[Newsbot]

<strong>Filibuster Cartoon</strong>
<strong>Title: </strong> <a href="http://www.filibustercartoons.com/archive.php?id=20070611" target="_blank">Bloated Bill</a> (click to view)
<strong>Date: </strong> June 11, 2007

For many months now the US Congress has been trying to push through a bill that will offer \"comprehensive immigration reform,\" and offer some approach for dealing with the dozen-million or so illegal immigrants currently residing within American borders. <br> <br>The process has been wrought with compromise after compromise and concession after concession, as politicians from both parties continue to add all sorts of amendments and stipulations to the bill, in order to ensure it will be truly \"comprehensive\" and appease everyone. As a result of this process, critics like Rudy Guliani say that the legislation no longer has any sort of central focus, and has instead simply become a \"mess\" of ideas and policies, some of which are so conflicting and contradictory almost anyone can find SOMETHING to oppose. <br> <br>And now, as a result, the bill has evidently died. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled the bill from the table on Thursday, and the press seems to think it is unlikely there will be any further debate. It collapsed under its own weight.

[Calbeck]

It was a highly controversial bill, so I'm not surprised that this became a huge hot-potato. It's certainly a substantial sting to Bush, who pushed heavily to get this bill approved.

Of course, Bush received a lot of support from the Hispanic community during his elections...and at the same time, there is no ethnic group in the US where this bill was more controversial than the Hispanic community. It's a telling point that first-generation Hispanic immigrants were very supportive of the bill, while families that had been in the US for multiple generations were very much against it. There are few Americans made angrier by the idea of "mass amnesty" than those who still remember how much they sacrificed to come to the US legally.

[Pitchfork]

I think this bill has been a lead pipe in the knee for Amnesty John's presidential campaign.

[Psudo]

As for the bill, good riddance to bad rubbish.

Calbeck wrote:

There are few Americans made angrier by the idea of "mass amnesty" than those who still remember how much they sacrificed to come to the US legally.

Perhaps those still sacrificing to legally receive citizenship. Like my friend Hazel, who was born and raised in South Africa and currently resides with her locally-born husband in the USA under a residency visa. Why should those who have illegally crossed our borders or who have irresponsibly allowed their temporary visas to expire get citizenship before she who has spent so much conscientious attention, work, and money on it?

It just doesn't fly.

[Calbeck]

Ditto for my cartoonist friend from Iceland, who was recently fortunate enough to win the Green Card Lottery --- after nearly a decade of being screwed over by INS concerning a court case that was vacated on appeal for being, well, STUPID. Everything from a police officer claiming right to search on grounds of a flashing light that'd been burned out for six months, to a lawyer that deliberately told him to plead guilty because he wasn't a Mexican national ("I only represent MY people"). Long story short, he got deported for riding in the same car as someone who wasn't transporting his legal firearms in a manner approved of by the State of California.

Even after being approved, he still got held up on entry by an officious twit who treated him like Carlos the Jackal and finally admitted him to the US with a snarky "You are clearly not of sterling character".

Damn right he's not. Karno wouldn't be the great guy he is if he had sterling character. -:D

[Psudo]

What should the application for a green card require that would accurately filter out the unwanted element but get most people through as efficiently as possible? Here are my thoughts.

1) CIA/Interpol background check. If they have connections to terrorism, foreign intelligence agencies, international drug trafficking, or violent or sexual crimes, we don't want them.

2) Loyalty: I'd like them to recognize a few sources of American pride, like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, the freedoms denoted in the Bill of Rights, the US Flag, the National Anthem, and the Pledge of Allegiance (the latter two in English). Nothing complicated or in-depth, just enough to know and respect the US values that hold the pluribus into a united unum.

3) Employability: If you've got a job (or a spouse with a job, or you're a kid who's parent has a job) in the USA, you're in, here's your Green Card. If not, here's a temporary work visa, there's employment services, we'll keep in touch. As soon as they connect you with a job you get a Green Card; if they can't, try, try again. If you want to help we want you around, and seeking to be gainfully, legally employed fulfills that requirement. For 99.9% of immigrants, this is effortless. For the other 0.1%, the intentional welfare bums, I'm all for deporting natural-born citizens who refuse to make themselves useful despite obvious capability, so I'm not going to feel any guilt over wanting foreign welfare bums out as well.

This seems exhaustive and complete to me. As long as you're not some fringe risk (1), you're here to help (3), and you like the USA for more than it's low unemployment (2), come on in. I don't want population caps or an end to all immigration, I just want those who want to help the USA to get in and those who don't to stay out. If there are 15 million helpers coming in per year, I'm fine with that. We've got plenty of room in this country. If you're here for us, we're here for you.

Did I leave out any important restriction? Was I overly or unequally restrictive anywhere?

[Kjorteo]

Psudo wrote:

I'm all for deporting natural-born citizens who refuse to make themselves useful despite obvious capability,

To where, exactly?

In all seriousness, the immigration debate is one colored by completely inaccurate and misleading mental images brought about by loaded terms and popular misconception. It's sort of like how even people who want to end the war in Iraq are opposed to doing so by cutting off the funding--it brings up a mental image something like a soldier deeply embedded in enemy fire and suddenly running out of ammo, leaving him helpless, because they suddenly and instantaneously stopped buying bullets. (As opposed to the much more boring "Hey, it looks like we're not going to continue to have the budget to stay here indefinitely, so let's start redeploying.")

In this case, I see many people (not strictly here, but pretty much everywhere) taking the following as general assumptions:

1) The process for legally immigrating and attaining citizenship in the United States is anything even remotely approaching sane.
2) People who immigrate illegally do so because they're lazy criminals who just can't be bothered to go through the (even remotely sane) legal process.
3) By "illegals" we mean "Mexicans," since all illegal immigrants started in Mexico and jumped a fence or crawled through tunnels, El Norte style.

Now, if 1 was actually true, I might have less sympathy toward illegal immigrants and might believe 2 a little more. 3 doesn't really have any bearing on the rest of my points, but I brought it up because it's kind of a personal pet peeve.

Maybe I'm just looking at the issue wrong, since the debate seems to be largely, if not exclusively focused on "What should we do about all these darn illegals." My idea of immigration reform is to make it easier to go through the proper channels first, so people like your friend Hazel can actually get their citizenship taken care of without so much frustration. I'll worry about the ones who subvert the system after we fix the system.

[Psudo]

.

Kjorteo wrote:

Psudo wrote:

I'm all for deporting natural-born citizens who refuse to make themselves useful despite obvious capability,

To where, exactly? :)

Space colonies, obviously! Haha.

Seriously, though, if people oppose productive society powerfully enough, we already remove them from society. Prison, capital punishment, etc.

Kjorteo wrote:

3) By "illegals" we mean "Mexicans," since all illegal immigrants started in Mexico and jumped a fence or crawled through tunnels, El Norte style.

Yeah, that assumption peeves me off, too.

Kjorteo wrote:

My idea of immigration reform is to make it easier to go through the proper channels first, [. . .] I'll worry about the ones who subvert the system after we fix the system.

Your description sounds right on. That's why I'm describing what it should be like rather than what it is like, because obviously what it is like has serious problems. If we can get a streamlined summary of what immigration policy should be popularized, maybe it can get passed (whereas the current "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" bill is rightly dead).

[Kjorteo]

Then Psudo and I are in complete agreement about something?

Hehe.

Oh, also, I love the Meaning of Life reference in the comic itself.

[JJ]

Thanks Kjorteo. And I liked your points.

What I mourn the most about the failure of this bill is the failure for America to adopt ANY sort of change to the immigration law status quo, which as K noted, is not terribly sane at present.

I think this obsession with Mexicans is inadvertantly hurting a lot of unintentional victims. Canadian visitors have suffered from an illogically tightened northern border (just so we don't seem racist) and now laws designed to keep Mexicans out end up turning into an across the board drive against immigrants of all sorts.

[Psudo]

What about my immigration outline? Isn't that what we want, to allow migrants interested in becoming American workers citizenship while keeping criminal and spies out? If that's universally accepted, why is this bill so massively bloated? What's the complication?

[Pitchfork]

Psudo wrote:

Isn't that what we want, to allow migrants interested in becoming American workers citizenship while keeping criminal and spies out?

Perhaps that is what you want.
Our leaders on the other hand are more interested in importing a peasantry.

[BartSimpson]

JJ wrote:

I think this obsession with Mexicans is inadvertantly hurting a lot of unintentional victims. Canadian visitors have suffered from an illogically tightened northern border (just so we don't seem racist) and now laws designed to keep Mexicans out end up turning into an across the board drive against immigrants of all sorts.

Truth be told, the illegal immigrant issue is being played out on the Mexicans who are coming here not to be Americans, but to be colonists as part of what they call the reconquista. Hispanic Americans who love America are the most adamant opponents of letting the reconquistas come into the USA because the reconquistas want to bring the corrupt style of governance with them that the Hispanic Americans left Mexico to escape.

The hidden issue in the illegal immigrant debate is the illegal muslims. Absent stronger legislation it is politically incorrect to pursue the illegal muslims even though they are far, far more dangerous than almost anyone from Mexico.

[Les-R]

From what I understand the key problem with immigration law was the attempt at making it self-sufficient through immigration fees. The INS dosn't get nearly as much money as it needs to do all it's work, so now in essence current legal immigrants are paying for the services rendered to past legal immigrants with their fees rather than paying for thier own...

[Psudo]

Is immigration a business? One expects government services to be largely tax-payer funded, though I'm sure there's a libertarian ideal supporting financial self-sufficiency through fees.