A lot of talk is going on about illegal immigration, how much it costs, how much it saves business…it’s all a bunch of bull shit. I don’t have a problem with anyone who wants to come to America to work, live, reach that dream. I do have a problem with those who want to come here and take jobs, work under the table, apply for and get government welfare and basically feed off the system. Very few of these illegals are accounted for, they meander about the country freely and that isn’t right. The very nature of this issue baffles me to no end: ILLEGAL immigration. That word ILLEGAL means against the law.
Those in Congress who want to impress me better have a damn good way to manage all this. I suspect they don’t though, as many of them fall coward to the business lobby groups who want cheap labor. I hate to say it, but that is what it comes down to.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said yesterday his chamber will work to produce an immigration bill this year, even as the White House signaled a new emphasis on immigration law enforcement as part of selling President Bush’s proposal.
The Illinois Republican placed immigration near the top of the list of priorities when Congress returns from its August recess, just below the must-pass spending bills and just before Social Security. He said any immigration bill must mix enforcement, a program for new foreign workers and a solution to the illegal aliens now here.

Big words, but I want to see some substance behind it. I want to see Hastert and the others really do something about this. I’m not shy to say that I don’t like President Bush’s proposal for this problem. It just doesn’t cut it…and it enables illegals to continue to be ILLEGAL.

“There has to be some accountability for those folks,” he said. “A lot of them have been here 20, 25 years, they’re integrated into the system, their children are American citizens, and quite frankly a lot of those people don’t have a home to go back to in another country, so we need to reconcile that. I’m not sure how we do that.”

I would like to see a system set up that would allow those who have been in the US for 20 years or more to be offered citizenship, so long as they pass a few “tests”…the tests would be more like a checklist- are they working, do they pay their fair share of taxes, have they broken any other laws besides being illegals…ect. As long as they are productive members of society.

Mr. Hastert also said, though, that “there are a lot of terms for how people get citizenship, but frankly what I have found, any time that you do an amnesty you just put people in the front of the line and cut out people who have come through the process legally.”

There should be no amnesty for people who haven’t been in the US for less than 20 years. It’s simple. Anyone who has been here THAT long is an American by most means. 20 years is a long time. Again, so long as they have been working and paying their bills and being productive members of society…I have no problem.

President Bush on Wednesday, in a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, called for action this year, but Mr. DeLay’s office said it was impossible to set an exact timetable.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, would shepherd any bill through. A spokesman said yesterday that the committee plans to work on immigration legislation this fall and said all options are on the table.
Mr. Hastert has tapped Rep. John Shadegg, Arizona Republican, to meet with House Republicans who are interested in the immigration issue in order to try to forge a consensus on what should be in an eventual House bill.
Mr. Shadegg, who held his second “unity dinner” on the issue this week, said making a deadline of this year would be difficult, but not impossible.
He said one area of consensus is that a bill would have to include border enforcement and employer sanctions.
That message apparently has been received by the White House, which is now also saying Mr. Bush’s guest-worker plans should be paired with new enforcement measures.
“We want to continue to move forward in a way that improves our border security and enhances our enforcement inside the United States, and moves forward on a temporary worker program,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday.

For some reason I don’t think we are going to see anything that is really worthwhile. I get the feeling politics is playing favorites again, and the business lobby will get what they want. Cheap labor.

That’s a marked difference from the White House’s earlier calls for action, which stressed the importance of a guest-worker program for U.S.-Mexico relations, as a humanitarian gesture and as a source of inexpensive labor for businesses. The administration also has said the guest-worker plan would allow U.S. Border Patrol agents to focus on catching terrorists and other illegal aliens.

The only problem with this theory is the Mexicans look an awful lot like the young angry Muslim men who want to harm us. If we let them into the country, posing as poor folk who need jobs…we are asking for trouble. In a big way.