The Thomas Chronicles

Well, it’s all over the news by now and it’s the first good news I’ve heard in weeks.

The comprehensive immigration reform bill that has dodged attacks from the left and right for weeks, survived “poison pill” amendments, and was once pulled from the Senate schedule failed its most important test Thursday. Passage of the legislation now appears unlikely.

The bipartisan coalition that had shepherded the measure through so many obstacles failed to get the 60 votes necessary to end debate. The final vote was 46-53

Until Thursday morning, it was unclear whether the bill would survive the cloture vote. But in the end, opponents of the measure from both sides of the political spectrum gained enough support to derail the legislation. Liberals felt it did not go far enough in protecting illegal immigrants, while conservatives rejected the bill because they felt it would grant amnesty to the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country.

Republican foes of the measure argued that the American public was broadly united in opposition to the bill and had made its views known by flooding Congress with phone calls and e-mails.

“What part of ‘no’ don’t we understand?,” asked Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who said the immigration fight had “reengaged the American people.”

I’ll have more thoughts on this whole debacle later.

We’ve fought two World Wars across six continents.

We’ve conducted superhuman efforts in the creation of the atomic bomb (building entire towns in the process).

We’ve constructed railroads and complex highways spanning an entire continent.

We’ve created two enormous fleets of naval ships to cover two of the world’s largest oceans, and that’s not even mentioning the auxiliaries and smaller forces for the seas.

We’ve rocketed to the moon and back, and lifted enough satellites into space to see every nook and cranny across the entire globe.

We’ve systematically defeated and torn down every empire we could get our hands on, so that its people could choose freedom and life and have it in abundance…

… and our current leaders tell us we aren’t capable of building a wall? And they wonder why they’ve lost credibility?

Since 9/11, we’ve sallied forth into an uncertain world to defend ourselves against Islamofascism and to defend the freedoms of other nations. Will we not do the same for our own citizens?

Along our border states, our own citizens and our law enforcement officials are being shot at, harassed, raped, murdered, and now our borders are literally going up in flames.

U.S. Border Patrol agents seeking to secure the nation’s border in some of the country’s most pristine national forests are being targeted by illegal aliens, who are using intentionally set fires to burn agents out of observation posts and patrol routes.

The wildfires have destroyed valuable natural and cultural resources in the National Forest System and pose an ongoing threat to visitors, residents and responding firefighters, according to federal law-enforcement authorities and others.

In the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, with 60 miles of land along the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Forest Service firefighters sent in to battle fires or clear wild-land fire areas are required to be escorted by armed law-enforcement officers.

Armed smugglers of aliens and drugs have walked through the middle of active firefighting operations, the authorities said.

The Border Patrol’s Tucson, Ariz., sector, which encompasses most of the Coronado National Forest, has the highest incidence of cross-border violators in the nation. Nearly 500,000 illegal aliens were apprehended last year — more than 30,000 a month. In addition, nearly 100,000 pounds of marijuana, with a street value of $200 million, was seized as it was hauled through the Coronado National Forest.

Our government is trying to paint our illegal immigration problem as an insoluble issue, which just isn’t true. The basic message they are trying to convey to us is both condescending and cynical.

For instance, that most often used phrase in this debate is that illegal immigrants are “doing jobs that Americans are unwilling to do.” The condescension in this is just fantastic, and it plays to the generally held belief in the broader world outside the United States that Americans are dumb, pampered playboys. The fact is, we don’t know what jobs Americans are willing to do.

We’ve been living the high life by paying illegal aliens $3-$4 an hour to do the job that used to pay Americans at least minimum wage. In our general culture, most women treat men who work manual labor jobs as ‘losers’.

Janitors, construction workers, building maintenance, farmhands, waitressing, garbage men, landscapers, etc., etc.— all these professions are now being done primarily by illegal immigrants. Previous to now, Americans could raise their families and live fairly decent lives off the income derived from these professions.

This is no longer the case because our undying love for cheap labor, which drove the value of these professions down into the sub-basement…

We’ve really got to clamp down on the our Southern Border. Anyone who says that a fence can’t be built there obviously doesn’t understand simple physics. We are catching 30,000 illegal immigrants crossing the border a month. And that’s only the ones we catching!

Clearly, we’re not just talking about illegal immigrants filling empty job-slots that Americans just won’t fill. A migration on the scale of tens of millions in the short span of 15 to 20 years cannot be treated as business as usual. We don’t know what will happen. It’s never happened before on this scale.

We should take it one step at a time to avoid a conflagration, not just along our Southern Border, but inside all our cities.

It doesn’t need to be that way, and I’m confident we can absorb much of the influx of illegals into our population, minus the criminals and the La Raza-esque crowd (We only want illegals who want to be Americans, not Mexicans wanting to be Mexicans in America, right?)

I think the first step in this is to have absolute control over our borders, and right now, before Los Angeles turns into Beirut.

Related Posts:

La Shawn Barbers’ Corner
Michelle Malkin, MM part 2
Pirate’s Cove
Slobokan’s Site Schtuff

The Party of the people and for the people wants more people… millions more. Senator Reid and his hatchet men are at work in our Senate to maneuver this ridiculous bill through to passage. You’ve got to admit. He’s a persistent fellow…

WASHINGTON (AP) - Only in the arcane world of the U.S. Senate could a quirky gambit known as a “clay pigeon” make the difference between passage of an important immigration measure and its death at the hands of opponents.

Democratic leaders hope the complex maneuver - which makes use of the Senate’s labyrinthine rules to insist on votes on amendments - will frustrate conservatives’ attempts to derail the embattled immigration bill, instead putting it on a fast track to passage next week.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he would revive the bill to legalize as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants late this week. To do so, though, he needs backing from 60 senators, and a way to guarantee votes on a tentative list of 22 Republican and Democratic amendments whose consideration is seen as vital to satisfying key waverers.

The so-called clay pigeon is how he’s expected to do it, under a strategy that was still taking shape Monday.

The tactic gets its name from the target used in skeet shooting, which explodes into bits as it is hit. In the Senate, an amendment is the target, and any one senator can demand that it be divided into separate fragments to be voted on piecemeal.

Under the tentative plan, Reid as early as Friday would launch his target - an amendment encompassing all 22 proposals - and shoot it into its component pieces. The Senate would then vote on ending debate on the immigration measure, which would take 60 votes and limit discussion of the bill to 30 more hours. After that interval, all 22 amendments would have to be voted on, with little opportunity for foes to interfere.

You can read the rest here.

(hat tip: Drudge)

Beating a dead horse

On the first of this month, Charles Krauthammer began his article on the recent Illegal Immigration Bill with this very commonsensical statement:

“Beware legislative behemoths. Beware “comprehensive immigration reform.” Any bill that is 380 pages long is bound to have nooks and crannies reflecting private deals, quiet paybacks and ad hoc arrangements that you often don’t learn about until it’s too late.”

Even Peggy Noonan, who normally swings from conservative to liberal depending on the issue, chimed in on the bill saying:

Naturally I hope the new immigration bill fails. It is less a bill than a big dirty ball of mischief, malfeasance and mendacity, with a touch of class malice, and it’s being pushed by a White House that is at once cynical and inept. The bill’s Capitol Hill supporters have a great vain popinjay’s pride in their own higher compassion. They are inclusive and you’re not, you cur, you gun-totin’ truckdriver’s-hat-wearin’ yahoo. It’s all so complex, and you’d understand this if you weren’t sort of dumb.

But it’s not so complex. The past quarter-century an unprecedented wave of illegal immigrants has crossed our borders. The flood is so great that no one–no one–can see or fully imagine all the many implications, all the country-changing facts of it. No one knows exactly what uncontrolled immigration is doing and will do to our country.

It is difficult to believe that the senators who crafted this bill in secret really wanted an open and honest debate about one of the most critical issue of our time. Unlike previous times, when the MSM had a virtual monopoly over public opinion and visible public discourse, the American people are much more sophisticated and much more politically savvy today than in previous generations. We don’t have a Peter Jennings or a Edward Murrows to whom we can give our trust. We live in an era where the news that’s fit to print no longer lies between the pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post.

Not much is taken for granted. Nothing on someone’s say so. I don’t know if this is going to be a good thing or a bad thing in the long run, but our leaders’ ability to curtail public debate has become severely limited.

For one thing, our good senators know that bloggers and other tech-savvy “John Does” out there are viewing them through an enormous electron microscope. It’s called the Internet. The dissemination of information and the speed in which it is done is breathtaking. A burp from a senator can reverberate throughout the universe and back in the whiplashing five seconds it takes for a person to upload it to his website. Which of our good representatives did we see napping during a speech on the House floor via YouTube?

Perhaps they are painfully aware of just how visible they are to the American public because they first disseminated this immigration bill on Saturday morning at 2 o’clock in the bleeding morning— well before the first coffee pot burned on the warming pad. To add insult to injury, this entire bill, this behemoth which would become 700 pages after it’s drafted, was debated for less than six days. And I’m not even sure about the six because it kept on being revised.

And now the behemoth is back, and it’s already throwing elbows every which way…

Now are they going to try to con us again, or are they actually going to do something productive?

(Read ongoing coverage here and here and here.)

Global US Citizens

I got to thinking today about the nature of citizenship. I think it was something Mark Steyn said about Senator Reid’s ludicrous comment that got this thought rolling. Senator Reid said a couple of weeks ago:

“This week we will vote on cloture and final passage of a comprehensive bill that will strengthen border security, bring the 12 million undocumented Americans out of the shadows, and keep our economy strong.”

I mean really. Just what does citizenship mean in a world where people insist on globalization?

A couple of months ago, I got into a heated argument with a co-worker about America and Americans. This woman, who for the sake of convenience we’ll call Jane, was a Chinese-American immigrant who was just naturalized and granted citizenship. To such gifts from our government she shrugged. She already has an ex-patriot for a husband, and they are both of the consensus that Americans are really boorish, dumb and generally uncultured.

“If I had kids,” she said, “I’m going to move back to Singapore to raise them.”

“Why the hell would you do that?” The thought of America’s gift of citizenship to her flashed across my mind.

“Because I want my kids to believe in something,” she said. She gesticulated her arms, adding emphasis to her words. “I don’t want them to become Americanized, to become mongrels. I want them to speak Chinese. America doesn’t believe in anything because it believes in everything. At least in Singapore, you have a single cohesive culture.”

Then, she had the audacity to call me an uncultured country bumpkin because I dared to say that I have a great affinity for old school Texas values. (I would have loved to have grown up in the American countryside, but alas, I’m a cityslicker.)

Despite being very upset from all her anti-Americanisms (even after we just granted her citizenship!), I got to thinking. Well… what DOES America believe? And what does citizenship mean in today’s world, anyhow? Are we just confused mongrels with an identity crisis?

I was left studdering when I tried to answer that question because I don’t really know anymore. I know what I would like it to be, which is not the same thing as what it has become. And as I write this, I don’t know if she’s wrong.

I would dearly love for Americans of this generation to stand faithful with the ideals of their fathers. Values such as decency, fairness, manners, liberty, individualism and freedom… and the moral courage necessary to fight for it.

In my version of America, citizenship means that you are taking on enormous responsibilities and duties. Your enfranchisement, your vote, means that you are one of the selected few men elected by birth or by naturalization to the solemn duty of electing officials who will affect the fate of the entire world.

In the America I love, we the people own this country. We are its government and its sovereign. And we get to be the ones who decide the course we take, not an entrenched bureaucratic civil servant who have never known a day of real work in his life (Yes, I am talking about many of our good Congressmen and Senators.).

In reality, I don’t think we can expect immigrants, legal or illegal, to give their loyalties to a country that doles out citizenship promiscuously simply because, as with all promiscuity, it’s value becomes cheap; therefore, not worth much consideration. I’m not saying this is right. It’s just the way things are. And if we, de facto, declare the globe and all inhabitants thereof to be U.S. citizens, the concept of citizenship is truly dead, because global citizens will demand all the prerogatives of U.S. citizenship without any of the duties and responsibilities inherent in the concept of citizenship.

Advocates of this bill and many of our globalist legislators, Democrats AND Republicans alike, would give a Chinese national or a Mexican national the same rights and privileges as an American citizen, whether he be a citizen by birth or by naturalization. This makes the entire concept of citizenship a joke, a fraud, and by its ridicule, any expectation of loyalty and patriotism will also be destroyed. It’ll go the way of the Dodo. The loyalty of these immigrants will be attached to their home countries, their ethnic group, their race.

And America? Well, America would be that envied, hated, affluent employer that hands out generous paychecks to employees in complete disproportion to their actual contribution. We all get out of the system much more than what we put in. The difference is, in this scenario, we Americans are the system and the employers.

Or as Mark Steyn phrased it:

Talk about “a fast track to citizenship”! Never mind probationary visas, Z-visas and Green Cards, in the eyes of the Democrat steering “comprehensive immigration reform” through Congress these guys are already “undocumented Americans”. Was it simply a slip of the tongue? (Speaking of which, I thought thanks to George W Bush we had “the worst economy since Herbert Hoover”. When did it get “strong”?) Or did Senator Reid mean it?

If he did, the very concept of citizenship is dead, and the Senate might as well opt for “really comprehensive immigration reform” and declare everyone on the planet a US citizen with backdated Social Security entitlements. As Le Monde’s famous headline of September 12th 2001 put it, “Nous sommes tous Americains.” Literally.

I believe that any solution to illegal immigration will involve some sort of massive deportation, especially of the criminals, but any solution to this problem will also involve massive amnesty to the illegals already here. If we’re honest with ourselves, we must also recognize our own contribution to this mess. We enjoy our cheap labor, our cheap fruits, our cheap burgers. This slop of a mess didn’t happen in a vacuum.

But this does not also mean that we should give them all blanket citizenship either, through indefinite Z Visas or whatever other hair-brain scheme. We’ve got to find some middle ground… but this bill ain’t it.

President Bush and Illegal Immigration

Unlike many of the President’s conservative critics, I am willing to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt on this issue. With all due respect, President Bush has been living atop the Acropolis for a bit too long to know what’s it like down in the rough and ready streets. President Bush, the majority of our congressmen and many a D.C. bureaucrats don’t live on the street-level with this issue. They would occasionally go down, look at the Piraeus and the millions of people down there full of life and diversity and think that it’s wonderful. That is, as long as they don’t have to go down and interact with the unwashed masses.

I give the President much more leniency on this issue than all the others though. President Bush belongs to a billionaire family. That in itself elevates him above the common plebeians and their level of everyday living, but he has another added dimension. He is the President of the United States. He is so busy his restroom breaks are scheduled… Literally!

Every time we see him in public, he looks physically and emotionally drained; so much so that his speeches sound as though he’s trying to eat a four-course meal and speak at the same time. With such a schedule and barely no one around him that he can trust any longer (thank you, Dems!), does anyone truly think he would have a chance to read 700-page monstrosity of a bill with a lawyer’s grasp of nuance, the importance of which can make or break our entire nation?

I don’t think so. Any fair-minded person wouldn’t think so.

Being that our President is caged inside his duties for our sake (and we can tangibly see it’s destroying him), he does not see what illegal immigration is doing to America. More importantly, the illegal immigrants of today’s world is NOT the illegal immigrants of the 1970’s and 19780’s. Back then, they kept their nose clean, worked hard and sent their hard-earned cash back to their destitute families back in Mexico. Many of them did this selflessly and they had a vigorous, virile code of honor.

However, times have changed. Illegal immigrants of this quality haven’t come across the border for decades; at least, I don’t think that’s the governing ethic of their behavior for a long time. Some old school Mexicans still have these virtues and arrive this side of the border, but again, I don’t know the percentages.

Our emergency rooms are inundated. We pay an enormous cost for liability car insurance because of all the scams from the illegal population (the ethic being, get in a car wreck and win the lottery in a litigation happy America! Victor Hanson has an illuminating illustration of this from his blog.). Violent crimes, rapes, murders, robberies have risen exponentially everywhere there’s a concentration of illegal immigrants. My friend’s sister, who lives in Arizona, has reported that her house has been looted by illegals passing by not once, but multiple times. It’s come to the point where she has to move it’s gotten so dangerous.

Also, places where illegals immigrants have become the majority, rank political corruption suddenly sweeps in.

There have been a series of reports about Cudahy City a few miles from downtown Los Angeles, and how the rise of gangs, the culture of corrupt politics, violence and intimidation, and tribal factionalism resemble a Mexican border town.

But why wouldn’t islets of Mexico sprout up, when the country has lost confidence in assimilation, requires nothing of the immigrant, doesn’t believe the English language should be our national cultural currency—and has allowed somewhere between 11-16 million illegal aliens living in apartheid communities?

All this was true by 1980 in segregated towns like Orange Cove, Parlier, or Mendota, California that had schools in crises, medieval city politics, and recall after recall—each alleging that the in-bunch was somehow stealing money through tribal favoritism and nepotism.

The antidote? Close the borders now (through a multifaceted plan of verifiable IDs, employer sanctions, fortification, increased security, and scrapping of bilingual government services). And then once done, fight the next decade over guest workers, amnesty, immigration numbers, etc. But if one were to close the borders now, the other problems will lessen by the time we get to them.

This, however, isn’t to say there aren’t any Mexicans and Latin Americans assimilating. Many of them are, and I’ve had the great privilege to befriend some of those I’ve met. Growing up in Houston, and now Los Angeles, I’ve met quite a few assimilated Mexicans and Latin Americans, but there also seems to be an enormous number of them that aren’t assimilated… and they show no desire to.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was sharply criticized today for being anti-illegal immigration because he said that many illegal immigrants don’t want to assimilate.

SAN FRANCISCO — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s remarks that immigrants should avoid Spanish-language media if they want to learn English quickly left some Hispanic journalists shaking their heads.

“You’ve got to turn off the Spanish television set” and stay away from Spanish-language television, books and newspapers, the Republican governor said Wednesday night at the annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. “You’re just forced to speak English, and that just makes you learn the language faster.”

Schwarzenegger, who immigrated to the U.S. from Austria, was responding to a question about how Hispanic students can improve academic performance. The audience included many journalists who work for Spanish-language media outlets.

“I know this sounds odd and this is the politically incorrect thing to say and I’m going to get myself in trouble,” he said. “But I know that when I came to this country, I very rarely spoke German to anyone.”

“I’m sitting shaking my head not believing that someone would be so naive and out of it that he would say something like that,” Alex Nogales, president and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, said Thursday.

Nogales said immigrants need Spanish-language media to stay informed and “function in this society.”

What Governor Schwarzenegger said was just basic common sense. To assimilate and learn to speak a foreign language, the best way to do it is immerse yourself into the culture. It’s obvious many an illegal immigrant aren’t doing this. In fact, there are more Spanish speaking radio in Los Angeles than English ones, and if you’re talking about just the local stations, there are probably more Spanish TV stations than English ones as well.

Now, I think the President is mostly ignorant of this. How can he possibly know what’s it like for the average American when he’s conducting World War III, balancing the economy and just trying to keep the country afloat?

I think the President is acting from what he believes is best for the country, but on this one issue, I also think he’s woefully ignorant of the reality of the situation.

I don’t think anyone thought this bill was going to die right away. Given the covert manner in which this bill was drafted and the ensuing railroad job from our “rulers”, it is not surprising that this bill went the way of “The Night of the Living Dead”. It keeps coming back alive to haunt the hollow corridors of the Senate even after you kill it.

WASHINGTON, June 14 — Senate Democratic and Republican leaders announced on Thursday that they had agreed on a way to revive a comprehensive immigration bill that was pulled off the Senate floor seven days ago.

The majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, and the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said they expected the bill to return to the floor before the Fourth of July recess.

In a joint statement, Mr. Reid and Mr. McConnell said: “We met this evening with several of the senators involved in the immigration bill negotiations. Based on that discussion, the immigration bill will return to the Senate floor after completion of the energy bill.”

The immigration bill, ardently sought by President Bush, would make the biggest changes in immigration law and policy in more than 20 years.

It would increase border security, crack down on companies that employ illegal immigrants, establish a guest worker program and offer legal status to most of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

The agreement does not guarantee that the bill will be approved by the Senate or become law.

Supporters of the bipartisan bill predict that some conservative Republicans will try to block a vote on final passage, because of concerns about the legalization program.

Predicting “procedural barriers,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the third-ranking member of the Senate Democratic leadership team, said, “Three or four senators will try to block every amendment.”

The House has held many hearings on immigration this year. House Democratic leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have expressed concerns about major provisions of the Senate bill, including one that would give less weight to family ties in deciding who can immigrate to the United States.

A White House spokesman, Scott M. Stanzel, said, “We are encouraged by the announcement from Senate leaders that comprehensive immigration reform will be brought back up for consideration.”

The bill stalled on June 7, when supporters garnered just 45 of the 60 votes needed to end debate. Republican senators said that they had not been allowed to offer enough amendments.

Under the agreement reached on Thursday, the Senate will consider about 22 amendments, half from Republicans and half from Democrats.

Earlier in the day, trying to start the bill moving again in the Senate, Mr. Bush called for an immediate burst of $4.4 billion in spending to show that the government was committed to “securing this border once and for all.”

Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, described the call for $4.4 billion as “a good start.” But Mr. Isakson said Mr. Bush needed to do more to secure the border and to show that he was serious about enforcing immigration laws.

Comments by Republican senators on Thursday suggested that they were feeling the heat from conservative critics of the bill, who object to provisions offering legal status. The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”

You can read the rest here.

I have a particular problem with Trent Lott’s statement about Talk Radio. After the virtual monopoly of the MSM by the liberals, Talk Radio provided an outlet for conservatives to vent some steam and conduct actual discussions about the direction of the country. This discussion has been sorely lacking for years, if not decades, where the American people can openly and publicly debate national and local issues.

How exactly does Trent Lott propose to “deal with this problem”? Silence them? Support the Democrat’s proposed Fairness Doctrine, which regulates the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause?

I don’t think the American people should tolerate such loose statements from a national leader, Democrat or Republican, who glibly suggests to curb our freedom of speech. What national leaders say matters terribly, especially when they intimate extra-constitutional powers. For the moment, Senator Lott has not stated just how he is going to “deal with” the problem of Talk Radio, but the veiled threat behind it is very disturbing.

We have tolerated what amounts to seditious speech from the Leftists for six uninterrupted years (over forty if you count the Cold War era of unilateral disarmament and peacenik nonsense), but conservatives are the problem for criticizing an illegal immigration bill that has more holes in it than thirty-year-old pair of socks?

When President Bush flew all over the world and was greeted with massive protests to his presence, he responded that such protests and criticisms were what made democracy so wonderful— the ability to have dissident point of views. So, when conservatives criticize this illegal immigration bill, they’re xenophobic, racist and thoroughly rotten bastards?

I am not saying for one minute that I think the President is conversely bad for criticizing his conservative critics. Again, I want to stress that I like President Bush. If it weren’t for him, we’d be years into a Great Depression. Make no mistake. It was the President’s policies that granted us this relative peace within our own borders without setting off the “Big One” around the world. For that, I am truly grateful to him. But I do object to the name calling, and I object to Senator Trent Lott’s intimation to “deal with” Talk Radio. This is an important issue that will affect, is already affecting, 300 million Americans, even those living well beyond the border states.

This issue should be debated openly and frankly without any of the PC baggage that our leaders insist we carry. If they keep pushing on this issue and a host of other issues in complete disregard for the very people that put them in power, I’m afraid “We the People” might reach a stage where we might say “We don’t consent”.

I think all of us will rue the day we cross that Rubicon.

Mini-Update:

Michelle Malkin has more of Trent Lott’s curious behavior. For instance, did you know that if you type www.trentlott.com right now, you get (drumroll please) Moveon.org’s website? WTFO.

Allahpundit has more on Trent Lott as well, while Gateway Pundit has more on the President.

Straight from Michelle Malkin’s blog.


















































































Now, I don’t know your stance on our illegal immigration problem, but it seems to me that since this issue is filled to Uncle Sam’s nostrils with controversy, it needs to be debated forthrightly and out in the open. None of this secrecy nonsense and back door deals. And as far as actual legislation goes, I agree with many conservatives on this point. It is much better to vote on specific items that we can all agree on, instead of trying construct a comprehensive bill.

For instance, everyone, or at least a consensus of the American people, agrees that a wall should be erected along our Southern border. This is imminently doable. What kind of wall could be debated, but we all agree that there should be a wall. Also, we all agree that violent felons who are illegal immigrants should be deported. We all agree that the Mexican mafia and other organized criminals should be actively fought. This is also doable. Deporting them will rid our country of violent criminals and protect the illegals here on whom they prey.

I suspect that if these two proposals were to find its way to the floor of the House and Senate in a bill, it would be overwhelmingly be accepted. As it should. But if these two moderate measures were shouted down or tabled, who are these “representatives” anyway to defy the will of the people? Any sensible person of good will can give assent to these to measures. No comprehensive immigration bill required right now.

So, for the moment, why is our government trying to force-feed a 2-pound rib-eyed steak into a populace that only wants an appetizer course? What gives?

***Update Below***

Hey, ya’ll want to hear a joke. It’s called a comprehensive immigration bill.

Deal Struck on Immigration Bill
May 17 02:12 PM US/Eastern
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Key senators in both parties announced agreement with the White House Thursday on an immigration overhaul that would grant quick legal status to millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S. and fortify the border.

The plan would create a temporary worker program to bring new arrivals to the U.S. A separate program would cover agricultural workers. New high-tech enforcement measures also would be instituted to verify that workers are here legally.

The compromise came after weeks of painstaking closed-door negotiations that brought the most liberal Democrats and the most conservative Republicans together with President Bush’s Cabinet officers to produce a highly complex measure that carries heavy political consequences.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said he expects Bush to endorse the agreement.

“Politics is the art of the possible, and the agreement we just reached is the best possible chance we will have in years to secure our borders and bring millions of people out of the shadows and into the sunshine of America,” Kennedy said.

Anticipating criticism from conservatives, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said, “It is not amnesty. This will restore the rule of law.”

….

The draft bill “gives a path out of the shadows and toward legal status for those who are currently here” illegally, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

The immigration issue also divides both parties in the House, which isn’t expected to act unless the Senate passes a bill first.

The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a “Z visa” and—after paying fees and a $5,000 fine—ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years. Heads of household would have to return to their home countries first.

They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and the high-tech worker identification program were completed.

A new temporary guest worker program would also have to wait until those so-called “triggers” had been activated.

I think it would be a mistake to glibly think that our illegals will become happy little Americans since many of our fellow countrymen no longer believe in the ideals of our country anyway. What makes us think that people who’ve come here illegally by the millions will assimilate into happy little Americans? What are we offering them other than money?

We currently have 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants in the United States, 90 percent of the Mexican, and assimilation with them is definitely not a given here in Los Angeles. I’m not sure we can absorb them into our culture. For assimilation to work, Americans must be the majority at any given place, and for many of our major cities, Americans are no longer the majority.

Many mistakenly believe that because assimilation worked in the past, it’ll work now. I’m not sure it will. The times and eras where mass assimilation has worked were in eras when Americans constitute the decisive majority; that is, not a 51 percent majority, but 80 percent majority.

Update

Perhaps I spoke too soon with this immigration bill. Readers of this blog would know that I am very emotional on the subject of illegal immigration. I think our current stance on immigration, and illegal immigration in particular, is just a travesty in the rule of law. Given enough time, it could very well destroy this nation.

In the course of the debate on this bill, I am sure we will know more about it. There are two particular items that I would like to see in this bill. One, to build and FUND the wall across our Southern border; not just 300 miles worth, but the whole damn thing. Two, to get rid of chain link immigration, where immigrants can bring every member of their family here.

I would also like to see a third item, very akin to that last item. Children that are born on US soil by alien nationals SHOULD NOT be automatically US citizens. Foreigners on a holiday having a baby shouldn’t suddenly be US citizens. Mexican women just can’t run across the border, have their baby and suddenly become US citizens.

Now, that I’d like to see too, though I understand we should take it one step at a time…