Thread: Rep. Price admits he doesn't want worksite enforcement.

http://immigrationequality.org/blog/?p=526

Immigration Reform

“Today I will suggest five principal homeland security priorities on which I would advise the next administration to focus. The first is comprehensive immigration reform. This might, at first glance, seem an odd choice as a top priority for the Department of Homeland Security, which – after all – was formed in response to the terrorist threat. But the historic missions of the departmental components did not go away when the Department was formed, and subsuming them under the rubric of combating terrorism is apt to confuse as much as it clarifies. Homeland Security encompasses critical areas of national policy that would demand attention even if 9/11 had not occurred. Immigration, I believe, leads that list.

“That is not to say that immigration policy is unrelated to terrorism; control of our borders and knowing who has entered our country – legally or illegally – are directly related to our defense against terrorist threats. Moreover, the intense focus on the broader illegal immigration problem – consisting primarily of an effort to intercept, detain, and deport individuals who illegally cross our borders in search of work and a better life – is distracting the Department’s attention and diverting the Department’s resources away from the truly dangerous threats and challenges we face.

“I want to be clear on that point. The illegal presence of foreign nationals in the United States is a problem, and calls into question our commitment to the integrity of our immigration laws. But we need to put that problem into perspective on two counts: First, the integrity of our immigration laws is compromised primarily by the fact that those laws are grossly unrealistic in relation to our labor market demands. And second, there can be no credible argument that deporting illegal workers should take precedence over efforts to combat smuggling, prevent terrorism, and deport criminal aliens.

“As comprehensive reform has floundered, our Subcommittee has used the power of the purse to take on the Administration’s skewed priorities in immigration enforcement. In 2007, the number of individuals ICE deported because they crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visas was 91 percent higher than in 2003, while the number of criminal aliens identified for deportation by the agency rose by only 16 percent. In other words, while we have been using scarce resources to detain and deport laborers at meatpacking plants, we have allowed tens of thousands of dangerous criminal aliens to be released back into our communities after serving their sentences, with no awareness on our part of their immigration status.

“At our Committee’s direction, ICE has now developed a plan for identifying all those criminal aliens now serving time in our Federal, state, and local prisons and jails, and for deporting them upon the completion of their sentences. This plan will require dogged dedication and significant additional resources to fully implement. We have provided such resources in the FY 2009 bill. No matter what one’s opinion about the broader illegal immigration problem and how to address it, we should all be able to agree that ICE’s highest priority should be to identify and deport unlawfully present aliens who have already shown themselves to be a danger to our communities and have been convicted of serious crimes.

“Our Subcommittee has also taken on the challenge of border security – through what will be a one third increase in the number of Border Patrol officers from the beginning of FY 2008 to the end of FY 2009; by compelling attention to the vast Northern border (which is more significant as a potential entry point for terrorists than the Southern border); and by requiring some accountability as DHS spends hundreds of millions of dollars to build fencing along the Southwest border. We are insisting that cost-benefit estimates be provided and that alternative means of border protection be seriously compared before funds are spent on expensive fence construction.

“The illegal immigration problem cannot be solved by border security and law enforcement actions alone – I have yet to meet an experienced Border Patrol agent who believes that it can. We are fooling ourselves if we believe that fences and worksite raids will do the trick. Our illegal immigration is more about demand than about supply, so as long as our immigration policies are not responsive to the realities of our labor market, illegal immigration will drain our resources and distract attention from the apprehension of criminal and terrorist aliens crossing our borders and living among us.

[b]“The current Administration made some effort last year to promote comprehensive immigration reform, but it now seems to have turned 180 degrees toward an enforcement-only approach. This might be interpreted as an attempt to appeal to the most hard-line anti-immigrant segment of the population, but some have painted it as an effort to drive home the need for immigration reform by inflicting pain on businesses and communities who depend on these workers. If it really is some sort of perverse “tough medicineâ€

Do you see where the rhetoric is going?

This is the new "ploy" --

the need to enforce the law as it applies to "real criminals" and "illegal immigrant terrorists"?

All illegal immigrants are criminals AND if you can't secure the border, how do you propose to catch the big bad evil "terrorists". I wonder when America is gonna wake up and realize that this whole "terrorist" threat is just a made up monster to create the NAU/open borders/oil in the middle east and a whole slew of other thigns.

Sure, there are terrorists - but they never posted a threat to us and they never EVER should have now compromised our whole governments foreign and domestic policy on 3rd world terrorists.

we have all been hoodwinked. The neo-cons and their ally's on the far left (with AIPAC) have and will destroy is country for corporatism and big government.

WE ONLY HAVE A LABOUR ISSUE because these corrupt businesses refuse to supply american workers with a fair wage. Simple. That is it. Cheap labour, minimal taxes, no benefits - the corporations are getting fat off our misery.

Yeah, we have a real shortage of $5.00 an hour roofers.

We need to wait UNTIL they have committed a felony crime, he seems to think. Maybe he is unaware of the hundreds of illegals who have been arrested multiple times, only for the LAST arrest to be for Vehicular Homicide or some other horrible crime. The man who killed a man and his wife, in Nashville, had been arrested 14 times before. I wonder how many lives have been saved by deporting illegals BEFORE they do something horrible.

Price has NO idea of the reality of illegal immigration. VOTE him out!

The dirtbag would obviously also be against E-verification as well. He seems to want to have no enforcement against anyone already here. That is except for those who are felons.

Illegals are ALREADY criminals and SO are their unscrupulous EMPLOYERS and LANDLORDS!

Illegal Immigration IS A CRIME:

8 U.S.C. 1325 = illegal entry.

" (a) Improper time or place; avoidance of examination or inspection;
misrepresentation and concealment of facts Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both."

The fact of the matter is that not only are illegal aliens law-breaking criminals by virtue of their illegal entry or intentional visa overstays, most are also liars & cheaters (filing fraudulent immigration applications including asylum, immigrant petitions and adjustments of status from non-immigrant visas; fabricating/obtaining for use fraudulent documents) and thieves (theft of taxpayer funded services meant for citizens; stealing identities to hold jobs illegally and operate here).