I picked this up off of twitter just now, and I came with an impending sense of dread.

I was wrong. This is a GOOD idea, at least at first blush. I want to see how exactly the legislation would be written, but that’s a solid idea

Think about it — the people who start businesses in America assimilate faster in some areas (language, monetary ties) by necessity. And isn’t that what conservatives really want from immigrants from a societal standpoint? Then, with the added benefit of jobs…hum, this wouldn’t be a difficult sell at all…

I totally agree with this post. The GOP needs to position themselves as the real party of immigration. The party that welcomes those who wish to come here to work and contribute. The democrats only view immigrants as votes for re-election. As a party, I think they could care less about the immigrants themselves. The GOP needs to show that we are the party that stands for and represents those who wish to make something of themselves, and immigration is a wonderful platform to show that by. Plus, is there anything more American than someone immigrating here and succeeding honestly?

In Para 3 I assume you meant

The GOP is said to be absolutely opposed to immigration in all cases.

Any intelligent reader will figure that out–not that I would know–but with your high visibility a correction might keep a lot of folks from going ballistic…

The Dems’ proposed legislation is intended to fail and attain two goals:

1. Give so-called moderates who vote against it cover for their previous cap and trade and likely healthcare support and go home and tell their constituents they stood up to Obama. The calculation is tha thet voters will remember the last thing they did.

2. Placate the Hispanic and immigration lobbys with claims of “we did all we could” to keep them in line.

Your ideas have merit, therefore, they never will be part of any Democratic legislation that will be advanced soley for the purpose of failure.. I have long felt that immigration should be dictated by what is needed for the country, not for individual gratification. You and Barone are correct about what should drive immigration policy, national interests. But those who will introduce this legislation do not share your values and just want a wedge and cover, no mean feat but something they will need to be called on..

This is something Major Garret discussed years ago in his co-authored book, “The 10 Biggest Lies In Politics”, i.e., that America prospers when it allows immigrants of workers with skills and knowledge beneficial to America.

Glad to hear some fellow conservatives supporting this idea also!

I don’t get it, why people do keep insisting that conservatives like are presumed to oppose immigration in all cases? This is stupid, and quite offending to my senses, if I may say so. Of course, conservatives support LEGAL immigration.

My father fled Hungary from the communist government in 1969, but he arrived here LEGALLY in America. Right now, illegals are pouring through the borders, and I’m pretty sure that’s something my father would find offending. He did it the hard way, so every other immigrant should do the same thing.

GOP should emphasize it’s all for legal immigration, but oppose extended family immigration for illegals, amnesty for illegals, and downsizing of border patrols or ending the construction on the border walls.

I don’t get it, why people do keep insisting that conservatives like are presumed to oppose immigration in all cases? This is stupid, and quite offending to my senses, if I may say so. Of course, conservatives support LEGAL immigration.

My father fled Hungary from the communist government in 1969, but he arrived here LEGALLY in America. Right now, illegals are pouring through the borders, and I’m pretty sure that’s something my father would find offending. He did it the hard way, so every other immigrant should do the same thing.

GOP should emphasize it’s all for legal immigration, but oppose extended family immigration for illegals, amnesty for illegals, and downsizing of border patrols or ending the construction on the border walls.

All immigration, by itself, is economically positive since people don’t go where there is no work for them (and no one else to do it).

The problem is the welfare state giving them incentive to come where there is not enough work / oppotunity to support them.  Free medical care.  Free tuition. Public housing.  Et stupid cetera.

Deciding who can come here based on economic viability is just more command economy manipulation.

Our position should be to deny illegals government benefits (beyond humanitarian stop-the-bleeding health care).   Then let as many people come who can come, as long as they aren’t our enemies.

Tall fence, wide gate.

IMHO, the GOP might clumsily come out and say that they favor immigrants from say, entrepreneurial cultures.

I’m not at all disagreeing with the idea that cultures are different, and some cultures have more entrepreneurial inclination than others, but the GOP could easily turn off a lot of Hispanic voters by blatantly reminding them of that.

Whether or not that would alienate more people than it would please is a question I really can’t answer.

I know many high-skilled, white-collar workers that really resent it when firms bring in foreign workers to do jobs for pennies on the dollars, and these are Republican voters.

I agree that if someone made me choose between high skilled vs low skilled immigrants, I would of course choose high-skilled, but why do we need to expand any immigration?

If the Republican Party looks like it’s aiding and abetting firms that are canning high-skilled Americans who were born here in order to hire skilled foreign workers for pennies on the dollar, it really into the Democrats hands of not caring about the middle class and only about corporation’s bottom. It’s really no different than outsourcing. You’re going to see traditional Republican voters running into the arms of Democrats in order to protect their jobs.

Right now, the US has no business expanding immigration in any form, legal or illegal. I can easily see the unemployment rate exceeding 12%. When you grant someone a visa in order to work here, that’s one less job for an American citizen. When you have close to full employment, that’s when it makes sense to look at granting visas for skilled workers.

The smart politics for the Republican Party would be to oppose any increase in immigration and to say hell no to any form of amnesty, particularly when our economy is in shambles. I don’t think we should push for anything crazy like a moratorium on all legal immigration, but wanting to expand immigration is really bad politics right now. We have PLENTY of immigrants making their way into this country in both good times and bad.

is to divide the GOP right in the thick of the campaign. Right now, the Right is intensely united and very active. They aren’t doing this to placate the hispanics or to make the GOP look anti-immigrant. They are doing it to divid the party… or at least those in Congress.

I’m opposed to illegal immigration but I notice that in some places on the border with Mexico it’s not really good to have a fence. A lot of policy in the way we handle legal immigration has caused much of the problem. The only real way to fix it, is to stop making it expensive to do it legally and make it easy for those in their countries to file legal paperwork to become citizens. Amnesty isn’t a good way to do things and neither is making the price to become a citizen quite high.

Am I dreaming or did I just read these wackos are now putting a bust of murderous Joe Stalin at the D-Day Museum? What is going on here?

that the gop couldn’t find their a$$ with both hands. sorry, facts are a funny thing.

let’s use this health care “crisis” for example. is there ANYONE who is really completely satisfied with all aspects of their health ins/care situation. no. most people would LOVE to have the ability to shop nationwide for coverage, so they could tailor their plan. or, they would like to purchase it themselves, with the same tax benefits that corps get. or just buy a catastrophic care plan, to cover the worst scenarios cheaply, and pay for more regular care out-of-pocket. gee, didn’t the gop have control of the white house, and both houses of congress? yeah, i thought so.

so, why was none of this ever done? you mean they couldn’t get off their collective fat a$$es to get this done for the [people? there’s our problem folks, they didn’t do $hit when they had the chance.they have zero credibility with me, and a lot of those like me. when i hear them screaming about spending, it’s all i can do to not throw my satellite radio out the window. bush began a lot of this crap,0bama just put it into hyperdrive!
tarp-bush
gm bailout-bush
choosing which firms were “too big to fail”(lehman,bears stearns,agi,goldman-sachs)-bush!
not at least trying to cut the budget to pay for the wars(or just to cut for general principle)-bush.

I remember a decade or so ago when I was proud to be a member of “the color blind party”. The Republican Party eschewed identity politics and proudly welcomed anybody regardless of race or ethnicity. All they had to do was embrace our principles.

I HATED the Bush/Rove strategy of playing identity politics with Hispanics. I have no problem with reaching out to minority groups and communicating our principles and letting them know they are welcome to join us. But, if like the Bush/Rove Strategy, this reaching out involves making promises and particularly promises that are contrary to our principles like promising amnesty, then it is a terrible strategy. First, it makes us no better that the Democrats and second it is guaranteed to be a losing strategy because when it comes to pandering, NOBODY can beat a Democrat.

I’m not sure what you were getting at with coalition building with Asians. If the idea is that they would basically join us because they agreed with our principles on immigration being focused towards job creators I am OK with that. If the idea is that somehow Asians are going to get special or preferential treatment under the new policy I think the strategy would be unprincipled and I am opposed.

I like the idea of immigration being focused towards job creators. I think that is good for Republicans and good for the country too. If that happens to be an attractive idea for Asians that is a bonus. If blacks and Hispanics like it, even better. But identity group politics should not be driving our platforms.

Republicans are not opposed to immigration per se. But Conservatives do look to history as being informative, and prescriptive. There is no reason we should ever stop doing so.

Why is it that I don’t ever hear anyone pointing out the vital fact that history provided our nation with blessed - I’ll contend Providential - time outs in the flow. This “nation of immigrants” nonsense was the title of a book by JFK, and prior to that publication the notion would have been deemed laughable in most parts of the USA.

I’ll quickly review history: Firstly, there was a nearly four-decade break from our founding to the first significant new wave of immigrants (the term “immigrant” was coined in 1789 by an American cartographer, and it was considered far from being a term of endearment). Then there were moderate flows, lulls and even some negative net migration years up until the great wave beginning in 1890 - the numbers you might see never count the level of repatriation, but if the repatriation levels of the great wave are at all informative, there have to have been some “zero net” years after 1840 and before 1890. Nearly one in four of all great wave migrants repatriated.

In response to outcry over the great wave’s length and intensity, Congress stepped in and did what world economics, famine and war had previously done to regulate the flow by passing the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924. This put a near net halt (comparatively) to immigration for 41 years until the Hart-Celler Act gave us the structure for this awful mess we have today. I sometimes wonder what this nation would have done had, at the outset of WWII, its major cities been populated with huge German and Italian communities not assimilated but in diaspora instead of the smaller, well-assimilated and more dispersed ones it actually had. That’s what we would likely have had to deal with without the time-out. That’s why I believe time outs are necessary and vital. One doesn’t have to be “anti-immigration” to be for time-outs. Without them, we would likely not have made it this far as a nation.

Your idea about “job creation immigration” is far better than what we have now, but nearly anything this side of amnesty would be better than we have now. Still, I would oppose it based on my belief that so long as the GOP plays its ethnic pandering games, no matter how colorful and prettied up they may be, it is simply casting itself in various shades of Democrat-lite, just another caboose on the hyphenation-nation train.

While it’s a nice idea at first blush, by intentionally pandering to and reinforcing societal and cultural divisions you’re still playing the whole ball game in left field. This sort of unprincipled pandering is the very thing that makes me retch when I happen across my voter registration card while thumbing through my wallet. I can hardly glance at the hideous thing the “R” has become; its divvying us all up like lords did serfs is a Democrat thing. I really don’t want any part in it.

by Republicans would be a back door amnesty of some sort. I hate to be the knuckle dragger here, but when it comes to illegals our policy should be “Down, Up & Out” i.e. hunt them down, round them up and throw them out.
Legal immigration is very high, one million a year. How many of these are the high skilled, desirables Erick speaks of? Ten percent, twenty, fifty? If we follow Erick’s sage advice we are still going to have to reduce legal immigration. Republicans will still be stuck with the “ant-immigrant” moniker. Anything which smacks of “big tent” or “kinder,gentler” makes me nervous.
We should also keep in mind the demographic changes that have occurred in the US since the 1965 Immigration Reform Act threw our doors open to the so-called developing world.
A decades long time-out is overdue.

It seems to me that the idea put out there that the GOP is against all immigration is a ploy made up by the Democrats and their State owned Press.

It derives from their deception and play on words such as refusing to call illegal immigrants illegals. To the Dems, if the GOP is against illegal immigration, then the GOP is against all immigration, which is of course a lie.

But the people should know by now that everything the radical left does and says is a lie and senseable people will not be fooled again,..I hope.

Amnesty is exactly the right approach when laws are unjust.

The immigration problem is twofold: A) immigration laws are too restrictive, which requires people to take an illegal path to come to the U.S. and B) we should stop the funding programs everyone is complaining about paying for.

Conservatives — who claim to be pro-liberty — should stop complaining about people trying to enact the free market by coming to America to work. This is always anti-market protectionist nonsense. It’s like Prohibition for travel, and has the same bad results. It’s morally wrong to try to restrict someone’s freedom when they don’t want to harm you, but add to the economic productivity of this country.

I am also amazed when conservatives cite the economic conditions in this regard. Since when does freedom result in less economic prosperity? Careful, you’re sounding like liberals. The idea that cheap workers coming here will hurt us is utterly false.

The government has absolutely no right to keep *peaceful* individuals out of the U.S. You should be able to come and work by passing a simple background check, period. Your ancestors are all lucky they squeaked through the gate to come to the U.S. when they did.

If we have a problem with paying taxes to support them, then eliminate the entitlements.

The proper free-market, prosperity-oriented approach is to support amnesty, eliminate immigration restrictions, and eliminate the welfare entitlements we are spending money on. Waffling on such principles is precisely what has driven advocates of limited government and personal liberty out of the GOP.

Jeff Montgomery
http://funwithgravity.blogspot.com

The larger issue here, as I see It, is Globalists. Global corporations need to destroy the American Middle Class as a last step to a world government. Dilute the middle class vote by allowing Massive Illigal immagration, take over the mass media and our education system, all of which they have done. The only bright spot is the internet and they are trying to shut that down. However, we are paying the price of decades of liberals brainwashing Americas children in the Government run schools to believe that Communism is good— they just call it democracy and you get millions of democrat voters.

How one of my ancestors felt about immigration,seeing wagon loads
of some of my other ancestors crossing their country, in the end its about capacity, how much capacity is there for people who won’t assimilate as my fore bearers did, learn the language, customs, laws, history, etc. as they did, to be able to properly earn a living. A hiatus may be definitely in order or at the least, as suggested,only, legal, job producing, moral people,who take care of their own, becoming assets to the community at large. my family taught me the Work ethic and it was almost immoral to accept charity, only when you were unable to help yourself, and with some shame, and repaying in kind when some one else fell to the wayside. Charity begins at home and was given by individuals and church’s and communities, Not ripped illegally from those, who strove hardest, but willingly from the heart. Politicians have been achieving their ends, through legal diversions,and imposing Government in the schools, destroying community, family, moral centers and they do it to control every aspect of our lives. they will destroy the nation, that most world peoples, want to come to, if not opposed every step of the way. As part of the melting pot called America, I respect the fact that, some of my family came here, to escape persecution in parts of Europe, then Canada, then finally into America. That aspect is good, but they earned every step of the way, and didn’t accept charity.

Support our troops, Washington has made them, political collateral in many ways, prosecuting and persecuting while doing photo-ops, to say we are behind you, Yeh right!
One Old Dog