PUBLIC NUISANCES: Our Immigration Imbroglio/Who Is Byron Dorgan?
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMM ETT TYRRELL, JR. Our mmigratio mbrogHo WASHINGTON I ! A SPEECH TO BORDER AND CUSTOMS agents in RECENT ucson, Arizona, President George W. Bush fastened he nation--s...
...He was tapped back in the Clinton days to investigate allegations that then Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros lied to the FBI and committed tax fraud in attempting to conceal money he had paid a mistress...
...In this cover-up the Democrats have had assistance from a few dubious Republicans...
...Those in favor of tough enforcement of border control and of action against illegal immigration think the President is not being tough enough, and these "restrictions" are drawn from both ends of the political spectrum...
...We need to know who is entering the country, and that they abide by the laws...
...Both sides in this debate fail to note the obvious...
...So Congress is preparing a series of get-tough measures, the toughest of which is probably that envisaged by Tom Tancredo of Colorado and J.D...
...It is the first independent investigation of the IRS by investigators armed with subpoena power...
...Cisneros was a very promising Texas Democrat and the Clintons did not want him to come a cropper...
...Yet there is another far more serious bit of funnybusiness he has been involved in...
...We are almost at full employment, and with two to three times as many illegal immigrants in the country as in the mid-1980s, when Senator Nan Simpson last addressed the immigration issue, that is pretty much proof that the economy can accept immigration and prosper...
...The KnowNothings faded away but the bad repute they settled on the country endured--unfairly, but it endured...
...Now there is an adverb to contemplate, "knowingly...
...They complain that Barrett has cost too much and taken too long...
...WASHINGTON A LL'S WELL, SENATOR BYRON DORGAN of the great state of North Dakota has done come clean...
...The report has been ready for publication since August 2004 but Kendall's nuisance tactics have worked, and now what do we hear from the Clintonistas...
...This is not an easy thing to accomplish but it is certainly more practical and feasible than the "tough" approaches now being bandied about...
...Some argue we should somehow drop the arrested immigrants into the interior of their countries...
...A whole political party, the Know-Nothings, was against it in the 1850s...
...The American people are by nature generous, optimistic, and tolerant...
...Civil libertarians concerned about the heavy-handedness of the IRS and its use as an instrument of political repression by the executive branch of the government know that this is very important...
...Hayworth of Arizona...
...Into a later appropriations bill they got language that would suppress 120 pages of the report relating to Clinton Justice Department and IRS misbehavior...
...2) immigrants are coming here because there is work that enriches them...
...Yet as the 20th century took on years and the economybecame more industrialized and prosperous Americans viewed immigration more benignly...
...Their legislation would deputize state and local police to arrest the millions of illegal immigrants (possibly 12 million) and deport them...
...That is a good start on Senator Dorgan's road back to respectability...
...Any prudent law has to be based on what James Madison in The Federalist Papers called the "genius" of the people...
...How would this be done, by a gigantic parachute drop...
...The market for immigrants is here and will not evaporate...
...The senator's aides admit that their boss did advocate some of Abramoff's programs while he was accepting the tribes' contributions, but he did not do so knowingly...
...There is a market for immigrants in this country...
...Last April he attempted to end Barrett's funding...
...Some Republicans defeated this attempt, but Dorgan and his allies are clever...
...hat should come as no surprise...
...The real problem is border security and an orderly society...
...The reports of every other Independent Counsel have been released to the public in full, with only minor redactions where classified material might be revealed...
...The approach would be brought to ruin, and the "hate-America" crowd would have more spurious evidence that this is a racist and intolerant country...
...As they are themselves the reason for much of the cost and delay, advocates of good government should be up in arms...
...Who Is Byron Dorgan...
...Nation of immigrants that we are, our appraisal of the problem has changed-once again...
...Senator Dorgan is the vice chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee...
...A majority came to a positive acceptance of it...
...Abramoff, a Republican, has obviouslybeen an equalopportunity fixer, and apparently Dorgan was not above accepting his help, though Dorgan claims he never met the rogue and never backed any of his programs knowingly...
...We have the capacity to close offthe border, and we should...
...Last time around he suggested addressing illegal immigration first with a guest-worker program, and tough enforcement of border control second...
...That is not true today...
...The President has reversed his emphasis...
...The President is more cognizant of this than those who would restrict immigration, but turn to consider the market for a minute: 1) producers need immigrants...
...The 78 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 2006 PUBLIC NUISANCES burden on the President and Congress is to close off the border and get the present immigrants to enter amnesty programs...
...Wretched immigrants would be held up by many Americans now favoring the tough approach as the victims of unjust law enforcers...
...In that capacity he accepted $6Z000 in contributions from Indian tribes represented by the recently indicted Jack Abramoff, a fabulous fixer here in the capital of the Free World...
...Thus politicians of all persuasions are promising action...
...The report is the work of the staffof Independent Counsel David Barrett...
...This market has been helpful to the economy...
...Senator Dorgan has led the campaign to deny the report's contents to the public...
...The legislation of the 1980s ended in amnesty and well over half the illegals became law-abiding citizens...
...Cisneros pied guilty back in 1999, and that would have been the end of it had Barrett's investigators not found serious misbehavior in Justice and in the IRS related to Cisneros' problems...
...It is growing robustly and without one of the feared downsides of immigration or even illegal immigration, unemployment...
...Our mmigratio mbrogHo WASHINGTON I ! A SPEECH TO BORDER AND CUSTOMS agents in RECENT ucson, Arizona, President George W. Bush fastened he nation--s attention on our immigration imbroglio...
...This stratagem has been used too frequently by the Clintonistas to smear an officer of the court...
...Corrupt administrations in the future will have a free hand at playing politics the way they are played in a banana republic, or 20th-centuryArkansas...
...During periods of the 19th century the nation was ambivalent about immigration...
...It is apparent, at least to me, that as we began arresting illegal immigrants the process would soon come to a sorry end...
...When Barrett completed his report, the Clintons' lawyers, led by that legendary Clinton pettitbgger, David Kendall, tried to kill offthe report either by gutting it with redactions or by getting it buried altogether...
...Certainly it is not true with regard to illegal immigration...
...Many Americans re very concerned about immigration policy...
...Civil libertarians would step in...
...FEBRUARY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 79...
...It is time to let the public see this report...
...With Democratic Senators Richard Durbin and John Kerry, he bootlegged into an Iraq-war appropriations bill an amendment that would suppress the report completely...
...There is a serious public-policy concern for releasing this report...
...He, along with several crafty Democrats, has been attempting to denythe public the contents of an Independent Counsel's report that is believed to contain evidence of serious corruption and misuse of the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department back in the Clinton administration...
...There is a better approach...
...Barrett wants the report released in full...
...As things stand now, the expurgated report will appear and the public will be none the wiser as to how the IRS and Justice Department can be used to obstruct justice and harass private citizens...
...He was thwarted then, but more recently he tried a new ploy...
...For the first time since the Gallup Poll began, a majority of Americans think immigration is bad rather than good...
...The Bush policy is to address border security and illegal immigration...
...Amazingly key Republicans in these negotiations agreed, Senator Kit Bond and Congressman Joe Knollenberg...
...We also have the capacity to encourage many of the illegal immigrants to enroll in a program aimed at amnesty, but one that does not make chumps of legal immigrants who have played by the rules...
...Toward the end of the century, when large groups of Irish and Italians were swarming in, the nation's older immigrants were against it...
...Kendall entered some 140 motions pursuant to this goal...
...If the butchered report were published in this shape, they promised to do nothing further to delay its appearance...
Vol. 39 • February 2006 • No. 1
