It's just interesting that every time less govt. is needed is when the Democrats are doing something like health care, regulating wall street banks, or the like. Then every time more government is needed it's for something that truly restricts our freedom like this immigration bill, or citizens being forced to show their papers, it's OK and usually comes from Republicans. Whether all tea party groups agree on this or not, the ones that do, certainly bring up issues with those that question the rationale behind what they oppose and what they don't when it comes to more or less government.
Both the Democrats and Republicans I associate with are thoughtful, open-minded, and well informed individuals. That says nothing about Democrats and Republicans as a whole. Often times a movement is defined by it's loudest members and the silence of the rest. In this case, the Tea Party is clear in it's definition of itself - not just by what the "radicals" say, but by what the "pragmatists" don't say. The primary cost of illegal immigrants is in education - I think Lou Dobbs put the figure at around 30 billion a year. Incarceration of illegals run about a billion and so does medicare payments. So that's as of 2006 so it's grown i'm sure - but we're talking 40 billion dollars. It should be noted that under Republican leadership, the number of companies fined for hiring illegals has dropped from about 400 in 1999 to 3 in 2006. Does it make sense to fight illegal immigration - absolutely. Does it make so by violating the civil rights of legal immigrants and U.S. citizens? Absolutely not. There are other ways. Better border protection, better treaty with Mexico to handle illegals who come here, bigger, crippling fines on companies for hiring illegals, and so on. But denying them social services, or using the police to find them is a very silly thing to do. It's not going to find more illegal immigrants. I'll give you a case in point. I was driving once and a guy on a bike ran a light and I hit him. I got out of my car and checked on him and asked if they needed a visit to the hospital - and you know what he did? He ran away. He ran limping away. They will just avoid the police and social services and be pushed further away from the law. They will live even deeper in the shadows. Carrying disease, being uneducated, and only being a deeper drain in the long run. You can't implement a short-sighted strategy. If you want to fight illegal immigration, take away their incentive to come here. Make it a federal crime to hire and illegal immigrant punishable by jail time and fines.
The problem with this solution is that you don't need to be a citizen to have an SSI or drivers license. Anyway even before the law AZ could still check on immigration status when they arrested someone by checking with ICE. Green cards don't provide temporary citizenship. That would require a Constitutional amendment as that is in the Constitution. Besides that though I personally find such a law to be both distateful and insulting as someone who was born in the US to parents who weren't US citizens at the time. Considering we are a nation of immigrants at some point all of us had ancestors who were born to parents who weren't citizens. Such a position strikes me as insulting and frankly against our ideals as much as the Jim Crow laws that said that if someone's grandparents couldn't vote then they couldn't. So in other words a government make work program.
Ron Brown, Jesse Brown, Togo West, Franklin Raines, Lee Brown, Rodney Slater, Alexis Hermann, Jocelyn Elders might disagree with this. And welcoming Jesse Helms, Trent Lott (no blacks in my fraternity!) and Strom Thurmond post-integration might have something to do with this "irony."
IT's not really that ironic. The administration you are talking about appointed a racist as the head of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice. It doesn't get too much more insulting than to appoint a racist as head of the civil rights division. In addition there were other racists appointed the Bush Department of Justice as well. When the GOP is appointing racists the part of government that is there to protect the civil rights of minorities, it's insulting, and understandable that the party would be perceived as racists. http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0901/final.pdf http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsme...r_called_voting-rights_official_black_and.php http://www.thenation.com/article/justice-bush-style
