New immigration poll: Bush at odds with Republicans

Issue 117: May 15, 2002

+== TIME-OUT PROJECT ==+

The Justice Department has announced that a system to track foreign students in the United States will finally be implemented. In the wake of 9/11, even the education industry, which rakes in about $14 billion per year in foreign student tuitions, saw the writing on the wall and dropped its lond-standing opposition to this sensible and modest proposal.

Meanwhile the nation will continue to debate the larger question of what we are doing with more than a million foreign students in the United States anyway, including 50,000 — mostly in the hard sciences — from the hostile and belligerent nation of China. (The government of the People’s Republic, which even now has weapons of mass destruction trained on American cities, actually pays the tuition for many Chinese students in the U.S.)

As the immigration issue continues to cement its position at the center of public debate, financial interests will inevitably be trumped by public opinion — as the recent progress on the student-tracking program encouragingly shows.

The tension between the financial interests, which seek to maintain or increase mass immigration numbers, and the public as a whole, which favors a more modern and moderate policy, will be most visible in the Republican Party.

Immigration policy has divided the Republican Party into two camps. There is the Wall Street Journal, corporate-funded RNC, George Bush open-borders camp. And then there is the Congressman Tom Tancredo camp, which advocates a time-out from mass immigration while we fix our broken system, a reduction of immigration to sustainable levels, and an end to illegal immigration.

Which camp enjoys the all-important support of grassroots Republicans? If a current poll at a Republican website is any indication, the open-borders extremists in the Bush camp are going to have their heads handed to them in the next elections:

From a GOPUSA poll (May 14, 2002, 10:30 a.m.):

QUESTION:

Which of the following statements best summarizes your position on illegal immigration?

RESPONSES:

67% — Illegal aliens should be deported because they broke the law in order to get here.

2% — Amnesty should be granted to certain illegal aliens covered under President Bush’s proposals.

29% — A moratorium should be placed on all immigration until the illegal immigration problem can be fixed.

1% — There should be no restrictions on immigrants who wish to enter the United States.
____________________________
Ashcroft announces new student tracking
http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2002/051002newsconference-sevistranscript.htm

The United States House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China
http://www.house.gov/coxreport/

GOPUSA poll on immigration (Republican site)
http://gopusa.com/pollvault/0513_immigration.shtml

Another poll on immigration at an influential conservative site
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/polls/former_poll.asp?POLL_ID=468

Another poll on the Bush amnesty at vote.com
http://www.vote.com/vResults/index.phtml?cat=4075633

INS critics take aim at libertarians at the top
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20020319-9999_1n19immig.html

INS to Monitor Foreign Students; Ashcroft Reverses Stance on System
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3525-2002May10.html

+== TAKE POSITIVE ACTION ==+

The Republican leadership seems to be most out-of-touch with its grassroots in its appointment of Libertarians to positions of influence in the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

In the poll above, the Libertarian position on immigration was the least popular, garnering just 1 per centof the vote. Yet, the director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Republican-appointed James Ziglar, is an avowed Libertarian who once told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce gathering that his libertarian doctrine made the idea of borders difficult for him (!)

And Stuart Anderson, the influential Executive Associate Commissioner for Policy and Planning at the INS, was once an immigration policy analyst for the corporate-funded CATO Institute, a Libertarian think tank. From there, Mr. Anderson went to work for Republican Senator Spencer Abraham, whose open-borders extremism cost him his Michigan Senate seat in 2000.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Senator Abraham and Stuart Anderson together “opposed legislation to speed development of a system to track people crossing the border.”

Before he was booted out of office, Abraham justified his opposition to the common-sense visa-tracking system on the grounds it would “slow down” commerce at the border. Of course, now we know that such a system might have helped prevent the atrocities of September 11.

If you believe the safety and security of the American people outweighs the profitability of some special business interests, please phone the Office of the Attorney General and ask them to remove Stuart Anderson, James Ziglar and other open-borders extremists from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Office of the Attorney General - 202-353-1555

+== QUOTE OF THE WEEK ==+

All things are sold: the very light of Heaven
Is venal;
– Percy Bysshe Shelley

+==EMAIL OF THE WEEK==+

I read an article from Associated Press regarding the 75% increase in INS arrests for the states of Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. It would make a lot of aware people happy to see the same start happening in California. I only regret to say it will not happen. Unfortunately, California may fall victim to this rash of immigration.

Heidi Burns
Sun Valley, California

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