Just a few weeks ago, before heading out on my annual march in support of rights for illegal immigrants, I wrote another article in my series of laments about the failure of the U.S. Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. And in that article I reiterated that only the McCain-Kennedy bill contained all of the provisions to assimilate the 12 million illegal immigrants who, quite frankly, are here to stay anyway!
Coincidentally, here’s how I made this indispensable point in one of these articles a year ago this week:
…with all due respect to Bush, comprehensive immigration reform will be enacted only if legislators like Sen John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen Ted Kennedy (D-MA) [pictured here with Sen Arlen Specter (R-PA) to Kennedy’s right and McCain in background] usher their bipartisan bill (which includes all of Bush’s 5 points except with regular border patrol police, not National Guard troops, enforcing the border) through Senate…and could reconcile it with the bill proffered by Republicans in the House (which includes making felons of illegal immigrants and seems designed, incomprehensibly, to deport them all back to Mexico). [The iPINIONS Journal, 16 May 2006]
– All illegal immigrants who arrived before Jan. 1, 2007, could stay and work after paying a $1,500 fee, passing a criminal background check, and showing a strong work record.
– They would also have to pay a fine of $5,000.
– After eight years, they could apply for a green card.
– A new visa category would be created for parents of U.S. citizens, allowing them to visit for up to 100 days per year.
– A temporary-worker program would allow 400,000 immigrant workers to enter on two-year visas, after which they would have to return home for a year before reapplying. The visas could be renewed up to three times.
– A new point system would add factors for green-card eligibility to lessen the “chain migration” of family members.
– The Border Patrol and interior enforcement would be expanded, and a new security perimeter would be created. Such border enforcement provisions would have to be implemented before immigrant-rights measures take effect.
Of course, this bill faces vituperative (bipartisan) resistance from jingoistic “no-open-borders” House members (and Lou Dobbs, the self-appointed arbiter of acceptable immigration policy). Yet chances are very good that it will be reconciled and sent to the White House in due course. And President George W Bush has already declared – in vintage bumper-sticker fashion – that he is anxious to sign it into law “without amnesty and without animosity”.
[This bill represents] the best possible chance we will have in years to secure our borders and bring millions of people out of the shadows and into the sunshine of America. [Sen Ted Kennedy]
However, as I indicated in the above-referenced article over a year ago, it behooved the Republican-controlled Congress to pass this bill on their watch to guarantee the Republican Party “a bloc of Hispanic voters more reliable than the black vote has been for the Democratic Party for almost a half century.”
But their failure to do so redounds to the benefit of the Democrats who now control Congress. Because, if this bill becomes law, the Democratic Party will have enough die-hard supporters amongst blacks and Hispanics to control Congress for generations to come.
Nevertheless, this is indeed good news. But stay tuned….
MY PODCAST
Apropos tuning in (or moving from the sublime to the ridiculous), a couple nights ago – after months of nagging and goading, some of the more overweening readers of my weblog finally prevailed upon me this week to record my first, and possibly last, podcast.
So click here to hear me ramble….
NOTE: Some of my Haitian brothers have turned from calling me a formidable advocate for Haitian migrant rights to condemning me as a traitor. Click here to read my Caribbean Net News article that has incited their fratricidal rage….
Related Articles:
Marching (yet again) for rights for illegal immigrants
My analysis of Bush’s 5-point immigration reform
immigration reform
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