Mr. Moderate

The politicians in Washington are now preaching that, because the American people persuaded their elected representatives to kill the “grand compromise” bill (which was neither grand nor a broad compromise, having been hammered out in secret by a small group of senators) we must now accept that nothing will be done about illegal immigration until 2009.

Says who?

Secretary Chertoff said that “some necessary tools … were left on the floor of the Senate” when the Senate killed that bill. Who says that those tools cannot be enacted one by one? Who declares that it is “all or nothing” with respect to the bill that was just killed (for the second time)? Can’t the people demand that Secretary Chertoff receive all of the “necessary tools” without enacting any of the highly-objectionable aspects of this huge piece of legislation?
Continue reading ‘Immigration - What Next?’ »

… “no man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”
Judge Gideon J. Tucker, Final Accounting in the Estate of A.B. (1866) [1 Tucker 248 (N. Y. Surr. 1866)].

Congress has reopened the can of illegal immigrant worms many thought had been buried a couple of weeks ago. It seems that more than 60 senators have agreed to go forward with the current bill provided two dozen amendments are considered before a final vote is taken. It isn’t the least bit clear what all is in the two dozen amendments or what chances of passage any of them or the bill itself might actually have. During the last go-around, one significant amendment was enough to get a majority to refuse to go any further with consideration of the bill. If it gets through the Senate, it will move to the House, where the Democrat leaders can use any number of tricky rules to ram the mess through without any real input from an extremely upset American public. So, for those of us who oppose this stinky diaper of a bill, this week’s prospective set of votes in the Senate is somewhat “do or die.”
Continue reading ‘Immigration Redux’ »

Suppose you read a story about a criminal gang that broke into a state lottery office and stole a batch of winning tickets. They get caught and punished, but the state gives them their lottery winnings anyway. Would you be outraged at such a set of circumstances?

Well, that is more-or-less what the current “compromise” immigration bill calls for. People who are in this country illegally get a mild punishment, but they still win the lottery and gain legal status within the US labor force. Normal immigrants have to win a real lottery to gain entry visas into the United States. Why should illegal immigrants get to move ahead of all of the folks who have played by the rules?

In my view, the only possible fair treatment of illegal immigrants is to require them to go to the back of the line and start over. That is what we would tell anybody who tried to cut into line, right? So, illegal immigrants, “go to the back of the line!”
Continue reading ‘No To Immigration Bill’ »

One thing I am not a fan of is illegal immigration. In fact, I strongly believe that the total hypocrisy of the Bush administration is on display on our southern border. How can we possibly have a “war on terror” when we will allow any terrorist who can get into Mexico to freely cross into the United States? There is no real “war on terror.” Instead, we have a war on the US middle class! Our wages go down just a tad for every new illegal immigrant who adds to the bottom end of the labor pool and starts competing for jobs under the Law of Supply and Demand. For more on this point, please read my page on Immigration & Wages.
Continue reading ‘Secure Our Borders!’ »