IMMIGRATION DEBATE WILL HEAT UP COME SUMMER

by Amanda B. Carpenter

After blocking off plenty of time to pay off special interests for helping them deliver midterm elections, the Democrats are kicking the illegal immigration can down the legislative road until mid-summer when the weather is warm enough to ensure that hordes of protesters will turn out to support the bill.

Immediately after being swept into power, the Democrats allocated time to debate obscure lobby reform restrictions. Thanks to them, a cottage industry of catering services that serves meals on toothpicks is now available since giving paper-plated food to Hill staffers is one of their “no-no” new rules. Several non-binding resolutions against the war were then debated before reluctant Blue-Dog Democrats were bought off to support a timetable for withdrawal. Now, it’s time for Big Labor to get their payback with the upcoming card-check bill that will make it easier to organize workplaces through legal, public coercion tactics instead of secret ballots.

Meanwhile, the immigration crisis continues to swell. Temperatures are beginning to rise again and we’ll be treated to another summer season of news footage showing illegal aliens streaming across our borders to attend liberal pro-amnesty rallies.

Congress is planning accordingly for maximum political advantage. The Senate has blocked off the last two weeks of May for debate on a soon-to-be unveiled immigration bill. The House is planning to take up legislation introduced by Rep. Jeff Flake (R.-Ariz.) and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D.-Calif.) sometime in July.

The Gutierrez-Flake bill was supposed to move through the House in tandem with a revamped version of the Senate’s amnesty bill written by Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D.-Mass.) last year, but the four-way negotiations broke down because of difficulties appeasing Big Labor. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the AFL-CIO are fearful that cheap immigrant labor will threaten their members’ jobs and demanded unachievable wage protections for United States workers in the immigration bill.

This breakdown allowed McCain to pander to immigration hawks at a March 20 event in Iowa while campaigning for the Republican nomination for President. McCain’s sponsorship of an immigration bill with Kennedy, quickly coined “McKennedy,” caused him to lose a significant amount of support from the conservative base. In Iowa he told supporters, “Immigration is probably a more powerful issue here than almost anyplace that I’ve been.” As a result, the New York Times wrote that McCain was “reconsidering his views on how immigration law might be changed.”

Aside from Kennedy himself, there is little support in the Senate to resuscitate McCain-Kennedy and the White House has intervened to broker a new deal.

In a March 30 address to the Republican National Lawyers Association Sen. Arlen Specter (R.-Pa.) explained, “We’re not going to use Sen. Kennedy’s bill and we’ve been having meetings where the administration is heavily committed. The President personally has delegated the Secretary of Commerce [Carlos Gutierrez] and the Secretary of Homeland Security [Michael Chertoff] to sit with about 10 Republican senators for two hours -- 4:00 to 6:00 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the past several weeks -- and we have come up with a bill, and the cornerstone of the bill is a verification of the status of undocumented immigrants.”

The talks were led by Sen. Mel Martinez (R.-Fla.) and have included Republicans Senators John Cornyn (Tex.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), John McCain (Ariz.) and Democrats Senators Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Ken Salazar (Colo.) and Bob Menendez (N.J.)

Martinez said a final version of their plan will be introduced after Easter recess, but portions of it have already been leaked to the press. The legislation is expected to allow undocumented workers to apply for three-year “Z visas.” The Z visa would cost $3,500 and could be endlessly renewed as long as the holder would pay $3,500 for each renewal. Z visa holders would then be entitled to access emergency social services and attend primary and secondary schools.

In order to gain full citizenship, illegal immigrants would be required to return home and pay $2,000 to apply for a green card at a U.S. embassy or consulate. Once approved, it would cost an additional $8,000 to get the green card.

On the other side of Congress, a 600-page bill introduced by Flake and Gutierrez would allow illegal immigrants living in the U.S. before June 2006 to apply for a six-year work visa.
Titled the “Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy” (STRIVE) Act, the plan offers several ways for illegal aliens to gain legal status without returning to their home countries.

Spouses and children under 21 of undocumented workers would also be permitted to apply for a six-year visa. Non-citizen students who have lived in the United States for at least five years before turning 16 years old would immediately qualify for permanent residence. The Flake-Gutierrez bill also contains Kennedy’s longtime plan to give those who entered the United States illegally in-state tuition rates at all public colleges and universities called the DREAM Act.

Those applying for legal status would be required to pay $500 for a security and criminal background check. The Flake-Gutierrez bill also contains provisions to give temporary legal status to illegal aliens who have agricultural-related jobs.

Both the White House plan and STRIVE would require immigrants to take English and civics classes, but will still probably be labeled an “amnesty” as previous measures have been.

Freshman Democrat Rep. Nick Lampson, who took over former House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s (R.) seat in Texas, campaigned hard against amnesty for illegal aliens in his midterm election. Lampson’s spokesman Bobby Zafarnia reiterated to the Associated Press on March 24 that Lampson “would not support a bill that has a road to legal residency for illegal and undocumented workers who are already here.”

When the House and Senate debate their bills in late May and July there are sure to be hundreds, if not thousands, of illegal aliens and their special interest group allies camping out on the National Mall to pressure members for votes, just like last year. Unfortunately, for the Democrats and President Bush most of them participating are not voting constituents.

Despite all the attention paid to last summer’s round of immigrant protests these events were largely unsuccessful in swinging real votes for their cause. And now, even an old politician like McCain has learned not to pander to those who aren’t registered to vote.

AL-SADR CAUSING TROUBLE AGAIN

Books take over the office! Click to see more.

Our good buddy and radical Islamic cleric in Iraq Muqtada Al-Sadr is now going around saying that Iraqis should not fight each other or the insurgents, instead they ought to fight the Americans. Why is this SOB still alive? For years we've been told that this is the guy in charge in Iraq, that this is the guy we need to go to. Work with Al-Sadr and we can bring his people along...make peace and stop the insurgency. And up until now this policy of appeasement has gotten us precisely nowhere.

So now Sadr is telling his followers that they should fight the Americans: "You, the Iraqi army and police forces, do not walk alongside the occupiers because they are your enemy. I am here to advise you the honest resister hopes for two thing from God: either victory or martyrdom. But at the same time, the honest resister should not kill a fellow Iraqi." Well it's nice to know Al-Sadr doesn't think the Iraqis should kill each other. I suppose that's progress.

And so this is what we get after 4 years of "working with" Sadr. The fact is this guy's been a problem since day one and it's time for him to go. It's time for Muqtada to experience the Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi memorial bombing...and be sent to visit his 72 virgins in paradise a bit early.

Bullets, not words.

THE WAR YOU'RE NOT READING ABOUT

By John McCain

I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq since 2003 -- and my first since Gen. David Petraeus's new strategy has started taking effect. For the first time, our delegation was able to drive, not use helicopters, from the airport to downtown Baghdad. For the first time, we met with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province who are working with American and Iraqi forces to combat al-Qaeda. For the first time, we visited Iraqi and American forces deployed in a joint security station in Baghdad -- an integral part of the new strategy. We held a news conference to discuss what we saw: positive signs, underreported in the United States, that are reason for cautious optimism.

I observed that our delegation "stopped at a local market, where we spent well over an hour, shopping and talking with the local people, getting their views and ideas about different issues of the day." Markets in Baghdad have faced devastating terrorist attacks. A car bombing at Shorja in February, for example, killed 137 people. Today the market still faces occasional sniper attacks, but it is safer than it used to be. One innovation of the new strategy is closing markets to vehicles, thereby precluding car bombs that kill so many and garner so much media attention. Petraeus understandably wanted us to see this development.

I went to Iraq to gain a firsthand view of the progress in this difficult war, not to celebrate any victories. No one has been more critical of sunny progress reports that defied realities in Iraq. In 2003, after my first visit, I argued for more troops to provide the security necessary for political development. I disagreed with statements characterizing the insurgency as a "few dead-enders" or being in its "last throes." I repeatedly criticized the previous search-and-destroy strategy and argued for a counterinsurgency approach: separating the reconcilable population from the irreconcilable and creating enough security to facilitate the political and economic solutions that are the only way to defeat insurgents. This is exactly the course that Petraeus and the brave men and women of the American military are pursuing.

The new political-military strategy is beginning to show results. But most Americans are not aware because much of the media are not reporting it or devote far more attention to car bombs and mortar attacks that reveal little about the strategic direction of the war. I am not saying that bad news should not be reported or that horrific terrorist attacks are not newsworthy. But news coverage should also include evidence of progress. Whether Americans choose to support or oppose our efforts in Iraq, I hope they could make their decision based on as complete a picture of the situation in Iraq as is possible to report. A few examples:

· Sunni sheikhs in Anbar are now fighting al-Qaeda. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Anbar's capital, Ramadi, to meet with Sunni tribal leaders. The newly proposed de-Baathification legislation grew out of that meeting. Police recruitment in Ramadi has increased dramatically over the past four months.

· More than 50 joint U.S.-Iraqi stations have been established in Baghdad. Regular patrols establish connections with the surrounding neighborhood, resulting in a significant increase in security and actionable intelligence.

· Extremist Shiite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr is in hiding, his followers are not contesting American forces, sectarian violence has dropped in Baghdad and we are working with the Shiite mayor of Sadr City.

· Iraqi army and police forces are increasingly fighting on their own and with American forces, and their size and capability are growing. Iraqi army and police casualties have increased because they are fighting more.

Despite these welcome developments, we should have no illusions. This progress is not determinative. It is simply encouraging. We have a long, tough road ahead in Iraq. But for the first time since 2003, we have the right strategy. In Petraeus, we have a military professional who literally wrote the book on fighting this kind of war. And we will have the right mix and number of forces.

There is no guarantee that we will succeed, but we must try. As every sensible observer has concluded, the consequences of failure in Iraq are so grave and so threatening for the region, and to the security of the United States, that to refuse to give Petraeus's plan a chance to succeed would constitute a tragic failure of American resolve. I hope those who cite the Iraq Study Group's conclusions note that James Baker wrote on this page last week that we must have bipartisan support for giving the new strategy time to succeed. This is not a moment for partisan gamesmanship or for one-sided reporting. The stakes are just too high.

WANT TO PURSUE HAPPINESS? LEARN ENGLISH

Immigrants deserve the government's strongest effort to give them opportunities to acquire English.

By Newt Gingrich, NEWT GINGRICH, House speaker from 1995 to 1999, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America."

I'VE BEEN TAKING lessons to learn Spanish for a while now, and it's given me a new understanding of how difficult it is to learn a new language. And there's no question that if I lived in a Spanish-speaking country and had to study and work and shop in Spanish as I struggled to learn the language, the challenges would be greater. But there's also no doubt that the rewards would be greater too. Mastering the language of a country opens doors of opportunity, plain and simple.

In the United States, English is by no means our only language, but it is the language of economic success and upward mobility. More important, it is the language of our national unity and political discourse. And just as opportunity is the birthright of all native-born Americans, it becomes the inheritance of all new Americans. But this is nothing more than a nice sentiment if we don't do all we can to encourage and help new Americans learn English.

Among the ways we can do this as quickly as possible is to replace bilingual education programs in our public schools with intensive English instruction and abolish the federal mandates requiring multilingual ballots and government documents.

Passions sometimes run high when the topic is English. I learned that firsthand last weekend because of a poor choice of words when talking about this subject. That's understandable. After all, there are 31 million Spanish speakers in the United States. There are also millions of Americans whose first language is Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi or Farsi, to name just a few. They are all justifiably proud of their language and their cultural heritage.

Still, it's important that we not allow passion to rule the debate. Too often, sincere expressions of support for English as our unifying language are interpreted as a lack of support for welcoming and respecting new Americans. For example, those who support "English-first" are often mistakenly portrayed as supporters of "English-only." English-first supporters believe that English should be the official language of the government but that other languages are fine in communities and commerce. In contrast, English-only advocates want to outlaw all languages other than English.

Clearly, these two positions are very different. Promoting English-first is not — and should not be — disrespectful of other languages. In fact, supporting English instruction for immigrants demonstrates our confidence in their ability to pursue happiness here and contribute to their families, communities and new country.

As a part of any comprehensive immigration reform, we should renew our commitment to making sure that all new immigrants have the opportunity to learn English. In public schools, children should have intensive English instruction rather than bilingual classes. For adults, we can adopt something similar to a program Israel has for its new immigrants. There, every new resident is entitled to 500 hours of intensive Hebrew language instruction paid for by the government. And along with intensive English language instruction, they could receive U.S. history and civics training.

Equally important, we must abolish federal rules requiring that government documents — including ballots — be printed in multiple languages. These multilingual documents discourage immigrants from learning English as rapidly as possible, limiting their ability to engage in a truly common political culture. Rather than expanding opportunities for new Americans, these mandates help limit them.

We must never lose sight of the self-evident truths affirmed at our founding: that we are all created equal — citizen and noncitizen alike — and that we are each endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we are to live out these truths, new immigrants deserve our respect, not our condescension. They deserve the opportunity to pursue happiness in the U.S. that comes with speaking English.

Meanwhile, I'm going to keep working on my Spanish. It's hard, but I'm making progress — poco a poco.

NANCY'S FOLLIES

by Martha Zoller

We wanted to give her a chance. After all, she is the duly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, but we should have known better. First, it was the so-called 5 day work week which never materialized. In fact, the Speaker’s idea of a full day in session is something akin to a working lunch in most circles. Then, there was the “First 100 Hours” with a clock that stopped and started more than the last two minutes of a football game with timeouts left. Then there was the hiring of extra lawyers, outside the government, to help with all the new investigations. If there is one place you shouldn’t need any more lawyers, it’s on Capitol Hill. The list goes on and it all can be chalked up to pure politics.

Nancy Pelosi wasn’t dangerous until she started meddling in the execution of the Global War on Terror, a phrase that Democrats don’t want to use anymore as if not using the words makes the threat go away, through convoluted votes on “supporting the troops without supporting the war.” If she actually talked to active duty military personnel, she might learn something about the men and women who serve this great nation. Instead, when the president exercises his constitutional authority by warning Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid that he will veto any bill for troop support that has artificial deadlines or strings attached to the money, Ms. Pelosi responded with the condescending and disrespectful taunt, “Calm down with the threats, there's a new Congress in town…We respect your constitutional role, we want you to respect ours." It is not the constitutional role of the House of Representatives to wage war. With all the throwing around of the Constitution by the left, you would think they have read it. The Congress (the House and the Senate) is the branch of government co-equal to the Executive Branch. Speaker Pelosi is not a co-equal to the President of the United States.

Apparently, Nancy Pelosi thinks more of dictators than our fighting men and women. I have made two trips to Kuwait and Iraq (July 2005 and January 2007). Her first trip to Baghdad after becoming Speaker of the House was about the same time I was in Baghdad in January. She didn’t meet with the troops. She flew in and out for photo ops within controlled circumstances. My guess is, she didn’t want to risk sitting practically by herself in the mess hall like Senator John Kerry did when he visited in the fall. That was a sad sight indeed. She has no problem going to our enemy, Syria or advocating for a National Holiday for Cesar Chavez. Who is this woman’s constituency; it’s clearly not average Americans.

She doesn’t understand Arab culture either. You would think that 5 and a half years after 9/11, Nancy Pelosi would understand our enemy. She’s been in the leadership all of that time and has been privy to the information about the culture. Isn’t that what leftists always want us to do, understand other cultures? I have been to Iraq twice and dined with Iraqi women and talked to Arab women from various backgrounds. Brigitte Gabriel, author of “Because They Hate,” commented that Nancy Pelosi’s actions will be seen by the “Arab street” as going behind the back of a man (George W. Bush) in charge to further he own agenda. She won’t be seen as a reasonable person, she will be seen as a woman who doesn’t know her place. Terrorist have praised her but they won’t take her seriously.

Again the left shows that they don't want America to win, they want their own
agenda to win, which is not an American agenda. Look at the world today;. There is violence in Somalia and Mogadishu today because we didn’t finish the job in 1993. Lebanon continues to be unstable because we didn’t finish the job there. We are back in Iraq today continuing the Global War on Terror because we didn’t recognize the threat and finish the job in the first Gulf War. If we do not beat back evil completely, we will be fighting this battle again in a few years. History teaches this lesson and if Ms. Pelosi understood the history beyond the last election looked farther ahead than the next election, then she would understand that. We wanted to give her a chance but now that the party is over it’s time to get back in the trenches to communicate the truth to the American people. We must win this Global War on Terror; this war against radical Islam. Defeat is not an option.

JOHN DOE AT DALLAS LOVE FIELD

By Michelle Malkin

Someone saw something and said something. No doubt CAIR's lawyers are getting ready to sue the John Does who spoke up when they saw this suspicious activity. Via DMN:

Dallas police and federal terrorism officials are investigating two women, both dressed in camouflage pants under their traditional Muslim robes and scarves, who were seen conducting what appeared to be surveillance and acting suspiciously at Dallas Love Field.

One of the women, Kimberly "Asma" Al-Homsi, 42, of Arlington, who is on probation for a 2005 Garland road rage incident involving a fake grenade, is said to have long-range assault rifle and explosives training, according to a Dallas police intelligence bulletin issued March 5.

"I'm a trained sniper and proud of it," Ms. Al-Homsi said in an interview Thursday after first refusing to comment on whether she has any terrorism ties. She then said no...

...On the afternoon of Feb. 25, Ms. Al-Homsi and a friend who could not be reached for comment, Aisha Abdul-Rahman Hamad, 50, of Irving, were spotted at Love Field wearing Muslim robes and camouflage pants and "acting suspiciously," the bulletin states. The surveillance video shows one of the women walking back and forth, apparently pacing off distances.

When confronted, the women told officials they were looking for the Frontiers of Flight museum. They left in a red Honda. Descriptions of the incident and the car were circulated at the airport.

Two days later, the museum executive director was leaving for the evening when he noticed the Honda parked facing the runway. A woman, later identified as Ms. Al-Homsi, was sitting on the hood, looking through binoculars at the airplanes. He told the women the museum was closing, and they left.

Dallas officers stopped the car nearby, but the women refused to let police search their car, , according to a police report. The women had digital camera memory cards, binoculars, a flashlight and several lighters on them.

***

Elsewhere in Texas, a Khomeini apologist imam gives an invocation before the state Senate.