The Litter Box

~ Thursday, April 13, 2006

Harry Reid: AGAINST Illegal Immigration Before He Was FOR it!
by John W Lillpop
Apr 7, 2006


Thirteen years ago, Harry Reid had it EXACTLY right on illegal immigration. (See the press release his office issued August 5, 1993 below).

Why is he SO WRONG now? Could it be that Democrats realize they can no longer win elections by appealing to real Americans and need illegal aliens?

Reid seems to have become a doctor. At least he has taken the "Hypocrites Oath!"

FLASHBACK: Dem Senate Leader Harry Reid: 'Our Federal Wallet Stretched To Limit By Illegal Aliens Getting Welfare'

August 5, 1993

The Office of Sen. Harry Reid issued the following:

In response to increased terrorism and abuse of social programs by aliens, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today introduced the first and only comprehensive immigration reform bill in Congress.

Currently, an alien living illegally in the United States often pays no taxes but receives unemployment, welfare, free medical care and other federal benefits. Recent terrorist acts, including the World Trade Center bombing, have underscored the need to keep violent criminals out of the country.

Reid's bill, the Immigration Stabilization Act of 1993, overhauls the nation's immigration laws and calls for a massive scale-down of immigrants allowed into the country from approximately 800,000 to 300,000.

The bill also changes asylum laws to prevent phony asylum seekers. Reid said the U.S. open door policy is being abused at the expense of honest, working citizens. "We are a country founded upon fairness and justice," Reid said. "An individual in real threat of torture or long-term incarceration because of his or her political beliefs can still seek asylum. But this bill closes the door to those who want to abuse America's inherent generosity and legal system."

Reid's bill also cracks down on illegal immigration. The 1990 census reported 3.3 million illegal aliens in America. Recent estimates indicate about 2.5 million immigrants illegally entered the United States last year.

"Our borders have overflowed with illegal immigrants placing tremendous burdens on our criminal justice system, schools and social programs," Reid said. "The Immigration and Naturalization Service needs the ability to step up enforcement.

"Our federal wallet is stretched to the limit by illegal aliens getting welfare, food stamps, medical care and other benefits often without paying any taxes.

"Safeguards like welfare and free medical care are in place to boost Americans in need of short-term assistance. These programs were not meant to entice freeloaders and scam artists from around the world.

"Even worse, Americans have seen heinous crimes committed by individuals who are here illegally," Reid said.

Specific provisions of Reid's Immigration Stabilization Act include the following:

-- Reduces annual legal immigration levels from approximately 800,000 admissions per year to about 300,000. Relatives other than spouse or minor children will be admitted only if already on immigration waiting lists and their admission does not raise annual immigration levels above 300,000.

-- Reforms asylum rules to prevent aliens from entering the United States illegally under phony "asylum" claims.

-- Expands list of felonies considered "aggravated" felonies requiring exclusion and deportation of criminal aliens. Allows courts to order deportation at time of sentencing.

-- Increases penalties for failing to depart or re-entering the United States after a final order of deportation order. Increases maximum penalties for visa fraud from five years to 10 years.

-- Curtails alien smuggling by authorizing interdiction and repatriation of aliens seeking to enter the United States unlawfully by sea. Increases penalties for alien smuggling.

-- Adds "alien smuggling" to the list of crimes subject to sanctions under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Expands the categories of property that are forfeited when used to facilitate the smuggling or harboring of illegal aliens.

-- Clarifies that a person born in the United States to an alien mother who is not a lawful resident is not a U.S. citizen. This will eliminate incentive for pregnant alien women to enter the United States illegally, often at risk to mother and child, for the purpose of acquiring citizenship for the child and accompanying federal financial benefits.

-- Mandates that aliens who cannot demonstrably support themselves without public or private assistance are excludable. This will prevent admission of aliens likely to be dependent on public financial support. This requirement extends to the sponsor of any family sponsored immigrant.

-- Increases border security and patrol officers to 9,900 full-time positions.

Dobbs: President, Congress defying people's will
By Lou Dobbs
CNN

Friday, March 31, 2006; Posted: 7:27 p.m. EST (00:27 GMT)

President Fox, left, takes President Bush, center, and Prime Minister Harper on a tour of a Mayan pyramid.

CANCUN, Mexico (CNN) -- We're reporting live this week from Cancun, where the leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada are meeting in a trilateral summit. And despite the contentious debate raging in the U.S. Senate over illegal immigration and the guest-worker program, this summit has a remarkably modest agenda.

U.S. President George Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will only try to advance the discussion among the three countries on economic integration, free trade, border and port security, and, yes, illegal immigration.

President Bush began his summit itinerary today by spending some time looking at the consequences of failed public policies. (Read full story)Although he only spent a short time at the Mayan ruins at Chichen-Itza (remember his decision not to see the Taj Mahal while in India for talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh?), I hope it was enough to make an impression.

The United States is challenged as never before in the global war on radical Islamist terror. And yet, our borders and ports remain insecure four and a half years after the 9/11 attacks. Our lack of border and port security is nothing less than a failure of the U.S. government and its policies. While we spend hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the war in Iraq, we spend next to nothing to protect our own borders.

President Bush, President Fox and Prime Minister Harper will discuss border security in terms of the perimeter of our three nations -- regional security perimeter, if you will. Such a concept, in my opinion, has no merit whatsoever while the United States cannot defend its own borders.

And economic integration among the three countries? How integrated can we be? Trade with Canada accounts for 52 percent of Canada's GDP and we have a $50 billion trade deficit with Mexico. Remittances from Mexican citizens living in the United States are the second -largest source of revenue for the nation of Mexico.

The three countries, however, could not be more different economically. Nearly 13 percent of Americans and 16 percent of Canadians live below the poverty line, but in Mexico that figure is conservatively 40 percent. The unemployment rate in the United States is just below 5 percent and about 6.5 percent in Canada. While the official unemployment rate in Mexico is 3.5 percent, the under-employment rate is as high as 25 percent.

I find it incredibly difficult to imagine how three economies with such disparities in economic growth, income and labor forces could possibly integrate any time soon. But far more troubling is there has been no popular expression of the people's will in any one of the three countries that any such integration occur.

For that matter, in the United States, this president and Congress seem hell bent on defying the popular will. The American people, in poll after poll and survey after survey, are revealed to be opposed to the direction of the war in Iraq, illegal immigration, amnesty, a guest-worker program, the outsourcing of jobs and certainly the outsourcing of our security. It has become increasingly clear over the last several years that the least represented constituency in either Congress or the White House is the middle class, working men and women who are the foundation of our country.

And while these three leaders are meeting in Cancun, the Senate is debating whether there should be a guest-worker program and whether there should be amnesty for those already here. Guest worker programs never work anywhere in the world. I firmly believe that we cannot significantly reform our immigration policies unless we can control immigration. And the control of immigration is impossible if our borders remain porous and vulnerable.

One of the things that frustrates many of us who care about our country and the truth is the rampant barrage of misinformation, disseminated by such vociferous special interests, whether they are ethnocentric social activists, labor unions, the Catholic Church or Corporate America. The truth is advocates of amnesty, guest-worker programs and open borders are unconcerned about the 280 million American citizens, the men and women of this country who work for a living and their families.

I hope these leaders will be far more direct and honest in their private meetings this week. And I sincerely hope in the months ahead they'll share that directness and honesty with the people they represent.

Hayworth to Bush: Tell President Fox to butt out

BY JONATHAN CLARK
Wednesday, March 29, 2006 11:53 PM MST



Herald/Review

BISBEE — As Congress has taken up the issue of immigration reform, the Mexican government of President Vicente Fox has been anything but a disinterested bystander.

When the House of Representatives approved a bill in December that would have built 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border and made it a felony to reside illegally in the U.S., Fox denounced the measure as shameful. His foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, went further and called it stupid and underhanded.

After thousands of marchers took to the streets of U.S. cities last week to protest the pending immigration legislation, Fox’s spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said the demonstrations showed the imminent need for an immigration accord that meets the interests of both the United States and Mexico.

And when the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill Monday that offered both a guest-worker program and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented residents, Aguilar said the bill was “headed in the right direction, but from Mexico’s point of view it doesn’t resolve the entire problem.”

Such statements have so angered U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth, a Republican from Arizona’s Fifth Congressional District, he wrote a letter to President Bush asking him to tell Fox and Derbez to butt out of U.S. internal affairs when they meet this week in Cancun.


“I respectfully request that you publicly make it clear to both men that their clumsy, over-the-top rhetoric about internal U.S. political matters pertaining to our border security is unwarranted and unacceptable,” he wrote.

According to George Grayson, a professor of government and Mexico expert at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., Hayworth has a point — at least in asking Mexico to practice what it preaches.

“The Mexicans have elevated hypocrisy from an art form to an exact science,” he said.

Mexico has long been sensitive to foreign intervention in its domestic matters. In fact, Mexican law on the matter is so strict that foreign nationals can be detained and deported for taking part in a political rally.

This week, after Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez demanded that his image be removed from ad spots — placed by Fox’s conservative National Action Party — that tried to tie him to leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the federal election agency opened an investigation into whether Chavez had broken Mexico’s law against foreign interference in elections.

And when U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza last year criticized Mexico’s ability to control drug-related violence in the country’s northern border region, Fox lashed out, saying, “Mexico’s government cannot permit any foreign government to judge or express itself regarding policy actions undertaken to deal with its problems.”

Grayson said such statements make Fox’s comments on U.S. immigration law untenable.

Hayworth would like Bush to convey a similar message directly to Fox and Derbez.

“Please let them know that they should henceforth refrain from making these kinds of reckless remarks,” he wrote, “and that they should stop meddling in our internal political affairs.”

Calling all Minutemen Supporters! SOS!
Henrietta Bowman

Were you deeply insulted when President Bush called the patriotic men and women of the Minutemen "vigilantes"? I certainly was! And just who was it that called following 9-11 for patriotic Americans to help safe-guard American security by being on the look-out for suspicious characters? Why, Bush of course. "Wait a minute!" sezs he, "I meant those nasty furrin' terrists that fly big planes into tall buildings -- but ya can't just say, 'he's an Ayrab, and it wuz Ayrabs that flew the planes.' No sir-ee Bob! That would be profiling and that's descrimination. The ACLU done told me so and I believe 'em. Everybody knows the Muslim religion is a peaceful one. Naw, ya gotta throw in a few grannies in wheelchairs and nursing mothers to be fair about this thing -- and we gotta be fair, dontcher know? It's the demercratic way and we Amuricans is real strong on dermocercy!"
Evidently Bush didn't read the reports the FBI sent out to law enforcement agencies across the nation that the MS-13 gangs are being linked to smuggling middle eastern men from nations known to be involved with terrorism across the Mexican Border, and into the USA. He doesn't like to read, remember? You can bet his good amigo, Vicente, didn't bring the subject up while they were traipsing around Mexican pyramids and they were talking about open borders between Canada, the USA and Mexico; amnesty for what Bear-Sterns estimates to be as many as 20 million illegal aliens and to ease the restrictions on migration. That is not a typo -- migration, not immigration. The Mongol hordes migrated; our European ancestors immigrated. Migration is an unrestricted nomadic flow to and fro. The Mongols moved into an area, stripped it bare of resources; then moved on to the next area after the previously occupied area would no longer support its numbers. Locust hordes migrate, too. They consume everything edible, right down to the bare earth, before taking wing to the next area waiting to be devasted by their numbers. What would you call 20 million invading illegal aliens if not a horde? They, too, consume resources they are not entitled to.

Bush's attitude about the Minutemen and his insane guest worker program have infected many Americans. One such person is talk radio host Barb Stanton, from Talk Radio 960 AM in Victorville, California. She is slanderously attacking the High Desert Minutemen, giving them no on the air rebuttal to her lies. What follows is the text of an e-mail sent to me by a very good and patriotic friend, who happens to be a very strong Minuteman supporter. (Thanks, Bill!)

For those of you who support the Minutemen's efforts to secure our borders -- doing the job our government won't do -- please help the High Desert Minutemen! It will take little more than a bit of your time. People living near Victorville should take a sign and protest in front of the radio station, if possible. Any further information needed is included below.

I am personally requesting Sierra Times readers and Sagebrush Saloon members to copy this article (complete with the link) and send it to all of their friends in an e-mail, with the request to forward it to all of their friends. Let's turn up the heat on Barb Stanton. This article will also be placed in the "Run for the Border!" forum in the Saloon for those wishing to discuss this issue. Thank you! Yours in Liberty...

--Henrietta Bowman,
Sierra Times Editor and Moderator of the Sagebrush Saloon


Request for Help from Luca Zanna and the High Desert Minutemen!

Do something now about illegals

Well, now isn't this a sight to behold? Many of America's streets lately resemble streets in France, with thousands of socialists traipsing around, breaking laws, and demanding more. I'm referring to the masses of illegal immigrants who have the unmitigated gall to showcase their rage to law-abiding, taxpaying, legal citizens. But, this is an outcome of socialism, especially where wimpy pacifists in authority fail to properly execute law and order.

Yeah, this country is in a mess now trying to deal with the influx of 11 million illegal immigrants, who are brazenly daring the government to intervene in their plight. Government officials had better get off their political duffs and nip these trespasser insurgencies in the bud before anarchy ensues in our cities. Their rallies and marches are not spontaneous. They're planned by political hacks using mass force to intimidate lawmakers. Democrats and Republicans alike are demagogues on this issue, hoping to get Latino votes.

So, what should be done? First, stop the unauthorized street marches. I was amazed to see Los Angeles officials wringing their hands last week over a tribe of high school hooligans wandering around on their expressways shutting down traffic. These delinquents were protesting our government. Where were the fire trucks and riot police? Why didn't they show up, hose down and tear gas these goofs, then paddy wagon them to juvenile lockup? Why did school officials allow kids to leave school unsupervised to make a social statement in the streets?

Next, crack down on all illegals on American soil. Look, this discussion is not about closing our borders to immigrants. Unless you are an unfortunate native American Indian, relegated to some miserable reservation, then either you or your ancestors immigrated here, or those of your lineage were hauled over here against their will on some slave ship. Right now, folks worldwide are discombobulated over the red tape required to get to America legally. So, why should they be shoved to the back of the line so some illegal immigrant can get a pass? This is abhorrent.
Every immigrant should be duly documented. Any company found hiring illegals should be slapped with humongous fines and put on a government watch list. Then these illegal workers should be shipped back to whence they came. I would, however, make an exception for those doing jobs that Americans won't do. Incidentally, who are these "choosy" Americans who are allergic to work? The president and politicians keep lamenting this shiftless bunch. I hope these lazy choosers are not on our welfare rolls, soaking up tax dollars in subsidies, while taxpayers are also supporting illegals who are doing their work. Mercy! Any illegal worker doing a job that Americans "refuse" to do, should be legalized pronto, and paid minimum wage along with benefits. Then those choosy Americans who can but won't work should be cut off from any government aid. You know that old Biblical adage about "you don't work - you don't eat!"

Last, seal off our borders tightly. Divert pork barrel monies to border security. Since the flow of illegals is mainly from south of the border, start the sealing off there. Erect sky-high fences with zapping electrical charges. Militarize the border patrol into a sixth division of our military - the Land Guard like the Coast Guard. Execute active recruitment for this new military branch. If current illegals don't want homebound deportation, then put them to work building the fence. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

State and national politicians need to quit their political gibberish about what will and won't work regarding this immigration predicament. Face it, illegals are flooding our schools and hospital emergency rooms, driving without licenses, not paying taxes, and on and on. Businesses and other institutions are forced to hire translators since most can't speak English. Worse yet, when these poor souls get in trouble, they can't fend for themselves.

It's high time for the U.S. government to "put up or shut up" about this looming crisis, and it's past time for seedy politicians to get out of the way.

Jessalyn Bailey is a registered nurse and a native Jacksonian. Write to her at The Jackson Sun, P.O. Box 1059, Jackson, TN 38302 or you can send an e-mail to opinions@jacksonsun.com. Log onto jacksonsun.com and share your thoughts on this column.

Originally published April 5, 2006

posted by Nikki B at 1:21:00 PM