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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (10327)	7/25/2006 4:04:46 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

We WILL for sure have terrorists come in via our borders...Maybe they already have. Is Congress going to take the responsibility of the loss of life and the damage done by the terrorists? Financially? Or are they going to continue denying there is a problem....?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (10327)	7/25/2006 3:35:26 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Do Republicans want to be the anti-immigrant party or the antigovernment one? BY BRENDAN MINITER Tuesday, July 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT Earlier this year President Bush was shaking hands at the national Hispanic Prayer Breakfast in Washington when Spc. Lito Santos-Dilone, an American soldier who lost his left leg in Iraq, grabbed his hand. "I'm not a citizen of the United States, and I want to be one," he told the president. Yesterday Mr. Bush visited Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington to see Mr. Santos-Dilone and two other wounded soldiers sworn in as American citizens. Granting citizenship to foreigners who serve in the American armed forces is perhaps the only immigration issue that the president enjoys broad support from within his party. For the GOP, this might be reason enough to consider the risk of pushing immigration reform. A political party that is bitterly divided isn't likely to maintain a majority in Congress or reasonably expect to win presidential elections. But there is a more pressing question for conservatives: Given that the political capital necessary to push through lasting reforms is finite, can the GOP be anti-big-government and anti-illegal-immigration at the same time? Recent history suggests that the answer is no. There is no disputing that illegal aliens are a tempting political target. If there is one issue that inflames the right more than 12 million people in this country illegally, it is that many of them are also on the public dole. Illegal aliens cashing in on government-provided health care, education and even food stamps has done more to drive the immigration debate toward increasing border security and away from increasing the number of legal immigrants than perhaps any other single issue. In the age of the welfare state, there is little appetite among the taxpaying public to bring in more people at the bottom of the income scale. The temptation is to capitalize on this voter anger with anti-illegal-immigration policies. This is the route California Republicans took in the 1990s. In 1994 Gov. Pete Wilson considered reforming welfare too difficult and instead set about enacting policies to deny illegal immigrants government benefits--not an unpopular thing to do. But the results were disastrous for his party. By the end of the decade Democrats controlled every statewide elected office as well as both houses of the Legislature. In addition to being turned out of power, the GOP also saw the centerpiece to the Wilson reform agenda--Proposition 187--ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge--a decision Mr. Wilson's successor, Democrat Gray Davis, decided not to appeal. Regardless of where one stands on the get-tough approach to immigration reform, it's clear that the 1990s was a squandered opportunity for Republicans in California. The GOP ended the decade without enacting much in the way of meaningful and lasting reforms in the largest and arguably most influential state in the union. And with the implosion of the GOP, big-spending Democrats led the state to near bankruptcy. No wonder Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is unable to find a political consensus to rein in the power of the state. For much of the 1990s, the California GOP wasn't the party of limited government, it was the party of limited government for some. California aside, Republicans have a more positive example from the 1990s. While Gov. Wilson went down the anti-illegal-alien road, Republicans won control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years by promising to reduce the overall size of government. Just over a year after the stunning 1994 election victory, Republicans cornered a Democratic president into mouthing the words "the era of big government is over." Soon he signed into law sweeping welfare reforms. These reforms, though once controversial, have become so embedded in the political culture in Washington that renewing and even expanding them this year has drawn little if any objection from Democrats. Today the Republican Party again confronts the choice of whether to cut the overall size of the welfare state--by reforming Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other entitlements--or going after illegal aliens. And so far it appears the GOP is heading down the same road California Republicans took a decade ago. Faced with a tough re-election cycle this year, congressional Republicans opted to make immigration reform a central issue. Rather than lasting reform, however, what the party is getting so far is gridlock, or, worse, reforms that would strengthen the GOP's political opposition. Buried deep in the Senate's legislation--which would create a guest worker program--is a requirement that employers who hire guest workers pay them a "prevailing wage." First enacted in 1931 in the Davis Bacon Act to insulate unionized Northern contractors from competition with black migrant workers from the South for federal contracts, federal prevailing wage laws have long served the interests of Big Labor. Expanding Davis Bacon provisions to cover guest workers would set a dangerous precedent for extending prevailing-wage mandates to other private employers. It's hard to see how increasing labor costs to give organized labor a leg up is good for either the economy or the Republican Party, but then it's a predictable outcome from a divided political party that has lost sight of its small-government principles. This isn't a position Republicans had to put themselves in. Voters angry over the cost of illegal immigration are also angry over the steep price they pay through taxes for generous government benefits. Getting big government off the back of taxpayers once united the party and handed it the confidence of the voting public. Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays. opinionjournal.com