johnny@.' johnny@. said:May 16, 2007 8:39 p.m.
WASHINGTON -- The White House and Senate negotiators have narrowed their
differences on immigration overhaul to a point where they hope to
announce a final deal Thursday on legislation that can be brought to the
Senate floor next week.Commerce Secy. Carlos Gutierrez was in the Capitol Wednesday evening in
an effort to resolve final details impacting agriculture workers. But
the more decisive meeting came earlier in a second-floor corner office
in the Senate Dirksen building where about a half-dozen key Democratic
and Republican participants met with Mr. Gutierrez and Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has spearheaded the talks for the
administration with Joel Kaplan, a top White House domestic policy adviser."Everybody in the room understood that tomorrow morning is the final
time," said Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.), who has led the Democratic
side. "Everyone realizes that if everyone in there wants to get a
resolution of this in a positive way, it's all possible.""Tonight's the night. We'll know by morning," Mr. Kennedy said. "If this
thing goes over the weekend, it's finished."The core bill, like the immigration overhaul effort that failed in the
last Congress, promises millions of undocumented workers already in the
U.S. a path to citizenship, something conservatives have criticized in
the past as amnesty. But to pacify these complaints, the new measure
offers a series of political tradeoffs that address other concerns on
the right: chiefly border security and chain migration.If amnesty pertains to the legalization of undocumented workers, chain
migration speaks more to fears that every new guest worker will gain
permanent residency or each new immigrant citizen will be followed by a
chain of relatives.To break this chain, the bill would alter current immigration rules that
favor families and institute a point system making it harder to bring in
siblings and adult children. Parents would also be capped at about
40,000 a year or about half the current level.In the case of temporary workers, up to 400,000 "Y" visas would be
available a year, and those who bring their families would be penalized
with a shortened stay in the U.S. But in an important concession this
week, conservatives have relented in their demands that all guest
workers be limited to no more than a single three-year tour.Instead, an immigrant guest worker could come for three, two-year terms
interspersed with one year "cooling off" periods in his home country.
This extended time, eight years altogether, would give the worker more
time to win points toward permanent residency and also establish ties
with American employers.The precise breakdown of the points was among the subjects in
yesterday's crucial meeting. Senate staff, who were excluded from the
discussion, must now fine tune the system to flesh out the conceptual
agreement. Republicans insist the motto remains "Temporary means
temporary," but there is a clear desire in both parties to have a system
flexible enough to reward workers who perform well for their U.S. employers.At the same time, a sleeper issue in the bill could be the tougher
employer verification rules that will very well impact American citizens
as they move between jobs. The whole undertaking is an immense
administration challenge for the Homeland Security Department, and Mr.
Chertoff must be able to deliver on a crucial "eight and five"
formulation central to the legalization effort.Eight refers to the number of years designated to clear the backlog of
pending applications for permanent residency documents, or "green
cards," from persons abroad or living here with a legal work visa. Five
refers to a five-year period afterwards, in which Democrats have been
promised that sufficient new green cards will be issued so that the
undocumented workers who have come forward to be legalized and meet the
criteria set can get permanent residency.That means it will take eight to 13 years for all the undocumented, who
qualify and have survived screening, to get a card, after which it takes
five more years to become a citizen. Added together, it will take at
least 13 years for the first undocumented to become citizens, compared
to about 11 years under last year's bill.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117935995904005563.html?mod=googlenew...
None of the [censored] in this article matters. What matters is the
republicans are going to vote with the democrats to allow 20 million
Mexicans to stay in this country,We would have been better off with John Kerry in office, he couldn't
have talked the so called republicans into voting for his immigration
bill.--
Tom Tancredo for President in 2008
For a Secure Americahttp://www.teamtancredo.org/http://tancredo.house.gov/
Naturally, Whites will pay for this tragedy.
ted