I attended the my GOP county convention this morning. It was a good morning. Our state senator and representative showed up for a few minutes, as well as our U.S. representative. Good times.
More importantly, I got two resolutions passed through that will be forwarded to the state convention.
BE IT RESOLVED:
- that employers be required to validate the legal status of all employees within 30 days of the first date of employment
- that all entitlement spending be approved by a two-thirds majority of both houses of the U.S. Congress; that a balanced-budget amendment be passed; that the president should be given a line-item veto power with regards to spending bills
Interestingly, #1 didn’t make it out of the resolutions committee, even though it passed at the precinct level just like everything else. I insisted on bringing it to the floor of the convention, and it passed easily.
Anyway, that brings us to a related topic: HR 4437. This is the U.S. House’s recent bill on illegal immigration. It really is a good bill. It is quite long (257 pages!), but here is a summary. The highlights:
- Measures to beef up actual border security (more guards, technology, etc)
- DHS would get responsibility for border control
- Redefine felony to include illegal immigration; redefine ‘aggravated felony’ to include smuggling, etc
- Denies admittance of nationals whose countries who will not admit deportations
- refuses entry and naturalization to aliens who are criminals, suspected terrorists, etc
- makes drunk driving, sexual abuse, and social security fraud deportable voilations
- make employer participation in the “basic pilot program* mandatory”
- illegal immigrants who have been deported can be deported again without going through all the process of deportation
Just a good bill, all around. I read the summary and didn’t see anything unreasonable at all. I really hope the Senate Republicans will form a backbone on this one and get it through without getting “Specterized” (i.e., gutting conservative principles and replacing them with Arlen Specter’s own, unreasoned liberalism).
*The basic pilot program is program, nationalized in 2003, allowing employers to validate the legal status of employees with databases maintained by the federal government.