June 29, 2007
HAVING WORKED THE MOB INTO A LATHER...:
Senators looking to pick up pieces: After overhaul bill collapses, work starts on smaller plans (MICHELLE MITTELSTADT, 6/29/07, Houston Chronicle)
[M]any Republicans now are reverting to their key priority: increased enforcement at the Southwest border and in the U.S. interior.And Democrats, for their part, are considering offering the DREAM Act, which would grant citizenship to illegal immigrant students. And they are looking at ways to address acute labor shortages in agriculture by bringing in more foreign farm workers and placing them on a path to legal permanent residence.
"We have to have a different approach," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said shortly after the Senate fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to keep the tenuous immigration deal alive. "It's clear from the vote that this bill was not the right approach."
Hutchison, who was among 37 Republicans, 15 Democrats and one independent voting to shelve the bill, is pressing for what she calls a "graduated approach."
Under her concept, Congress would first pass bills increasing border security and creating a temporary worker program to fill unmet U.S. labor needs before turning to the most controversial aspect: What to do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.
Fellow Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who also opposed the bill, agreed. "The one thing we have a consensus on that we need to do is to secure the border and to deal with the document fraud and identity theft that makes our current system so hard to enforce," he said.
...they have to appear to do something about the border and, under that guise, the amnesty will be enacted. It's just an argument over the pace of amnesty. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 29, 2007 6:36 PM
. . . and McPain is sinking in the polls nationwide as a result of his trying to shove this down the throats of Americans. He is having a hard time raising money, but he acts like nothing is amiss. I say he'll be out of the race by Labor Day - Thanksgiving at the latest.
Posted by: obc at June 29, 2007 7:52 PMNothing is going to happen on any of the measures. No border fence, no guest worker program, no amnesty. None of these ideas individually have enough backers, and collectively, we saw what happened.
July is going to be a series of Iraq votes, tied to appropriations, then summer break. Fall is govt. shutdown.
Both sides want to pass something, so they will.
Posted by: oj at June 29, 2007 9:11 PMBush thought he could get his amnesty passed with a Democratic Congress. Drove both himself and the Congress to lowest recorded levels of approval. No one is touching amnesty for a long time. All other measures are meaningless babble, cobbled together to sell amnesty.
Posted by: sam at June 29, 2007 9:46 PMprecisely.
Posted by: oj at June 29, 2007 11:57 PM"It's crashing! Oh, the humanity!"
Who could have predicted it?
Can someone tell us why there should be any linkage betweeen illegal immigration and citizrnship whatsoever? Immigrants are immigrants and those sneaking in to work are what they are.
By all means, regularize guest workers. Grant them a legal status, protect them from exploitation, treat them fairly and collect their share of taxes. Hammer, really hammer with prison and forfeitures, employers of illegals.
But if the guest worker would become a permanent resident or citizen, let him apply in the ordinary course of business, like any Pole, Filipino, Hindu or African. There should be no favortism or priority in this regard, no reward for effrontery.
Guest workers and immigrants are not the same thing. Let us stop so thinking of them.
Posted by: Lou Gots at June 29, 2007 11:58 PM"Both sides want to pass something, so they will."
Let them just pass gas. It won't smell any worse than the failed bill, and the noise will be about the same as any Senate debate.
Posted by: Ed Bush at June 30, 2007 9:13 AM