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Paul Hosse
Another Opinion
http://hosse.blogspot.com

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Obama never uses the term deportation. IN the Obama Administration, if you make it to the U.S., you get to stay. It does not matter if you overstay your visa or sneak across the border. As long as someone wants to come here, the Obama Adminitration is willing to support them. No one in power in the Democratic Party is willing to support inproving border security, deport illegal aliens, or do anything to control immigraiton. The idea that employers should do the job of ICE and CPB is laughable. People will immediately accuse the employers of profiling and the ACLU/trial lawyers will quickly sue any employer that trys to ask about immigration status.

I'm sure you and I will have to agree to disagree on whether or not we should deport everyone who's already here, but I do understand the concern about an ongoing porous border. It's disingenuous to say that we're potentially going to accept the people that have already crossed over illegally but stop the flow of illegal immigration, and then fail to follow through on the second part of that (which is what happened in the 80s.)

The government did comprehensive immigration reform back in the 80's and it was a massive failure. The government refuse to establish the enforcement and border control that was promised. Instead the U.S. went thorugh a decade of open borders and unlimited immigration that people did not pay attention to during the dot.com boom and the real estate boom. Now you have states like California with massive budget deficits, bad schools, and sprawl caused, in part, by unlimited illegal immigration.

The solution is not to repeat the mistake of the amensty from the last time. While the Democrats are proposing free college and free healthcare paid for by middle class tax payers, the Democrats are still proposing open borders and unlimited immigration.

There is no way that progressives can reconcile their hatred of sprawl and pollution with their support of open borders and unlimited immigration. The only reason that makes sense is that their hatred o Republicans and the middle class exceeds their ability to make sound decisions.

The idea behind the comprehensive plan was to get past the problem you mention, that in the past when amnesty was granted the govt didn't follow through with enforcement. A comprehensive plan would do both simultaneously- sort of grandfathering in the people who are here, amending the laws to allow for a reasonable continued flow of immigrants that we can assimilate, and shore up enforcement of fair laws to prevent massive influx that we can't handle.

But it didn't gain much support on the Dem side (I don't remember anyone blocking it, just that it was ignored) and on the GOP side the hardliners said that enforcement had to come first (and encouraged their constituents to loudly oppose the plan on the basis that history had shown that we can't trust the government on following through.) Plus, some of the hardliners won't even accept any form of amnesty at all-nothing short of rounding up every illegal immigrant and deporting them would satisfy those people- but McCain (and Bush, actually, I should give credit where due because he was on what I consider the correct side of this issue and expended political capital supporting this plan) tried to do was marginalize the extremists and get support for the only practical plan anyone has come up with.

And now, of course, it's being ignored once again.

I actually don't know what the Republicans were trying to do around immigration and I honestly don't know what the Dems were trying to do, either. But I recall (at least I think I do) McCain taking a sympathetic view of children born here to illegal immigrants…. and that I liked.

I'm not even sure of my own solution… other than it's a complicated issue, especially where it involves illegal parents with children who are US citizens…. We've given “amnesty” (or whatever it was called) in the past to illegal immigrants…. But then the government doesn't follow through on keeping the illegals out, so the illegal immigrants continue to cross into the US. Then both parties use for their own benefit the horrible situation (because it is horrible- I'm sure those illegal immigrants felt so totally hopeless in their mother countries to feel the need to leave their families and come here)….

And then we have the immigrants who do want to come here with their families but can't.

In the first link below the article mentions some immigrants who co-founded some huge US companies… including Intel… I think the US should be doing everything it can to keep obviously smart and motivated people who want to immigrant here to move here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/business/12im…

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/family…

Immigration is a huge and complicated issue and there is no easy solution to it. But I think that one policy would be to allow illegal immigrants the chance to stay in the US if they have children who are citizens, and as long as those parents are otherwise law-abiding “citizens” who are productive.

Believe it or not, but blacks do better in South Carolina than in Chicago. The same can probably be said of Detroit. When HBO wanted to do a documentary on bad inner city schools, they went to Baltimore Maryland to a city that has been run by black Democrats for decades and found a school where learning was virtually impossible. The did not go to South Carolina or Mississippi.

No democrat will oppose the union. So the people of D.C., and Detroit and a dozen other cities will be filtered through the appalling school systems to a life of ignorance and poverty.

According to your logic, the south which is full of “Right to Work” States in which unions are either non-existent or very weak should have high educational achievements with very low costs. Is this the case?

From the article, “We would like Mr. Obey and his colleagues to talk about possible “disruption” with Deborah Parker, mother of two children who attend Sidwell Friends School because of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. “The mere thought of returning to public school frightens me,” Ms. Parker told us as she related the opportunities — such as a trip to China for her son — made possible by the program.”

The article says the trip was “made possible by the program.” I saw no reason to assume the article was wrong and assume that what the article really meant (if it did indeed mean it) was “the trip was made possible by local businesses who sponsor kids (or some other group to sponser kids).” I took the story at face value. If it is indeed true that local businesses supported the kids then the article is distorting the facts.

Nonetheless the article was linked to and commented on about tax dollars being used to send kids to private schools, whether those schools are or are not affiliated with a religion.

While I certainly think more money needs to be spent on education, the point is that your (and my) tax dollars could be sending children to madrassas or Catholic high schools or Baptist schools or Mormon schools…. Even if tax dollars are not diverted from public schools those tax dollars would have been used in some other program and the sum of all those programs are causing a debt to the country.

If the US government has extra money to spend on education, then why not spend it on public schools, which would help more kids, than expensive private schools which only helps the kid that goes to that school?

Oddly though since you mention immigration- when the GOP tried to tackle it, it blew up. That's another case where I feel that moderates didn't give credit where due to McCain, for the political price he paid by trying to moderate the hardliners within the party on that issue. When someone within the party is willing to take it on the chin like that, why not try to help him even if you have some other areas of disagreement or disappointment around the edges with him?

That's actually a really good way of thinking of it…. And I think that the attributes mentioned, '”small government, personal responsibility, spending restraint, government reform and term limits”' are all good (well except I don't agree with every office having term limits).

So those are a few issues that the GOP needs to regain Americans' trust on.

But there are other issues, i.e. abortion and immigration that may be just as important to some people as these issues, and the GOP needs to come up with a cohesive, principled message.

The GOP doesn't have to reinvent itself entirely and a lot of their ideas are great. If they just had some credibility and didn't turn everything into a partisan hack fight.

I agree that some changes are necessary in public school, and I think some are stupidly administration-heavy. Teachers should be paid MORE not less, but that should be merit based. We need to be able to remove underperforming teachers and surplus administrators. We don't need to fund private schools. If they're so demonstrably great, they can apply for grants, or convince investors to ante up.

jwest. sorry, but I just trashed your assertion that no Democrat will oppose teachers' unions.