WASHINGTON (AP) – Sidetracked by hurricanes and Supreme Court nominees, the Senate will not take up comprehensive immigration legislation until January, a leading proponent of immigration law reform said Monday.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, also told reporters he did not expect the Senate to vote on immigration legislation that addresses only border control enforcement without considering the issues of illegal aliens already in the country.

“We have to deal with this comprehensively,” said Cornyn, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s immigration, border security and citizenship panel.

Then…
When I read this article I got really mad. It’s funny how these all come together at once. This article, which is very long, along with the news bit from above, tell a lot. Makes me wonder if anyone in Congress is ever going to really do anything.

Here are just a few of the facts….

– Did you know that, in just 2004, undocumented workers illegally hired by US businesses contributed $7 billion to Social Security and $1.5 billion to Medicare? And yet, virtually none of the illegal workers will ever receive benefits back from these federal programs? Not one penny.

– Did you know that all Social Security Administration projections and budgets include, and rely heavily on, billions in annual contributions from undocument illegal workers? That Social Security would have a significant solvency problem without that revenue?

– Did you know that, in 1999 under President Bill Clinton, the US government collected $3.69 million in fines from 890 companies for employing undocumented workers….and in 2004, under President George Bush, the US collected only $188,500 from 64 companies for such illegal employment practices? And that NO fines were levied at all in pre-election 2004?

– Did you know that when, in the 1980s and 1990s, US corporations relocated their cheap-labor, low working conditions factories from along the US-Mexico border to Asia, that unemployment in Mexico rose to about 40%? And that Mexico has no unemployment benefits for its jobless residents?

The equation explaining the whys of illegal immigration into the US is a dirty little secret that no politican seeking reelection wants to openly discuss. Both George bush and John Kerry carefully avoided the subject during the 2004 presidential campaign.

As if that weren’t enough to get my thong in a major twist…someone near and dear to me send me a link to THIS op/ed piece…

The results of the recent special election in California’s 48th Congressional District are a sober wakeup call to economic conservatives who believe in the free movement of goods, capital and labor. Self-appointed, vigilante immigration restrictionist Jim Gilchrist received a sizable 14.4 percent of the vote for Congress on a single-issue, immigrant bashing platform. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, who endorsed Gilchrist, is trying, with some success, to raise immigrant-bashing to a top-tier issue in the 2008 elections.

Anti-immigration sentiment is one symptom of a larger neo-Mercantilist disease that is also threatening the globalization of trade and capital flows. Unless true free-market conservatives tame these emotional arguments with the force of logic, much of the economic progress of the past century could be reversed. —>There is ALOT more to this, read further

Tom Tancredo answers the above piece of bullshit with this-from his REFORM NOW BLOG:

Since the Republican base put our party in control of the House, Senate and the White House, you’d think that we’d get what we want—strong border security, tough interior enforcement, and NO amnesty. But the Republican Party (like all parties, for that matter) is a coalition of groups, and, on immigration, an uneasy coalition to say the least.

On one side are big business interests that have prospered from cheap foreign labor and depressed wages. On the other side are social conservatives worried about the cultural division that accompanies mass, illegal immigration, and regular Joe Americans who bear the brunt of social service costs from illegals.

The Democrats have their own problems, too: the latte left accepts illegal immigration for cultural/diversity reasons, while working class Americans (many of them African-American) have suffered unfair labor competition from illegals.

Add to that mix an historically central Democratic voting bloc which is MIA. Organized labor suffered tremendous membership losses as the economy changed over the past few decades. This, in part, precipitated a split in the AFL-CIO. The break-off organization, Change to Win, is courting new immigrants—presumably, many of whom are illegal—as a strategy to reverse membership decline, even though an influx of labor works against current labor’s quest for higher wages.

At least I know the names of 80 House Members who have signed a letter to President Bush, expressing their discontent with current “guest worker programs“ and legislation.

Tancredo also respond’s to yesterday’s hearings about the Guest Worker Program, and Michael Chertoff’s now famous saying: “Return every illegal, no exceptions” rhetoric…

Finally, read Tancredo’s letter to the ACLU…THIS cracked me up to no end. I love him.

UPDATE:: The Mary Hunter reminds us about the Guard The Borders Blgoburst:

This has been part of the Guard the Borders blogburst. The burst occurs every Monday, and seeks to promote awareness about the illegal immgration epidemic that our country is facing and the desperate need to curb the problem before it’s too late. GTB was started at Euphoric Reality, which this week reports on the the MSM’s effort to side-step the illegal alien criminality issue.

If you’d like to join the blogburst, send an email to kit.jarrell AT gmail.com with your blog’s name and URL.

I do not chose to be a part of this blog burst. I can’t commit to doing a weekly post right now and would prefer to continue doing my own thing for now. I will link up to Kit’s site though so others who may be able to participate can do so.