Thread: Pelosi's Amnesty Agenda . . . Maybe Not

November 9, 2006 8:32 AM

"Interesting Opportunities"
Are amnesty and open borders in our future?

By Mark Krikorian

Before election night was even over, White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Democratic takeover of the House presented “interesting opportunities,” including a chance to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” — i.e., the president’s plan for an illegal-alien amnesty and enormous increases in legal immigration, which failed only because of House Republican opposition..

At his press conference Wednesday, the president repeated this sentiment, citing immigration as “vital issue … where I believe we can find some common ground with the Democrats.”


Will the president and the Democrats get their way with the new lineup next year?

Nope.

That’s not to say the amnesty crowd isn’t hoping for it. Tamar Jacoby, the tireless amnesty supporter at the otherwise conservative Manhattan Institute, in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs eagerly anticipated a Republican defeat, “The political stars will realign, perhaps sooner than anyone expects, and when they do, Congress will return to the task it has been wrestling with: how to translate the emerging consensus into legislation to repair the nation's broken immigration system.”

In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria shares Jacoby’s cluelessness about Flyover Land: “The great obstacle to immigration reform has been a noisy minority. … Come Tuesday, the party will be over. CNN’s Lou Dobbs and his angry band of xenophobes will continue to rail, but a new Congress, with fewer Republicans and no impending primary elections, would make the climate much less vulnerable to the tyranny of the minority.”

And fellow immigration enthusiast Fred Barnes earlier this week blamed the coming Republican defeat in part on the failure to pass an amnesty and increase legal immigration: “But imagine if Republicans had agreed on a compromise and enacted a ‘comprehensive’ — Mr. Bush’s word — immigration bill, dealing with both legal and illegal immigrants. They’d be justifiably basking in their accomplishment. The American public, except for nativist diehards, would be thrilled.”

“Emerging consensus”? “Nativist diehards”? Jacoby and her fellow-travelers seem to actually believe the results from her hilariously skewed polling questions, and those of the mainstream media, all larded with pro-amnesty codewords like “comprehensive reform” and “earned legalization,” and offering respondents the false choice of mass deportations or amnesty.

More responsible polling employing neutral language (avoiding accurate but potentially provocative terminology like “amnesty” and “illegal alien”) finds something very different. In a recent national survey by Kellyanne Conway, when told the level of immigration, 68 percent of likely voters said it was too high and only 2 percent said it was too low. Also, when offered the full range of choices of what to do about the existing illegal population, voters rejected both the extremes of legalization (“amnesty” to you and me) and mass deportations; instead, they preferred the approach of this year’s House bill, which sought attrition of the illegal population through consistent immigration law enforcement. Finally, three fourths of likely voters agreed that we have an illegal immigration problem because past enforcement efforts have been “grossly inadequate,” as opposed to the open-borders crowd’s contention that illegal immigration is caused by overly restrictive immigration rules.

Nor do the results of Tuesday’s balloting bear out the enthusiasts’ claims of a mandate for amnesty. “The test,” Fred Barnes writes, “was in Arizona, where two of the noisiest border hawks, Representatives J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, lost House seats.” But while these two somewhat strident voices were defeated (Hayworth voted against the House immigration-enforcement bill because it wasn’t tough enough), the very same voters approved four immigration-related ballot measures by huge margins, to deny bail to illegal aliens, bar illegals from winning punitive damages, bar illegals from receiving state subsidies for education and child care, and declare English the state’s official language.

More broadly, this was obviously a very bad year for Republicans, leading to the defeat of both enforcement supporters — like John Hostettler (career grade of A- from the pro-control lobbying group Americans for Better Immigration) and Charles Taylor (A) — as well as amnesty promoters, like Mike DeWine (D) and Lincoln Chafee (F). Likewise, the winners included both prominent hawks — Tancredo (A) and Bilbray (A+) — and doves — Lugar (D-), for instance, and probably Heather Wilson (D).

What’s more, if legalizing illegals is so widely supported by the electorate, how come no Democrats campaigned on it? Not all were as tough as Brad Ellsworth, the Indiana sheriff who defeated House Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Hostettler, or John Spratt of South Carolina, whose immigration web pages might as well have been written by Tom Tancredo. But even those nominally committed to “comprehensive” reform stressed enforcement as job one. And the national party’s “Six for 06” rip-off of the Contract with America said not a word about immigration reform, “comprehensive” or otherwise.

The only exception to this “Whatever you do, don’t mention the amnesty” approach appears to have been Jim Pederson, the Democrat who challenged Sen. Jon Kyl (a grade of B) by touting a Bush-McCain-Kennedy-style amnesty and foreign-worker program and even praised the 1986 amnesty, which pretty much everyone now agrees was a catastrophe.

Pederson lost.

Speaker Pelosi has a single mission for the next two years — to get her majority reelected in 2008. She may be a loony leftist (F- on immigration), but she and Rahm Emanuel (F) seem to be serious about trying to create a bigger tent in order to keep power, and adopting the Bush-McCain-Kennedy amnesty would torpedo those efforts. Sure, it’s likely that they’ll try to move piecemeal amnesties like the DREAM Act (HR 5131 in the current Congress), or increase H-1B visas (the indentured-servitude program for low-wage Indian computer programmers). They might also push the AgJobs bill, which is a sizable amnesty limited to illegal-alien farmworkers. None of these measures is a good idea, and Republicans might still be able to delay or kill them, but they aren’t the “comprehensive” disaster the president and the Democrats really want.

Any mass-amnesty and worker-importation scheme would take a while to get started, and its effects would begin showing up in the newspapers and in people’s workplaces right about the time the next election season gets under way. And despite the sophistries of open-borders lobbyists, Nancy Pelosi knows perfectly well that this would be bad news for those who supported it.

—* Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and an NRO contributor.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Zj ... EwMDViM2Q=

Wouldn't it be ironic if the Dems, looking ahead to future elections, actually thwarted Bush's desire for total amnesty?

It could happen. They've already got 70% of the hispanic vote locked up, so they don't need to pander to them like the GOP does. Just look at the black vote; the Dems have something like 95% of that, yet they've never proposed giving them reparations, as some of the more radical blacks have demanded.

It could work the same way for the hispanics. Who knows?

I do know that had the Republicans kept control of the Senate, we'd definitely would be seeing an amnesty bill next year, probably based on the Pence "amnesty lite" proposal that was cooked up with the Bush Administration.

Wishful thinking on my part? Probably, but you never can tell. So far, the only person I've heard talking about amnesty is that half-wit Bush.

You're right about that.

Then again, the House hasn't turned just yet.

We'll see what happens when Pelosi & Co. are sworn in.

Wishful thinking guys and gals. If amnesty and new guest worker programs are stopped, it'll be because of people like us - not President Bush or the Democrat controlled U.S. Congress.

Nothing wrong with grasping at any glimmer of hope made available, but all the rhetoric in the world is not going to convince me that our U.S. Congress and president are going to pass on this opportunity to construct a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Face it, there are just too many powerful people that want to see it happen.

We, and the tens of millions like us, are the only ones at this point that can stop amnesty and increased guest worker programs. With the loss of the U.S. Congress our voice has faded considerably, it's time we figure out how to fix the knob and turn up the volume.

Wasn't it the Dems.that placed the stricter Colorado laws in place?

Amnesty will be a disaster and the controlling party has to take the blame, so I really don't think they want this on their record right before 2008. If they are smart, they won't. If they can manage to say NO to amnesty and the war works itself out, the Dems. might be a shoo-in for '08 barring some other idiotic screw-up!

At least, this article lifted my spirits quite a bit! I am beginning to see flickers and some rays of hope. Forge Ahead...............>>>>>>

Originally Posted by CountFloyd

Wouldn't it be ironic if the Dems, looking ahead to future elections, actually thwarted Bush's desire for total amnesty?

It could happen. They've already got 70% of the hispanic vote locked up, so they don't need to pander to them like the GOP does. Just look at the black vote; the Dems have something like 95% of that, yet they've never proposed giving them reparations, as some of the more radical blacks have demanded.

It could work the same way for the hispanics. Who knows?

I do know that had the Republicans kept control of the Senate, we'd definitely would be seeing an amnesty bill next year, probably based on the Pence "amnesty lite" proposal that was cooked up with the Bush Administration.

Wishful thinking on my part? Probably, but you never can tell. So far, the only person I've heard talking about amnesty is that half-wit Bush.

Maybe "polsi" will agree to a "Public Debate" on immigration?A face to face,live broadcast of the event.She must have used the word "Bipartisan" fifty times in her speech yesterday,maybe she would be willing to include the American People as a third party and make it Tripartisan Talks???????
Jerry Alexander

What’s more, if legalizing illegals is so widely supported by the electorate, how come no Democrats campaigned on it? Not all were as tough as Brad Ellsworth, the Indiana sheriff who defeated House Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Hostettler, or John Spratt of South Carolina, whose immigration web pages might as well have been written by Tom Tancredo. But even those nominally committed to “comprehensive” reform stressed enforcement as job one. And the national party’s “Six for 06” rip-off of the Contract with America said not a word about immigration reform, “comprehensive” or otherwise.

Well, the Dems. will have to turn their backs on what they promised and hopefully they won't be willing to do so....so soon. Plus, they KNOW how the people feel about this or they wouldn't have campaigned on it......it may take them awhile before they feel confident enough to turn on the voters. Not all Dems. are pro-amnesty!

Originally Posted by MW

Wishful thinking guys and gals. If amnesty and new guest worker programs are stopped, it'll be because of people like us - not President Bush or the Democrat controlled U.S. Congress.

I have to disagree with you on part of this, MW.

They don't give a rats ass about people like us. If it gets stopped at all, it will be because there's a bigger political issue at stake.

Maybe the Dems won't want to tick off the unions, or their Southern white voters. As I said, they don't have to pander like the GOP does; they've already got the hispanic votes locked up.

I don't know. I am convinced that the recent fence deal was all a charade cooked up between the White House and the Republican Congress to make us think they finally got the message.

Bush's idiotic statement yesterday about amnesty has convinced me that there was never going to be a fence.

Virginamama sent me this a while back. Below is just the first paragraph.
Pretty interesting read.

http://www.worldnewsstand.net/history/your_power.htm

Taking Back Your Power:
Your Re-Declaration of Independence
[author unknown]

Since 1933 you and all other Americans have been pledged for the debt of the UNITED STATES owed to international bankers, most of whom are foreign to our country. Your credit, labor, productivity and property have been used and is now being used as collateral by the incorporated UNITED STATES OF AMERICA without your knowledge or consent. This is legal until you take back your implied consent by a special, lawful process.

Originally Posted by ohflyingone

Virginamama sent me this a while back. Below is just the first paragraph.
Pretty interesting read.

http://www.worldnewsstand.net/history/your_power.htm

Taking Back Your Power:
Your Re-Declaration of Independence
[author unknown]

Since 1933 you and all other Americans have been pledged for the debt of the UNITED STATES owed to international bankers, most of whom are foreign to our country. Your credit, labor, productivity and property have been used and is now being used as collateral by the incorporated UNITED STATES OF AMERICA without your knowledge or consent. This is legal until you take back your implied consent by a special, lawful process.

Everyone should see the new movie "Freedomtofascism" by"Aaron Russo" Director of "The Rose","Trading Places" and others. GO to "freedomtofascism.com".Also,take a look at the google video "Thief by deception".Write "Income Tax' in the search bar and select "Thief by deception".