Thread: Immigration Bill Looks Like History

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Immigration bill looks like history
Posted by Frank James at 12:16 pm CDT

A story of mine ran in today’s Chicago Tribune about a move by House Republicans that greatly lessens the chance that immigration-reform legislation will be passed this year.

House leaders are planning to hold a number of hearings this summer to examine in detail the immigration legislation the Senate approved in May.

It’s an extraordinary move by House Republicans. A congressional expert I talked with yesterday, Donald Ritchie, associate historian of the Senate, could not recall an instance where hearings occurred on legislation that normally would go to “conference,” as we say in Washington.

A conference is typically when negotiators from the Senate and House meet, to hammer out the differences between the competing versions of legislation passed by both chambers.

Hearings usually occur before either chamber votes on legislation not afterwards. So it is highly unusual for the House to conduct hearings on a bill the Senate has already voted on.

House opponents of the Senate legislation are convinced that when the details of the Senate’s work product get a full public airing, that enough Americans will be horrified at what they learn to justify the House action.
One feature in the Senate bill to which opponents of the legislation often point would allow illegal immigrants, including those who wrongly used the Social Security numbers of U.S. citizens and legal residents, to apply for benefits accrued during the period the illegal immigrants worked without authorization.

This really steams opponents of the Senate bill since numerous instances of identity theft have been traced to illegal immigrants and these crimes often result in a miserable experience for victims who often must go years trying to repair their credit histories.

I recall that when the Senate voted against an amendment by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) that would have stripped out this controversial provision, I thought that this issue wasn't going away. And so it hasn't.
In any event, my guess is that there’s a lot of legislation that wouldn’t fare very well if submitted to the kind of scrutiny the House is about to give the Senate bill.

For this reason, I’m guessing this tactic of pre-conference hearings won’t be often repeated. But now that it’s been unleashed, who knows how and when it will be used again?

One feature in the Senate bill to which opponents of the legislation often point would allow illegal immigrants, including those who wrongly used the Social Security numbers of U.S. citizens and legal residents, to apply for benefits accrued during the period the illegal immigrants worked without authorization.

I think this is the one thing more than any other that might get to Americans. What goes hand in hand with this is the provision that they have to prove they have been here so many years, working so many years. It needs to be widely known the amount of false documents floating around and how someone who comes across the border tomorrow will more than likely be able to "prove" they have been here for years.

The part that requires them to pay back taxes for 3 of the past 5 years also needs to be brought forward and heavily publicized. I do not know any American citizen that would not like that deal.

With like it is stated the grief that is caused to American citizens whose identities are used by illegals.

Can someone steal the SSNs of the 60+ idiots that are responsible for passing this monstrosity?

Maybe my feelings would be different if they were to apply those provisions to themselves.

Alas, Congress is exempt from the law!

Just ask Cynthia McKinney and Patrick Kennedy.

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I am looking forward this one time, when they start these hearings, to watch CSPAN. I want to see this bill be put under scrutiny, made public and them GO DOWN!!!!!!

This is interesting drivel out of LA

EDITORIAL

The GOP's immigration shame

Republicans choose divisive campaign politics over urgently needed policy.
June 21, 2006

HOW CAN YOU TELL WHEN a governing party is running out of steam? When it controls all branches of government yet abandons even the pretense of addressing an issue most members claim is a "crisis."

That's what the GOP-led House did Tuesday in announcing that discussions over reconciling its enforcement-centric immigration bill with the Senate's legalization-focused version will be pushed back to September at the earliest, and only after completing more hearings. Instead of naming negotiators and attempting in good faith to bridge the chasm between the bills, House leaders are busy naming locations for "field meetings" that can deliver maximum demagogic effect in the run-up to the November election.

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These meetings are nonsense. Congress held more than a dozen hearings on immigration last year before passing HR 4437. That punitive bill filled the streets with millions of protesters angry that it did little to address the nation's need for a legal supply of labor or the estimated 11 million-plus illegal residents of this country, besides turning them into felons.

The Senate version, a flawed piece of work in its own right after too many compromises, at least offered a system (however torturous) by which millions of underground workers could finally come into the open without fear of immediate incarceration or deportation. Most of the last-minute amendments to the Senate bill brought the legislation closer to the version passed by the House. But Republicans there prefer clinging to the dangerous fantasy that a massive, militarized wall must be approved before discussions can even begin over what to do with the millions of indispensable, but vilified, workers already here.

House GOP leaders can barely conceal their preference for divisive politics over sound policy. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois has reportedly conveyed to President Bush that hard-line enforcement politics is polling particularly well this season. One Republican congressional aide told the Associated Press: "The discussion is how to put the Democrats in a box without attacking the president." This is what passes for Republican leadership nowadays.

Summer and fall will be gut-check time not just for Bush, who has tried in his vague though periodically eloquent way to make immigration reform his signature domestic accomplishment this year, or for pro-reform GOP senators such as John McCain of Arizona, but for the American people. When the vulnerable party in power chooses to adopt a campaign strategy that demonizes a class of people, how it fares will say much about who we are.

Twelve years ago, Republicans were swept into Congress on a platform bursting with energy and ideas, with many measures enacted within the GOP's first 100 days in power. If inaction and xenophobia are all the party has left, this could be its last 100 days.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/edi ... editorials

Originally Posted by 2ndamendsis

This is interesting drivel out of LA

EDITORIAL

The GOP's immigration shame

Republicans choose divisive campaign politics over urgently needed policy.
June 21, 2006

HOW CAN YOU TELL WHEN a governing party is running out of steam? When it controls all branches of government yet abandons even the pretense of addressing an issue most members claim is a "crisis."

That's what the GOP-led House did Tuesday in announcing that discussions over reconciling its enforcement-centric immigration bill with the Senate's legalization-focused version will be pushed back to September at the earliest, and only after completing more hearings. Instead of naming negotiators and attempting in good faith to bridge the chasm between the bills, House leaders are busy naming locations for "field meetings" that can deliver maximum demagogic effect in the run-up to the November election.

ADVERTISEMENT
Click here to find out more!
These meetings are nonsense. Congress held more than a dozen hearings on immigration last year before passing HR 4437. That punitive bill filled the streets with millions of protesters angry that it did little to address the nation's need for a legal supply of labor or the estimated 11 million-plus illegal residents of this country, besides turning them into felons.

The Senate version, a flawed piece of work in its own right after too many compromises, at least offered a system (however torturous) by which millions of underground workers could finally come into the open without fear of immediate incarceration or deportation. Most of the last-minute amendments to the Senate bill brought the legislation closer to the version passed by the House. But Republicans there prefer clinging to the dangerous fantasy that a massive, militarized wall must be approved before discussions can even begin over what to do with the millions of indispensable, but vilified, workers already here.

House GOP leaders can barely conceal their preference for divisive politics over sound policy. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois has reportedly conveyed to President Bush that hard-line enforcement politics is polling particularly well this season. One Republican congressional aide told the Associated Press: "The discussion is how to put the Democrats in a box without attacking the president." This is what passes for Republican leadership nowadays.

Summer and fall will be gut-check time not just for Bush, who has tried in his vague though periodically eloquent way to make immigration reform his signature domestic accomplishment this year, or for pro-reform GOP senators such as John McCain of Arizona, but for the American people. When the vulnerable party in power chooses to adopt a campaign strategy that demonizes a class of people, how it fares will say much about who we are.

Twelve years ago, Republicans were swept into Congress on a platform bursting with energy and ideas, with many measures enacted within the GOP's first 100 days in power. If inaction and xenophobia are all the party has left, this could be its last 100 days.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/edi ... editorials

Leave it to the Mechista open borders bandwagon at the L.A. Slimes' editorial page.

Just when you thought they couldn't descend any further into the muck, they fall below expectations.

2ndamendsis wrote:

Twelve years ago, Republicans were swept into Congress on a platform bursting with energy and ideas, with many measures enacted within the GOP's first 100 days in power.

I doubt very much that this is the way the LA Times reported it at the time.

Originally Posted by CountFloyd

2ndamendsis wrote:

Twelve years ago, Republicans were swept into Congress on a platform bursting with energy and ideas, with many measures enacted within the GOP's first 100 days in power.

I doubt very much that this is the way the LA Times reported it at the time.

I'm a bit skeptical of their self-appraisal myself.