Tell Eric Cantor there really is something to see here.
The Hill reports Professor David Brat, House Majority Whip Eric Cantor’s primary challenger in Virginia, remarked “though Cantor has yet to introduce his own plan to provide a path to citizenship for some immigrant children, his public support for the idea had helped cause the recent flood of migrant children to the U.S.-Mexico border”.
Perhaps Eric Cantor was waiting for the text of the new RPT Immigration Plank:
“America is proudly a nation of immigrants. Throughout our history, our nation has attracted productive, industrious and gifted people to America because she is exceptional, and those immigrants and their descendants helped make America the world’s unrivaled economic and military superpower. It remains imperative to create fair and consistent procedures that will again enable freedom-loving, hard-working and law-abiding immigrants to join us, by providing them an efficient, practical method of legal entry, so they can lawfully take positions where their labor is needed, without exploitation or harassment.
Our national interests are poorly served by our broken, embattled, and outdated immigration system, and patchwork attempts to mend its deficiencies will not prepare us to continue to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex global economy that demands the legal movement of people to fill jobs at all skill levels. An efficient, pro- family and market-based system will provide a more workable solution that is compassionate, equitable and respects the rule of law.
But by failing to create a rational and effective system that encourages and facilitates legal immigration to the benefit of the nation, Congress has forced states to deal with the consequences of a broken immigration system, including human, sex and drug trafficking, the direct criminal activities of cartels and gangs. This situation must end so America can, once again, enjoy the fruits of a vibrant and beneficial system of legal immigration.
In addition, with 92 million Americans not working, the labor force at 36-year low and a lethargic economy, the United States of America can ill-afford a guest worker program designed to depress wages.
The following outlines specific actions needed to address these critical issues:
- Secure the borders through increasing in the number of border security officers
- Increasing joint operations and training with local law enforcement, DPS and the Texas State Guard
- Contiguous physical barrier coupled with electronic, infrared and visual monitoring
- Ending In-State Tuition for Illegal Immigrants
- Enhancing state smuggling laws
- Prohibiting sanctuary cities
- Prohibiting the knowing employment of illegal immigrants
- Providing civil liability protections for landowners against illegal immigrants
- Protecting the ability of law enforcement officers to inquire of the status of someone in custody
- Modernizing Current Immigration Laws to address the following: Any form of Amnesty should not be granted, including the granting of legal status to persons in the country illegally. We support replacement of the current employment visa system with an efficient cost effective system. We support ending country of origin quotas. We support ending the annual green card lottery. Once the borders are verifiably secure, and E-Verify system use is fully enforced, creation of a visa classification for non-specialty industries which have demonstrated actual and persistent labor shortages.”
As Breitbart Texas’ Bob Price reported, Von Ormy Mayor Art Martinez de Vara said, “We passed it and now we have to go read it to see what it says.”
For all of the money spent by the pro-amnesty forces at the convention it didn’t work this time around. This and several other issues that we conservatives won, restores my faith in the GOP. In order to truly combat human smuggling, a zero tolerance policy on illegal immigration must be adopted. This week Parker & Perry stood side by side at City Hall so proud that Houston has a zero tolerance policy on human smuggling and their solution is to pass out flyers, post notices on billboard, buses, etc. But several months ago, Park stood on the steps of City Hall and declared the illegal aliens gathered there “citizens”, the police are still not allowed to ask about the legal status of someone they stop and the “Texas DREAM Act” that Perry signed in 2001 is still in effect. As long as these attitudes persist, human smuggling/trafficking will not stop and will only increase, as it does every time there is serious talk about immigration reform is discussed.
Janet, do you really want to take a police officer off the streets for 4 to 8 hours to process someone who might be an illegal alien stopped for a traffic offense? Who is then released because the Feds won’t pick him up, as there’s no place to hold him? How much are you willing to pay in taxes to increase the number of Federal employees on the border? Are you willing to pay another $5000 per year? $10,000 per year? What’s your price? Or, are you like most of the rest of the tea Party and GOP boneheads who think it just magically happens, or, worse yet, you want to cut taxes as well as increasing the number of government employees.
And, yes, there is a huge difference between human smuggling and run if the mill illegal immigration.
Ross:
The median income in the US last year was $51,000. Federal taxes on that income averaged about $6,000. So, your saying that actually policing our border is going to almost double our federal budget? Or (as seems more likely) did you just pull some cool sounding figures out of your a$$?
Here’s a better question. How much do illegal aliens (they are NOT immigrants!) cost the taxpayer each year? Or, are you like most of the rest of of the Occupy Whatever and liberal boneheads who think that it doesn’t actually cost anything for the government to provide things like health care, school lunches, 2nd language learning, etc. Or, worse yet, you don’t care about raising taxes and increasing bureaucracy as long as it’s for social services.
We have no idea how much this ill conceived plan to “seal the borders” will cost. The fact is that illegal aliens pay taxes that fund schools, health care, etc, since those are mostly funded via property taxes here, and we all pay property taxes, either indirectly via rent, or directly as property owners.
I threw out those numbers as a starting point for discussion. Most Republicans, and especially Tea Party types, seem to think that we can increase the scope of government while cutting taxes at the same time. That’s a complete figment of a bunch of minds that are thinking more of what will sound good at the next party convention, rather than what will actually work.
Most Republicans are also blissfully unaware of what the unintended side effects of the proposed policies will be, because they never think those through.
I’ve seen no discussion of where funding for thousands of additional Federal agents will come from, and that’s my estimate of how many it will take to effectively interdict immigrants along 5,000 miles of land borders. I’ve seen no discussion of how to keep citizens who happen to look like illegals from falling into the dragnets, ie my inlaws. And, anyone who thinks that Americans will step up to fill the vacant spots in restaurants, farm fields, and other manual labor intensive job sites is sadly mistaken. It didn’t happen during the worst of the economic downturn, and it won’t happen now.
“I threw out those numbers as a starting point for discussion” seems to equal “I made a hyper-inflated, silly, wild-assed statement to try to intimidate you into conceding my point.” Lets try this on for size instead: Janet would you be willing to pay an extra $25 dollars a year in taxes to make sure that the continued inflow of illegal aliens is ended? See? My numbers are at least as credible as yours.
“Increasing the scope of Government” – how about we just let the people we have do their jobs instead of hamstringing them all the time and then just setting the illegals that they do round up free. We continue to talk about the “broken immigration system” and while I agree that it’s woefully lacking and needs to be changed in a lot of areas, much of the reason that it’s broken is that we simply refuse to let it work. At any rate, how about this – in order not to increase the size of government, let’s agree to reduce the staffing of every non law-enforcement civilian federal agency by 30{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}. That should more than cover whatever negligible increases are needed in the Border patrol.
“Dragnets”. I don’t know what you’ve been reading, but I don’t see any mention of such silliness in the RPT platform plank. You certainly didn’t see it in any of the writings in this thread. Yet one more in your sizable arsenal of strawman arguments. I certainly don’t advocate any kind of “dragnet” (whatever that might actually be), nor does anybody I know.
The remark about “lazy Americans who won’t work” is another of your silly arguments. Of course then won’t do manual labor as long as the Government is paying them to sit at home on their asses and watch Happy Days reruns.
“illegal aliens pay taxes that fund schools, health care, etc, since those are mostly funded via property taxes” Well, except for the significant contribution that the Federal Government makes, which most illegals don’t contribute to since they don’t pay federal taxes. At any rate, I suspect that their contribution (whatever it might be) is far exceeded by the additional expenses attributable to them.
Ross, first of all this is not a hispanic issue, it’s an illegal immigration issue. There are illegal aliens in this country from at least 100 other countries, including countries that sponsor terrorism. Big business republicans and your beloved democrat party are the factions that saturated the media with the lie that it’s a hispanic issue. I guess you’re in favor of having the borders wide open and letting God knows who come into this country unchecked. America, like every other country in the world has a right to protect its borders and dictate who comes into this country. You might want to read Mexico’s immigration laws (much more draconian than ours). Regarding spending excessive amounts of money on border protection, you might want to check the numbers on what illegal aliens cost the America taxpayer: Harris County Hospital District a couple of years ago said it cost over $500,000 a year in illegal alien indigent care; $14 billion in Earned Income Tax Credit paid to illegal aliens, in some cases to illegals who’s kids don’t even live in America (as reported by the Houston Chronicle a few months ago); 2010 – 60 hospitals in Los Angeles; in 2012 26{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the prison population were illegal aliens. These are only a few fiscal instances. You might want to check out the Remembrance Project for the numbers of murders committed by illegal aliens – those figures will be in addition of the 3,000 people killed on 9/11 by 18 illegal aliens (1 of the terrorists was here legally). You say illegal aliens pay property taxes, but when they are packed 8 to a one bedroom apartment, you’re going to tell me they pay their fair share? If you don’t think this doesn’t happens, check out the apartments in Spring Branch, the Gulfton Ghetto area and Southeast Houston. How about the school districts that have to hire bi-lingual teachers because these kids can’t or won’t speak English and don’t forget the bond elections every year or two for more schools that increase our property taxes, you don’t think that has to do with illegal aliens? We have perfectly good immigration laws on the books for employers who can’t find Americans to do specific jobs, but most of these employers would rather put Americans out of work than comply. It’s not that Americans won’t do the work, they’re not going to do it for slave wages. We are now expecting 130,000 illegal aliens kids in this country by year end and you think this is good for America. There’s not enough space Big Jolly to address all of the negatives about illegal immigration. Get educated Ross
This platform reads much like the commission study advocated by the late, great Barbara Jordan
I meant to state “platform plank”
And after we “solve” the illegal immigration problem by hiring tens of thousands of new federal agents, attorneys and immigration judges, I am sure that Congress and the President will then move to eliminate all of these positions…. And I am sure that if we have solved the problem of illegal immigration, that a Democratic President would never, ever do anything like use these law enforcement agents to enforce, say, an Assault Weapons Ban…
Enforcing the letter of our immigration laws is the textbook definition of Big Government… Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is deluded or dishonest…
Golasso:
You and Ross seem to share a penchant for pulling numbers out of some lower bodily orifice. I really don’t understand your position. Can you please explain to you why you want our country to continue to accept anybody who wants to walk, run, float or fly across the border, no questions asked? No other nation on earth is willing to do such a thing. I don’t want to hire thousands (or even hundreds) of new federal employees – I simply want to allow those we already have to do their job. Electing to not enforce and secure our border is textbook idiocy/insanity. Anybody who tells you otherwise is as deluded as you apparently are. . . . .
And, just as an observation, I find this new tactic of trying to equate a classic liberal position, i.e. “immigration reform” (otherwise know as “open it up and let ’em in!”) with a desire for smaller government, amazing.
How disingenuous! Next, you can try to tell us that increasing welfare and other so called entitlement programs will result in lower crime, and thus smaller government. You might also try claiming that the sun rises in the west, and the Astros will win the World Series this year. If you’re going to advocate a position don’t start by making an argument that causes other people to snicker.
Golasso, the idea that enforcing the letter of our immigration laws is the textbook definition of big government is libertarian drivel or else you employ illegal aliens. By the end of 2014, we’ll have 130,000 minor illegal aliens, in addition to the 400-500 adult illegal aliens that are being caught at the border and this is OK with you and you’re OK with the dismantling America?
filmmaker, your photo serves as an appropriate platform for your comment about pulling something large(numbers) out of a lower bodily orifice, Wow! That must be a real strong crane! Just one question; what should be done with the busloads(chortle, chortle) of illegal alien children (yeah, they’re not Swedish, Janet) of kids from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala? I really am interested in your opinion.
Loren, how about on a bus/jet back to El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala, unless of course you would like to take some of them in. All of this on top of the 400-500 per day that Border Patrol is stopping at border. The local media in these countries has reported that the southern border is open, so they’re flooding across our border. So far, the government’s solution is to warehouse some of them and turn some of them over to “sponsors” in the US, which in some cases probably means their illegal alien relatives. What’s your solution?
Loren – congratulations on the ad hominem assault, yet one more sign that you know you have a pathetic argument.
As to what to do with the “busloads” of children, I would imagine that their parents would probably want to keep them. If not, there is a perennial shortage of children available for adoption in the US.
Also, as I continue to point out, the whole question is irrelevant until we take the first step of closing the border. My position is that we take that first (and most important) step and then we can begin assessing how to deal with subsequent issues.
Janet, Firstly, we should never have gotten to this point. Many years ago, just like today, employers are not punished for hiring illegals. Who runs the companies that hire the illegals? The people that run the companies that hire the illegals are the employer Johns that pay the prostitute politicians for their services. Those services have included not securing the borders because there’s money in it for those selfsame salacious employer Johns. That’s right. Secondly, many of the kids coming up from Central America have parents or relatives here in the USA. Not all, but many. Thirdly, the people who send these kids up here are trying to give them a shot at a life free from the influence of narcogangs. And where did the narcogangs get their money? That’s right. Poor little kids.
filmmaker, you are the one that brought up orifices so it’s not an attack on your character so much as it is your argument. To your point. I agree with you, the first step is to close the border. This has been agreed on for decades. Enough assessing already(chortle).
As one who was a Reagan delegate in 1976 and supporter thereafter, all I can say is AMEN to Jason Villalba’s recent open letter! We need more like Jason Villalba to speak out and assume leadership in the party. With some 17,000+ delegate and alternate positions for the 2012 GOP state convention, less than 6,000 showed up. This says more about who participated and who didn’t (i.e, business-oriented conservatives) than the 60/40 vote on the immigration plank. Alas, if responsible conservatives don’t bother to attend party conventions, the results are apparent.