Thread: TIGHT BORDER KEY TO REFORM, HOUSE GOP SAYS

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... K721E1.DTL

TIGHT BORDER KEY TO REFORM, HOUSE GOP SAYS
- Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Friday, July 28, 2006


(07-28) 04:00 PDT Washington -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Thursday that the Bush administration would have to achieve something close to a "no penetration" policy on both the Mexican and Canadian borders before House Republicans agree to negotiate on any immigrant guest worker or legalization plan.

Hastert and Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said they would conduct an August blitzkrieg of 21 hearings in 13 states to force President Bush and the Senate to cave to the House's border crackdown legislation.

"Let me repeat this one more time: I think what the American people want us to do is secure the borders first, both our northern border and our southern borders," Hastert said.

"I think we ought to have a no-penetration policy on the border. If we can reach that, then we can start to look at other issues and other options," he said.

Hastert said that when the administration can vouch that border penetration has been reduced "by 90 percent or 85 percent, or some number -- I'm not throwing any specific number out -- some metric, then we can move on to the next step. That's just a possibility."

House Republicans may find themselves in a bind come September, however, if the enormous attention Washington has showered on illegal immigration -- elevating it to a top public concern in most polls -- proves all for naught.

Hastert said "hopefully" Republicans would return to Washington in September and "put together a piece of legislation negotiated with the Senate that will lead to real border security in this country. That's what the American people expect us to do, that's what the American people want us to do, and that's what this Congress will do."

The House passed a bill last December that would make illegal presence in the country a felony and build a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.

The Senate responded with a bipartisan bill backed by Bush that would provide a road to citizenship for the 12 million illegal immigrants now thought to be in the country, and a guest worker program for future immigrants, as well as toughen enforcement.

The new hearings continue a series that began this month after House leaders decided to delay formal negotiations with the Senate and instead opted to spend the summer collecting testimony on why the Senate bill is so wrongheaded.

They will veer northward to Washington state, Michigan and upstate New York, as well as border cities in California, Arizona and Texas, as House Republicans acknowledged that the land border with Canada -- roughly 4,000 miles and twice as long as with Mexico -- could also be an entry point for the smugglers and possible terrorists whom Hastert said now view the southern border as a sieve.

Behind the scenes, business lobbyists said that despite their tough stand, Hastert and Boehner are encouraging trial balloons aimed at a compromise, like the guest worker plan re-released this week by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. It would require all illegal immigrants to leave the country and then re-enter as legal guest workers after registering at privately operated "Ellis Island Centers" abroad.

Under the Pence plan, an unlimited number of workers could apply for the new visas in the first three years, though they would have to be residents of Central America or Canada. The visas could be renewed for up to 12 years, at which point the worker could apply for a five-year "X-Change" visa. After 17 years in all, the worker could apply for legal residence and later citizenship.

The proposal has stirred interest at the White House as a possible middle ground. But it has been fiercely attacked by conservatives as "amnesty-lite." NumbersUSA, a group that opposes immigration-fed population growth, issued a scathing critique Thursday, saying the Pence plan caters to business, exploits workers and would admit huge numbers of people. "Calling 17 years 'temporary' is like calling the period of time a baby is born to the time he or she applies for college 'temporary,' " said NumbersUSA Executive Director Roy Beck.

There is little indication that Democrats would go along with such a plan -- or that the mere month between the end of August and Congress' adjournment in October before the election leaves enough time to work through such enormous issues.

Democrats ridiculed the new round of hearings. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said two of the hearings might at least be devoted to examining the "monstrous" House bill, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco accused Republicans of failing to enforce current immigration laws despite their control of the White House, House and Senate.

Two recent polls -- California's Field Poll and a Tarrance Poll issued by pro-immigration groups -- showed that large majorities of the public, including Republicans, favor both tighter borders and an earned legalization program to deal with those already here illegally.

Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group, said Republicans are "in pursuit of more turnout of base voters upset with illegal immigration, but they're likely to turn a generation of Latino immigrant voters into Democrats."

He and other lobbyists said House Republicans are battling among themselves over whether to stand firm on enforcement only, or whether such a stance will never be agreed to by Bush or the Senate, and that Republicans will wind up looking incompetent.

"It's hard to imagine a 'We're in charge and we did nothing on an issue you care about' as a campaign slogan," Sharry said. "I'm pretty sure a decision hasn't been made and won't be made" by the leadership until the House returns from the hearings in September.

Bush held a naturalization ceremony for immigrant veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and a raft of administration officials have been testifying at the House hearings on their stepped-up enforcement efforts in an effort to woo public opinion and win more GOP allies.

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com.

I would like to see those polls that said American citizens were for a earned citizenship of illegal immigrants! I wonder who the pro-illegal immigration groups polled to get the response they wanted?

Who are the democrats kidding, they sure aren't going to enforce any laws either.

(07-2 04:00 PDT Washington -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Thursday that the Bush administration would have to achieve something close to a "no penetration" policy on both the Mexican and Canadian borders before House Republicans agree to negotiate on any immigrant guest worker or legalization plan.

I'm not sure politicians on Capitol Hill are hearing us! Haven't we said over and over again that there should not be any amnesty (legalization) for those that have crossed our borders illegally!