McCain-Kennedy Reborn

Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 6:04 PM

<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1918 -- 9/16/2008 >>>>>

The Immigration Law Website (ILW) posted an analysis that began with the
question:

If immigration is your number one political priority, what
should you do this election?

The answer to the question is simple for the ILW: if McCain wins, they win,
and if Obama wins, we lose. That's because both Democrats and Republicans are
almost unanimous in the belief that we need to import more foreign workers,
and to give amnesty to the ones who came to this country illegally. I'm not
sure I agree that immigration is one of the few issues both parties agree on,
but it is true that their rhetoric on immigration is almost identical.

While there are a few areas of agreement between Mr. McCain and
Democrats, immigration is the largest issue on which Democrats
and McCain agree.

I was sort of hoping we had buried this piece of legislative perfidy, but
apparently the coffin wasn't sealed well enough.

We expect to see almost all of the original McCain-Kennedy bill
become law during the first six months of a McCain Presidency.

Just for contrast I posted a totally different vision of the future by Joe
Guzzardi. He recently moved from Lodi, CA to Pittsburg, and it appears that
toxic fumes emitted from the rusting steel mills may be clouding his vision.
All the sudden he has turned into a wild-eyed optimist!

http://www.ilw.com/immigdaily/digest/2008,0917.shtm
McCain Kennedy Reborn

http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/080912_amnesty.htm
Joe Predicts: Zero Percent Chance Of Amnesty In 2009!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.ilw.com/immigdaily/digest/2008,0917.shtm

McCain Kennedy Reborn

If immigration is your number one political priority, what should you do this
election?

We begin with the observation that Democrats will likely consolidate and
expand their control of the Senate and the House. This is good news for the
immigration cause. However, in spite of controlling Congress for the past two
years Democrats have done virtually nothing on immigration benefits and have
continued massive spending on immigration enforcement. So, even though most
political analysts are agreed that Democrats are poised for significant gains
in the House and the Senate, that alone does not portend any immigration
benefits in the coming years.

With that background, let us examine the difference in prospects for
immigration benefits on Jan 20, 2009 if we get President Obama or if we get
President McCain.

If we get President Obama, Democrats are going to be euphoric on Jan 20, 2009,
and rightly so - being back in the White House, at last, after 8 long and
bitter years. Democrats have not been able to pursue their priorities for 8
years and we can expect them to act aggressively on their big priorities
immediately after a President Obama takes office. There are at least four
Democratic priorities ahead of immigration: the Iraq war, universal health
care, budget/taxes and energy policy. These are all large, complex issues and
Congress will take most of a President Obama's first term to work on these. In
such a scenario, we will not see any significant immigration benefits in the
foreseeable future.

If we get President McCain, we will still have a powerful Democratic majority
in Congress on Jan 20, 2009. This Congress will be at loggerheads with him on
all the major Democratic priorities. Democrats will want to bring the troops
home whereas Mr. McCain wants them in Iraq for 100 years; Democrats see a
health care crisis whereas Mr. McCain sees none; Democrats will want increased
taxes whereas Mr. McCain would like to cut them; Democrats want to conserve
oil and work on alternative sources of power whereas Mr. McCain would like to
drill for oil all over the map. Democrats and a President McCain will be 180
degrees apart on all major Democratic priorities. In this bitter fighting
hardly anything will get done legislatively, and both Democrats and Mr. McCain
will be looking for opportunities to show the country that they can work on
something together.

While there are a few areas of agreement between Mr. McCain and Democrats,
immigration is the largest issue on which Democrats and McCain agree. While
the current Republican Party platform is the most anti-immigrant one in
memory, there were news reports that Mr. McCain, who has a long track record
of being pro-immigration, tried to make it more immigration-friendly and
failed. This is the issue on which he is most likely to stab his party's anti-
immigrationist wing in the back both in his political interests and due to his
own convictions (Mr. McCain had to fight his party's anti-immigrationists
tooth and nail during the Republican primaries). We expect to see almost all
of the original McCain-Kennedy bill become law during the first six months of
a McCain Presidency.

The Bush era has been the worst in memory for immigration advocates.
However the combination of a powerful Democratic majority in Congress with Mr.
McCain as President offers the best hope for speedily obtaining desperately
needed immigration benefits.

We welcome readers to share their opinion and ideas with us by writing to
editor@ilw.com.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/080912_amnesty.htm

September 12, 2008

Joe Predicts: Zero Percent Chance Of Amnesty In 2009!
By Joe Guzzardi

Eight years of George W. Bush has proven one thing: that it doesn t matter
what the U.S. president wants regarding an illegal alien amnesty, open
borders, unlimited work visas or any other treasonous elements of immigration
policy that subvert American interests about which he may fantasize.

If Bush simply could have snapped his fingers and gotten his way, I imagine he
would have established an expansion of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy that
currently applies to Cubans.

Then the only requirement for a green card would be to get into the US.

Bush would doubtless have loved to have created a national rolling amnesty
that would have included Mexico, Central and South America -- and perhaps
everyone in the world.

But throughout his two terms, Americans thwarted Bush at his every turn.
Despite his virtually non-stop efforts to get his illegal immigration agenda
past Congress, Bush instead lost ground every year.

At his low point in 2007, Bush experienced such a string of ignominious
"Comprehensive Immigration Reform" defeats that his administration suffered
what in effect was a vote of no confidence.

Given our successes, I -- unlike other immigration reform patriots -- am not
in a huge lather about what appears to be the certainty of a 2009 amnesty
effort.

I m VDARE.COM s in-house optimist. Our recent track record gives me good
reason to feel as I do.

Sure, John McCain and Barack Obama are both for amnesty.

So what?

If Bush couldn t get it past either a Republican or Democratic controlled
Congress, why should we assume either of them will?

The American government has a process that must be followed.

Whoever wins in November will start his first term with higher negatives than
Bush did. In fact, the survivor will likely be the least popular president
ever elected, thus starting out his new job with a considerable reservoir of
ill will.

The worsening economy, the nation s rotten public education system,
unaffordable health care and the ever-present Iraq War put immigration reform
no higher than fifth on most lists of American s concerns.

In some states, like my Pennsylvania, immigration is barely on the radar, at
least by comparison to California.

That makes "comprehensive immigration reform" unlikely to be the first item on
the new president s legislative to-do list. Why lead with your chin?

McCain and Obama s challenge is to get elected. As of today, each is
floundering in the polls and probably appearing less attractive to even their
small core of hard-core supporters as the days drag on.

Whichever candidate does the best job of convincing the unconvinced will
prevail. Fifty-three days remain for either to pull it off.

Which of the two might blink and bring immigration to the forefront of their
campaigns?

Short answer: neither.

Despite what our good friend Mickey Kaus at Slate thinks (that Obama could
appeal to blue collar workers suspicious of him by promising to delay amnesty
until he became convinced that wages would not be adversely impacted by more
immigration), Obama has no wiggle room.

First, Obama is the candidate who publicly supported driver s licenses for
aliens. (See his speech here) If you re one of many who wonder about Obama s
intelligence, remember that his endorsement of this wildly unpopular idea
could easily have been ducked by saying that licenses are a state and not a
federal issue.

Second, Obama doesn t have a disaffected base on immigration. Mainstream
Democratic voters support amnesty.

Third, Obama has made so many pleas on behalf of Hispanics "in the shadows"
that if he reversed himself now, he would appear idiotic. [Obama Pitches
Immigration Policy, by T.W. Farnam, Wall Street Journal, September 10, 2009]
Peter Brimelow proposes that Obama try to draw McCain out about his amnesty
devotion by pressing for an agreement between them that whoever ends up going
back to the Senate will commit to working tirelessly with the winner on
comprehensive immigration reform.

The idea is sound -- trying to trip McCain up on his true treasonous
immigration feelings -- and would make wonderful theater. But I can t envision
either of them playing.

While its true that thousands of Republican voters -- or would-be voters --
are furious at McCain for his immigration betrayal, he s alienated all of them
to such an extent that nothing he could say or do at this point would bring
them around.

On immigration, Republicans equate McCain to Teddy Kennedy.

The situation on the ground is what we have come to expect from presidential
candidates: the less they say about immigration to a broad-based audience, the
safer it is for them.

Let s assume the worst: that whoever gets into the White House will
immediately throw all of his weight behind amnesty.

It won t get to first base.

Unlike in 2001, when we were "ambushed," the patriotic immigration reform
movement is fully prepared to go to the mat.

Amnesty in all its forms, either "comprehensive," a "grand compromise," or one
piece at a time (Dream Act and Ag Jobs), has been soundly defeated dating back
even further than the Bush administration. The last success the other side
registered occurred during the Clinton years.

To grasp the enormity of passing amnesty, consider that similar bills
introduced this week (H.R. 5882 and H.R. 5924) to increase worker visas by
more than 550,000 met with such public outrage that the House Judiciary
Committee could not even organize a vote even though one had been scheduled.
This is in the Committee! Good luck to them on amnesty.

Whether the Republicans or the Democrats control the next 111th Congress, the
environment may be more hostile than the 110th that consistently sent amnesty
down to a string of defeats. Many immigration restriction candidates will be
on November s ballot. If elected, expect their votes to be cast in our favor.
In a perverse kind of way, I m actually hoping that an amnesty bill makes it
to the floor. Of course, it s a drag to have to fight the same battles over
and again.

But when it s defeated, as I am 100 percent certain it will be, amnesty will
be cast aside to the lowest rung of Congress legislative agenda -- labeled as
something that is simply not doable.

Once amnesty tanks again, it won t be resurrected for a long time to come.

Joe Guzzardi [email him] is a California native who recently fled the state
because of over-immigration, over-population and a rapidly deteriorating
quality of life. He has moved to Pittsburgh, PA where the air is clean and the
growth rate stable. A long-time instructor in English at the Lodi Adult
School, Guzzardi has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It currently
appears in the Lodi News-Sentinel.

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