WASHINGTON - Everyone considers immigration reform a top priority when Congress reconvenes next month.
But no one agrees what "reform" means.
"I fully understand the politics of immigration reform," President Bush assured reporters this week.
Many lawmakers, including the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, call tougher enforcement the centerpiece of reform. Many others interpret reform as a code word for a guest-worker program that puts illegal immigrants on track toward a green card.
This apparent contradiction could doom legislation. Or perhaps Capitol Hill's long immigration stalemate could be broken by some deft combination of getting tough and giving hope...
The "giving hope" part is then defined as passing AgJobs, a horrible amnesty program. Coverage of AgJobs starts here. Somewhat surprisingly, the SacBee pimped for AgJobs at least once before.
Immigration2004 · Sun, 12/26/2004 - 20:34 · · Importance: 1
Independent, in-depth coverage of immigration, politics, and media bias since 2002. Also: multiculturalism, Los Angeles, California, privacy, and occasionally celebrities and wacky humor...
If you can't find what you're looking for, see the About page or use the navigation features to the right.
Atom feed · RSS 2.0 feed · RSS 0.91 feed · WML
Immigration 2008a · Immigration 2007b · Immigration 2007a · Immigration · Immigration (6/05 to 12/05) · Immigration (1/05 to 6/05) · Immigration (8/04 to 12/04) · Immigration (before 8/04) · Immigration & Terrorism · Immigration & Driver's Licenses · Immigration & Consuls · Immigration & Media Bias · Immigration & Europe · North American Union
Blogging Across America
MultiCulti Madness ·
General Politics ·
Privacy ·
Miscellaneous ·
The "Peace" Movement
Los Angeles ·
California ·
Outdoors and sports ·
Celebrities ·
Wackiness ·
Inside Blogging
Iraq ·
Beltway Sniper ·
Terrorism & Extremism ·
The Saudis ·
Warblogging ·
War On Drugs
Comments
If the administration fully understands the politics of this, how can they believe that they can get away with repeatedly giving us the line about the illegitimate family values that don't stop at the Rio Grande? This is done in the place where a rational argument should be. Why don't they say something like: it is good to have ambitious people for jobs which otherwise would get casual laborers, and almost no one else? Because it would be then too easy to say that what they propose implies that we have far too few casual laborers? Least likely of all perhaps, would be for the administration to say its because we're afraid to offend the Mexicans, by implicitly telling them that their people are undesirable aliens. There is no way to avoid that, though, short of giving all of them instant US citizenship. Officials don't seem to have understood this point.
Posted by: John S Bolton at Dec 26, 2004 10:17 PM