Blog of Jeff

I won’t be blogging much until after the 4th due to a vacation, but at least it comes on the glorious news of the immigration bill’s death. The House may still propose something from there side, but there is a good chance that it will be a smaller, more reasonable bill.

A focus on border security, actually deporting at least the worst illegal immigrant criminals and cracking down on businesses to reduce the availability of jobs of illegal immigrants are all steps that will reduce the tide of illegal immigrants constantly trying to enter the country. If all those steps take place, then we can work on measures to assimilate the millions of illegals already here. Of course, all those steps require a President and Homeland Security Head that will actually TRY to take those steps, instead of just ignoring the laws that they don’t like.

A big question around enforcement of laws and reducing the availability of jobs for illegal immigrants is how many of the millions already here would voluntarily leave. If we could actually hit a point where as many illegal immigrants were leaving each month as were entering, that would be the sign of a working policy and a country headed for at least a stablized immigration policy. We would also get the opportunity to find out how many jobs there are that Americans truly will not do and how many legal immigrants we should allow into the country to perform those jobs.

But it is clear that it will take a new President first, because this one is intent on keeping the flood gates open as wide and as long as he can. Since Obama and Clinton also seem keen on flooding the country will illegal immigrants, that raises the odds of either the status quo or worse immigration enforcement in the future. It looks like Romney might be strongest candidate who spoke against the recent bill.

Maybe Giuliani did also, but I still have hard time thinking of him as a first tier candidate. He is a scandal machine that makes Bill Clinton look mild by comparison. If you play the 7 degrees game with him, you end up with a lot of the kind of people who might know where Hoffa is buried. (Or will know by the time they finish their political/prison terms …)

I am close to taking a week vacation and it would be much more enjoyable if the Senate hadn’t decided to take their best shot at destroying the country. The cloture vote today means the immigration bill is still alive.

 For those who are keeping score and want to know who to hate, here is the list of who voted for what:

Grouped By Vote Position YEAs —64 Akaka (D-HI) Bennett (R-UT) Biden (D-DE) Bingaman (D-NM) Bond (R-MO) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Brownback (R-KS) Burr (R-NC) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Clinton (D-NY) Coleman (R-MN) Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Craig (R-ID) Dodd (D-CT) Domenici (R-NM) Durbin (D-IL) Ensign (R-NV) Feingold (D-WI) Feinstein (D-CA) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Hagel (R-NE) Harkin (D-IA) Inouye (D-HI) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Kyl (R-AZ) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lieberman (ID-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) Lott (R-MS) Lugar (R-IN) Martinez (R-FL) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Menendez (D-NJ) Mikulski (D-MD) Murkowski (R-AK) Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Obama (D-IL) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Salazar (D-CO) Schumer (D-NY) Snowe (R-ME) Specter (R-PA) Stevens (R-AK) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (R-VA) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wyden (D-OR)

NO:

NAYs —35 Alexander (R-TN) Allard (R-CO) Barrasso (R-WY) Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Bunning (R-KY) Byrd (D-WV) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Dole (R-NC) Dorgan (D-ND) Enzi (R-WY) Grassley (R-IA) Hatch (R-UT) Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Landrieu (D-LA) McCaskill (D-MO) Roberts (R-KS) Rockefeller (D-WV) Sanders (I-VT) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Smith (R-OR) Stabenow (D-MI) Sununu (R-NH) Tester (D-MT) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA)

There are 4 presidential candidates in that yea list. Obama, Clinton, Brownback and McCain. Wait, is Biden still running? Make that five. If you were even remotely considering one of those people, you should think long and hard about the ramifications of this bill. It is bad for blue-collar Americans, it is bad for recent immigrants and it is bad for pending legal immigrants. All so a few companies can make their products a few pennies cheaper.

Here is a good summary of why this bill is bad. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmY1MGJmMjFiNTUxMWQ0YTIzMzJkNGNlYTEwNTdmNjg=

If you care about this issue and one of your senators voted yea on today’s cloture vote, you should contact and blast them for it. (Find your Senator here: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm) If they think they can get away with today’s vote to resume discussion, they will think they can get away with passing this pile of garbage.

On the positive front, if your Senator voted against cloture today, you should give them a call or e-mail and let them know you are happy with them. We don’t want them to weaken on us on the next vote.

On Meet the Press this morning, I watched some pro-immigration bill guy debate Pat Buchanan. 90% of his comments were based on the age of the American workforce and how they will desperately need laborers when the boomers start retiring.

This is another of those incredibly stupid arguments that makes no sense. All we have to do is increase the number of allowed legal immigrants each year to meet that demand. In fact, that approach will be even better for the immigrants, because there will be less competition for those jobs. An intelligent policy would match the skills of the applicants with the jobs in demand.

That is one of the paradoxes of this bill. It totally screws current, pending and future legal immigrants and yet the people who are against it are accused of being uncaring racists. I am fine with increasing the number of people who are allowed to immigrate to this country. I am fine with increasing it dramatically. And I don’t care what countries they come from.

I just have this crazy idea that we shouldn’t hand out the right to be in this country without thoroughly checking them out (more than a cursory 24-hour background check), weeding out the bad apples (no gang members, drug dealers and pedophiles please) and without favoring illegals over those trying to get in the legal way. It would also be nice if employers were accountable in some way, shape or form for intentionally hiring illegal immigrants to reduce their costs.

I am not proposing anything xenophobic and it is nonsense for Bush, Lott and Co. trying to play that card. It is also insane that they are blaming the same right wing talk shows that helped put them into office. The fact that a lot of people who listen to talk radio think the politicians are wrong doesn’t make that fact any less accurate.

The reality is that many of these talk show hosts don’t generate opinions or policies on their own; they echo what they think Americans are thinking. That is why their ratings are good. And it is pretty clear that an increasing number of Americans think this bill is garbage.

http://hutchison.senate.gov/pr062107c.html - Senator Hutchison’s formal statement that she will not vote for cloture on the immigration bill. Looks like all the e-mails and letters from Texas made a difference here. She is still a bit of a fence sitter in terms of viewing comprehensive immigration as a good thing if it has the right amendments, but at least she is off the “yes” vote list for the moment.

http://noamaskew.blogspot.com/2007/06/cloture-vote-guesses-hunt-for-60.html - Noam Askew lists senators who have publicly said they will or will not vote for cloture. If your senator is on the list as undecided, then it is time to send them an e-mail. Every now and then, public opinion can actually influence legislation and it needs to happen now. Whether you are a liberal concerned about low-wage workers (see http://borjas.typepad.com/the_borjas_blog/2007/06/an-oddity-in-th.html for some economics on who suffers from illegal immigration) or a conservative (see any conservative who isn’t owned by W) concerned about criminals being given a free pass into our country, this bill sucks.

Not many posts these days as I have been busy changing day jobs. But the return of the immigration nonsense is really depressing. Yesterday, Sean Hannity (one of my least favorite people) was raking Tony Snow (one my even less favorite people) over the coals.

I have to admit that I find right-wing vs. right-wing fisticuffs rather entertaining considering how often they march in lock-step. The problem is that the left wing isn’t coming out strong against the Dems, because the bill is a piece of garbage even if you are a liberal democrat.

It isn’t hard to figure out that 12 million workers who are largely low-skill, low-education workers makes it harder for low-skill, low-education Americans to find jobs and that those jobs pay lower wages due to competition with immigrants. Those same blue-collar workers used to be one of the strongest constituencies of the Democratic Party.

So, with the immigration bill we will have the best of both worlds when it comes to low-education workers. Our lousy educational systems will keep producing Americans who are only competitive for the jobs that immigrants will be filling. Our 50% high school graduation rate here in Houston bodes real well in relation to an immigration bill that intends to give away millions of jobs that are their best bet to avoid welfare or jail.

Not much time for blogging the last week. Day job issues and too much irritation at political issues these days. The immigration bill is still one of the worst pieces of legislation ever written and Bush/Chertoff keep blasting critics as if its their fault that it is a piece of #%@# bill.

It’s especially galling to hear Chertoff talk about how this bill will fix the borders. This man was the master of disaster Katrina. He is the top un-enforcer of current immigation law. He is the top man in charge of allowing guys with deadly TB on no-fly lists to go on ahead if they look OK. And we are supposed to believe that this law will be enforced, just because he says so?

The man is incompetent. His agency is exactly the type of big government bureaucratic slow-moving obscenity that Republicans are supposed to be against. And we are talking about a bill to give him billions of extra dollars and personnel to do an even tougher job than the one he has completely failed to do so far.

Aside from any feelings regarding illegal immigrants and the employers who hire them, just the fact that this bill greatly expands homeland security is a reason to oppose it vehemently. We had a “comprehensive immigration” reform law in 1986. Congress should be asking Chertoff why he hasn’t been enforcing that law before it authorizes an even more convulted immigration law based off the assumption that Chertoff will be any more effective at enforcing it.

And Chertoff should be the last person out selling this bill. His complete and total failure to enforce existing immigration law (despite the dramatic increase of resources that the war on terror and the department of homeland security has thrown his way) is why we have millions of illegal immigrants in this country and businesses that do not worry at all about the legal consequences of hiring them.

He had the greatest opportunity of all time to lock our borders down and instead left them totally thrown open. The first few years after 9/11, he had total public support and a blank check from congress. Yet, somehow, securing our border never made the war on terror’s priority list and his agency just never quite got arround to it. Oh, and some businesses that hire illegal immigrants happen to be Republican funders. Can’t forget the importance of that little nugget.

And, of course, Bush deserves full credit for his part in this idiocy. If we fight the terrorists over there, we won’t have to fight them here. So, terrorists are so excited about fighting our armed and trained soldiers in the middle east, they won’t bother to waltz across our totally unsecure border to attack defenseless civilians? Strategery at its finest.