Times: It’s back

WASHINGTON, June 14—Senate leaders announced an agreement this evening to put a comprehensive immigration bill back on track for further debate and possible passage.

Senators Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader from Nevada, and Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader from Kentucky, agreed on a timetable for the bill and for a limited number of amendments to be offered.

The agreement, coming after President Bush’s pledge earlier today to provide $4.4 billion for border security, revives a bill that had stalled in the Senate and was all but given up for dead.

“We met this evening with several of the senators involved in the immigration bill negotiations,” Mr. Reid and Mr. McConnell said in a statement. “Based on that discussion, the immigration bill will return to the Senate floor after completion of the energy bill.”…

The additional money for border security is intended to assuage Republicans who have strongly criticized the plan as amnesty for illegal immigrants….

Bringing as many senators as possible on board is crucial in the Senate, since 60 votes are required there to overcome procedural hurdles in order to vote on the bill itself. With lawmakers, and their constituents, wanting different things in an immigration bill, support can easily erode.

Mr. Bush’s emphasis on security, backed up by his push for more than $4 billion aimed at “securing our borders and enforcing our laws at the work site,” plus continuing sentiment among lawmakers to give the bill another chance, lay behind the accord between Mr. Reid and Mr. McConnell.

Only a week ago, Mr. Reid declared with some disgust, “We are finished with this for the time being.” Now, things are apparently back on track, at least for the time being.

So, after all these weeks of traumatic struggle and of shocking education about what was in this bill, all that was needed to bring GOP senators back aboard was more money for border security?? Hasn’t it already been established beyond question that more money and more Border Patrol agents and more walls and more everything don’t mean a damn thing in themselves, that the only thing that demonstrates real intentions and real success is actual enforcement?

Do none of the Republican senators participating in this deal understand that President Bush, who is the boss of the Border Patrol, has made it crystal clear that he has no intention of preventing illegal aliens from crossing the border, until illegal aliens cease crossing the border illegally, and that according to Bush the only way to make them cease crossing illegally is to let them all cross legally? Do the senators not understand that this bill is a transparent fraud the aim of which is simply to open America’s borders?

No, they obviously don’t understand that, since they believe that $4 billion makes everything ok. They imagine, like the similarly imagination-challenged Lady Macbeth, that

A little expenditure clears us of this deed:
How easy is it, then!

The bastards—the stupid bastards, and the evil bastards, and the stupid AND evil bastards—are not going to do this to us.

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I didn’t make the point that apart from Busheron’s lack of any intent to prevent illegals from crossing the border, there is no connection between increased border security and the amnesty. Do the senators not understand that prior to any increased border security all the illegals in America get instant legalization, also triggering a flood of more illegals to take advantage of the same? Do they really have no objection to the amnesty in and of itself?

In connection with which, a reader sent this:

But Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who opposes the legislation, took a different view. “I appreciate the effort to fund border security, but there’s simply no reason why we should be forced to tie amnesty to it. If the administration was serious about fulfilling the border security promises, then this funding should have been supported all along, not offered at the last minute to attract votes to a bad bill.”

Josh writes:

As long as grass-root Americans and the political pundits that represent them cower at the idea of mass deportation as a fundamental solution to illegal immigration, then this bill has the chance to be perpetually resurrected. The belief that the only real long-term solution and fundamental right of the American populace, i.e., mass deportation, is off the table and beyond discussion as an “impossible solution,” means we will lose or have lost this battle already. We’ve surrendered our best arguments for protecting the integrity of America and its people from legal and illegal immigration.

I believe that upon resurrection of this bill that those that had a hand in burying it should be prepared to defend the idea of mass deportation or many of them are going to be left stuttering how this little tweak or that little tweak will make the bill acceptable.

LA replies:

I don’t see this. Real workplace enforcement combined with other enforcement combined with some targeted deportations would get the vast mass of illegals to leave voluntarily. There nothing that mass deportation achieves that attrition could not achieve.

LA writes:

Sometime on Thursday, hours before the announcement that senators had reached a deal to revive the bill, conservative movement veteran Paul Weyrich posted an article predicting that the bill would be revived.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 14, 2007 09:15 PM | Send