Barbara Boxer: Sensenbrenner is inhumane

[undeterred]

Sen. Boxer blasts immigration-reform bill
Wendy Leung, Staff Writer

During a trip to the Inland Empire on Friday, Sen. Barbara Boxer didn't hold back on her opinion of Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and an immigration bill he has introduced."It's anti-faith based," Boxer said. "It's inhumane. Sensenbrenner is inhumane."

Speaking to reporters at the office of the Daily Bulletin's sister paper, The Sun, Boxer said the border desperately needs increased enforcement, but once somebody slips past, the issue is different. Help from the federal government for education, prisons and health care is then needed, she said.

Sensenbrenner's bill -- HR-4437 -- would call for employers to check documents submitted new employees against a federal database to verify their authenticity and make it a crime for citizens to help undocumented immigrants. Boxer said a jobs program needs to be created for illegal immigrants that would help them receive proper documentation. She added that it is important to match undocumented workers with appropriate agricultural jobs.

"If they are clean and pay taxes, we need to get them on the path to legality," Boxer said.

http://dailybulletin.com/news/ci_3637849

[Gormy Cuss]

1. "to check documents submitted new employees against a federal database"

Oh, so this bill enables a national ID database in addition to all the other draconian measures. I hope the people of his district vote out Senselessbrenner next fall.

[Marie26]

27. You wouldn't know that, would you?

While liberals have been distracted & fighting, Republicans have quietly created a "Real ID" that instantly tracks & identifys every American. These IDs, I'm sure, will be cross-referenced to the enormous databases that the government is amassing through the "Total Info. Awareness" program & "no-fly" airline lists. Americans will soon be tagged & ID'd like a bunch of cattle. Once this happens, a police state can truly exist. Oh, you want to go to the football game, but you're labeled "suspicious" - can't let you in. You want to cross the borders to visit Canada, but have been "red-flagged"? Sorry.

And all this has happened, almost w/o notice, because people are too busy fighting over illegal immigrants. "Oh, well, we've lost any privacy, but at least those illegals can't get medical treatment!" :sarcasm: Reminds me of - "Oh, well, we've re-elected a war-mongering idiot, but at least those gays can't get married!" If I didn't know better, I'd think this was done on purpose. Classic diversionary tactic. They're like magicians - w/this bunch, when they're trying to distract your attention w/one hand, you better watch what the other is doing.

[suffragette]

31. Yep, Real ID already created the basis for a de facto National ID

through its policy of linking of state ID databases. And it imposed draconian measures on immigrants, particularly those seeking asylum. Sensenbrenner is trying to extend what he's already created and is using fear, just as he used it to get Real ID passed, to do so.

Another aspect of this is the Orwellian approach of getting civilians to take on a governmental function by making it a crime to assist undocumented immigrants. (HR4437, sec. 202) In addition the sheer inhumanity of that, there is the aspect of those who would actually follow this law needing to card people before assisting them and turning away those who don't produce appropriate ID. This would turn church workers, teachers and all manner of people who provide social assistance who would comply into a new branch of US-ICE. And this is what Sensenbrenner wants. HR4437 also mandates that state and local police would have to take on immigration control duties. (HR4437, sec. 220-225)
I swear Sensenbrenner views "1984" as a how-to manual.

Meanwhile, Frist and Specter have little discussed provisions in their immigration legislation that would shift immigration cases from immigration courts to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a court that currently focuses primarily on patent cases. This would likely swamp the court and delay and/or deny justice for those brought before the court. As a nasty bonus, this administration could appoint three additional judges. I'm sure they already have some in mind.
For more on that, see my post here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2188514

[Warpy]

2. Senselessbrenner is a truly evil man and his bill is unchristian

and if it passes, I will look for opportunities to violate it.

[sweetheart]

3. he really is an evil man

I'm shocked that such pond scum holds any office in a supposedly civil society.

He'd make brushing your teeth wrong a criminal offense if it served some way
to get more poor in to the prisons in his democraphically deprived rich-prison neighborhoods.

[MissWaverly]

5. Excuse me isn't he the head of the Judiciary Committee

Isn't Sensenbrenner supposed to be worried about the legality of all this, there are
no employers (GOPers) in Wisconsin that hire illegals? My sister lives down in Northern
Virginia must of the construction workers are latinos and I suspect many are illegals.

[sweetheart]

6. illegals are a way of life

In britain, the wandering people are called "travellers" and they
do jobs that nobody else will take. Everybody generally is nasty
to them, because they are disenfranchised and do not have a member
of parliament.

It is the same with the gypsies in eastern europe and our new
modern transnational labour underclass as well. These people are
not "criminals" but migrant labour. It is time we gave such persons
a way to do their business above board, given fair consideration to
the many millions of americans reciprocally living and working abroad.

This small-minded little ameirica thinking is our undoing. It is good
when people come to the US to work, they take back lessons on goodwill
and dissillusionment of silly anti-americanism bakc to their home
countries... it is the dumbest foolisheness on earth to do an
iron-curtain border AKA israel... and you'd think the aristocracy
would have learned.

I threw my fragment of the berlin wall off the cliff in to the ocean,
because it is no longer valuable given all the new walls going up.

[MissWaverly]

8. people will go where the jobs are

and many are willing to look the other way so they can pay cheap wages, but the solution
is to start using our brains. Mexico has discovered huge oil reserves, what if we help
them develop these reserves in return for oil contracts then there would be jobs in Mexico
and people would want to stay there. I saw films of people climbing over the walls that
line our texas border, we will not keep people out that way. I am sorry the world is in
such a sorry state and cannot work on its problems together, please understand that Bush
and our current Congress are not popular with us and I suspect that much electronic
trickery went on to elect this current administration.

[shanti]

13. exactly

if anyone gets the "blame", it's the corporations that encouraged it in the first place. this issue is all about the $$$ to them.

[sweetheart]

18. but people are coming to make that £££.

Its simply the physics of supply and demand in a marketplace.
The force of demand is pulling supplies of labour to arbitrage
price differences, meaning the best wage they can expect in their
domestic domain. Then your economic migrants are persons who
are underclass slaves looking for a free man's life.

I feel we can be more generous, looking at wealth as only valuable
if shared. If we close our hearts, then what christian nation
is there? Then we are shrewd misers defending our jobs whilst
bagmen are robbing us blind at the white house.

The only way we're gonna sort this out, is to introduce a whole
new generation of economics in an electronic economy that are able
to, using digital certificates, price the public externalities in
to markets so that the last free spaces of the earth are not
destroyed totally in a neeed to feed every human being canned
tuna fish. The externalities are much more than carbon, but
free space, unpolluted oceans, fish in those oceans!, land that is
not overbuilt on every square inch due to no value being put on
nature, empty, unfilled space.

[MissWaverly]

21. we have to see beyond winners vs losers

The current administration is arrogant bunch of haves and are only interested in enriching
their vested interests. They see nothing as a team effort. We truly are a world community
and have to look beyond the quick fix of an easy buck to what is better long term strategy
and better for our country long term. George Will basically said it today on ABC's This
Week, if we commit to Global Warming strategies, it will be expensive. So do we ignore
it because it is expensive and continue to put the entire global community at risk. How
ridiculuos!

[rodeodance]

10. Specter is chair of Judiciary.

[undeterred]

16. Specter is head of the senate judiciary

but there is also a judiciary committee in the house of representatives, and sensenbrenner is the chair. When Conyers tried to have a meeting on the Downing street memo, he turned off the microphones and marched out.

[shanti]

12. the midwest/east coast is now feeling

what california has felt for some time, and has adapted to. it's that old NIMBY thing now, that's what this is. racist too...

[undeterred]

15. He is at the end of his term as head of the Judiciary committee.

Re-elected or not he is done- 6 years is up.

And if the Democrats take back the House, John Conyers will be the new head of the JC and it will be a different country we're living in.

[MissWaverly]

19. Oh happy day!

I am so glad, I truly think he is another who has put politics above justice.

[High Plains]

23. Sensenbrenner needs to be concerned with justice, not just more

ways to fill prisons. Yes, he is head of the Judiciary Committee, and that's just horrible. All the more reason for a strong showing in the congressional elections this year.

Read what Sensenbrenner's bill would do, then look at the alternatives.

[MissWaverly]

29. he also made inflammatory remarks on POW's

that we are holding at GITMO, he said that they are not entitled to a trial, his son
is fighting in Iraq so just leave them at GITMO.

[Marie26]

4. If this bill passes, I will violate it. nt

[roody]

22. Be pre-emptive. Violate it today.

[Marie26]

28. I actually do

As a public interest attorney, I often work w/women who are victims of domestic violence. And yes, some of them are undocumented. I'm not going to stop & watch people being beaten, or even killed, because of some senseless moronic law. So yes, if this bill passes, I will violate it. They'll have to toss me in jail along w/the other 40+ million immigrants, nuns, doctors, nurses, & social workers who will become felons under this law. I'm sure the country will be safer for it. :eyes:

[JitterbugPerfume]

7. same old song and dance

blame the poor

and the poorer and browner you are , the more you get blamed


He is a prick --a real fking prick

[rodeodance]

9. Editorial: Sensenbrenner's crude language

http://www.madison.com/toolbox/index.php?action=printme...

Editorial: Sensenbrenner's crude language

A Cap Times editorial
March 24, 2006

We did not expect U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner to change his anti-immigrant position simply because tens of thousands of Wisconsinites rallied in Milwaukee this week to call for humane and responsible reforms to current immigration policies. But the Menomonee Falls Republican's cavalier dismissal of the massive demonstration as an "illegal alien rally" was as irresponsible as it was inaccurate.

While the crowd in Milwaukee was predominantly Latino, the best bet is that most of those present were citizens and legal residents of the United States. Even Sensenbrenner who is emerging as the House's leading immigrant basher ought to be smart enough to figure out that foreign citizens who do not want to reveal the fact that they are in the United States illegally do not show up in big numbers at public events organized to draw attention to immigration matters. Yet he dismissed the rally as a gathering of lawbreakers.

The congressman should be ashamed of himself.

[rodeodance]

11. "The congressman should be ashamed of himself." (Madison, WI)

[undeterred]

14. Great letter- he really is as cold as ice, isn't he!

"a gathering of lawbreakers"

[ToeBot]

17. She's one letter off, but I guess the truth would be impolitic. n/t

[LWolf]

20. Work ethic.

I think the immigrant work ethic, undocumented or not, needs to be recognized. They often have a stronger work ethic than the culture they are crossing into. In my experience, anyway.

I really believe that "anti-immigrant" positions are based on racism, classism, nationalism, and cultural bigotry. The immigrants, documented or not, work and provide services. They aren't slipping over the border to overwhelm the healthcare system, education system, or become criminals. The real issue is that they work for less; a "cheap labor" pool. Exploitation of workers, worker's rights, fair/living wages, and undocumented payrolls are better areas to focus on. In my opinion, of course.

[formercia]

24. I guess this country hasn't got enough non-voting felons. n/t

[Mr_Spock]

25. Inhumane Sensenbrenner is just a typical Republican

They lack the compassion gene - it's a very serious illness and they should not be making public policy!

[undeterred]

30. most of them attempt to disguise their bigotry

but Sensenbrenner comes right out with it

[Marie26]

26. Go Barbara Boxer!

:yourock: :woohoo: :applause: