A truly impressive number of bloggers have fired up their computers in outrage at the Bush Immigration Betrayal, with its guarantee of massive new immigration. The servile Senate isn’t winning itself any friends either. Some excellent work is being done, with many bloggers generously linking to valuable items they see on other sites.

I found Donkey Cons Next day, same issue item this evening particularly worth reading. For example

The Senate rejects enforcement-first …The enforcement measure was proposed by Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia. When I lived in Georgia, Isakson was considered kind of a moderate, country-club type from a posh suburban district, but I guess now that he’s representing the whole state, he’s become a stalwart. Way to go, Johnny!…

Donkey Cons raises a crucial point

Bush first proposed this “guest worker” plan in January 2004, out of the blue. It is obvious that he sincerely believes in it, so it is not a “compromise” with anybody.

Why does he so sincerely want this electorally catastrophic idiocy?

The answer lies behind Donkey Cons funniest thought

At National Review Online, the editors are blunt:

If the purpose of the speech was to shore up the president’s standing with conservatives, it failed. This administration’s lack of credibility on immigration enforcement can’t be reversed by adding a few National Guard references to its tired rhetoric of unmanned aerial vehicles and more detention beds.

Does this mean that National Review will reinstate Peter Brimelow? The author of Alien Nation recently spoke at Vanderbilt University:

[O]pinion polls have consistently shown that the Americans are highly disturbed by the issue. There’s a reason why the President hasn’t been able to get his amnesty program through, although he’s been trying now for six years. That’s because when the Republican congressman go home, they find that their districts are fiercely opposed to it.

Exactly. Folks who spend their lives in Washington or New York, debating other college-educated professionals like themselves, have no idea the strong, visceral reactions which amnesty proposals provoke in the working class and middle class in the Red States. “Fiercely opposed” is probably an understatement.

The reason Bush is so adamant on this policy is the same reason that Immigration reform was so systematically eradicated from National Review almost ten years ago. Think about it.

Last night, President Bush said “Mexico is our neighbor, Mexico is our friend.”

After hearing the President’s call for National Guard troops on the border, our friends in Mexico took to the airwaves and threatened to sue us…yes, sue us for detaining illegal aliens in our own country.

“If there is a real wave of rights abuses, if we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people … we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates,” Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said in an interview with a Mexico City radio station.[Mexico Threatens Suits Over Guard Patrols By Will Weissert, Associated Press 5/16/06]

Never has the adage been truer: With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Radio host Hugh Hewitt is a Republican loyalist who “was actually okay with” the Bush immigration speech , thought it was a “fine effort,”… and then Julie Myers came on his program.

Julie Myers, if you’ll recall, was

• “Another Homeland Security Hack”
• The Straw That Broke Bryanna’s Back
• “My question is: Who the hell is going to enforce the immigration laws?”

Myers herself said

“I will seek to work with those who are knowledgeable in this area, who know more than I do.”

Julie appointed assistants named “Marcy (Investigations), Traci (Professional Responsibility) and Cynthia (Intelligence)”

Now, you can read and listen (MP3) to Julie as she manages to “undo the impact of a Presidential address in one easy lesson:

HH: So I’m back to the fencing conversation. If fencing is the best way to stop them at the border, why don’t we have a plan laid out for that?

JM: Well, you know, I don’t think we think that fencing is the best way to stop them on the border. I think the President’s called for…if you build a fence, they build a tunnel. We just saw that today. There was another tunnel destroyed, another, excuse me, another tunnel found over in the San Diego area. So you can’t…given the kind of the layout of our land, I believe it’s the President’s view, it’s the border patrol’s view, that a fence alone is not enough. We need a layered approach that includes surveillance, personnel, technology. We are working with the military to make sure we have the best technology. And some places, a fence may be very effective, but some places, it’s simply not.

HH: Assistant Secretary Myers, correct me if I’m wrong. I think you just walked the administration back from the fence.

JM: I…no, I said consistent with what the border patrol chief’s been telling me all along, he’s been telling me what he needs, the combination of all these things. You look at the particular location, the particular terrain, and you decide what’s most effective. You don’t want something people can scale in two minutes and then be in the desert, and then you just have put people on the other side of the fence.

HH: But the idea that the fact that someone can dig a tunnel undermines the idea that a fence is effective…we’ll come back.

Just for the record, the technology used to defeat tunnelling has existed since the First World War.

Senator Dorgan (D-North Dakota) introduced an amendment which would remove the provision (from S.2611) allowing a certain number of guest workers into the United States annually–roughly 325,000.

Please remember, these 325,000 guest workers are in addition to the 1.5 million “special” agriculture workers who would be allowed in every year–the agriculture workers would also be eligible for legal permanent residency.

There was a motion to table the amendment (kill it) and…it passed.

Votes: YEA 69 Nay 28

This is not a good day for immigration reform…this means a lot of Republicans voted to basically maintain the status quo.

Good job…umm…conservatives.

Two of the “new immigrants” Bush said America should be “proud to welcome” injured six in a Sunday night drive-by shooting in downtown Stockton, CA.

(”2 Sought in shooting that left 6 injured,” Warren Lutz, The Record. May 16, 2006)

On Monday night, as Bush waxed poetic about immigration and immigrants, he told the heroic but gratuitous story of wounded Mexican marine Guadalupe Denogean. This is a favorite trick of the open borders crowd…pick one shining example and suggest that every immigrant is equally worthy.

But while Bush was polishing his speech Sunday night, two Sikhs, Pardeep Singh and Kurwant Singh Gadri shot and injured six after a Punjabi festival. The victims ranged in age from 22 to 72.

In a variation on the typical Hispanic drive-by, the Sikhs were driving a late model, silver, 3-series BMW.

Sikh drive-by shootings? No wonder Bush is having a hard time convincing Americans about more immigration.

Another vote:

The Salazar Amendment says the President must certify immigration bill improves national security before provisions are implemented.

Votes: YEA 79 NAY 16

So this one passed–I could be wrong but this amendment seems to accomplish absolutely nothing.

Oh yeah…the Senate is smokin’ right along.

Here’s the first floor vote of the day:

The Isakson Amnedment would delay the “earned citizenship program” until Homeland Security Secretary confirms the borders are secure.

This is the GOP getting tough on immigration? We’re in trouble…

Votes: YEA 55 Nay 40

Well, no luck in delaying the amnesty.

From Bush’s Monday night speech:

“English is also the key to unlocking the opportunity of America. English allows newcomers to go from picking crops to opening a grocery, from cleaning offices to running offices, from a life of low-paying jobs to a diploma, a career, and a home of their own. When immigrants assimilate and advance in our society, they realize their dreams, they renew our spirit, and they add to the unity of America.”

Some one should get the word out to the non-English speakers.

At the Lodi Adult School, where I teach English as a second language, here’s what’s going on: in the morning class, only two of three rooms are used. One is approximately half full; the other 25 percent full. In the evening, again only two of three rooms are used with roughly the same ratio of students to empty chairs.

What’s interesting about this is that the school is located in a predominantly Hispanic area with high levels of unemployment. That is to say, most in the neighborhood need to learn English and have plenty of time on their hands to do so. And they can easily walk to school.

But as I have repeatedly written: they aren’t interested. And if Bush’s disastrous fantasy should become law, you can bet that mastery of English and “assimilation” by the newly amnestied will not come with it.