Immigration

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus now has a column called Gang of 8 Fraud of the Day. Today’s is “Back Taxes.”

Negotiators had to choose between a hard-line approach favored by Republicans, like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), that would have required immigrants and employers to painstakingly piece together a tax history so the government could collect what is owed and a less burdensome option of focusing on people who already have a past-due bill with the Internal Revenue Service.

Yup. No tax audits. Only if they already have an assessment is it pursued.

Rubio’s published materials now often carefully say to-be-legalized immigrants would have to merely ”pay taxes” as opposed to pay “back taxes.” That hasn’t stopped the bogus “back tax” meme from being propagated during Rubio’s current round the clock Con-the-Cons tour.

The Senate has served up another in Harry Reid’s menu of “Unanimous Consent” bills with no hearings and no amendments except those he approves. This is not how the Senate is supposed to work and is a large part of the reason that Congress has produced such bad legislation since 2008. Now, we have another massive bill which is being presented with minimal hearings and debate.

The “Gang of Eight” has written this bill and it is supposed to be fast tracked with no argument. Marco Rubio has been pressing for approval and now Paul Ryan is aboard.

In an interview last week with the Catholic television network EWTN, Ryan recalled his history at Kemp’s side and how they worked together to fight Proposition 187, a California ballot initiative that prevented non-citizens from using the state’s social services.

One reason why immigration worked in this country for 150 years was the fact that immigrants were here to work and support themselves. There was no welfare for them. Prop 187 in California was passed with 60% of the vote and even had majorities in heavily Hispanic districts. It was ruled “unconstitutional” by the California Supreme Court and the decline of the “Golden State” has followed. His reasoning at the time ?

“I actually campaigned with Jack Kemp against a thing called Prop 187,” Ryan told host Raymond Arroyo. He said they both worried that the proposal would burn Republicans within the immigrant community, and “make it so that Latino voters would not hear the other messages of empowerment.”

Other Republicans seem convinced that Latino voters, unlike those after the 1986 amnesty, would flock to vote for Republicans out of gratitude for being made legal and eligible for welfare. Britain made a similar mistake but the Labour Party flooded the country with Muslim immigrants as a plan to dominate the Conservatives. It worked and Britain has not had a Conservative government since Margaret Thatcher. The present government is called a coalition of Conservative and Liberal but neither party would be recognizable to Winston Churchill or Lady Thatcher.

Marco Rubio has been campaigning for this bill before it was presented. He has presented the bill as having far more conservative features than is believed by others.

He brought up the legislation’s goal of apprehending 90% of illegal border crossers (in “high-risk” sectors)–alluding no less than four times in 17 minutes to its creation of a “border commission.” He used virtually identical language all four times:

“If, in five years, the plan has not reached 100 percent awareness and 90 percent apprehension, the Department of Homeland Security … will lose control of the issue and it will be turned over to the border governors to finish the job …. which is not a Washington commission, made up of congressmen or bureaucrats.

This, in fact, is not an honest expression of the bill’s provisions. Senator Schumer has been saying something quite different, even before the rollout of the bill last week.

Unfortunately for Rubio, Washington Examiner’s Byron York read the actual bill and noticed that, if the goals are not met, the job of the commission is almost entirely advisory–to make “recommendations to the President, the Secretary, and Congress” on how to meet them. (See pages 16 and 17.) Specifically, the bill says the commission writes a report “setting forth specific recommendations,” sends it to the Government Accounting Office, and then goes out of business in 30 days. Nothing about taking over control, or the “issue,” or the policy or about finishing the job.

This provision has been the subject of inflated claims by some supposed conservative radio talkers but the language of the bill does not inspire confidence.

Thomas Sowell points out one major weakness in the bill.

It is already known that a significant percentage of the immigrants from some countries go on welfare, while practically none from some other countries do. Some children from some countries are eager students in school and, even when they come here knowing little or no English, they go on to master the language better than many native-born Americans do. But other children from other countries drag down educational standards and create many other problems in school, as well as forming gangs that ruin whole neighborhoods with their vandalism and violence and cost many lives. Are we to shut our eyes to such differences and just lump all immigrants together, as if we were talking about abstract people in an abstract world?

This goes right to the issues that Prop 187 addressed in California and why it was hated by the political left and the business lobbies.

Above all, we need to look at immigration laws in terms of how they affect the American people and the American culture that gives us a level of prosperity that has long been among the highest in the world. Americans, after all, are not a separate race but people from many racial and ethnic backgrounds. Yet most Americans have a higher standard of living than other people of the same racial or ethnic background in their respective ancestral home countries. That is even more true for black Americans than for white Americans.

This is what Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan ignore.

Why is the Boston Massacre not an issue in immigration reform ?

let us briefly look at the mythical self-radicalized lone-wolf terrorist. There have been 19 documented foiled terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11. The vast majority of the suspects were born and raised in America and radicalized here long before some of them sought training and assistance from foreign jihadists. Nor were they radicalized on the Internet. In virtually every case, they embraced Islamism in American mosques and Islamic centers under the control of radical Wahhabi, salafi, or Muslim Brotherhood imams, some of whom turned out to be wannabe jihadists themselves. This unfortunate reality is neither a coincidence nor an aberration.

For despite the fact that most American Muslims are well integrated and economically successful, much of the Muslim establishment in this country has been controlled by radical Islamists ever since the Muslim Brotherhood made its first appearance in America with the founding of the Muslim Student Association in 1963.

Moderate mosques in this country have been marginalized by those funded by Saudi Wahhabi extremists and many are run by immigrant imams.

U.S. Border Patrol agents captured a radical Muslim cleric attempting to sneak into the United States across the California-Mexican border this morning.

Said Jaziri was discovered hiding in a Mexican registered BMW. The terrorism supporting cleric has been banned from France and Canada, as well as the United States, police sources told the Law Enforcement Examiner.

Jaziri, who gained notoriety when he ordered his followers to “execute” the controversial Danish cartoonist who drew pictures of the prophet Mohammed, was arrested, as was the BMW’s driver Kenneth Robert Lawler.

Jaziri, 44, had been deported from Canada to Tunisia in 2007 after Canadian immigration officials discovered that he had fabricated statements on his refugee application. Prior to that he had been imprisoned in France on terrorism-related charges.

This is reminiscent of the radical “blind sheik” who masterminded the 1993 WTC bombing.

It is time to think about terrorism and immigration, especially illegal immigration. Even if Michelle Obama visits a student on a terrorist watch list in the hospital.

“The First Lady visited with patients, their families and hospital staff at Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital,” the White House spokesperson emailed. When we asked about the visit again now that alleged photos have surfaced, we were again pointed to the general pool report noting Obama’s visit to the hospitals.

The Republicans have a history of double talk and unfulfilled promises on the immigration issue. The 1986 amnesty was supposed to be followed by strict border enforcement. That never happened. That is why we have another 11 million illegals today. In 2007, another border enforcement bill was passed but the Democrats gutted it after they took over Congress. There is plenty of history on this topic but Republicans seem determined to forget it.