Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : FREE AMERICA -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (916)	4/6/2006 2:43:51 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 14758

Reid’s about face on the issue is an astonishing reflection of his party’s desire to politicize every issue on the floor of the U.S. Senate in the hopes of gaining electoral advantage. Harry's change of heart Harry Reid has undergone an extreme makeover on immigration reform. by Tim Chapman Townhall.com Apr 6, 2006 In September of 1993 an ambitious young senator, fresh off his first reelection to that seat, took the Senate floor to discuss a contentious issue: immigration reform. With clarity and purpose the senator took a hard line on the issue. It appeared that no amount of political correctness or external political calculations could sway him. “In 1986, we granted amnesty--and I voted against that provision in law--we granted amnesty to 3.2 million illegal immigrants,” said the upstart. “After being in this country for 10 years, the average amnesty recipient had a sixth-grade education, earned less than $6 an hour, and presently qualifies for the earned-income tax credit.” Further disillusioning to this senator were the incentives the nation offered illegal immigrants to break the law. “If making it easy to be an illegal alien is not enough, how about offering a reward for being an illegal immigrant?” he asked. “No sane country would do that, right? Guess again. If you break our laws by entering this country without permission and give birth to a child, we reward that child with U.S. citizenship and guarantee full access to all public and social services this society provides.” “That is a lot of services,” he pointed out. Frustrated, he could only come to one sad conclusion in a later floor speech, “Under our immigration laws, cheaters tend to prosper.” Fast forward thirteen years. That ambitious young senator has now risen to the top post in his party: Senate Democratic Minority Leader. And now the Senate again is debating the immigration issue. But this time, Harry Reid (D-NV) is marching to a different drummer. “One crucial element of this strategy is to provide incentives for the undocumented immigrants already in the country to step out of the shadows,” said Reid on the Senate floor on March 30. Indeed, it appears as if Reid is now intent upon supporting a Ted Kennedy (D-MA) crafted “guest worker program” that his early 90s alter ego would almost certainly have decried as amnesty. Reid this week filed cloture on the immigration reform bill in an effort to prevent any and all amendments offered by conservatives that would strengthen border security provisions and weaken or remove amnesty provisions currently in the proposal. “We're going to make sure that bill is not damaged before it leaves the Senate,” Reid told National Journal this week. Also this week, Reid and his fellow Democrats blocked an amendment offered by Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and John Cornyn (R-TX) that would have barred illegal aliens who commit felonies from becoming U.S. citizens. This obstruction by Reid seems particularly hypocritical in light not only of his 1993 floor statements, but of actual legislation he offered that year. The Immigration Stabilization Act of 1993, offered in the Senate by Reid, among other things prohibited violators of immigration laws from filing for immigrant status. While introducing his legislation on the Senate floor, Reid said it would “rid this country of the burden of people who are known criminals who prey on the American public and become a drain on our resources.” Reid went on to promise “an all-out crackdown against the practice of smuggling illegal aliens into the United States for profit. Our lax enforcement of immigration and asylum laws has created what can be termed as modern day slave trade.” These realistic proposals are a far cry from the political opportunist that Harry Reid is today. Reid is no longer concerned about crime as he was in 1993. “Of course most of these eleven million pose no threat,” contends Reid. All we have to do is “shift the flow of undocumented immigrants to legal channels.” That way, “we can finally focus on catching the criminals and terrorists who put our nation at risk.” No longer does Reid see immigration as a potential economic problem as he did in 1993. “Half a million people come across every year,” said Reid last week. “The fact is, our economy depends on them and absorbs them. Some sectors of the economy would literally shut down without them.” In fact, as Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) pointed out on the Senate floor yesterday, Reid no longer even agrees with what used to be his own definition of amnesty. Sessions explains that the conditions imposed on illegal aliens in 1986 who were granted amnesty were more rigorous than the conditions the current Senate bill would impose in the Kennedy “guest worker program.” Sessions correctly notes that Reid called the 1986 bill “amnesty” but he refuses to characterize the current bill as such. Reid’s about face on the issue is an astonishing reflection of his party’s desire to politicize every issue on the floor of the U.S. Senate in the hopes of gaining electoral advantage. Not only is Reid pandering to the growing Hispanic vote at the cost of national security (as are many Republicans as well), but he is shrewdly positioning his party to capitalize on the failure of the U.S. Senate to pass real immigration reform – you know, the kind he proposed 13 years ago. Reid will be the first politician to schedule a press conference blaming Republicans when and if he succeeds in blocking legitimate immigration reform – count on it. In a Congress where words mean increasingly less and political posturing is the name of the game, this is sort of stunt is not surprising. Nevertheless, Republicans should not let the Democratic leader get away with this blatant hypocrisy. Reid must be reminded that he had it right in 1993 when he said, “We now have a permanent illegal alien population of 4 million people…That is more than two times larger than the state I represent, the state of Nevada--4 million people…Yet we are doing almost nothing to encourage these people to go home or even to deter them from coming here in the first place. In many parts of the country we actually make it easy to be an illegal alien.” Well Senator Reid, the number of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. is now nearly three times what you cited in 1993. Where is your concern now? Tim Chapman is the National Political Writer and Senior Congressional Liaison for Townhall.com. He also hosts Townhall's Capitol Report. Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com townhall.com

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (916)	4/6/2006 7:50:24 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14758

He reminds me of American Spirit. Harry Reid simply can't get his facts straight. Harry Reid Tells A Tall Tale? Power Line Blog of the Week Right Wing News comments on what looks like an excellent takedown of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid by the Washington Times. Reid, as you probably know, is embarassed by the fact that in 1993, he gave a fiery anti-illegal immigration speech and introduced legislation to tighten up the system. That, of course, is at odds with the current position of the Democratic Party, which now advocates making citizens out of illegal aliens even if they have been convicted of felonies (above and beyond illegal immigration). So yesterday Reid tearfully took the Senate floor and disavowed his 1993 position. He said that he changed his mind after a few days because his wife, whose parents were immigrants, chided him. It turns out, however, that Reid reintroduced his bill and testified for it in the Senate Judiciary Committee the following year, 1994. Confronted with this fact, Reid last night backtracked on his touching story: <<< Mr. Reid's office said last night that his conversion occurred after the second time he introduced his bill but couldn't give an exact time line. >>> They can't give an exact time line, I suspect, until they've done a Nexis search and figured out when Reid last gave an anti-illegal immigration speech that was reported in the press. powerlineblog.com rightwingnews.com washingtontimes.com