Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013 | 2 a.m.
It’s the beginning of the year but the end of January. I’m always thankful for every day given me. I’m also thankful for everyone I know born in January. From my brother, my dad, my aunt, Martin Luther King Jr. and everyone else, whether it’s by blood, spirit or acquaintance. I’m also thankful for President Barack Obama’s inauguration. I’m thankful for and love my brother, father, aunt, and the teachings and freedom given me by King, a peaceful warrior. I am also really proud that this president is going to free 11 million of our brothers and sisters, who are illegal ...
Mark, your words of thanksgiving are so refreshing to read. Thank you!
Mark says "I am also really proud that this president is going to free 11 million of our brothers and sisters..."
Maybe not
Obama's extreme proposal for illegal immigration reform includes poison pills.
----
You may need to thank Rubio for freeing the illegals not Obama
---
Obama's extreme proposal for illegal immigration reform includes teses poison pills:
- The Rubio Bi-partisan Senate plan requires registration, guest worker program, establishes a green card process followed an opportunity for citizenship at the back of the line.
Obama has issued EOs to ICE and Customs Agents for rules of engagement that prevent them from implementing enforcement laws. Obama want no contingencies, he wants to confer guaranteed citizenship to every illegal the day the bill is signed.
- The 1986 immigration amnesty law FAILED because there was no enforcement. Obama will NOT accept enforcement; securing the southern border, e-verify, Identification of illegals - as a basis of for starting the pathway process.
- Accepting Gay marriage contrary to the Defense of Marriage Act-1996 passed by Clinton.
Changing the Defense of Marriage Act is the only acceptable way to address this gay issue
Based on this it is evident that Obama is try to scuttle the immigration bill to keep it alive as a campaign issue.
In reply to Mark Wells; I will never fault a man of peace, however I believe your views on President Obama freeing eleven million illegal immigrants from the shadows of bondage has gone way too far.
I would never vote for a candidate or a sitting President who fails to secure our borders and blatantly allows an outright illegal invasion of immigrants into our country. But, this is not only a Barack Obama or a Democratic political disaster for the United States. George W. Bush and the Republicans were just as negligent and incompetent;
http://www.wnd.com/2004/01/22663/
Let me ask you, Mr. Wells; a family of vagrants enters inside your property line and declares squatter's rights in your front yard. The government orders you to provide these unlawful tenants with temporary housing, such as a tent, and also commands you to make available food, medical and educational services to these intruders.
Are you going to have the same outlook towards these illegal aliens as you do now?
Well, let me take this analogy a bit further. Several of the illegal aliens secure a job on a local farm. The illegal aliens are paid by the employer in cash. The illegal aliens pay no taxes and are still receiving the free handouts that the government ordered you to provide for these illegal aliens. How would you feel now?
Well, well, Mr. Wells, we do differ. You apparently don't care how your paid tax dollars are utilized, that is, even if you pay any taxes. I do pay more than my fair share of taxes and I don't like the game that these illegal aliens have played. This path to citizenship for these illegal aliens is most difficult to take, without you claiming that these same individuals have broken out from the shadows of bondage. How dare you write such rubbish and falsehoods about our country!!!
They were "free" when they left their country to come to the USA. Now, they just have to become legal citizens.
CarmineD
The bipartisan bill being discussed in the senate provides a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. the plan, proposed by Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida,Jeff Flake of Arizona and Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and Michael Bennet of Colorado has a chance of passing.
Last time I checked, Obama hasn't presented an Immigration bill to congress. The credit for the bill, if passed, will go to this group of bipartisan senators. It was a nice attempt by Obama to steal credit for the senate immigration bill. Politics as usual in Washington D.C.
Let's invite all the third world peoples to the USA and have them enjoy our safety net!
Some will remain righteously indignant about the fact that 11 million people illegally entered our country. Their anger towards the immigrants is misplaced.
The migrants came here because they knew that AMERICAN businesses run by AMERICAN owners would offer them employment even though that was ILLEGAL. These AMERICAN businesses would profit from cheaper labor and transfer the cost of such things as emergency medical care and education of the children of migrants to the rest of us. So, save some of your anger for AMERICAN greed. We have met the enemy and they are us.
The truth is, we need immigrants to fill jobs Americans simple do not want to do.
The five states with the highest number of illegal immigrants are:
California
Texas
New York
Illinois
Florida
The industries that most commonly hire illegal immigrants are:
agricultural
construction
restaurants/hotels/resorts
domestic services (nannies, housekeepers)
We need a streamlined green card/work visa process to hire immigrants legally.
"Illegals came here because corporations & mom & pop stores are greedy." What a load of horse manure! The bleeding-hearts in this country who blame the USA for the flood of illegals swarming our nation haven't a clue as to why they break our laws by sneaking across the border. Illegals don't come here because we offer opportunity; they come here because there is little offered in the country of their birth. I don't see Brazilians breaking down our doors to sneak in here and that's because they are no longer a third-world country ruled by despots with a government riddled with favoritism, nepotism and corruption. The truth is those who "blame America first" are treating the symptoms and not the disease. Clean up the scumbag governments in countries such as El Salvador, Mexico, Guatamala, etc. and their citizens would have no reason to opt to flee them. Under the rule of men, not laws, most are denied any chance to rise from the grinding poverty and, so, they sneak into the USA. We must quit subsidizing the tyrants and their corrupt practices! We should put an economic embargo on them just as we did Cuba. They are no better! We must insist they change their indefensible treatment of their own people and things would change quickly. If the USA has any resposibility for the plight of the illegals it's because our government turned a blind eye towards their mistreatment at home for decades. It's time to stop it and live up to our true values. The buck stops in Washington, DC, beginning with our crass, disingenious and uncaring politicians!
My Lord, two days in a row, sensible, sound comments by Freeman. Keep it up Re!
Future: Obama has endorsed the Plan that includes Shumer, McCain, Durbin, Rubio, et al. And says he will submit a bill to be voted up or down, on the record if they fail. The plan as announced by the 8 senators was orchestrated too.
Bradley, I agree with your analogy, but that is not what happened, plus your link is from a toxic website that has no credibility. This is closer to what happened:
There was a family farm with 10 brothers. 9 of them played by the rules and set up clinics and made sure there was adequate pay for affordable housing. The hardest working and smartest employees made more money and had nicer homes.
The 10th brother hired from outside the local labor pool, paid very low wages and pocketed the additional profits. When his employees needed anything he said "You're on your own" and he nudged them to use the services provided by his 9 upstanding brothers, including the Emergency Rooms, Schools, and food stamps when brother number 10 said "Sorry buddy, no work this month"
Eventually 3 other brothers followed in brother number 10's footsteps and now the total of employees and family members donated by the brother number 10's of America is 11 million.
Bradley, what does your plan do differently than the one on the table now, and what chance is there of your plan, if it is different from Obama's and the senators, have of becoming law?
Moo the cow: You should have listened to the whole speech, or read the transcript http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-vid...
Rusty, sure, that's what anyone is saying.
Carmine, are you rationing your words per post today? :)
Commenters Bradley Chapline, CarmineD, Jim Weber, and Jerry Fink all bring very valid points to the table, Mr.Wells.
Not for one moment, would I believe that Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr., nor President Barack Obama, advocate any person entering the USA ILLEGALLY, and continue to reside and work in the USA ILLEGALLY, which is a CRIMINAL act. If an American Citizen did that in another country, they would arrested, prosecuted, and deported, as it is illegal.
The thing to be thankful and encouraged over, is that our country's Lawmakers are compelled to sit down together and once and for all deal with immigration, and resolve the issue.
Blessings and Peace,
Star
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.:
"Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated".
"In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich. We are inevitably our brothers' keeper because of the interrelated structure of reality".
"What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love".
Good job, Mark. I'm thankful for your letter because it'll get all the usual rightwing suspects on this site (they know who they are) worked up and doing what they do best -- complain, which is always entertaining.
Like this comment, my crybaby favorite: "Let's invite all the third world peoples to the USA and have them enjoy our safety net!"
Mark's letter should also remind us that undocumented white Europeans once came to a new land and used brutal force to take it from the original owners, native American tribes that had called this place home for thousands of years.
BChap, Carmine et al neglect the role that American foreign policy and American corporations have played in the dislocation of many Central American countries. Furthermore, American drug policy has helped in the formation and maintenance of shadow narco-states. The vagrants derisively mentioned above are in that position precisely because we have created their environment. In the minds of these correspondents the notion of responsibility seems to be a distinctly one-way street.
Wow, Many letter writers have a 'part' of the truth, but few have most of it.
Illegals come here because American companies will give them jobs at higher wages than they can make at home AND because they cam get social safety net benefits here that they cannot get at home. That's the magnet.
At this point, we do need to find a path to make the people already here (without criminal records) visible, so we can put them under wage laws and collect taxes from them. BUT, if we start down that road without first 'totally' implementing a national E-Verify system, tough employer sanctions
and the deportation of those breaking the immigration laws, we will just repeat 1986.
Americans need to remember that the very powerful business community, the illegal immigration spawned 'assistance' industry, those favoring open borders and other groups DO NOT WANT ANYTHING put in place that would actually really control (under all circumstances, not just one where our economy is slow) the flow of people coming in illegally, over our borders. A GOOD E-Verify system could control the flow and these groups will fight that until hell freezes over.
That's the fight (over a good E-Verify system) that must be won before the illegals here are given a path to citizenship. It can be done and we are foolish if we don't insist that we get that.
Michael
Last Throes correctly points out:
"Mark's letter should also remind us that undocumented white Europeans once came to a new land and used brutal force to take it from the original owners, native American tribes that had called this place home for thousands of years."
I add:
The same was done to Mexico and Mexicans here. Look at this map of Mexico from roughly 1821 http://drtlibrary.files.wordpress.com/20...
Those who say our foreign policy helps create the crappy nations that a lot of illegal immigrants come from are correct. But the biggest problem we create comes directly from our voracious appetite for drugs. That's a societal problem we have and it is a very tough one.
Michael
It's nice that certain letter writers use the fact that we took America from the Indians and Mexicans, as a reason we should just kind of gloss over illegal immigration. We did after all, do what they say.
The problem is, as it often is, REALITY. There is an argument to be made that since all these people came illegally, while knowing it was illegal, they should all be sent home. REALITY says that's not practical. There is also an argument to be made that says since we took this land by force, we should ignore what 11 million illegals did. REALITY says that also isn't practical.
If we leave a de-facto open border system in place, where most poor, low educated and low skilled people are the majority of immigrants, we will degrade our own country. E-Verify is vital...
Michael
Another consideration is the role of Mexico. The Mexican government has been trying for years to end rural subsistence farming and move those people to the cities to work in factories (i.e. USSR and China) owned by wealthy Mexicans. When government aid to rural communities ended, rather than move their families, most men chose to come here to work and send money back to Mexico to allow their family to stay in their rural communitiess.
They will have to choose, bring the entire family to the US, or continue to send money back to Mexico. Either way, it is a bad choice, and Mexico doesn't care what these families do.
What absolute drivel. This is about 11 million votes from fools like you, and nothing else. Have some Kool-Aid while singing "Kumbayah."
Casler:
No one is saying to gloss over anything. Here is what is being proposed:
President Obama, Speaking at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas Tuesday, Jan 29th, 2013.
"So--so the principles are pretty straightforward. There are a lot of details behind it. We're going to hand out a bunch of paper so that everybody will know exactly what we're talking about. But the principles are pretty straightforward.
First, I believe we need to stay focused on enforcement. That means continuing to strengthen security at our borders. It means cracking down more forcefully on businesses that knowingly hire undocumented workers. To be fair, most businesses want to do the right thing, but a lot of them have a hard time figuring out who's here legally, who's not, so we need to implement a national system that allows businesses to quickly and accurately verify someone's employment status. And if they still knowingly hire undocumented workers, then we need to ramp up the penalties.
Second, we have to deal with the 11 million individuals who are here illegally. Now, we all agree that these men and women should have to earn their way to citizenship. But for comprehensive immigration reform to work, it must be clear from the outset that there is a pathway to citizenship.
We gotta--we gotta lay out a path, a process that includes passing a background check, paying taxes, paying a penalty, learning English, and then going to the back of the line behind all the folks who are trying to come here legally. That's only fair. All right.
So that means it won't be a quick process, but it will be a fair process. And it will lift these individuals out of the shadows, and give them a chance to earn their way to a green card and eventually to citizenship."
And here is the president in 2011 in El Paso Texas:
"So one way to strengthen the middle class in America is to reform the immigration system so that there is no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everybody else. I want incomes for middle-class families to rise again. (Applause.) I want prosperity in this country to be widely shared. (Applause.) I want everybody to be able to reach that American dream. And that's why immigration reform is an economic imperative. It's an economic imperative. (Applause.)
And reform will also help to make America more competitive in the global economy. Today, we provide students from around the world with visas to get engineering and computer science degrees at our top universities. (Applause.)
But then our laws discourage them from using those skills to start a business or a new industry here in the United States. Instead of training entrepreneurs to stay here, we train them to create jobs for our competition. That makes no sense. In a global marketplace, we need all the talent we can attract, all the talent we can get to stay here to start businesses -- not just to benefit those individuals, but because their contribution will benefit all Americans.
Look at Intel, look at Google, look at Yahoo, look at eBay. All those great American companies, all the jobs they've created, everything that has helped us take leadership in the high-tech industry, every one of those was founded by, guess who, an immigrant. (Applause.)
So we don't want the next Intel or the next Google to be created in China or India. We want those companies and jobs to take root here. (Applause.) Bill Gates gets this. He knows a little something about the high-tech industry. He said, "The United States will find it far more difficult to maintain its competitive edge if it excludes those who are able and willing to help us compete."
So immigration is not just the right thing to do. It's smart for our economy."
Obama has been consistent.
Now is the time.
All won't be able to make the cut as there will be the criminal element that I hope we can weed out and send back to what ever country they came from.
Of the people that do make it.And who are able to latch on to the American dream,and play be the rules I say welcome to your new found freedom and country that has excepted you and yours.
Comment removed by moderator. Racist.
I listened to and read President Obama's entire remarks regarding immigration. Here's the rub:
Some people still refuse to come to grips with the way our system really works. The proposals we are hearing now are much the same as what we heard in 1986. The amnesty went through back then...no problem. Border Security?.... not so much.
Why? Powerful interests that did not want to actually secure the border. Nothing much has changed, except now we have 11 million instead of 3 million illegal immigrants, and the forces that depend on illegal immigrant labor and make a living off exploiting the illegal immigrants, while 'assisting' them are more powerful than before.
I'm calling for the E-Verify 'first' piece to be in place and functioning well before much else is done. I hear the President's words, like 'we will close Guantanamo', 'health costs will go down with the ACA', just like I heard former President Bush say 'Saddam has WMD's'. Words are just that... words and when politicians speak them and our Congress remains corrupted by special interest influence, my 'trust' is at a low ebb... be it Republicans or Democrats doing the talking.
Michael
Yeah Michael, we should stay jaded and wait for your perfect, non republican, non democrat, truthful at all times politician to be elected to ease your low ebbedness.
Comprehensive, everyone has some skin in the game reform is what is needed.
Now is the time.
Gitmo is still open due to fear mongering and Obama reading the fear in the wind. ACA will lower health costs by, as mentioned above, everyone having some skin in the game.
Some people still believe that the people we have in office, will, if we just keep supporting them, do the 'right' thing. All we have to do is just 'lend our support and money' and not squawk much about the terrible mess we see almost everywhere we look and the self serving decisions that we see being made.
That ignores the fact that our legislative branch is totally corrupted due to the money needed to be elected and re-elected, and the fact that we have allowed a seat in Congress to be a career and that we refuse to enact term limits and public financing of campaigns.
In my opinion, the people that foolishly think we are going to get important things done properly under the current system run by the current elected representatives is just kidding themselves.
Michael
There's no doubt e-verify needs to be part of any reform legislation. There should be stiff fines for employers hiring ineligible workers. I would suggest triple the wages paid to the illegal worker as a minimum penalty.
Comment removed by moderator. Quotes a removed comment.
Comment removed by moderator. Quotes a removed comment.
The 15 million are free to GO HOME and stop stealing our jobs and our economy, our cultures, our society.
I honestly do not comprehend how anyone could compare the victims of the slave trade in this country (or any slave trade anywhere) to the people who have voluntarily entered our country illegally to live in the shadows.
Okay there is no correlation between exit polls of those favoring big government and Nevada's high school graduation rates by ethnicity.
Warriors of the heart.
Blenders of fortune.
Seers of soul.
Knowers of love.
Believers of humanity.
Assurers of the disturbed,
disturbers of the assured,
Destroyers of visions and creators of dreams,
to you we owe what we could become - the embodiment of our better selves.
Jeff from Vegas says:
ACA will lower health costs by, as mentioned above, everyone having some skin in the game.
Can't prove that by my paycheck. Sorry for being the barer of bad news.
Letter writer is a bit spastic ... Barack Obama Day? Really?
We Be in Ground Hog Day! More of the SAME!
""More of the SAME""
Actually I withdraw that statement. It's getting worse, a lot worse!