CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush reassured Mexican President Vicente Fox on Thursday he was committed to getting the U.S. Congress to approve broad immigration reforms, including a guest worker program.Another charming image courtesy of Lou Dobbs:
Speaking after talks with Fox in the Mexican resort of Cancun, Bush told reporters: "I'm confident we can get a bill done." He made no prediction on the timing of such legislation, which the U.S. Senate started debating on Wednesday.
Bush also praised Fox for pledging to do more to police the U.S.-Mexican border, the crossing point for most illegal immigrants entering the United States.
"I'm committed to having a comprehensive immigration bill on my desk, and by comprehensive I mean not only border security, a bill that has border security, a bill that has security enforcement in it, but a bill that has a worker permit program in it," Bush said...
President Bush, President Fox and Prime Minister Harper will discuss border security in terms of the perimeter of our three nations -- regional security perimeter, if you will. Such a concept, in my opinion, has no merit whatsoever while the United States cannot defend its own borders...
...For that matter, in the United States, this president and Congress seem hell bent on defying the popular will. The American people, in poll after poll and survey after survey, are revealed to be opposed to the direction of the war in Iraq, illegal immigration, amnesty, a guest-worker program, the outsourcing of jobs and certainly the outsourcing of our security. It has become increasingly clear over the last several years that the least represented constituency in either Congress or the White House is the middle class, working men and women who are the foundation of our country.
And while these three leaders are meeting in Cancun, the Senate is debating whether there should be a guest-worker program and whether there should be amnesty for those already here. Guest worker programs never work anywhere in the world. I firmly believe that we cannot significantly reform our immigration policies unless we can control immigration. And the control if immigration is impossible if our borders remain porous and vulnerable.
One of the things that frustrates many of us who care about our country and the truth is the rampant barrage of misinformation, disseminated by such vociferous special interests, whether they are ethnocentric social activists, labor unions, the Catholic Church or Corporate America. The truth is advocates of amnesty, guest-worker programs and open borders are unconcerned about the 280 million American citizens, the men and women of this country who work for a living and their families...
Immigration · Thu, 03/30/2006 - 21:28 · · Importance: 1
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Comments
"Personally, I'll take a rational person of integrity over a robotic 'people's will follower' any day."
Where do they find one of those-they generally don't go into politics.
Re democracy- remember what Winston Churchill said about it. It's been repeated too many times so I wont't state it here for the benefit of any illegal aliens stopping by. If we opt for some variety of authoritarian regime there is no guarantee we'll get a relatively benign ruler like the late Generalissimo Franco.
Posted by: perroazul del norte at Mar 31, 2006 12:32 PM
If what you want is the "will of the people", with the technology available today we could all vote on the issues instead of for a person -- eliminate the middlepeople.
And be careful what you wish for -- you may get it in the form of "people" who are the rough equivalent of the OJ jury in what they want.
Personally, I'll take a rational person of integrity over a robotic 'people's will follower' any day.
Posted by: eh at Mar 31, 2006 8:44 AM
What is the purpose of a(purportedly) representative government if not to represent the will of the people? The continued existence of the US Senate (an anachronism that is a relic of a time when the States were still considered sovereign) complicates matters for democratic theory as does the role of the Federal courts. Authority must ultimately rest somewhere. If not the electorate then where? I think Congress is in the process of giving us the answer: an international gang of corporate oligarchs.
Let me quote one Robert C. on Lawrence Auster's blog:
I agree that things will apparently have to get even worse before the populace might, just might, recognize the fraud of liberalism and universalism. I fear that by that time, any organized effort at collective resistance through the already rotten two party racket system, whose leaders consider the concept of a nation as something to be overcome, will be even less possible. That would leave only extra-constitutional means to resist a government that long since stopped representing its people.
Posted by: perroazul del norte at Mar 31, 2006 8:21 AM
Personally, I don't think authorities ought to be, or feel, obligated to always or unconditionally follow the people's will, or to do what "voters want"; I don't expect it of them.
But the point here is that there is more than plenty of evidence -- facts -- that it is harmful to Americans today, especially the unskilled, and will do America no good in the long-term either. And I think most politicians in a sense know this to be true. So the problem is that on this question, "public officials" are (in a sense) knowingly acting against the best interests of the nation, and doing so for contemptible reasons: corruption caused by serving the interests of big business, and craven political correctness. They know that if they oppose all of this -- amnesty, guest workers -- their contribution streams will dwindle, and they will be called names: racist, xenophobe, nativist, etc. And they simply don't have the stomach for it.
How can Feinstein act as she does, all the while knowing the impact on California of always more and more poor Hispanics of well above average criminality and well below average academic achievement? In the age of the "information economy", how can it make sense to explicitly bless the (illegal) entry of so many people who are only capable of doing jobs that increasingly are being sent overseas (e.g. un- or low-skilled manufacturing jobs) or cannot be exported (e.g. low tier service jobs that pay little and have no benefits) but lead to poverty?
Clearly it makes no sense at all.
But such a discussion involves openly acknowledging group differences, and this is taboo.
Add to this the more common and politically acceptable con arguments -- the slap in the face to law and order, the obvious encouragement it gives to other third worlders, as well as the resulting population growth, which will occur primarily in urban areas already suffering from traffic, high housing costs, etc -- and it's a no brainer.
Or so one would think.
Posted by: eh at Mar 31, 2006 3:54 AM
As in the photo, it's about sacrificing one group to feed the greed for prestige and power, and some money, too, so long as it is ill-gotten. Human sacrifice and cannibalization of the net taxpayer, placed like a worthy value at the top of the unspeakable savages' pyramid, that's what vicious power-seekers have always tried for. They smile from that pyramid, as if saying what they dare not speak in explicit words: "this is healthy, this is comestible", when what they are pushing is poison.
Posted by: John S Bolton at Mar 31, 2006 2:56 AM