Immigration bill clears Senate test vote

[superconnected]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Tuesday to jump-start a stalled immigration measure to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants. President Bush said the bill offered a "historic opportunity for Congress to act," and appeared optimistic about its passage by week's end.

The pivotal test-vote was 64-35 to revive the divisive legislation. It still faces formidable obstacles in the Senate, including bitter opposition by GOP conservatives and attempts by some waverers in both parties to revise its key elements.

Supporters needed 60 votes to scale procedural hurdles and return to the bill. A similar test-vote earlier this month found just 45 supporters, only seven of them Republicans. This time, 24 Republicans joined 39 Democrats and independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, to back moving ahead with the bill. Opposing the move were 25 Republicans, nine Democrats and independent Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., an architect of the bill, said he was proud of the vote, calling it "a major step forward for our national security, for our economy, and for our humanity."


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070626/ap_on_go_co/immigration_congress

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I'm glad. And the Republicans will see it as a bush failure.

[Bobbieo]

1. The one thing I don't like about the Immigration bill

is that GD multi-million dollar fence which is about as useless as tits on a boar unless it is electrified. Then, the GD thing will end up killing animals.

Blame it on it is the 112 degree heat today!

[jaybeat]

2. I'm not sure *I* see it as a Democratic victory

I mean, without requirements that families be reunited, that third-world working conditions and wages be improved, that US wages and working conditions be improved, I see nothing in this bill that will prevent the continued ghettoization of immigrants fleeing intolerable conditions to provide for their families. And as long as we have second-class residents, with fewer or no rights, willing to work longer, for less, without the income, benefits or security necessary to provide for a family, we will continue to see erosion of US working conditions and standards of living.

The Nazi's made concentration camp victims build their own fences.

We have contractors hiring illegal immigrants to build *their* own fence.

Nice. Real nice.

I have yet to have anyone explain to me how it this bill is consistent with Democratic values. Or even what the political upside is for Dems. The right-wing mouth pieces have rocketed immigration to the top of the political agenda. (A new poll came out in Oregon that shows it is now the #2 issue, behind education and ahead of health care. Link here.)

:wtf:

It is a perfect storm for the right-wing to pummel Dems in '08 on an issue defined in *their* terms. (Remember the "enforcement-only" bills the Repuke-led House kept passing?)

:puke:

That's how they'll define it, getting all the under-paid, under-employed and unemployed to blame their dark-skinned fellow worker, instead of the Repuke's corporate cronies and their Repuke policies, which are, of course, the real culprit in the assault on the middle class.

Gee, and the Nazi's blamed the plight of the common German on the Jews and the Communists, diverting attention away from their own industrialist/capitalist ruling-class base. This is sounding more and more familiar all the time.

[Zookeeper]

3. The bill is too complicated....

If the laws currently on the books aren't being enforced, why would a new set of laws be different?

Where are the plans for the huge bureaucracy that will be needed to monitor and process illegal immigrants attempts to gain citizenship? The bill certainly doesn't make it simple.

How is a longer wall going to be built when the sections that have already been approved aren't finished?

Who is going to monitor illegal employers and how are we going to know that it is being done fairly, without preferential treatment for large political contributors?

What about the "guest workers" who don't go home for the required year? What about the citizens of other countries who will just ignore the whole thing and continue to come here and work illegally?

Have proponents of this bill explained how to pay for it?

[rocktivity]

4. DING DING DING! Zookeeper, you're our grand prize winner!

What about the "guest workers" who don't go home for the required year? What about the citizens of other countries who will just ignore the whole thing and continue to come here and work illegally?

Why, whatever do you mean, Zookeeper? OF COURSE twelve million people will rise up as one, quit their U.S. jobs and leave for a year in order to take the first step on the path to citizenship!

:rofl:
rocknation

[Hotler]

5. Quit fucking around and go after the ....

god damn employers that hire them. We don't need no stinking new laws. Enforce to ones we already have with the same vigor has the war on drug.

[pampango]

6. That's part of the freeper solution.

"Build the goddamed fence.
Put sharpshooters on it
arrest all employers that hire illegals
confiscate their businesses and sell them
use that money to pay back the taxpayers that are paying millions in healthcare costs, higher insurance premiums due to uninsured illegals driving drunk and causing wrecks

do it now"

posted by shug 6/26/2007 10:58:44 am PDT

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26014_Rai...

What are we going to do with the 12 million who are here? Deport them all? Should we use cattlecars or would that bring back bad images from the past? Or we could wait until they become destitute enough (no jobs, no apartments, no education) that the abject poverty they left behind in Mexico suddenly doesn't look so bad and they deport themselves voluntarily. I just hope we can stick the repubs with the blame for the pictures of millions of Hispanics lined up at the border to leave the US.

After the 12 million are gone, do we increase immigration quotas so that many more legal immigrants can enter the country or are you against legal immigrants, too? Hammer the employers all you want but that is not a comprehensive strategy. What else are you going to do?