How can the author so blithely call giving the current crop of aliens a pathway to citizenship as modest? Does he understand the full ramifications of this action?

I'll list a few that I see:

1. 50 million new illegal aliens in 20 years. We could, with this amnesty, demonstrate to the world, conclusively, that if you can just get here, you can wait until there is a path to being legal. This will be broadcast around the world and will open floodgates.

2. Each alien that becomes a citizen will have anywhere from as few as 0 to as many as 10? 15? relations that they can bring in to the country, not subject to any numerical caps. That married man sending money to his wife and 5 kids? If he becomes legal, she can move and apply, their 5 kids can move an apply, and their 4 parents can move and apply for citizenship. That one alien becomes 11 people. Call it 5 average per alien, and suddenly it is 50 million people, not 11 million. The elderly parents will collect social security and burden medicare. Their kids will attend public school and frequent the emergency room. With an unskilled, uneducated parent making a living, they will pay no federal tax, little state tax, and will be a net drawer from the public till. Has congress estimated the net cost of this bill to the welfare state? I believe they have voted to specifically not determine the cost before voting the bill out of committee. How can they be so willfully blind to a reality that a casual observer can see as being a gigantic disaster? 50 million new uneducated people will not make the giant problems the country will face in the future regarding oil, the environment, entitlements, medical spending, transportation, etc, and easier to solve. In fact, 50 million new people that draw far more than they could ever contribute in the next generation will make all these problems much harder to solve, due to the entitlement notion that is quickly bred into newcomers - entitlement to drive a Hummer, for example.

Finally, if one cedes the notion that we need huge numbers of laborers to pick fruits and build buildings, perhaps we should recruit literate, educated people from other countries who happen to have nothing to do at home, instead of what we seem to be doing. It makes absolutely no sense to import 50 million uneducated and largely illiterate persons at the exact time we are trying to root out uneducated and illiterate persons from our country so we can compete more effectively in the world market.

Please, someone tell me how making any of this current crop of aliens citizens solves any problem at all, and does not make some seriously troubling problems far worse?

"The religious right was shepherded by referendums against gay marriage in 16 swing states."

This oft-repeated claim is false, and has been debunked many times. It's disappointing Sidney couldn't fact check himself.

Indeed, if you look at the difference between 2000 and 2004, states with the gay referendum on the ballot did not result in a net gain for Bush, and indeed in many states led to a net loss for Bush compared to the 2000 results.

The Boston Review (among others) showed the data; in any case, evidence for this claim (and its cognate, that gays are dangerous for the Democratic party), has never been produced. It's purely because it sounds good that it's repeated ad infinitum.

You cannot collect Social Security unless you have a work history. You need to have worked at least 10 years with a valid SSN number to be eligible for retirement benefits.

All those elderly parents you fear do not qualify.

Fine. No social security. What then. Welfare? Or is a single person going to provide for a family of 5 or more by picking fruit? What about the burden on our schools? Hospitals? It sounds like a very bad idea to me.

David

The point of Blumenthal's article is that the GOP is imploding. The article is not about the pros and cons of immigration policy.

The issue is splitting the coalition that formed a GOP majority. Classic political cycle.

All the blowhards pounding the table about the rule of law and "the right of the country to defend its borders against invasion" ought to reflect on how their own ancestors got here, how they ended up living on land that belonged to Native Americans, and how the Native Americans ended up corralled in "reservations" in the least hospitable parts of the country. Perhaps they should be asking for a little amnesty themselves?

>Or is a single person going to provide for a family of 5 or more by picking fruit?

Yyyyeah, that's assuming that granting amnesty to illegals means that there will be a huge tidal wave of increase in the numbers that will come here, that each person who used to come here illegally will suddenly bring their entire family, and that 50 million illegals will suddenly come within the next 20 years.

My rear end.

At the moment, we take in 900,000 legal immigrants per year, and 300,000 illegals per year. At that rate, that's 6 million people over 20 years. So granting amnesty will increase that number to 50 million? And 2 and 1/2 million people will suddenly start coming here each year, on top of the 900,000 legals, where only 300,000 illegals came before? Right.

From

http://www.rapidimmigration.com/usa/1_eng_immigration_facts.html

The U.S. government has forecast a shortage of 20 million workers by 2026, prompting many parties to call for a relaxation of the US immigration laws in order to meet the labor demand.

Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Chairman, has warned repeatedly that the shortage of workers could lead to inflation. He commented that "Under the conditions that we now confront, we should be very carefully focused on the contribution which skilled people from abroad, (as well as) unskilled people from abroad, can contribute to this country, as they have for generation after generation.

Besides which, if we make illegal workers legal, won't that make them less likely, not more likely, to evade taxes by working under the table?

But yes, the point of the article wasn't immigration reform, it's the fact that the Republican party is fracturing, and that Bush's voting blocs are splitting to pieces over it.