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*Its a long article, so to continue reading through the whole thing, go to the URL address. Its worth reading!

Citizen Lobbyist
Fighting the Global Corpocracy
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« McCain got lucky in NH and SCLieberman designates who the liars are. And it’s a lie. »Wait, my friends. Before you pull that lever for John McCain…

In May, 2006, Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy were striving to pass a complex piece of legislation through the Senate. It wasn’t going very well. Opponents of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act wouldn’t stop calling the bill an amnesty. That meant trouble.

Everyone here in Washington knows that, when it comes to infuriating the electorate, nothing works like a proposal to reward millions of foreign nationals—whose very presence in the United States demonstrates disrespect for the laws that underpin our republic—with the gift of citizenship and the consequent right to have a say in determining those laws.

Voters understand that to extend the protection of our laws to those foreigners who have demonstrated a willingness to violate them, while withholding that protection from the billions around the globe who’ve so far respected our laws, is a perverse inversion of the most basic understanding of fairness, and a reckless and shortsighted policy that would do little more than incentivize precisely the opposite behavior from what the American people desire.

Senators understand voter outrage, however, and few are anxious to put their names on an amnesty. They’d much prefer voting for an earned regularization, or an adjustment of status, or a step-by-step pathway to legalization.

As the New York Times put it, helpfully, in an editorial addressed to Republicans arriving in town for their 2004 convention,

“The word amnesty is anathema to Mr. Bush’s conservative Republican base, but the president has to realize that reform will work only if there is a reasonable way to allow some illegal immigrants a path toward permanent residence and even citizenship.â€