1) Border secured, with military if necessary, with warnings that those arrested will be jailed for ten years, then deported.

Since 1) will never happen, I do not want amnesty/legal status/work visa/whatever. You want to come to this country, do so through the front door, not come in by breaking through a back window.

After our allegations about 404Care were proved true by Gruber’s big mouth, how can anyone trust this government when it comes to ‘comprehensive immigration reform’? Better to cut off benefits and have the illegals self-deport. Because once their gravy train ends, they will leave.

Of course, any law can be flouted.

In fact, not passing such a law does nothing to avoid the flouting of the laws already on the books, does it?

If the border were to be actually sealed, I would study the proposals for guest worker status and then decide whether I thought much of them or not. I can certainly imagine a law that would be better than the current situation, where they’ll all here anyway, illegal and “undocumented.”

I notice you don’t address the fact that you were so certain I meant citizenship, and you were jumping to conclusions.

We could deport millions and millions of people, if we were willing to spend an extraordinary effort and a ton of money to do so, but we are not. Period. If you don’t understand that, you are the naive one.

You can’t be so naive as to think they’ll only be giving out legal status cards to the current criminals invading our Nation? Remember proggie incrementalism.

Mass deportations may not occur, but if that is not done, bloodshed is certain. There aren’t jobs for Americans now, and we should give legal status to millions of these invaders so they can have jobs?

Barry wants violence, he’s egging us on with his imperiousness. We either back down in the face of cries of racism when we say such things about Chocolate Jesus or we give him what he wants. In spades.

By claiming there is no other practical solution, you are giving up. You are putting out a ‘welcome’ sign, allowing the invading hordes a place to stay at my expense. And we know that these new ‘legal status’ immigrants are not the most highly educated. They will do exactly what happened after the 1986 so-called immigration reform: They will go on the public dole, stealing money from us citizens. Why should we be the welfare capital of the world? I don’t remember that clause in the Constitution.

Seriously, why can we not kick out all the illegals? (Or, even better, make them self-deport by not allowing them to work, cut off public benefits, etc.) I understand we don’t have the balls thanks to PC crapola, but why can’t we enforce our laws on immigration, kicking out those here illegally? We wouldn’t be the first country around the world today to do such a thing.

Fascinating how you misread what I wrote.

Let me repeat: “I would consider some sort of arrangement by which the people already here could get some legal status.”

I did NOT mention citizenship, nor do I mean citizenship.

“Legal status” can cover a lot of territory, including some sort of guest worker program without citizenship. People would apply to it and there would be rules they had to follow, the border would be securely closed first (as I said) and the law’s continuance would be dependent on the security continuing, and any new people wanting to come would have to abide by the rules. The permit would be for a certain amount of time, would be available only to a certain number of people, and perhaps could be renewable for those already here when the law was passed. The reason to advocate this general approach is simple: the situation was allowed to get so terribly out of hand (which never should have happened) that it is almost a certainty that mass deportations will never occur.

And I said I would consider it. Whether I would support it would really depend on the details of the law.

I try to choose my words carefully. Not that I don’t sometimes make errors, but in general I don’t say what I don’t mean and I do say what I do mean, at least that’s what I aim for. The manner in which you leaped to an incorrect and more extreme (and outraged) conclusion about what I was saying is something I see frequently from a lot of people angry about this issue: the assumption that people are taking about citizenship when they are not.

I not only am not talking about citizenship, I did not say citizenship, and I have never advocated that, as far as I can recall, in any post I’ve ever written.

neo-neocon Says:

I consider myself quite conservative on immigration, but if the border really were secure, I would consider some sort of arrangement by which the people already here could get some legal status. I don’t consider that unreasonable; I’m not sure there’s any other practical solution. But security must come first, and it must be very effective.

I do not understand why you and others like you think we must have some sort of amnesty/path to citizenship for illegals. Why do you, and others, want to sell my birthright cheap by giving it away to criminals (who are criminals by virtue of being here illegally)? I don’t get it.

Fourteen Republicans crossed the aisle in the Senate to vote for that bill, 32 voted against. The fourteen were: McCain, Rubio, Flake, Lindsay Graham, Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Jeff Chiesa (N.J.), Susan Collins (Maine), Bob Corker (Tenn.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Dean Heller (Nev.), John Hoeven (N.D.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). That is certainly not all the “establishment Republicans” in the Senate, with all the rest conservatives. Some of those usually considered conservative voted for it, and some of those usually considered establishment voted against it (most prominently McConnell). It was not just conservatives who were against that bill.

Also, the bill was a far cry from what Obama is about to do. It contained “triggers” to make sure the border was secure before it went forward.

I consider myself quite conservative on immigration, but if the border really were secure, I would consider some sort of arrangement by which the people already here could get some legal status. I don’t consider that unreasonable; I’m not sure there’s any other practical solution. But security must come first, and it must be very effective.

Boehner was not so eager to pass that bill, either. You can say that he was only responding to conservative pressure—and he definitely was under conservative pressure, but there is no indication it was only conservative pressure that made him hesitate. Right after it passed in the Senate, he said:

…that he intends for the House to pursue its own immigration reform approach, rather than taking up the Senate bill.

“The House is not going to take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes,” Boehner told reporters at a press conference. “For any legislation, including a conference report, to pass the House, it’s going to have to be a bill that has the support of a majority of our members,” he added later, referring to Republicans.

Here’s another statement by Boehner around the same time:

“Let me be clear,” Boehner said, according to a source in the closed GOP meeting, “Immigration is not one of these scenarios. We have plenty of leverage. And I have no intention of putting a bill on the floor that will violate the principles of our majority and divide our conference. One of our principles is border security. I have no intention of putting a bill on the floor that the people in this room do not believe secures our borders. It’s not gonna happen.”

Doesn’t sound like someone eager to pass an amnesty bill to me.

“Immigration reform” can mean anything at all, including a stand-alone border security bill. You actually haven’t a clue what Boehner would prefer.

Here’s another post I wrote on this topic.

Such a stinger can be dropped into every critical piece of legislation that hits the President’s desk.

He’ll be forced to veto every act that reaches his desk — until HE shuts down the government.

&&&&

There is a Drudge laugh piece (Fleet Street) about Biden being insurance.

If the nation could survive Andrew Johnson, then Biden is a walk in the park.

FDR and Woodrow Wilson were so ill that they were medically incompetent to stay in office. Yet they did. The staffs picked up the slack and ran things without them. All substantive matters were simply held off until a new president came into office.

THIS is the reason why Harry Truman felt like the whole world had fallen on his shoulders — at once.

He was tasked with a decision back-log that ran back — in many cases — more than a year. (!)

And if Biden screws up: unlikely — then he can be impeached in turn.

Biden is very likely to be a status quo president. He certainly can’t ruin foreign policy — Barry has that covered.

I’m not sure what Obama or Linda Chavez think will happen when the illegals are granted amnesty, but one thing that will definitely happen is that the vast majority will be out of a job,

&&&

This happened in 1986-7 after the Reagan amnesty.

On the whole, they promptly went on welfare.

&&&

There is simply no way that the welfare rolls won’t explode with EO amnesty.

Additionally: unemployment insurance is not available to aliens. With EO amnesty, millions of freshly laid off aliens will qualify, tapping out the various state unemployment funds.

Such drains will happen even before the big downturn due to the 0-care tax impact.

We’ve been Hugo’d.

There are no good options, and a lot of ways to crash the whole house of cards. It may be that the only thing we can do is let it fall, and hope the majority of the blame lands on the smooth-tongued liberal demagogues that made the collapse inevitable.

What happens next will depend on how the newly unemployed Mexican-American citizens decide to respond to their mass layoffs. Pack their bags and travel back to Mexico peacefully is the best option, but also the least likely one. Start up their own businesses is another good option, but I wonder how much respect they’ll show the current regulatory climate.

Worst case, they’ll respond to mass layoffs the same way Americans throughout history have responded to being screwed over just when they thought things were looking up: booze up and make the LA riots look like a Girl Scout pep rally in comparison.