Immigration Watch International (2)

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Lindsey Graham doing everything possible to avoid constituents

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has been leading the charge for amnesty since the beginning of the year. He is a member of the Senate's Gang of 8, which laid out their amnesty proposal- calling it a "pathway to citizenship"- in January.

Since all of this immigration reform talk started, Lindsey Graham has not held a town hall in South Carolina to get his constituents' views on the issue. He has not done a survey through his Congressional website on immigration either.

The reason for this is obvious: Senator Graham already knows where his constituents stand on amnesty. They don't want it. And he doesn't care.

The Senate's Gang of 8, which also includes Senators John McCain and Marco Rubio, has not actually introduced a bill yet. They set a self-imposed deadline of March 21st to get a bill written and introduced.

March 21st falls on a Thursday. For the two full weeks after that date, Congress will be on recess. This means two full weeks of town hall meetings, Congress on your Corners, and constituent meetings.

This is great! The bill will finally be revealed to the public, and the American people have two weeks to learn what's in the bill and tell their lawmakers how they feel. What a great opportunity for democracy!

Unfortunately, Senator Graham and the rest of Gang of 8 disagree with me. On Tuesday, they changed the plan. The Associated Press reported that the group will not meet their deadline, and instead the American people should expect a bill after the recess in April.

Senator Graham is being very honest on why they did this. From the AP story:

"The legislation is certain to be controversial and may spark passionate opposition from lawmakers' constituents at town halls and elsewhere. Such opposition helped sink the last congressional attempt at overhauling immigration laws, in 2007. So even if it were finished in time, Graham said it wasn't a good idea to release the bill before a two-week recess. "You don't want to leave it hanging out for two weeks to get shot up," he said."

Sen. Graham knows what is going to be in the bill, and he knows the American people aren't going to like it. He certainly knows that his constituents in South Carolina aren't going to like it. So, he is going to do all he can to avoid answering to the public.

Everyone saw what happened to John McCain when he held a town hall two weeks ago in Arizona. His constituents were furious that he is pushing for amnesty, and they didn't even know the extent of the amnesty yet.

Shockingly, Sen. Graham has no town halls scheduled. I tried to call today to double check, giving him the benefit of the doubt, but I couldn't get through to his offices. All of my calls went straight to a voice machine.

Senator Graham doesn't want to face voters back in his state. A state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. A state where nearly 15.8% of its residents are unemployed or underemployed.

He realizes that there is a huge void between his top priority- giving work permits and amnesty to 11 million illegal aliens- and the top priority of people in South Carolina - getting South Carolinians back to work.

SOURCE

Recent posts at CIS below

See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.

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2. 9th Circuit Analysis of Arizona's Day Labor Law Lacking

3. Five More States Submit REAL ID Compliance Packages

4. The Negative Hat Tricks of the Immigration Business

5. Fighting Words for Republicans from Notre Dame Sociology Professor

6. State Dept. Takes Small Step in the Right Direction on J-1 Sponsor Fees

7. Bishops Throwing Another $800K Behind Amnesty Fight

8. 'Tis Ever Thus: Creative Criminals and Catch-Up Cops, Now in Marriage Fraud

9. "Minor" Unlicensed Traffic Offender Kills Brooklyn Family

10. Illegal Immigration Meets the Wisdom of Juarez

11. Closing the Gap on REAL ID: 48 of 56 Jurisdictions Have Digitized Vital Records

12. Indian Body Shop Indicted for Abuse of H-1B Program

13. A Mexican Border Patrol? Former U.S. Ambassador Is Skeptical

New Topic Pages on the CIS Website

14. Immigration and the State Department

15. J-1 Nonimmigrant Visa Program

16. E-Verify

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Background

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.

The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:

1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.

2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.

3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.

4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.

5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.

6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.

I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.

Immigration Watch International (2)

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

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