An Education in Border Injustice

Nope. The bill had opposition on both sides. There were not 61 obstructionist Republicans in the Senate in 2007.

Nice string of random adjectives, though.

It is undisputed that the main oppostition came from the Republicans. Everybody knows that -- especially the Hispanics who switched back to the Democratic party in 2008 after an ill-advised shift to Bush and the Republicans in 2004.

The silver lining in all of this is that the obstinate and consistent xenophobic, nativist tone of the Republicans is bearing great fruit in the elections-- for the Democrats that is.

Facts matter, but the one you introduce is not relevant. 61 voted against cloture on June 7, 2008. The Democrats then reworked to bill such that a later vote largely followed party lines, but the bill never got more than 45 votes of support, which meant that it wasn't going to pass, even with the support of several Republicans.

The Democrats didn't want it to come to a vote because they didn't want to alienate moderates. Nonetheless, they were effective in spinning the process as one of Republican obstructionism, which helped win over Hispanic voters.

________________________________

"but the bill never got more than 45 votes of support, " Kevin47

I am glad we can agree that facts count. Now if we could just get you to state some facts.

Cloture failed on June 28, 2007 by a vote of 46 Yea to 53 Nay. I know, it is probably nitpicking to call you on one vote but then again, we both agree that facts count.

37 of the Republicans in the Senate voted to kill the bill by denying cloture. 14 of the Democrats voted against cloture. Sanders also voted against cloture-- but he is not a Democrat, he's a Socialist.

Hispanics can count and with numbers like that, they could readily see who is and is not on their side. No spin needed, thank you. The numbers speak for themselves.

Oh well, maybe it was for the best anyway--- the bill was full of measures to try to appease Conservative Republicans, and if we get a fairer, more equitable bill two years later, it's worth the wait. In the meantime, the bill's demise helped cement the Republican postion as a minority party. Sometimes it is worth it to lose a batttle, especially when the results are so positive.

"thereby forcing migrants to cross in the desert " No one forced them to cross in the desert. I wonder why our anger is not directed more at the Mexican government whose corruption and policies "force" people to seek a better life in the US. As those who were "mistreated" in our courts decide their next steps, I wonder if they will consider the treatment that they recieved here to be better than staying where they are. If we treat people so badly, why do they continue to flock here? If our justice system is so bad, why do people continue to come?
We do need to be compassionate and care for those who are in need. I cannot speak to the specific treatment of the case you cite as I was not there, but at the worst, they must bear some fault for the choice that they made. The difficulty is that there is no simple definition for who is in need other than the most extreme cases. Should anyone be turned away at our borders? If so, then what is the correct response to those who cross illegally. (you can phrase it as "undocumented" all you want but it violates law). Do we say, "if you believe in following law you can't come in, but all who wish to flout our immigration laws are welcome"?

Following the "work together to reduce abortion" model, can we of different opinions join together to provide education for those in other countries about the risks of border crossin? Maybe we station people (i.e Humane Borders) at the borders to counsel those seeking to cross that the dangers they face are great. We could even tell them how evil the U.S. court system is.
Seriously, I know they my position is characterized as uncaring, cold and cruel. I believe that it is uncaring, cold and cruel to continue to perform actions that encourage those seeking a better life to risk their life in crossing the border. It is not an issue that has a simple answer. The answer to every question here on immigration seems to be let them all in. Any opposition to that is characterized as cruel, evil and full of hatred. Who will you blame now that Bush is gone and now it is an Obama administration?

Why do we expect Bible verses to matter to politicians who are supposed to represent myriad views of people, not just those who want them to adhere to the Christian Scriptures?

I'm all for open borders; it has worked within the United States (hence the plural StateS), why wouldn't it work across national borders? We're forcing people into the black market and below subsistence labor by making it illegal to be here without the approval of a group of people who own more guns than all of us.

You have displayed a loyalty to open markets much like that of a guy who posts here frequently under the name of Juristnaturalist. Although I may not share your confidence in total free market capitalism, I do respect your consistency in understanding that in order for any market to be free, it must be comprised of a free flow of both labor and goods. I commend you for that.

From wat I have understood most illegal immigrints actualy compliment the American Justice System . Perhaps its just perspective because of the lack of justice and corrupt systems that are found in the countries they are coming from.

I wonder why our anger is not directed more at the Mexican government whose corruption and policies "force" people to seek a better life in the US."

Bull manure, plain & simple:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mexecon1j...

Placing Blame for Mexico's Ills
The economic policies of the U.S. are at the heart of Sunday's presidential contest.
By Marla Dickerson, Times Staff Writer
July 1, 2006

TLACHINOLA, Mexico Francisco Herrera Sanchez is not an economics expert and knows little about globalization. But the octogenarian says he knows that something has gone terribly wrong with U.S.-backed trade policies that were supposed to lift millions of Mexicans from poverty.

He has seen hundreds of residents flee this farming community for the United States since 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement began opening Mexico's markets to more low-cost U.S. agricultural products. He feels his neighbors' absence in the meager receipts at his tiny grocery in this hamlet about 3 1/2 hours southeast of the capital. "The riches are up there," said the 85-year-old widower, referring to the U.S. Here "there is nothing, not even music. Just silence, like a dead man hanging."

Many Americans are angry that as many as 12 million illegal immigrants, mostly Mexican, are living in the U.S., driven by lack of opportunities at home. Critics are demanding that Mexico right its stumbling economy, create jobs for its people and end its de facto development strategy of shipping its problems north of the border.

But some experts say U.S. economic policies have played a role in fueling the mass exodus. Pushed hard by the United States, Mexico began embracing the Washington-backed prescription of privatization, free trade and government austerity in the early 1980s. A quarter of a century later, the results are decidedly mixed and are the heart of Sunday's cliffhanger presidential election in Mexico.

The contest pits leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who wants to boost social spending and rethink the NAFTA relationship, against conservative Felipe Calderon, who wants to maintain Mexico's policy on free trade and open the country's state-controlled energy sector to private investment. Their divergent views reflect the soaring achievements and bitter disappointments that have accompanied Mexico's economic restructuring.

Strict fiscal and monetary discipline has helped Mexico rise Lazarus-like from its devastating 1994 peso devaluation. Inflation is tame. Interest rates are relatively low. The government's books are balanced, and Mexico's debt is rated investment grade. It was a stunning comeback for a nation that had a history of lurching from one financial crisis to another.

"It's stability," said President Vicente Fox in an interview this year. "This is a big, big change in Mexico."

Yet the so-called Washington consensus has done little to spur economic growth, reduce income disparity, create jobs and stem migration to the U.S.

Consider the landmark NAFTA agreement.

Proponents point to the nearly threefold leap in trade between the United States and Mexico as proof of the pact's success. NAFTA has vaulted Mexico into Latin America's premier exporter and given it a fat trade surplus with the United States. Yet the agreement has yielded little in the way of net job creation or in helping to build the vibrant Mexican middle class that supporters promised.

U.S. and Mexican officials touted the deal as a way to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants by creating jobs in Mexico. The tide of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. surged after the pact was implemented. Fully two-thirds of undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States have been there 10 years or less, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Many of those people are Mexicans from hard-hit rural areas, the predictable casualties, NAFTA critics say, of a trade deal that forced Mexico to wrench open its farm sector without a viable transition strategy for millions of subsistence farmers.

Adjusted for inflation, Mexico's growth in gross domestic product has been flat for more than two decades. The cost to Mexico's people for this dismal performance is staggering. If Mexico's economy had grown at the same pace from 1980 to the present as it did in the period from 1960 to 1980, today it would have the same standard of living as Spain, said economist Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research in Washington. Instead, nearly half of Mexico's 106 million people live in poverty.

"It's hard to reduce poverty and create employment when you don't have growth," Weisbrot said. "To have 25 years of this rotten economic performance, you'd have to conclude something is wrong."

Some analysts contend that Mexico simply hasn't moved far enough and fast enough down the free-market path, while botching earlier reforms. Privatizations such as the 1990 sale of the state-owned telephone company essentially replaced public monopolies with private ones. Mexico's inefficient state-owned energy companies are harming its competitiveness. Red tape and corruption are strangling innovation.

But Weisbrot and others contend that some free-market policies simply haven't delivered and are contributing to the immigration friction that has become a major sore point in U.S.-Mexico relations.

Economists point to a host of demographic, cultural and economic factors fueling the mass migration. But many agree that NAFTA accelerated the decades-long exodus of Mexicans from the countryside by opening the nation's markets wider to subsidized U.S. agriculture products.

Mexico has shed nearly 30% of its farm jobs since the trade pact went into effect, according to government statistics. That translates into 2.8 million farmers and millions more of their dependents fleeing their fields. Some have taken subsistence jobs in Mexico's cities, but many have relocated to the U.S.

Not far from Tlachinola, brothers Valente and Francisco Aguilar yoked a team of black-and-white oxen to a scarred wooden plow on a recent hot morning to till a field of spindly corn. The men worked for years in construction and other jobs in the U.S., returning to Mexico to care for their aging parents. Their six siblings are still up north, in Nevada and New York, and are unlikely ever to come back.

The brothers say poor Mexicans have a right to take jobs in the U.S. because policymakers on both sides of the border appear to have abandoned them to their fate.

"Neither government cares about us," said Francisco, who earns about $8.75 for a 12-hour day busting sod for a local landowner.

NAFTA experts say negotiators from Mexico and the U.S. knew that rural families like the Aguilars would be hard hit by the trade deal. The bet was that many of them would find work in Mexico's burgeoning maquiladora export factories. But there too NAFTA has fallen short.

Mexico has lost more than four times as many farm jobs over the last 12 years as it gained in export manufacturing positions, in part because of relentless competition from China.

Economist Jeff Faux, author of a new book on globalization, said the current focus of the U.S. Congress on tougher border enforcement ignored the root economic causes pushing migrants north. He said talk of fences, guest worker programs and Mexican government ineptitude diverted attention from U.S.-backed policies such as NAFTA that have helped create the very flood of illegal immigrants that many Americans are now decrying.

"It's really unconscionable that there is no discussion of the American fingerprints on this," said Faux, founding president of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute and author of "The Global Class War." "There is a lot of winking and nodding going on because it's their business constituents that supported [NAFTA] and that are enjoying the benefits" of low-wage immigrant labor.

Around Latin America, countries are loosening their embrace of free-market policies and institutions as left-of-center leaders have come to power. Argentina, which has sparred repeatedly with the Washington-based International Monetary Fund after its 2001 financial crisis, has emerged from the largest sovereign debt default in history with economic growth rates topping 9%. Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia have moved to exert greater state control over energy resources to devote more funding to social spending. Privatization of public utilities such as water has fallen out of favor. And a U.S.-led push for a hemispherewide trade agreement has gone nowhere.

Given that climate, some political analysts say the time might be right for Mexico to push back against its largest trading partner and demand protections for key domestic industries such as farming that still generate a lot of employment in Mexico.

Mexico's agriculture minister last month pleaded with the U.S. and Canada to allow the country to keep import restrictions on corn and beans, which are scheduled under NAFTA to come off in 2008. Mexican farm groups have warned that the end of protections would send millions more rural dwellers toward the border. The U.S. quickly rejected the proposal.

But Lopez Obrador, who holds a slight lead in opinion polls, has declared that he wouldn't honor Mexico's NAFTA commitment to eliminate barriers on corn and beans if he were elected. In fact, his chief economic advisor, Rogelio Ramirez de la O, told Reuters last month that a Lopez Obrador administration would seek a full review of the agreement, particularly the agricultural component.

"We think that this is high time for a due diligence on NAFTA ," Ramirez de la O said. "We have to recognize where things have not worked out."

That kind of talk has U.S. trade officials and farmers chafing. But given Americans' rising fury over illegal immigration, Pamela Starr, Latin America analyst for Washington-based Eurasia Group, said it was time for the United States "to get real" with its trade and immigration policies toward Mexico. She said it was disingenuous and unfair for the U.S. to protect its own farmers with fat subsidies while demanding that small Mexican growers compete with them head-to-head.

"An essential part of any migration program designed to reduce the flow [of illegal immigrants] needs to have U.S. efforts to help Mexico develop its own economy," Starr said. "The U.S. has two options. It can import Mexican goods or it can import Mexican workers."

Now to answer your question: Because Mexico is not alone in causing the problem.

Facts matter, but the one you introduce is not relevant. 61 voted against cloture on June 7, 2008. The Democrats then reworked to bill such that a later vote largely followed party lines, but the bill never got more than 45 votes of support, which meant that it wasn't going to pass, even with the support of several Republicans.

The Democrats didn't want it to come to a vote because they didn't want to alienate moderates. Nonetheless, they were effective in spinning the process as one of Republican obstructionism, which helped win over Hispanic voters.

________________________________

The bill itself never had more than 45 votes going for it. There were various cloture votes throughout the process, but the June 7 vote killed all momentum for the bill.

You asked why anger was directed at the US, and you got an answer. Nobody who voted for NAFTA was "liberal" in the truest sense, and many Conservatives supported it. Nice try at a dodge, though. Your "facts" are getting torn to shreds all over this blog.

"but the bill never got more than 45 votes of support, " Kevin47

I am glad we can agree that facts count. Now if we could just get you to state some facts.

Cloture failed on June 28, 2007 by a vote of 46 Yea to 53 Nay. I know, it is probably nitpicking to call you on one vote but then again, we both agree that facts count.

37 of the Republicans in the Senate voted to kill the bill by denying cloture. 14 of the Democrats voted against cloture. Sanders also voted against cloture-- but he is not a Democrat, he's a Socialist.

Hispanics can count and with numbers like that, they could readily see who is and is not on their side. No spin needed, thank you. The numbers speak for themselves.

Oh well, maybe it was for the best anyway--- the bill was full of measures to try to appease Conservative Republicans, and if we get a fairer, more equitable bill two years later, it's worth the wait. In the meantime, the bill's demise helped cement the Republican postion as a minority party. Sometimes it is worth it to lose a batttle, especially when the results are so positive.

Farm subsidies are liberal plot insofar as it allows Dem Senators to win seats in traditionally red states. Further, the idea of doling out money to farmers is, by definition, progressive.

That electoral politics are fueling Democratic interest in amnesty is obvious. You stated yourself that Hispanics vote based on this issue.

________________________________

I wonder why our anger is not directed more at the Mexican government whose corruption and policies "force" people to seek a better life in the US."

Bull manure, plain & simple:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mexecon1j...

Placing Blame for Mexico's Ills
The economic policies of the U.S. are at the heart of Sunday's presidential contest.
By Marla Dickerson, Times Staff Writer
July 1, 2006

TLACHINOLA, Mexico Francisco Herrera Sanchez is not an economics expert and knows little about globalization. But the octogenarian says he knows that something has gone terribly wrong with U.S.-backed trade policies that were supposed to lift millions of Mexicans from poverty.

He has seen hundreds of residents flee this farming community for the United States since 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement began opening Mexico's markets to more low-cost U.S. agricultural products. He feels his neighbors' absence in the meager receipts at his tiny grocery in this hamlet about 3 1/2 hours southeast of the capital. "The riches are up there," said the 85-year-old widower, referring to the U.S. Here "there is nothing, not even music. Just silence, like a dead man hanging."

Many Americans are angry that as many as 12 million illegal immigrants, mostly Mexican, are living in the U.S., driven by lack of opportunities at home. Critics are demanding that Mexico right its stumbling economy, create jobs for its people and end its de facto development strategy of shipping its problems north of the border.

But some experts say U.S. economic policies have played a role in fueling the mass exodus. Pushed hard by the United States, Mexico began embracing the Washington-backed prescription of privatization, free trade and government austerity in the early 1980s. A quarter of a century later, the results are decidedly mixed and are the heart of Sunday's cliffhanger presidential election in Mexico.

The contest pits leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who wants to boost social spending and rethink the NAFTA relationship, against conservative Felipe Calderon, who wants to maintain Mexico's policy on free trade and open the country's state-controlled energy sector to private investment. Their divergent views reflect the soaring achievements and bitter disappointments that have accompanied Mexico's economic restructuring.

Strict fiscal and monetary discipline has helped Mexico rise Lazarus-like from its devastating 1994 peso devaluation. Inflation is tame. Interest rates are relatively low. The government's books are balanced, and Mexico's debt is rated investment grade. It was a stunning comeback for a nation that had a history of lurching from one financial crisis to another.

"It's stability," said President Vicente Fox in an interview this year. "This is a big, big change in Mexico."

Yet the so-called Washington consensus has done little to spur economic growth, reduce income disparity, create jobs and stem migration to the U.S.

Consider the landmark NAFTA agreement.

Proponents point to the nearly threefold leap in trade between the United States and Mexico as proof of the pact's success. NAFTA has vaulted Mexico into Latin America's premier exporter and given it a fat trade surplus with the United States. Yet the agreement has yielded little in the way of net job creation or in helping to build the vibrant Mexican middle class that supporters promised.

U.S. and Mexican officials touted the deal as a way to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants by creating jobs in Mexico. The tide of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. surged after the pact was implemented. Fully two-thirds of undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States have been there 10 years or less, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Many of those people are Mexicans from hard-hit rural areas, the predictable casualties, NAFTA critics say, of a trade deal that forced Mexico to wrench open its farm sector without a viable transition strategy for millions of subsistence farmers.

Adjusted for inflation, Mexico's growth in gross domestic product has been flat for more than two decades. The cost to Mexico's people for this dismal performance is staggering. If Mexico's economy had grown at the same pace from 1980 to the present as it did in the period from 1960 to 1980, today it would have the same standard of living as Spain, said economist Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research in Washington. Instead, nearly half of Mexico's 106 million people live in poverty.

"It's hard to reduce poverty and create employment when you don't have growth," Weisbrot said. "To have 25 years of this rotten economic performance, you'd have to conclude something is wrong."

Some analysts contend that Mexico simply hasn't moved far enough and fast enough down the free-market path, while botching earlier reforms. Privatizations such as the 1990 sale of the state-owned telephone company essentially replaced public monopolies with private ones. Mexico's inefficient state-owned energy companies are harming its competitiveness. Red tape and corruption are strangling innovation.

But Weisbrot and others contend that some free-market policies simply haven't delivered and are contributing to the immigration friction that has become a major sore point in U.S.-Mexico relations.

Economists point to a host of demographic, cultural and economic factors fueling the mass migration. But many agree that NAFTA accelerated the decades-long exodus of Mexicans from the countryside by opening the nation's markets wider to subsidized U.S. agriculture products.

Mexico has shed nearly 30% of its farm jobs since the trade pact went into effect, according to government statistics. That translates into 2.8 million farmers and millions more of their dependents fleeing their fields. Some have taken subsistence jobs in Mexico's cities, but many have relocated to the U.S.

Not far from Tlachinola, brothers Valente and Francisco Aguilar yoked a team of black-and-white oxen to a scarred wooden plow on a recent hot morning to till a field of spindly corn. The men worked for years in construction and other jobs in the U.S., returning to Mexico to care for their aging parents. Their six siblings are still up north, in Nevada and New York, and are unlikely ever to come back.

The brothers say poor Mexicans have a right to take jobs in the U.S. because policymakers on both sides of the border appear to have abandoned them to their fate.

"Neither government cares about us," said Francisco, who earns about $8.75 for a 12-hour day busting sod for a local landowner.

NAFTA experts say negotiators from Mexico and the U.S. knew that rural families like the Aguilars would be hard hit by the trade deal. The bet was that many of them would find work in Mexico's burgeoning maquiladora export factories. But there too NAFTA has fallen short.

Mexico has lost more than four times as many farm jobs over the last 12 years as it gained in export manufacturing positions, in part because of relentless competition from China.

Economist Jeff Faux, author of a new book on globalization, said the current focus of the U.S. Congress on tougher border enforcement ignored the root economic causes pushing migrants north. He said talk of fences, guest worker programs and Mexican government ineptitude diverted attention from U.S.-backed policies such as NAFTA that have helped create the very flood of illegal immigrants that many Americans are now decrying.

"It's really unconscionable that there is no discussion of the American fingerprints on this," said Faux, founding president of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute and author of "The Global Class War." "There is a lot of winking and nodding going on because it's their business constituents that supported [NAFTA] and that are enjoying the benefits" of low-wage immigrant labor.

Around Latin America, countries are loosening their embrace of free-market policies and institutions as left-of-center leaders have come to power. Argentina, which has sparred repeatedly with the Washington-based International Monetary Fund after its 2001 financial crisis, has emerged from the largest sovereign debt default in history with economic growth rates topping 9%. Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia have moved to exert greater state control over energy resources to devote more funding to social spending. Privatization of public utilities such as water has fallen out of favor. And a U.S.-led push for a hemispherewide trade agreement has gone nowhere.

Given that climate, some political analysts say the time might be right for Mexico to push back against its largest trading partner and demand protections for key domestic industries such as farming that still generate a lot of employment in Mexico.

Mexico's agriculture minister last month pleaded with the U.S. and Canada to allow the country to keep import restrictions on corn and beans, which are scheduled under NAFTA to come off in 2008. Mexican farm groups have warned that the end of protections would send millions more rural dwellers toward the border. The U.S. quickly rejected the proposal.

But Lopez Obrador, who holds a slight lead in opinion polls, has declared that he wouldn't honor Mexico's NAFTA commitment to eliminate barriers on corn and beans if he were elected. In fact, his chief economic advisor, Rogelio Ramirez de la O, told Reuters last month that a Lopez Obrador administration would seek a full review of the agreement, particularly the agricultural component.

"We think that this is high time for a due diligence on NAFTA ," Ramirez de la O said. "We have to recognize where things have not worked out."

That kind of talk has U.S. trade officials and farmers chafing. But given Americans' rising fury over illegal immigration, Pamela Starr, Latin America analyst for Washington-based Eurasia Group, said it was time for the United States "to get real" with its trade and immigration policies toward Mexico. She said it was disingenuous and unfair for the U.S. to protect its own farmers with fat subsidies while demanding that small Mexican growers compete with them head-to-head.

"An essential part of any migration program designed to reduce the flow [of illegal immigrants] needs to have U.S. efforts to help Mexico develop its own economy," Starr said. "The U.S. has two options. It can import Mexican goods or it can import Mexican workers."

Now to answer your question: Because Mexico is not alone in causing the problem.

I didn't say they were alone, but they are the principle contributor. Mexico was poor prior to NAFTA, though all NAFTA did was expose Mexico to our absurd farm subsidies. Kind of a nice ploy by liberals. Install subsidies that damage another economy, and then scoop up votes from those who come here to avoid them.

________________________________

It is is impossible to say how many votes the bill did or did not have-- it never came for a vote-- the cloture vote failed. Legislative Procedure 101. In the heated context of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform back in 2007-- a vote for cloture is the closest thing to a vote for the bill since it did not come for an actual vote.

Keep trying, though, you may be able to come up with a seemingly valid spin to your previously inaccurate post. I find that I expend much less engergy, though, just admitting that I am wrong in those instance when I am wrong.

Farm subsidies are liberal plot insofar as it allows Dem Senators to win seats in traditionally red states. Further, the idea of doling out money to farmers is, by definition, progressive.

That electoral politics are fueling Democratic interest in amnesty is obvious. You stated yourself that Hispanics vote based on this issue.

________________________________

Thank you for writing this posting. I have stood in the Kangaroo courts where undocumented immigrants have been paraded through like cattle. In the same courtroom even theprosecutors were ashamed of the rash and cavalier manner in which the magistrate judges trampled the procedural protections that are supposed to be accorded to everybody. What is so frustrating is that people fail to see the clear nexus between NAFTA and the vertible wave of displaced humanity that its ill-advised policies have created. They prefer to persecute those who are already victimized. God bless you and your work!

""thereby forcing migrants to cross in the desert " No one forced them to cross in the desert. I wonder why our anger is not directed more at the Mexican government whose corruption and policies "force" people to seek a better life in the US."

For the majority of those who understand the issue in this country, this is precisely where the anger is directed. That said, our elected officials are trying to hedge their bets on the possibility that illegals become citizens (and, therefore, potential voters). Note that the bi-partisan amnesty bill proposed last year was largely unpopular with Americans.

"Who will you blame now that Bush is gone and now it is an Obama administration?"

Actually, they had no basis for blaming Bush, since he was an advocate for amnesty. I wonder if Obama won't actually be "tougher" than Bush on this issue. Will he take a hit on this issue for the sake of his party, knowing that the only election that matters to him is four years away?

I wouldn't worry about how your position is perceived here. This is (ostensibly) a Christian blog. The only perception that matters is God's.