The Bush-McCain-Kennedy-MALDEF Immigration bill was defeated by a broad cross section of Americans. Whether one uses the Rasmussen poll or the senate vote, there is no other conclusion to be drawn except that a cross section of Americans were against this bill.
The Rasmussen poll showed no support for this bill among Republicans, Democrats or Independents. It did no win support among the old, the middle aged or the young. It did not win among Conservatives, Liberals or Moderates. It did not win support among any single race or ethnic group, including Hispanics. It did not win a majority with men or women.
Indeed, a break down of the Senate vote clearly shows that the opponents were far more bipartisan in their opposition than the proponents where in their support. So I am left to ask Ms. Linda Chavez, where is the great majority of Americans clamoring for the immigration bill?
She dismisses the ‘victory’ by Americans as Pyrrhic, that is a costly victory. Costly to whom? To Ms. Chavez who lost not only in terms of the legislation but her credibility as well? George W. Bush? Harry Reid? There was a costly defeat for all those spoiled children who carried water for this pig running around as serious legislation. Me thinks that Ms. Chavez is simple angry because so many turned on her.
The victory was clearly not a victory for conservatives; it was a victory for America as indicated by the polls and by the senate vote. Ms. Chavez is merely continuing the rhetorical propaganda tactics of blaming one class – the dark force of hate-filled conservatives – for the failure, a typical tool of the betrayed lover.
Despite her accusations, I do not know of any one popping champagne corks in celebration or engaging in gloating, what we are doing is working to solve the problem in a sensible way, unlike those who sought to force a secretive, backroom deal on the American people, like Ms. Chavez.
Our borders are no more secure today than they were yesterday because we have a president, an administration, and a congress unwilling to enforce the law and secure our border. The border would not be more secure today with the passage of this bill, it would have been actually less secure as larger numbers of illegals would have tried to get into the United States to beat the deadlines and qualify for legal residency. Neither Ms. Chavez nor any proponent can refute the truth that the ill-conceived bill extended full legal status (rights), legal residency status to every illegal whether they sought citizenship status or not at the moment the bill became law. That was the only section of the law that was guaranteed to work 100 percent. This is clearly amnesty, albeit under another name.
There is no denying that employers will continue to hire under the same old system today as yesterday, the same old failed system that would not have been fixed with some magic piece of paper. By their on admission, Basic Pilot, the database system currently in use is unreliable, a failure. The question is why are we still using it? It will take years to fix the database when more reliable systems exist in the marketplace. Employers who want to hire legal workers would not be any better off because they would have the same tools today or in the future under the defunct bill.
An illegal alien can present fake documents today when applying for work, just like they could yesterday. There was no way under the failed bill that this problem was ever going to be solved. There were already schemes afoot to subvert the requirements of the failed bill, an entire ring of forgers and counterfeiters were captured and they told the nation how they could and were planning to continue subverting the system, indeed, planning and counting on the new legislation to help their scheme.
Illegals presenting fake documents to secure employment have violated numerous laws and should be prosecuted and banned from this nation. Employers knowingly hiring illegal aliens should be fined and if violations continue, shut down. Employers should in their own interests make their employment process more rigorous, and many have already begun that change by doing criminal and credit checks which filters (blocks) false employment (of illegals). Additional bio medics should be used including DNA sampling, retinal scans and finger printing. Civil rights complaints would drop if the criterion changed for the employment process, as would the number of illegals hired falsely.
By Ms. Chavez’s own admission, the Basic Pilot database used to check employment eligibility is a failure, so scrap it and start a new database not based on social security numbers but actual citizenship and a bio medic system. It could start tomorrow with those illegals apprehended and inclusion of those in jails and prisons right now. Go to private companies that know what they are doing and allow them to run the system instead of the government. The social security card by itself has become worthless as any kind of criteria because of our failed leadership to address the problem years ago.
You enforce the employer sanctions very easily, you hire lots more border patrol agents, have special investigative units (undercover) that seek out these illegals by doing good police work. It is not hard to know which of these employers are violating the law; it just takes some will power and investigation skills.
The 12,000,000 to 20,000,000 are not living in the shadows, as Chavez and her allies like to lament. I see them every morning at Valero gassing up their landscaping trucks and lawnmowers; at the Home Deport looking for work with contractors; wrecking their vehicles and then disappearing without paying for the damages because they have no insurance; or driving drunk and killing Americans. Is that in the shadows?
Illegals will be just as uncooperative with law enforcement today as they were yesterday. The failed bill did not and would not have changed that truth one iota. Illegals have set up their own little colonias, living in a self –imposed apartheid seeking isolation because they know they have broken the law. In many cases they are openly hostile to the outside world, hostile to our culture and our society and many do not want to ‘come out of the shadows.’
Illegals will continue to not pay their way and the defunct senate bill would not have come close to having them pay their fair share of taxes or anything else. It is estimated by the congressional budget office this failed bill would have cost the American taxpayer conservatively $2.1 trillion over the next five years and the Heritage Foundation estimated it cost about $21,000 annually for every illegal currently in the nation. They have never paid their fair share. They are invaders, taking what they want and the problem is simply, we fail to make them pay.
In other words, the catastrophe created over the past twenty years under the leadership of people like Linda Chavez, G.H.W. Bush, B. Clinton, G.W. Bush and others, would have only continued under the ill-conceived bill defeated this past week.
However, despite the smears and propaganda by Chavez and others, what you will read on conservative blogs and hear on talk radio over the next few days and weeks ahead are ways to truly fix the system. The first myth and ploy employed by Chavez and other proponents is to try their best to paint a picture of their defeat at the hand of the dark forces of conservatism - those racists, xenophobic, hate-filled people over there. They did it! It is the NCLR-MALDEF stratagem. But as we have seen, that simply is a lie. Admittedly, Conservatives were a large part of the leadership on the issue, but in the end only a part of the broad cross-section of Americans opposing this bill. In fact, the only people interjecting these types of epitaphs into the debate and using them to smear their opposition was Chavez and her allies (a Marxist tactic). I have read much glee and congratulations on the blogs but all are serious about keeping their eyes on he ball, attacking the issue and providing a solution, unlike Ms. Chavez.
Unfortunately for Chavez and allies, the senate did listen to the people on this issue. For Chavez and the proponents to try and now spin their defeat in any other way is nothing more than sour grapes. As demonstrated above, the bill fell victim to a broad cross section of Americans: Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Men, Women, Conservatives, Liberals, Moderates, Old, Young, White, Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow.
And as a matter of fact, we conservatives as part of this broad cross section of Americans do intend to participate in the process further. We are formulating elements of a border security and immigration bill as I write this. After all, unless I am wrong that is one of our Constitutional rights. We do not need to be emboldened, as Ms. Chavez characterizes our behavior, to take actions, since over the past twenty years Ms. Chavez and her allies have accomplished nothing of substance on this issue. And now that the crisis has exploded, she and her allies parade around blaming everything and everybody but themselves for their collective incompetence. And I only add that as Americans, we can call for the deportation of the lawless as part of any action or policy suggestion, since when is that wrong in American to require that people follow the law, Ms. Chavez?
Ms. Chavez and her Chicken Little brigade then attempt to throw out another rhetorical piece of propaganda to scare the people. The liberals will carry the day because of our defeating the defunct bill.
Let me be straight on about this one, Ms. Chavez we are not hearing from the liberals because they are in the same stew as you RINOs. I hate to burst you bubble but there were no winners in Washington D.C. this past week among the ruling class except those who took a principled stand against a pork barrel project parading as an immigration bill, birthed in the backrooms of secrecy – is that how legislators are suppose to work Ms. Chavez?
Time is not on their side; it is not on the side of any politician after the blatant power play by the ruling class to push this piece of legislation down the throats of the American people. The actions of the past three weeks sound more like Mexico than the United States. The liberal socialists can wait all they want to, but if they try to force fed the American people something they do not want, the growing crisis of the state, which we are in, will explode.
There will not be bigger Democrat majorities in the House or the Senate and I do not believe there will be a Democrat in the White House, that malady is your opinion which I might add is inside the belt way think and as we have found out very, very wrong.
If Democrats control both houses, they will be of a far different make up than what you see today. Whether you want to believe it or not, there has been a very radical change, a sea change, based on the misbehavior of the ruling class over the past three weeks.
Ms. Chavez claims that the current laws on the books are inadequate and contradictory. They are just that her claim, her opinions and little else. I have read the major reform efforts of 1986, 1996 and 2006 and analyzed them. They are not contradictory or inadequate, what they lack is the will power by our government to take the necessary actions to secure the border, what we have is a leadership that is inadequate and contradictory creating confusion rather than confidence.
Ms. Chavez tells us that ‘if all illegal workers disappeared overnight, we’d be in a bind." I believe we are already in a bind, a crisis created by the likes of Ms. Chavez and her boss GWB. One they tried their best to cover up by passing an ill-conceived piece of legislation, and that is why they are mad.
We will not be in a bind for workers. That is simply another myth. There are willing workers out in the market place who can not find work because the wages and job opportunities have been summarily debased, just like currency. Illegals are not doing jobs that Americans won't do; they are doing jobs that they are used as a cheap substitute for American workers. The American worker has been debased by an artifice of cheap labor not reflective of any free market forces, but of the interventionism of the government allowing the invasion of cheap, mostly uneducated workers. The debasement of American labor is much like the debasement of the American dollar, the latter the victim of the printing presses and the former the victim of cheap Mexican labor allowed to invade this nation.
What needs to happen is enforcement of our immigration laws to bring order to the system so market forces can decide if we need immigrate labor from Mexico; but at present, it is not a market choice at all, it is a false choice resulting from a failed enforcement regime. Presently, we do not need 20,000,000 illegal workers in America. They are taking jobs from Americans - teenagers, entry level workers, low-skilled workers and others.
All of these things matter to Americans and Americans will solve the problem. We do not need the input of a sycophant like Chavez, any longer; who is predisposed to favor amnesty and a failed system over more realistic elements that address the issue in a responsible way. No one is counting their victory dollars or running victory lapse, no one is gloating. The real American majority wants their representative to listen and act accordingly. We do not want illegal aliens in our nation, taking jobs from our children, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and older workers. What we want is an orderly process of legal immigration and perhaps, if the market demand is there, a temporary worker program.
What we do not want is a bunch of know-nothings like Linda Chavez and George W. Bush lecturing us on what we are to believe and what we are to do. We know what needs to be done and we will get it done by working hard and presenting a border security and immigration bill the real American majority will support.
Chavez, et. al., simply failed America over the past twenty years and as the crisis of illegal immigration grew, they tried to paste over it with a piece of paper that really didn’t make things any better and in many ways made them worse. They were pasting over twenty years of failure and now they are trying to make conservatives the bogeyman in their defeat.
That is simply a lie, another of Chavez’s rhetorical propaganda tactics - used when you are a betrayed lover.