Mike Littwin uses his column in the Rocky Mountain News for a look back at the immigration bills and the discussion this week. He writes, "I knew there was trouble when the midevening e-mail update came in from Sen. Ken Salazar's office Salazar, it said, was hopeful the painfully crafted compromise immigration bill would go forward - if the Senate could just get through the 226 amendments still awaiting consideration. This was all-too- typical Salazar optimism. Eventually - around the time the Nuggets-Lakers game was heading into overtime - the total had grown to 400 amendments awaiting consideration. So, of course, the bill was left undone. After all, Congress was faced with a Friday spring-break deadline - and there had to be enough time left to establish where lawmakers could go to give this matter further study...
"Politics, to coin a phrase,is the art of the possible. This bill is not art. This bill is not even remotely possible. The argument came down to amnesty - and how much amnesty to give Spanish-speaking, dish-washing, border- crossing, garden-digging illegal immigrants. Why should they get a free ride on the American dream when so many of our ancestors never once waved a Mexican flag? Sides quickly formed. The House, of course, was already on record as being anti-amnesty, having passed an 'enforcement-only' bill that would construct a 700-mile wall along the Mexican border and make felons of the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants - and also anyone who would offer them so much as a cup of soup. The bill doesn't mention how one might get rid of the so-called felons. I guess they would just disappear, sort of like the federal budget surplus did. The bill is at once mean-spirited and completely unworkable...
"In the Senate, they tried to do better. The proposal by Sens. John McCain and Edward Kennedy was the basis for a bill that passed the Judiciary Committee and then, after some changes, was embraced by maybe 70 senators. Then came the 400 amendments...
Category: Denver November 2006 Election
2:21:20 PM 
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