Why the Immigration Bill Died in the Senate -- and Will Keep Dying (AlterNet)

Why the Immigration Bill Died in the Senate -- and Will Keep Dying

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted June 12, 2007.



Hardliners, far outside of the mainstream, are using the "big lie technique" to derail immigration reform.

Last Friday, a small but vocal group of hardliners hijacked the national debate over immigration and, in all likelihood, derailed the effort to reform a system that Americans from across the political spectrum agree is dysfunctional. (George Bush has said he hopes to restart the negotiations, but most observers agree that a deal is not likely.)

The bill -- which began as a compromise that everyone hated -- was killed in the Senate, smothered under the weight of a flurry of unpopular amendments offered up by a small group of Senators, including some of the chamber's most reactionary, before the national debate was even under way.

The hardliners shot down the compromise before negotiations that might have made the bill widely palatable had begun in earnest, and they did so over the objections of the leading voices within their party and the White House. If the measure had gotten past them, hardliners in the House were standing by; The Hill reported last week that House conservatives were "ready to stop the Senate immigration bill in its tracks with a potent procedural weapon should the contentious measure win passage in the upper chamber."

The compromise's unexpectedly swift destruction reveals a little-discussed aspect of the immigration debate today: It is not an epic battle between America's two major parties, and it's not a grand clash of political ideologies. It is a debate between a supermajority of pragmatic Americans in both parties who favor a comprehensive approach to immigration control, and a small but extremely loud group of immigration hardliners who want a predominantly punitive approach to the issue -- with a focus on "enforcement" first and foremost -- and have proven that they will do whatever they can to obstruct any bill that allows undocumented workers who meet certain conditions to come out of the shadows. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/53843/

They will send Karl rrrRove to capitol hill to persuade or threaten people into giving them what they want. It has happened countless times. We keep seeing this pattern of bills that look good and sound like they have a possibility of passing suddenly going up in flames. Or there are those who they want passed such as funding an illegal war that should have never had a chance in a Democratic controlled house suddenly under the cover of darkness pass.
Then we hear reports of rrrRove making his pre vote trips to the hill and Crash Cart standing in the back of the Senate Chambers to insure that the GOPers vote to his liking.

Democracy is broken and the regime will have a free ride from now on!

NAFTA was the concept of open borders - and ultimately the absorption of the Mexican economy and its cheap labor into the Greater North American Enterprise. The Wall Street Journal is all for it.

The author of this piece is too terrified of being thought 'nativist' or 'xenophobe' or 'yahoo' to recognize that illegals are one front of the cheap labor war against the American worker (the others being offshoring, outsourcing, and H1B's). So terrified that he is willing to march shoulder to shoulder with the Wall Street Journal editorial page and their corporate globalist agenda.

'Comprehensive immigration reform' failed because it is quite obviously not in the interest of the American worker (and quite frankly a declaration of war against the American unskilled and semi-skilled worker) or taxpayer and a howl of populist fury smashed it. 'Supermajority of pragmatic Americans' ? I expect that kind of lying from the Wall Street Journal.

"a supermajority of pragmatic Americans in both parties who favor a comprehensive approach to immigration control"

unless it's the "close the borders" majority!

The real issue is that the bill didn't solve anything.