Thread: USEFUL HYSTERIA BORDER-BILL CRITICS HAVE A POINT

USEFUL HYSTERIA
BORDER-BILL CRITICS HAVE A POINT


Sessions: Blocked the bid to ram bill through. May 22, 2007 --

THE American Right is up in arms. The new immigration-reform bill announced with great fanfare last week is, say my fellow conservatives, a disaster of Biblical proportions. Virtual spittle is being expectorated all over the senators who negotiated the terms of the bill and the White House, which supports it.

Anti-immigration conservatives are the most vocal people in the country when it comes to saying that our immigration system is broken. But now they have been presented with an "immigration reform" bill that attempts to address some of their concerns, and they're screaming bloody murder about it.

They're right to scream bloody murder. These comprehensive legislative solutions - the sorts of bills that run hundreds of pages in length and are written in impenetrable gobbledygook - are almost always disastrous.

They are jerry-rigged, rickety affairs whose language is inexact and imprecise by design. They often do the opposite of what they are intended to do. The best (or worst) example is the big 1996 bill that was intended to slice away regulation from the telecom industry - and merely ended up handing out gifts to big companies.

Critics of the immigration bill have already gone through it with a fine-tooth comb and found dozens of instances in which tough-sounding provisions are revised and undercut pages later.

Here's a doozy, uncovered by talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt. While the bill starts off with language that suggests no goodies will flow to illegals until the border is strengthened by fencing and more patrol agents, other language - 260 pages later - seems to remove the trigger from the trigger mechanism.

That contradiction is surely intentional - the act of a clever liberal congressional staffer who was surreptitiously trying to remove a provision that was added to satisfy the complaints of conservative senators.

That's pernicious and disturbing - and par for the course with one of these comprehensive bills. It violates the central principle of representative government - which is not only that the people should govern themselves, but that the governing law written by their representatives should mean what it says.

The conservative revolt over the weekend, conducted on the Web and talk radio, will almost has resulted in an entirely proper and appropriate slowdown of the bill's progress. Following the threat of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to filibuster the bill if his colleagues tried to ram it through before week's end, the Democratic leader of the Senate has postponed debate until June.

There was never any good reason for a rush. The illegal-immigration morass is decades old and didn't need to be fixed before Memorial Day.

Yes, the senators who made the deal wanted to speed it through because they know that what they came up with is a very delicate balance that will lose support if any of its provisions is removed.

But in this case, debating the terms of the bill can only improve it, since the most questionable provisions - like a new visa status for newer illegals that seems to grant its holders almost-permanent residency and rights with no requirements from them - won't survive a serious Senate debate.

All the same, there is reason for astonishment at the hysteria - there is no other word for it - that attaches to this issue on the Right. This country, I am informed on an hourly basis by e-mailers enraged by my refusal to join in the apocalyptic frenzy, is being destroyed by illegal immigration.

This is a conviction so deep and basic that it seems inarguable to those who hold it. It has almost reached the status of received religious wisdom, such that disagreement with any of its particulars brands you a heretic.

Still, I will be grateful to those people who take such relish in calling me a "traitor" (five e-mails today alone) if their witch-burning frenzy keeps a bad bill from becoming law.

jpodhoretz@gmail.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05222007/po ... htm?page=0

We need to wake these idiot politicians up!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Podho ... _situation

In disagreement with several other writers at National Review, Podhoretz has favored a more open immigration policy for the United States. He has specifically emphasized his Jewish ancestry in such discussions, writing: "I said merely what I feel deeply — which is that, as a Jew, I have great difficulty supporting a blanket policy of immigration restriction because of what happened to the Jewish people after 1924 and the unwillingness of the United States to take Jews in."[7] Podhoretz has been generally supportive of President Bush's proposals for a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrants in the U.S.

I guess he doesn't have a problem with the much more legitimate claim of the Palestinians and their Right of Return, then, right? Think again! He opposes that.

Sam, Palestinians weren't "Palestinians" until recently- 20th century.

They were nomads and I believe they came from up around the surrounding Jordan area. {might be a bit off in the details-but close}

This is from way back in my memory but their actual origin is easily checked. At any rate, they were not from Palestine-- which is a misnomer and used as an incorrect wedge in that 'conflict.'

NONE of their muslim brothers WANT THEM in their countries....their original nomadic territories. Isn't that something? Kind of like mexico dumping millions of their brothers and sisters in America.

However, up until arafat the nut blew up the market in the 2nd intifada - where I had shopped for fruit the morning before - Palestinians lived, worked and moved about freely in Israel. As well as were involved in the government.

You know the strange thing? They would never have an economy without Israel. They can't build, maintain, govern and prosper on their own.
Very much like mexico.

Right of Return? They have the entire middle east -- strange how a few miles of desert out of the millions of miles of desert seems to be the one piece of real estate that they must have. They should have the RIGHT of RETURN............right back to where they came from.........plenty of open, uninhabited land out there in the middle east.

Kind of like laraza demanding to take over American States {their origin?} when they have an enormous, RICH country of their own? {Israel isn't even oil rich}

We sure do have parallel that few have noticed.
The ILLEGAL ALIENS here have the RIGHT OF RETURN also.......right on back to their countries of origin.

Wouldn't you say?