Here's a picture of the bill vs. the standard Gideon bible:




Reid Postpones Immigration Cloture Vote Until Monday
By Fawn Johnson, CongressDaily
© National Journal Group Inc.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Senators negotiating a broad immigration bill caught a break Tuesday evening when Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., agreed to postpone a cloture vote scheduled for today until Monday.

"The bipartisan negotiations are showing progress and this gives them a chance to continue," said a Democratic aide.

The staffs of all the major players in the immigration debate have been assigned different portions of the measure to draft, but the negotiators themselves have not seen all of it. "We've got language, but in parts," said Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla.

"We have a lot of language which has already been prepared, and there are some contentious issues where there's going to have to be some more language," said Judiciary Committee ranking member Arlen Specter, R-Pa. "I'm optimistic we'll be able to proceed with a bill ... I think we're heading in the right direction."

The bill being discussed includes a new point system for green card applicants, a path to citizenship for current undocumented workers and a guestworker program that would require the vast majority of future foreign workers to leave the country when their visas expire.

On the guestworker program, Martinez said negotiators are still determining how many of the new guestworkers -- allotted at 400,000 annually -- would be permitted to apply for green cards, estimating that the final number could be "10 to 20 percent." Lawmakers also have not yet determined whether the new guestworker visa would be renewable.

Negotiators have agreed to a separate legalization program for agriculture workers similar to the "AgJobs" bill and to including the "DREAM" Act for illegal students in the final bill. Immigrants currently holding "temporary protected status" visas for refugees also would be converted to a "Z visa" that would be created for the illegal population.

Martinez acknowledged that Democrats might have difficulty agreeing to send guestworkers home when their visas expire. "I think there's grudging acquiescence that that's probably the way it's going to go," he said. "When you come as a guestworker, you come as a guestworker. It's not a vehicle for immigration. You come here to work."

Still outstanding in negotiations is the number of overall green cards that would be allowed annually, a decision that represents the linchpin of any new immigration policy. Immigrant advocates argue that if the number is too small, green card processing could be backed up for decades. Conservatives argue that if the number is too large, the population of low-skilled workers will grow exponentially.

Democrats, meanwhile, are focused on ensuring that the point system for determining the priority of green card applicants gives considerable credit to applicants who have family in the United States.

"I would consider the point system if, in fact, people get extra points for family reunification," Reid said Tuesday.


*************



Here's great blog comment on this whole thig:

"The moral of the story is that we no longer live in a country governed by its people. What the elites want, they will get. Open borders, "free trade," never ending war and interventionism, the melding of America into globalist political institutions and a "global economy" and the destruction of our laws, culture, and people.

That is what you will get, ladies and gentleman, by continuing to vote for men like McCain, Graham and George W. Bush. "

I would agree with the aforementioned blog, but I don't want to be called a "racist" one more time.
Besides, I've always wanted to learn Spanglish anyways.

It appears as though a whole mess of liberals and a whole mess of conservatives hate this bill.

If that's not a sign of great legislation, I don't know what is.

Temporary worker program under threat
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/23/congress.immigration.ap/index.html
Story Highlights• Democrats seek to slash the number of foreign worker temporary visas
• Senate prepares for debate on bipartisan immigration bill
• Final Senate vote on measure postponed until June

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats are seeking to slash the number of foreign workers who could come to the U.S. on temporary visas as the Senate prepares for another day of freewheeling debate over a bipartisan immigration measure.
A Republican proposal to crack down on illegal border crossers with mandatory prison sentences also was to be discussed Wednesday, as leaders in both parties sought to alter elements of the broad agreement that are drawing criticism from their core supporters.

The measure would toughen border security, give quick legal status to the estimated 12 million immigrants in the country unlawfully and create a new workplace verification system to bar undocumented workers from getting jobs.

It would create a point system for future immigration applicants that would place less emphasis on family connections and more on education and skills in demand by U.S. businesses.

Republicans, responding to conservative criticism that the measure is too lenient, were considering efforts to bolster its security provisions and make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get on a path to citizenship.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who helped craft the immigration deal, was expected to offer the border security amendment.

Democrats, hearing criticism from labor unions and immigrant groups on the guest worker program, were focusing on shrinking or otherwise altering it.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, was seeking to cap the number of annual visas available for temporary workers at 200,000. A similar amendment passed the Senate last year by an overwhelming margin.

As currently crafted, the temporary worker plan would allow up to 600,000 workers -- largely unskilled, nonagricultural laborers in areas such as construction, landscaping and meatpacking -- to stay for up to three two-year stints, provided they left the United States for a year between each stay. A Democratic attempt to strip the program altogether failed Tuesday in the first major test of the fragile immigration compromise.

Democrats also are planning attempts to ensure that more visas would be available for family members of permanent residents and U.S. citizens.

The coalition of conservatives, liberals and centrists who worked out the White House-backed deal are struggling to keep it intact.

Senate leaders in both parties, however, say it's important to have a wide-ranging debate on the measure. They have postponed a final vote until June.

"There's good and bad in this," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said of the bill. "That's what amending the legislation is all about -- trying to improve it."
_______________________________________________

We have been invaded. We've surrendered, and now we're giving back. This country's laws are being reformed due to an external force.

I'm really surprised the republicans are being so easy on this bill. Big fuckin deal about improving businesses, we can do that without these illegals. It seems like both sides know exactly where this country stands and what needs to happen.

12 million criminal aliens. That's 1 out of 25 people in this country.

What I think should ideally happen? FBI emphasis on finding and locating these illegals, and literally throwing them back where they came from or some other harsh saction. We need to make this country attractive to immigrate here legally and less attractive to invade us illegally (as said by Romney). I know it sounds impossible to do, but I think by keeping the 12 million illegals here AND the fucking retarded guest worker program will just be a huge incentive for people to cross the border without hesistation before this bill is passed. It almost dissapoints me that our leaders think this is impossible. This country is so pussified and afraid of offended anyone and everyone. When will I see the day when we'll start putting our foot down?

House minority leader makes a funny.

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/ ... t_211.html

It looks like the bill is public now.


The 'hate-spewing right wing think tank', The Heritage Foundation, has done a brief analysis of the bill:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Immigration/wm1468.cfm


It's too long to post, but here are some highlights:

I have no problem with the tuition provision, for reasons I've outlined elsewhere.

The other two provisions have obvious problems that should be addressed.

Investment purposes. Yeah that makes sense, but I'm pretty sure legal aliens (and citizens above all else) should recieve these benefits first.

For real...

what

the

fuck

on the first two.

Since you seem to have taken my previous criticisms to heart, I won't rehash those, but simply address the langauge in the article itself.


Why should an out-of-state student expect to get cheap tuition? That person is a resident in SOME state and can get in-state tuition there. If they really think that the state school in another state is that much better, they should be willing to pay for it.

An illegal immigrant (or more accurately, the child of an illegal immigrant who has probably been in this country since before he can remember), is a resident in a given state. Just like everyone else in that state, the person should receive the benefits of in-state tuition. Denying it is nothing more than a punitive measure for the sins of the father.

It all comes back to the two basic questions I raised previously: Why do we have in-state tuition in the first place? And since illegal immigrants pay most of the same taxes (if not all) that go towards funding public universities, then why should they not see the same benefits? The "thousands of dollars lost" is a bullshit argument. If the state REALLY wants to recover all that money, they'll dump in-state tuition entirely for everyone. I mean, it's just a commie give-away program anyway, right?

The problem I see with the tuition provision is the last part from the summary, which accurately states that legal immigrants with different visas would be exempt. Now, I'm all for giving those who would be granted a "Z Visa" tuition discounts, but if others that followed the legal route are going to be left out, then they should either include all legal immigrants (with the F, J, or M visa) or forget the whole thing. This appears to be a loophole that legal immigrants will unfortunately fall into, but iti can be easily fixed with an amendment .

A lot of bad legislation can be fixed with an amendment, but it's unlikely to happen. The gang and interim visa portions could be easily fixed as well.

Can you show me information that proves this? I find it hard to believe that 100% of these criminal aliens voluntarily pay their taxes when they know damn well the gov't has no record of them.

Well, let's look at it logically.

Clearly it's not 100% of them paying 100% of the taxes that a legal resident or citizen pays.

But they do pay all of the same sales taxes that we all pay whenever we buy goods or sevices. I think it's pretty clear that the same percentage of illegals, or pretty damned close, pay those taxes as do citizens. If they own real property, then they pay real estate taxes, just like citizens. If they rent, then the landlord pays real estate taxes with those funds, just like the landlords of citizens do.

The only question is income taxes and other payroll taxes. Many, but certainly not anywhere close to all, illegal immigrants pay income taxes under a Taxpayer ID Number, similar to a SS#. Some people have illegally obtained fake SS#'s, and they are paying SS taxes and other payroll taxes out of their paychecks just like you or I, but unlike us, they cannot get a tax refund in April if that is what they are due. So they are likely overpaying.

Just by making rough guesses based on reasonable estimates, as a whole, illegal immigrants are probably paying well more than half, but well less than all of the taxes that they should be obliged to pay. Then again, there are a great many citizens who get paid under the table and otherwise evade taxes, so if you're comparing them to your average legal resident or citizen (which is really the only fair measure), then the definciency is mitigated even further. Not to mention, there are some real bastards out there who have been caught singlehandedly evading more taxes in a couple years than several hundred illegal immigrnats will make in their lifetimes. Basically, I don't think this is nearly as big of a problem as many people try to make it.

Just becasue their 'employers' are withholding taxes, doesn't mean the government sees a dollar of it.



You guys should read the rest of the article from heritage, there are some other pretty shitty things in the bill.

REPUBLICANS SHOULD BACK IMMIGRATION COMPROMISE

By DICK MORRIS

Published on TheHill.com on May 23, 2007.

The Republican Party would be self-destructive (not for the first time, either) if they did not let the immigration compromise negotiated by Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) pass and become law. The hopes of the entire Latino community are pinned to immigration reform and, if the GOP is seen as blocking it, the consequences for the indefinite future will be horrific. The Republican Party will lose Hispanics as surely as they lost blacks when Barry Goldwater ran in 1964 against the civil rights bill (even though a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats backed the bill in each house).

If the Hispanics are not massively turned off by a Republican rejection of immigration reform, they will drift into an increasingly pro-Republican orientation just as Irish and Italian Catholics did before them. Already Protestant evangelicalism has converted a third of the American Latino population, a clear precursor of GOP political support.

Hispanics now account for 13 percent of the U.S. population (blacks are 12 percent) and will constitute 20 percent of our population by 2020 regardless of whether immigration reform passes or not. Key red states like Texas and Florida hang in the balance, depending on the voting intention of their burgeoning Latino populations.

The reform compromise proposed in the Senate postpones, in my opinion wrongly, granting citizenship and voting rights to immigrants now in the U.S. for at least a decade. While they get legal status immediately on payment of a $5,000 fine, they must return to their country of origin and wait their turn in line for a valid green card to return legally. Only then can they become citizens. Given the seven- to eight-year wait for green cards, they would not be a potent political force until well into the next decade.

In the meantime, the GOP base should note that the bill commits the Democrats to the border fence and a major increase in border guards. It also will require tamper-proof identification cards, a key element in blocking further illegal immigration.

But the political stakes are largely in the symbolism of the bill. Whichever party is seen as supporting reform will gain a huge vote share among Hispanics, and the opponents will lose accordingly.

Had the Republicans gotten it together to pass such a bill while they ran Congress, they would have gotten unambiguous credit for the achievement. This history would have made it possible to switch Latinos into Republican voters. Surely, two-thirds of Latinos would not have voted Democrat as they did, in their disappointment with the lack of a bill, in 2006.

In fact, the Republican Party could well have held onto the Senate with a few Latino switches in key states like Georgia and Missouri.

Now the GOP will have to share credit with the Democrats, but the signature on the bill will still read “George W. Bush,” a fact that Latinos are not going to forget.

But if the Republicans kill the bill, driven by their own irreconcilable base, they will leave it to the next president — very probably a Democrat — and two Democratic houses of Congress to pass the liberating legislation. The GOP will have delivered the largest minority group in America right into the hands of its adversaries.

The compromise requires English skills, payment of a fine, and a good work history for an illegal immigrant to get citizenship. It also requires that he “touch back” in Mexico and wait his turn. The bill also puts border enforcement before the granting of rights.

Democrats want Hispanics to vote but don’t want them to work and compete with their labor union allies for jobs.

Republicans want them to work (since the employers are mostly Republican) but don’t want them to vote.

This bill, unfortunately, allows current illegal immigrants to work immediately but defers giving them the franchise for almost a decade. It’s a bill a Republican should love.
________________________________________________________________________

PLEASE FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY WHO MAY BE INTERESTED IN DICKMORRISREPORTS!

THANK YOU!

***Copyright Dick Morris and Eileen McGann 2007. Reprints with permission only***

Is this the fabulous "catch and release program" recommended by our glorious leader? I much prefer it to eating the entire haul.

I hate this...

This bill is an absolute pile of garbage on almost every level.

This bill really makes America look bad. Plain and simple. It makes us look bad! Leftists and global critics never stop at accusing us of exploiting labor overseas. So what do we do? We not only turn labor abuse into legislation, we, politicians included, justify it as NECESSARY to our economy. How sad. We have 20 million able bodied adults in America that are living on welfare at some level that WON'T WORk for nefarious pompous reasons. And that somehow justifies us importing completely uneducated people to do our dirty work at otherwise repressed wages.

Why?

Cuz you don't wanna pay a little more at the store for a fucking quart of strawberries.

How utterly shameful. Make no mistake about it. This is legislated expoitation. I got a question. What wages are we going to pay these people? Bush says "we want to bring them out of the underworld." What the fuck? That's doing nothing but proving that we tolerate this "underworld" in the first place to fulfill our own gluttonous wants and needs. It's okay to exploit these people, because we need this stuff and we don't wanna pay a little more. Furthermore, this isn't going to take these people out of the underworld. They've created their own underworld out of their own volition. They don't want to assimilate. These people rarely make an effort to further their education, or obtain citizenship. They have more love for their former countries than America. And what's worse, is that generally speaking, their children have a much greater tendency of ending up in the same position as their parents than other racial groups. IE: ninth grade education if they're lucky. It's not everyone, but it's a disturbing trend.

The worst part is that you have politicians on both side of the coin, including our president. The leader of the free world. Proclaiming that America can't run itself. And that we need to IMPORT SECOND HAND LABOR in order to function and stay afloat.

America needs to be careful. For years Europe has opened the faucet to people coming into their nations, and now a whole lot of nations are finding themselves undesirable situations. Whether it be France, the Netherlands, Germany, or Scandanavia, these nations have allowed immigrants to come, to not assimilate in the name of "being nice." This has consequated in isolated and detached sub-cultures. These people not only resent their nations, but they refuse to participate in them. Xenophobia abounds. Violence has reared its ugly head on multiple occassions in France. Make no mistake about it, this is a very devisive issue, and we're going to end up with problems.

To what end have we come?

What about high skilled labor? Our nation is in such a state that we cannot provide an adequate number of high skilled employees to fill a number of high tech fields. Ranging from electrical engineering to biotechnology. Yet, that goup of immigrants (the highly educated kind) is restricted to 180,000 people a year. It costs $5000 for employers to bring these people over in application fees. It's highly regulated. These people are some of the smartest people on earth, and they want to come here, and they'll ASSIMILATE. These applications year after year are filled in just one stinking day. We restrict these highly educated people from coming here, restrict foreign students that WE EDUCATE from STAYING here (contributing to American brain drain), and then say..."Oh yeah, millions of you without the equivelance of high school diploma's that can't speak any English, welcome to America!!!! Bring all your relatives here too! Free taco's for everybody."

It's ridiculous. You come here illegally. And you're just handed everything on a silver platter if you manage to dodge the system long enough. A system that quite frankly doesn't give a rats ass because the people within the government WANT these people here.

I have a friend that has been trying for a year and freakin' half to get his Djiboutian fiancee over here, and it's been nothing but run around. Months of it. Proof of the relationship, send pictures, send emails, prove you love her, send MORE pictures, how much did you spend on the ring? One interview, then another interview. Can you prove you have the means to return to Djibouti if your marriage fails? Can you send us more pictures? Another interview, then another interview. Interview with this person at the embassy, fill out these forms online they say. Interview at the consulate, fill these forms out now. Your final interview is next month, but you haven't had a health exam in a year now so you need another one. Prove that you've never been married before... This is how a United States Marine and his educated fiancee are treated.

All this shit is just waved for illegals. Why? Simply because they're here.

And why can't you do anything about the people that circumvented our laws? Simply because they are here. And somehow, I don't know how, it would be inhumane to uphold our system of laws which exist for very good reasons. It's not nice. It's even mean.

Ya know, it's really starting to hit home now because I can't get a fucking TOURIST VISA for Miss LittleWing to show her America to make sound decisions about my future, and her future. But you come here illegally, and you're seemingly being shown the red carpet. They're not going to have to go through ANY of it.

It's ridiculous. They restrict and make life miserable for the people trying to do things genuinely, who want to follow the rules, who are law abiding and want to do things right. But welcome and do nothing to disuade those who are uneducated, that we know nothing about, who have no regard for our laws from continuing to flood our nation and put a burden on our economy.

Make no mistake about it too. This isn't going to stop the flood of illegal immigration. If anything, it will continue to increase because it's just another case of us giving amnesty to them. Nor will this make illegal immigrants go away. Illegal immigrants in this country KNOW that politicians will do nothing to stop them from staying here. They know they'll never get serious about it. Nothing's gonna change.

Gosh. I'm so not nice today.

zzzzzzzzz