Last updated on 2014.11.21
Speaker Boehner can't get his House in order. He and poor Rep. Kristi Noem can't get Republican majority to pass a farm bill. Now Speaker Boehner needs Democrats to help him pass an immigration bill:
The House Republican leadership is reaching out to top House Democrats to assess their support for a piecemeal approach to immigration reform, according to sources involved in the discussions.
The House’s immigration gameplan is to pass individual bills rather than take the comprehensive approach advocated by the Senate. Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) team isn’t trying to cut a deal with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), these aides caution. But deeply-divided Republicans want to get a read on what members of the minority party would back when immigration reform comes to the floor [Jake Sherman, Seung Min Kim, and John Bresnahan, "GOP Reaching out to Dems on Immigration," Politico, 2013.07.10].
Speaker Boehner better hope he doesn't find many Democrats like my friend and stalwart South Dakota Democrat Douglas Wiken, who sees immigration reform as surrender to invaders:
We don't need immigration reform, we need deportation teeth. It is not the immigration system that is "broken", it is the border protection that is broken. We have spent $Billions against yellow peril and red threat while hardly any of the Chinese Communists or hard-core communists have invaded the US. But, twelve or more million under-educated Hispanics have invaded and they and their legal apologists are demanding amnesty for the invaders with a "road to citizenship". They need to find the road back to Mexico or Central America or wherever they came from [Douglas Wiken, "Immigration 'Reform' or Deportation Teeth?" Dakota Today, 2013.07.10].
I remind Wiken that Congress isn't talking amnesty. But Winner's greatest cynic sees selfish political interests in Boehner's outreach to Pelosi on immigration reform:
Republicans want under-educated superstitious products of a backward and bankrupt political, economic, and religious system as cheap labor to destroy unions and increase obscene profits. Democratic politicians want cheap ignorant votes.
Both are willing to sell American down the drain for short-term partisan advantage and long-term wasteful, costly needless diversity [Wiken, 2013.07.10].
As a sign that I'm just asking for a knuckle sandwich, I yield the floor for a response to Wiken from George W. Bush:
“I do hope there is a positive resolution to the debate and I hope during the debate that we keep a benevolent spirit in mind and we understand the contributions immigrants make to country,” Bush said outside his presidential library. “The vast majority are decent people who work hard, believe in their faith and lead responsible lives. Immigration is a sign of a confident and successful nation” [David Nakamura, "Bush on Immigration Debate: Keep Benevolent Spirit," Washington Post, 2013.07.10].
If we accept Wiken's invasion language, Bush deems the vast majority of those invaders responsible, hard-working contributors to our economy (though apparently, if they were unfaithful atheists, Bush might temper his call for benevolence). This ain't Red Dawn; these invaders are keeping us from having to break our backs picking our own cucumbers. Expel these invaders, and we lose numerous economic advantages while spending another $285 billion in a massive police/military mobilization.
The arch-conservative wing of Boehner's party and the (smaller, I'm sure) Wiken wing of mine apparently will bust the budget for principle. Let's hope Boehner keeps Bush ringing in his ears long enough long enough to forge a positive solution with his pragmatic colleagues across the aisle.
Elkton has become a majority Spanish-speaking community.
Wiken and the SDGOP war machine is engaged in cognitive dissonance: from one side of its mouth it says Spanish speakers are taking South Dakota jobs no white person will do and from some other orifice it's selling The People's Republic of Brookings, a city in a county reliant on milk for a French-owned cheese factory.
The "stop the invaders first, foremost, and always" crowd has never explained what should be done with the 11 million people who are here illegally.
I would hope the American public would resist the civil liberties intrusions necessary to find, arrest, and incarcerate all of these people. I would also hope that the they would recoil at the governmental infrastructure necessary to deport all of them. Our prisons are overcrowded with 3 million incarcerated. Adding 11 million to that total would create a rather nasty definition of inhumane behavior.
Finally, I wonder how many of the conservative folk who believe securing the border first is only solution also believe that Obama is creating a dictatorship. If so, have they considered the fact that a fence will not only keep people out but will also keep people in to suffer under tyranny?
How different would not resisting the intrusions on 11Mil be compared to 350Mil not resisting the civil liberties intrusions in the NDAA Kal?
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Don't need fences if you have drones.
I don't get it. The GOP, a.k.a Tea Party, will spend billions to put up a wall or whatever on our border to keep out, but have no problem cutting programs for the poor.
Maybe somebody could explain
"I would hope the American public would resist the civil liberties intrusions necessary to find, arrest, and incarcerate all of these people."
It didn't stop them in Arizona. We protect and the civil rights of "our" people and don't seem to worry about the civil rights of "those other people." It is a lack of logical empathy by too many people in the country.
SD farmers bring in lots of South African youth (the white variety) every year to do farmwork. Those young people get visas to come here and work for a period of time. If the US gave out more visas to south of the border people there wouldn't be so many of them trying to sneak in, and we could keep track of them easier. Of course there would still be those who couldn't get a visa because they are criminals or for whatever reason, but those folks are a just a subset of the ones already sneaking in now.
I have some other novel ideas about how immigration could be done better, but they're not suitable for a blog comment.
I guess I don't quite get the desire to have illegal invaders who demand that store clerks speak their kind of Spanish and just don't understand why descendents of legal immigrants who forced their children to learn English don't want to speak the invader's language.
And you don't want to have your car hit by one of those South African farmers here legally in South Dakota. You will probably quickly find out that "uninsured motorist" coverage means next to nothing.
The people I here thrilled with the Hispanic invasion often turn out to have them as underpaid gardeners, baby sitters, or house cleaners. We don't need any of them for that.
I also find the apologists for the invasion highlighting some college graduate of Stanford or Harvard, etc who is now a highly paid and respected doctor or lawyer. Never any mention of the hundreds arrested (many here in South Dakota) hauling in meth and pot. Often they prey on the South Dakota reservation residents. Or those who seem to hit the newspapers nearly every week for child endangerment or spousal abuse, drunken driving, etc. For a small part of our population, they generate a lot of misery and social expense.
Doug, we can solve this problem pretty simply without demonizing foreigners. Frankly, the problem is us: we hire them. If American employers weren't offering illegal aliens paychecks, they wouldn't come. Plus, if we didn't flood the Mexican market with our subsidized corn via NAFTA and destroy their domestic farm jobs, Mexicans wouldn't need to come looking for jobs. We destroy their chance to work in Mexico, then hold out paychecks that offer them the chance to feed their families, and we blame these working people for risking their lives to take that opportunity? Pfft.
It's just like the war on drugs: we can't dry up supply unless we shut off our demand. You don't want an uneducated horde sneaking across the border and annoying your with their Spanish? Pass the Senate immigration bill: it mandates every employer use E-Verify, and it requires those illegals applying for RPI to learn English.
Cory, the corn flooding Mexico story is BS. The country corruption is the real problem.
My reaction to the glorification of Hispanic illegal aliens as being near angels by the press may be perceived by liberals intent on demonizing alternate positions by attacking them as demonization and nativism. It is a dose of reality instead.
We are being fed a load of crap about the "benefits" of legalizing 11 million people who could care less about our laws, traditions and culture. That kind of senseless thinking is already costing local governments billions of dollars.
Our Congress critters can solve the so-called immigration problem (which is actually a deportation problem) in two simple bits of legislation.
1. Make a 500 yard kill zone along the US-Mexican border. Be in that area and know that you can be killed as an enemy combatant.
2. Give illegal aliens 90 days to dispose of all US property and depart for Mexico or wherever. If they fail to do this, confiscate all such property.
I agree with your attack on US employees recruiting or knowingly hiring illegal aliens. And, the US demand for illegal drugs is a homegrown disaster now fueled by illegal aliens and murderous drug lords.
These are serious problems that need serious solutions. US Drug enforcement did finally put a partial stop to the thousand of tons of imports to Mexico of the ingredients to make pseudophedrine and that partially or temporarily reduced availability of meth. The Mexican government incompetence and corruption is the source of much of our illegal drugs and illegal aliens.
Apologizing for illegal aliens is really condoning the corruption and incompetence of the Mexican government and society. The USA does not have an obligation to solve their self-generated problems even if Reagan's idiotic attack on birth control is a contributing factor.
All your attacks should be directed at our unrepresentative congress where Republicans front for corporations seeking cheap labor and union destruction. Democrats think they will have a near perfect lock on suddenly legalized Hispanics voting just as they have gained in Black communities because of Nixon's racial and religious campaign strategies.
As Rick Weiland's campaign propaganda indicates, Congress dances with the money pulling their strings. It is a very interesting if disgusting puppet show in DC.