April 21, 2006
From this:
A Democratic National Committee (DNC) radio ad claims Republicans would "criminalize...churches just for giving communion" to illegal aliens. The claim is nonsense. The House bill to which the ad refers [HR4437] doesn't say that. Both the Republican sponsors of the bill and the Bush administration have made clear that's not the bill's intent...
Posted to Immigration at April 21, 2006 09:19 PM
Comments
The Dems know that a large percentage of the population is stupid and/or illiterate and that the MSM will let them get away with their lying to them. The more intelligent part of the "hate America" coalition is largely unconcerned with such "ends justify the means" tactics. This case is a reminder of why the late Sam Francis called the Dems "the evil party" and the Reps "the stupid party".
Posted by: perroazul del norte at April 21, 2006 11:04 PM
And that when the Democrats and the Republicans get together to do something both stupid and evil - like this immigration reform aka amnesty - it's called bi-partisanship.
Posted by: D Flinchum at April 22, 2006 04:48 AM
What could the following mean?
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-outlook16apr16,1,6553805.column?coll=la-headlines-politics
(...)
So as House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) prepared his border security bill last year, the Justice Department asked him to include a provision making unlawful presence in the U.S. a crime. Sensenbrenner, on the House floor in December, said the idea came from the Bush administration, and an administration official last week, speaking anonymously, confirmed his account.
Both parties agree the administration did not tell Sensenbrenner what sort of crime it believed unlawful presence should be. So Sensenbrenner proposed to make it a felony, subject to a year and a day in prison.
Contrary to the description from Hastert and Frist, Democrats and immigrant groups opposed this proposal from the start. In particular, they charged that the idea advanced a hidden agenda distinct from the argument about equalizing the penalties for overstaying a visa and sneaking across the border.
During the Judiciary Committee debate, Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Lakewood) pinpointed one of those concerns: By designating all illegal immigrants as criminals, she said, the bill would increase pressure on local law enforcement officials to apprehend them — a top priority for many conservatives. "This bill could lead to an open season on anyone in this country who appears to be foreign," she said.
Democrats identified another concern in their dissent to the committee report that accompanied the bill. Proposals, such as those most senators support, to allow illegal immigrants to work legally in the U.S. and move toward citizenship exclude those with a serious criminal record. If all existing illegal immigrants were branded as felons, the Democrats noted, they would be ineligible for any future legalization program.
After the panel approved the bill, the administration asked Sensenbrenner to change the proposed penalty from a felony to a misdemeanor. Sensenbrenner agreed and said on the House floor that he concluded the felony designation was unworkable because it would require a grand jury indictment, a jury trial and a public defender for the illegal immigrant.
But Sensenbrenner's amendment to change the crime to a misdemeanor failed when most Democrats and some conservatives voted against it. That's the vote Hastert and Frist cited to blame Democrats for the provision that would brand illegal immigrants as felons.
Hastert and Frist are right that political posturing contributed to the Democratic vote: They had little interest in helping Republicans sand off the sharpest edge in the GOP bill.
But Democratic opposition rested on a deeper objection that Hastert and Frist ignore. If House Democrats supported the Sensenbrenner amendment, they would have been voting to make unlawful presence a misdemeanor. But almost all Democrats believe it should not be a crime. The House Democrats' bill retains unlawful presence as a civil, not criminal, violation.
(...)
LA Times columnist Ron Brownstein devotes two paragraphs to the problems inherent in "branding" all illegals felons when this could have easily been solved by voting for the Sensenbrenner amendment to reduce unlawful presence to a misdemeanor-something they refused to vote for. Not to mention that the felony problem was a red herring to begin with. No one can be "branded" a felon, a judicial process is necessary. The idea of clogging the federal courts with felony charges on 12-20 million illegal aliens is beyond absurd.
The Bush Administration(with La racista Alberto Gonzalez as AG) was apparently trying to tidy things up and equalize the status of visa overstays and those who entered the US illegally(i.e. "without inspection"). The stupid Bushites-those who denounced the Minutemen as vigilantes- did not count on the bad faith of the Dems. Even illegal presence in the US as a MISDEMEANOR was too much for them! Of course, when they refused to reduce illegal presence to a misdemeanor they gave themselves the phony issue of the heartless Republicans "branding" all illegals as felons.
Posted by: perroazul del norte at April 23, 2006 11:06 PM
