post. You are calling on the Professor to manipulate posts and posters so as not to show comments that potential new voters might find offensive. I don’t know what else to call that but an artificiality created via censorship.
“An obvious danger is that it will swing out to a point of no return. Another danger is that it will snap back instead of swinging back. Either scenario could involve a man on horseback. The longer that the voters do not perceive common-sense competence anywhere in the political spectrum, the greater those dangers become.”
Your bug is my feature, lol. Reagan once rather oddly speculated that all the otherwise warring factions on Earth would coalesce into partnership if they were confronted with a common enemy such as alien invaders. I think this could happen among otherwise opposed political stripes within American society, a sort of Tea Party uprising writ large, not along conservative plankage, but along very basic American values. I see a great many liberals who otherwise support(ed) Mayor Bloomberg in NYC are now sort of ‘hey, wait a minute now..’ concerning his fascist-petit dictats about the size of a soda and other mini-issues.
There are borders that, if crossed by current libs in power, will turn their own base against them, and if they double down, provide a reason for – wonder of wonders – the liberal and conservative bases to join hands against the common enemy. Soda size won’t do it. But one can list a great many values both groups share, freedoms related to incomes, finance, taxes, family, children, etc., over which neither will tolerate but so much federal interference and control. What exactly? Dunno – my crystal ball hasn’t a focus knob.
Ditto re: NC Mt Girl. I always appreciate a well thought out, well written, brief as necessary post and she consistently delivered.
1. …You are calling on the Professor to manipulate posts and posters so as not to show comments that potential new voters might find offensive. I don’t know what else to call that but an artificiality created via censorship.
How about calling it ‘ground rules’, which are the blog owner’s to set?
2. I don’t expect Bill to implement my views anytime soon, but maybe he will recall them if future circumstances warrant.
3. Your bug is my feature, lol…
Quite possibly. My parents were refugees from the collapse of Central European civilization before, during, and after WW2. I know in my bones that things can fall apart, especially if not prudently maintained.
There are borders that, if crossed by current libs in power, will turn their own base against them, and if they double down, provide a reason for – wonder of wonders – the liberal and conservative bases to join hands against the common enemy.
If the conservative and liberal bases ever join hands, hopefully it won’t be in a way that combines the worst of each.
Anyone who is talking about a “path to citizenship” is not interested in solving any immigration related problems.
Call or e-mail your Senators and Congresspersons and tell them we demand real border enforcement and real interior enforcement of exiting immigration laws before any more talk of amnesty.
There is no reason why we can’t FIRST secure the border and start requiring employers to use e-Verify, before we start handing out rewards to foreigners who have willfully violated our laws.
The security interests of Americans should come before the economic interests of law-breaking foreigners.
Needing the most reform is Congress.
Don’t we have immigration laws on the books now? Why aren’t they enforcing these laws?
The gang of eight will unleash a plague of locust upon us.
Why do we relax our standards – -moral, legal, financial and physical boundaries – for votes? We would be better off helping the nations where these people are coming from. What is all of our foreign aid doing anyway? Just paying for intel?
It may seem imperialistic to some to be involved with another nation’s business but it sure seems to be a better choice – to help people help themselves where they are at.
I like my solution the best. $50 or $100 per head with no bag limit.
Alternate solution #1: Surrender, give up, leave the country ’cause it’s only going to get much worse here. And I do mean much worse.
Alternate solution #2: Stay, relish your memories of the good ‘ol days, try to find a cheap version of Rosetta Stone Spanish on EBAY.
We need first and foremost to reform our own party. It’s OURS — NOT THEIRS.
Forget wasting energy attacking the left — no one hears it but us. We need to devote 100% or our efforts on a D-Day landing invasion of the GOP.
Representative Lamar Smith summarizes the 844 page monstrosity in about three sentences:
“Senate Strikes Out on Immigration Proposal”
http://lamarsmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=329246#.UW3Bvc5AV5I.twitter
“Under the deal, voting rights wouldn’t begin to arrive until 2027.”
My guess is that many are already voting and, once they get drivers licenses, the number will rise dramatically as LaRaza, ACORN (or whatever it calls itself these days) and the local Democratic organizations start registering these people.
Re: Point number two:
Why do you think that the Democrats are so desperate to raise the minimum wage? They know the impact that the flood of newly-minted “legal” workers will have, and are desperate to make sure that their precious “working poor” get some type of wage increase before they never see one again.