Thread: The Coming Immigration Fight?

Wednesday, September 02, 2009
The Coming Immigration Fight?

In the middle of an article on an apparent (though also superficial and largely irrelevant) GOP split, Thomas B. Edsall writes that immigration is "an issue likely to be taken up by Congress next year."

I have my doubts, since it's unlikely that House members, in an election year, will be eager to vote on an immigration bill that includes some sort of amnesty. Still, let's imagine that the president's agenda on health care, cap and trade, financial regulation, and the budget all go swimmingly, and Obama retains the political capital to push for an immigration overhaul along the lines of what Bush attempted in 2006 and 2007. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.

Yet Michael Barone points out today that, when it comes to immigration, "the facts on the ground have changed." Writes Barone: "The surge of illegal immigrants into the United States, which seemed to be unrelenting for most of the last two decades, seems to be over, at least temporarily, and there's a chance it may never resume."

Why? Three reasons, says Barone. First, border security and enforcement isn't pretty, but it does work. Second, the recession has diminished the demand for unskilled labor, thereby shrinking supply. And third, the recent immigrant experience in America hasn't been fun. Jobs dried up. Immigrants encountered public hostility. The real estate bubble popped, and the dreams of many immigrants to own their own home vanished with it.

"I think we might, at a time when high unemployment means we have less need for unskilled workers, have to consider moving away from family reunification and toward high skill levels in our criteria for legal immigration, as Canada and Australia already do," Barone concludes. Too true, but Democrats oppose such a shift, so skill-based immigration isn't likely any time soon. It's far more likely that the president will go ahead and try to pass, for the third time, something like McCain-Kennedy. And if he did that, history suggests he'd be effectively begging for more angry town halls and a major legislative defeat.

Posted by Matthew Continetti at 01:53 PM


http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/T ... migration/

"The surge of illegal immigrants into the United States, which seemed to be unrelenting for most of the last two decades, seems to be over, at least temporarily, and there's a chance it may never resume."

There's a bridge not to far from my house...

I believe, we are being set up for an Amnesty push in the fall. It seems to me that they want to get other things in place to make Amnesty easier to imnplement. They are busy takling away our freedom of speech via the internet and through key people like William Gheen and Glenn Beck. Taking away our means of defending ourselves. They got the hate crimes bill so that we will be punished if we speak out against the illegals population. Obama is getting his army of radicals to take us out if we resist their violations to our Republic. Obviously, they want to strangle us economically and weaken and destroy us with their massive take overs of every part of our infrastructure and then put Amnesty through.

I love the way they try to make it look like they are actually enforcing the laws and have closed the border....WHAT A JOKE!! SORRY NOT BUYING IT!!