Americans respond to President Bush on immigration

An Open Letter To President Bush, from The Violence Worker

Dear Mr. President,

Sir, I've supported you these past 6 years through thick and thin and I have to tell you, that's is hard to do living in the People's Republik of Washington. People hate you out here. They get a hangnail out here and they somehow figure out some way to blame you for it.

I'm afraid, sir, that you've lost my political support. You lost me, not over the war in Iraq or the greater war on terror, but on the domestic issue of immigration. Your remarks over this travesty of an immigration package were uncalled for. This is where we part ways. From this moment on, you can place me in that polling statistic that no longer supports you.

Mr. President, you can call it what you want. You can wrap it in nuance and political doublespeak, but this bill is amnesty and laden with more loopholes then the tax code.

Honestly sir, can you really look me in the eye and tell me that any bill that Teddy Kennedy supports is good for America?

We need to control our borders first! Then we need to work on dealing with those illegal immigrants that are already here. We need to address local government and their idiotic policies of "sanctuary".

Mr. President, you and most liberals have it wrong. We are NOT a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of Americans. I'm not an immigrant, you aren't an immigrant and most people here today are not immigrants. There was a time in our history when we could take in the world's huddled masses, but times have changed.

So good-bye, Mr. President. If you had any political capital at all, it's now gone. You are now truly a lame duck. Amnesty is your legacy. --VW

Full Text of His speech is here
The Official White House SPANISH TRANSLATION IS HERE

Others:
Immigration man 2, (The Decider), Fore Left!
Immigration Bill Not So Popular, Cop the Truth
The Presidents Immigration Speech Translated…CONGRESS SHOULD HAVE THE COURAGE TO LIE, stickNstein
Bush Defends Immigration Plan, My Country - My View
An Inconvenient Immigration Truth, Blue Collar Muse
GA Immigration Fighter Succeeds, and Gov. Perdue May Kill Illegal Immigration, GA Crime Watch

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let us know at what level you would like to participate.**

Comments

[Western1]

I know, Debbie. That's the problem. Both parties are locked into partisan politics instead of dealing with the problems and needs of the American people. I frankly blame this on the GOP. Years of constant, unending attacks on Pres. Clinton, continuing even after he was gone, pushed the Dems farther to the Left than they had ever been before, and united them against the Republicans even though they disagree wildly among themselves.

I'm not saying he didn't deserve the attacks, but I am saying that they united the Democrats in a way that is unhealthy for America.

What we do, if at all possible, is vote out the loons in both parties and try to put middle-of-the-roaders in their place. We need to get some sanity back in government.

Rastaman
www.IslamaNazi.com

[Debbie]

Rastaman, it took us a while, but we're with you now. Still, The Democrats are worse, so what are we going to do?

[Rastaman]

Years ago I was speaking out to Republicans about this miserable liberal excuse for a President and was met with a wall of blind worship from virtually all of them. I was right then and I'm right now, and I can tell you that there is no satisfaction whatever in finally seeing many in the Party figure this out for themselves at last.

So very much harm has been done that it can never be undone. My country is damaged literally beyond repair by this stupid puppet of the MIC, this Corporate Clown. The damage continues to be wrought because the GOP refuses even now to put common sense ahead of partisanship.

That many of those we count on to represent the Right continue to support this traitor is extremely disturbing. I think our country is in more trouble now than it was in the Civil War or World War II, and that's entirely because of partisan blindness.

Rastaman
www.IslamaNazi.com

[Debbie]

Human Resources Rep, you say "They use fake job ads and/or bad faith interviews of American citizens to convince the federal government that they tried to find American workers first."

This is just one tiny drop in the bucket of illegal or shady dealings. It makes me so mad. The businesses carry a large amount of the blame for the situation we are in. Any immigration bill worth considering should have means to deal with the corporations.

Thank you so much for your comment and information.

[Human Resources Rep]

Along with the legal status that it would confer upon those who violated U.S. immigration laws, this bill also poses a grave economic threat to middle class Americans, because it would drastically raise the number of H-1B visas granted to foreign professional workers.

As a Human Resources representative, I see first hand how the H-1B visa and employment based green card programs actually work together to drive U.S. citizens in a wide variety of white collar industries from their jobs and even from their careers. To begin with, there is virtually nothing in the law that prevents employers from hiring H-1Bers for open positions even if qualified Americans are available and willing to do the work. Americans are routinely laid off and replaced with lower paid H-1Bers also. In these cases, Americans have practically no legal recourse available under current law.

H-1B is also a dual intent visa, which means an employer may sponsor an H-1Ber for an employment based green card for legal permanent resident status. When a company seeks to sponsor a foreign worker for an EB green card, they are required by law to demonstrate a good faith effort to recruit Americans first. This process is called labor certification. But employers routinely game the labor certification process for green card sponsorship to defraud even well qualified citizen job applicants in favor of low wage foreigners. They use fake job ads and/or bad faith interviews of American citizens to convince the federal government that they tried to find American workers first. These practices are common in non-tech industries as well as high tech industries, but HR people are told to keep quiet about it or lose their jobs.

I would be in favor of a program that issues a small number of self-sponsoring green cards for truly innovative or entrepreneurial foreign nationals on a competitive basis. But very few of the H-1Bers or green card applicants that I have seen in 10+ years even come close to being truly innovative or entrepreneurial. Most are just practitioners with skills that are actually quite common among the domestic workforce. The only thing special about these foreigners is that they will work for substantially less than Americans in order to have a chance to become legal permanent residents. Thus they are used by management to sweeten corporate balance sheets.

The prevailing wage regulations are supposed to insure that foreign nationals are paid the same as their American counterparts in the same job functions, but these regulations are so riddled with loopholes that they are a bad joke.

Since my work allows me to have access to salary records, I can tell you that the labor cost savings for H-1Bers and green card applicants is substantially greater than the costs of filing the applications with the government.

Citizens in all white collar professions should demand that both the H-1B and employment based green card programs be abolished in their current form.

[Debbie]

Joe Schembrie, I have not been happy with Bush for some time. I see that you are a Ron Paul fan. I never heard of him until this year.

[Joe Schembrie]

There comes a Bush Moment in all our lives, when we realize that the man cannot be trusted in anything he says or does.

Bush has declared that bin Laden is 'not a priority.' Then he shut down the CIA unit responsible for tracking bin Laden. That was when I realized that Bush is not serious about fighting terrorism.

Same with refusing to defend the borders. You fight in Iraq but leave our borders wide open? What if the terrorists ever figure out that they don't have to go through Iraq in order to attack the US?

If he's not serious about fighting terror, then what's the Iraq War? Smoke and mirror, lots of blood, distraction, I don't know. I just know that Bush lies, and I'm not surprised it's cost us two trillion dollars and created twenty thousand terrorists where there were none before.