Jun 05 2007
More Poll Support For Guest Worker Program
Rasmussen does it again with another poll, focused on Arizona (a good bellweather for the center of the immigration debate), showing large majorities supporting a Guest Worker Program:
Just 22% of Arizona voters believe it is Very Important for “the government to legalize the status of illegal aliens already in the United States.†However, 60% would be willing to accept a compromise providing illegal aliens with a path to citizenship provided that it truly reduced levels of illegal immigration.
Even the GOA says the bill would reduce immigration by 25%. Of course, when citing the parts of the CBO report they like it is gospel, when it blows a hole in their arguments the immigration hypochondriacs dismiss the numbers as foolish. Rush did so today in a classic cherry-picking maneuver reminiscent of the liberals and their use of polls.
If this bill pivots on the guest worker program, support will shift. If we are left with another decade of the same screwed up mess we have now – we can thank the far right. They will own the immigration mess. And I doubt we will let them forget that. It is this or nothing folks. When Rasmussen asks that question and is brave enough to print the results I will be stunned.
AJ,
You’ve been doing all the cherry picking here. This poll and every other poll show strong dis-favor for the bill as is. The guest worker program is not “the issue” — indeed, most(?) of us who oppose current bill would go along with a guest worker program (not true for the dems who are against) — the key word in the 60% is “accept”. Border security, stopping the flow of illegal entry is FIRST & foremost what the majority want.
Why does it have to be an all-encompassing, convoluted, mess-of-a-bill or nothing at all? You’re claim that this is the only shot in the next decade or more is baseless. Yes, I know, you think this will fracture the repubs and basically take them out of congress & the WH perhaps for several years. Could happen, but I think it more likely that this issue will help the repubs because the middle is with them (us) on stopping the flow of illegal immigration as the priority. And I think the repub contender for pres has excellent chance to win, which means this will be one of the mandates for priority legislation.
In the meantime, thru executive orders and appropriations a lot can be done to steadily improve things (e.g. more border agents, more ICE workers, more UAVs, etc.). Who knows, maybe some amendments can make this bill workable, but we’re a long way from that.
thank the far right? you have to be kidding. if this bill goes down it goes down because 72% of americans don’t trust politicians to secure the border first–the whole border, not some pathetic 300 mile strip of vehicle barriers and assorted fencing with the rest to be promised.
now even the cbo admits that the bill will only reduce immigration by 25%–well there’s a big woopy do.
what i’m more amazed at is how little the bill supporters will sell out for. even john mccain in a “border enforcement freudian slip” stated we won’t build a fence around our country. oops!
Yes, there is some cherry picking on both sides I would say. But the point is the CBO report has always been used that way. I can remember when they used that kind of material during the Drug Prescription plan debate the same way. And btw, that plan costs less and worked better than its many critics said it would.
My point about the bill is that if the right can kill this bill then they should be able to fix it. If they have all this freaking support they keep claiming they have then why can’t they get a bill passed in the Senate and House that they can live with? I keep hearing how everyone agrees with them…..
It seems the only thing they can do is reduce us to the status quo and that is not a step forward, that is spinning your wheels. I for one do not believe that if they put all the enforcement elements of the bill first that they will even create the guest worker program, in other words I don’t trust them to do that.
However, if they want just enforce the laws then they should do that. If it is true that they do not need tamper resistant IDs and stronger penalties for employers in order to enforce the laws, then they should show us how that is done. If it is true that they can end illegal immigration just by concentrating on that one section of that one border, then perhaps they should explain to me how the rest of the problem will just go away. If they can really deport all these people without additional resources or streamlining that system, then hop to it.
I am not an ideologue. I just want a plan that can work and it seems to me that if Rush and his friends would put a fraction of the effort into pragmatic problem solving that they do rabble rousing rhetoric we might get somewhere.
I know this, I am an Independent and this episode has convinced me to remain one. I will not become a Republican if it is indeed the party of Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo.
Now after they kill the bill and leave nothing in its place but a gaping wound there will be the months of self satisfied gloating, Bush bashing, strutting, the I told you so’s and such as that.
And then eventually we will we hear the old familiar whine: What are they going to do about illegal immigration. And then we still start this some tiresome process all over again. But I don’t think they will get to play this game again. If they can not find a way to do something constructive this time around, I am not sure the Senate will even try again. Or maybe the Democrats will try once they gain enough seats to avoid filibuster.
As for the folks on the right, well, I have my principles too. It is not as if everyone who disagrees with them does not have principles. I have already taken several people off my book marks, I do not listen to their stuff on TV or radio any more and I while I have been voting a Republican ticket for some time I have decided that I will give Ellsworth in my district another look. He is in most respects a moderate Democrat and prolife and while I was going to vote against him next time because I wanted the Republicans to win back the House, I have decided that I will rethink that.
After all, they don’t want my kind anyway. That means they don’t want my vote either.
So now we will see the dance in the primaries when candidates like Gulliani try to convince a bunch of people that they are right as rain after which of course they wil try to go center enough in the general election to win. But you know what? After this little spectacle I am not sure the American people will believe that any Republican candidate can break from the Buchanan-Tancredo wing of the party. And if that is true then the Democrat might not look so out of step in comparison.
And AJ, we all know how Rasmussen feels about this, he will not asked that question.
If Soros really wants to run things, he does not need to buy candidates, he needs to buy pollsters.
Did I spell that right?
Word from the Hill is that this bill is losing support in the Senate and its support in the House is weak. And that is not due to a few on the “far right” but to millions of constituents telling their representatives they don’t like the bill and mostly due to the border issue – they just don’t trust the politicians to keep their word – imagine that….
Check this out. In the Washington Times today:
One of those defeated amendments would have required voters to show identification before voting. It was defeated 52-41. And senators voted 62-31 to preserve
special rights for illegal aliens to get ahead in the citizenship line,
defeating a Republican amendment that would have put them on an even footing with future immigrants for getting green cards.
“Support this amendment to level the playing field under the merit-based system,” said Sen. Wayne Allard, Colorado Republican and the amendment’s sponsor.
But Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, said the low-skilled illegal alien workers who are being legalized under the bill wouldn’t make the cut if they had to meet the same standards.
“These workers will never, ever be able to compete in a meaningful way,” he said.
TO GET AHEAD IN THE CITIZEN LINE? Why I thought theywere going to be in the BACK of the line. Smoke And Mirrors.
I heard Senator Jeff Sessions on C-Span Yesterday. You really aught to read this. It is important. And if you have acess to the bill, he provides a way for you to look up what he is talking about.
http://sessions.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=275456
it’s worth your time folks.
Like I’ve asked before: How are we going to pay for this, down the road? Check this out, and remember, when Government “Estimates” the “Cost” of something, they are usually off by 100%. Look at what Medicare was suppose to cost when inacted, and what it ACTUALLY cost after implementation. Same with the Drug bill, etc. It cost Double what we were told. Now look at these CBO numbers, and tell me How will we pay for this, going forward?
CBO found that during the first decade, the immigration bill would increase discretionary spending by $43 billion, while new workers would provide $48 billion worth of additional revenue to the government. (Over the next few days, these numbers will be repeated endlessly on radio and television and in Senate debate by advocates of the “compromise” bill.) But these numbers could hardly be more misleading, because with the exception of the earned-income tax credit and one smaller welfare program, illegal aliens granted amnesty under the bill do not become eligible to benefit from federally funded means-tested welfare programs until 2018 and beyond, while CBO’s figures cover the years 2008-2017. After 10 years, amnesty beneficiaries become eligible for nearly 60 taxpayer-subsidized programs ranging from food stamps to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
Roughly 9 million adult illegal immigrants will be given amnesty under the bill; 7 to 8 million of them will live to retirement age. When this occurs, 30 to 35 years from now, they will receive from the taxpayer an average of $17,000 a year in benefits above and beyond the taxes they pay. When amnesty recipients retire, the situation becomes much worse for the taxpayer: these people will pay approximately $5,000 a year in taxes and receive approximately $37,000 in benefits. The total net cost of the amnesty over the next three to four decades will be approximately $2.5 trillion, estimates Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Rector, who has done pioneering work in analyzing the effect of low-skilled immigrants on taxpayers.
None of this be a surprise, given the low level of employment skills these people bring to the United States. “This is a group that is 50 to 60 percent high-school dropouts,” Mr. Rector tells us. “They will never pay substantial taxes in the U.S. system. But you’re making every one of them, from the very beginning, eligible for Social Security and Medicare. And the worst thing about this is that the fiscal cost is going to come smashing into the Social Security and Medicare systems at the very time they are already going bankrupt.”
Now we have 623,000 people inside our borders who have jeered at our court system, who went on the lam after they were ordered deported — and the immigration bill will let them get away with it.
Not only did they enter illegally, but they failed to exit when caught and ordered to leave — and our porous system permitted it. Yet the Kennedy-Bush-McCain immigration “reform†treats them the same as the rest of the 12 million or so who are here “merely†illegally. They all would get to stay, overturning the removal orders of the courts.
I hope, and think, this bill will die a slow death.
This too, is in the Jeff Sessions Press release, which gives you page and verse, so you can follow along at home.
I hope those Far Right Senators do help derail this. You know, Collins, Voinavich, etc.!
Our Local Rep. Sue Myrik, stated recently that this bill would face a very tough burden in the House, as she said, most of the new Dem’s. ran AGAINST Amnesty, and FOR Border Security FIRST. And they face the people who sent them there in a very short period of time.
Steve, like I said before, show me HOW you are going to get what you want through the senate and house. Exactly HOW you will stop the madness that is immigration NOW. I need to see how you can make the changes HAPPEN. NOW.