Criminalization of Undocumented Immigrants Came from Bush

[kpete]

Criminalization of Undocumented Immigrants Came from Bush
by Jonathan Singer, Mon Apr 17, 2006 at 02:57:18 AM EST

Late last week, President Bush and his Do Nothing Republican allies in the Congress began trying to pin the blame for the failure of the immigration reform bill on the Democrats, a charge that really isn't true. Majority Leader Frist and Speaker Hastert took the effort one step further during the past week by claiming that it was the Democrats who were responsible for the House legislation that would criminalize those who are unlawfully in the country today, a wholly fallacious charge that will soon be repeated in Spanish language ads paid for by the Republican National Committee.

In today's issue of the Los Angeles Times, columnist Ronald Brownstein -- a true Beltway opinionmaker -- successfully debunks the Republicans' attack on the Dems, noting that House Democrats did not oppose decreasing criminal penalties for unlawful presence in the country from a felony to a misdemeanor but rather "opposed an effort to increase the penalty for unlawful presence from a civil violation to a criminal misdemeanor" (emphasis original). Brownstein also notes one of the most important facts surrounding the debate over the Republican-backed criminalization plan: where the idea originated.

So as House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) prepared his border security bill last year, the Justice Department asked him to include a provision making unlawful presence in the U.S. a crime. Sensenbrenner, on the House floor in December, said the idea came from the Bush administration, and an administration official last week, speaking anonymously, confirmed his account.

http://mydd.com/story/2006/4/17/25718/4311
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-outlook16apr16,1,6553805.column?coll=la-headlines-politics

[rodeodance]

1. Good for the LA Times -so Sensenbrenner was just a lapdog again!

[louis-t]

2. Headline should read:

"Bush Administration Adds Lying in Spanish to its List of Crimes"