According to the Council on Foreign Relations website:

The Council on Foreign Relations sponsors Independent Task Forces to assess issues of current and critical importance to U.S. foreign policy and provide policymakers with concrete judgments and recommendations. Diverse in backgrounds and perspectives, Task Force members aim to reach a meaningful consensus on policy through private and nonpartisan deliberations. Once launched, Task Forces are independent of CFR and solely responsible for the content of their reports. Task Force members are asked to join a consensus signifying that they endorse “the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation.” Each Task Force member also has the option of putting forward an additional or dissenting view. Members’ affiliations are listed for identification purposes only and do not imply institutional endorsement. Task Force observers participate in discussions, but are not asked to join the consensus.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.

Broken Immigration System Risks Serious Damage to U.S. National Interests, Warns CFR Task Force

July 8, 2009
Council on Foreign Relations

“The continued failure to devise and implement a sound and sustainable immigration policy threatens to weaken America’s economy, to jeopardize its diplomacy, and to imperil its national security,” concludes a new Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Independent Task Force co-chaired by former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former White House chief of staff Thomas “Mack” McLarty.

 

 

“The stakes are too high to fail,” says the report. “If the United States continues to mishandle its immigration policy, it will damage one of the vital underpinnings of American prosperity and security, and could condemn the country to a long, slow decline in its status in the world.” For this reason, the report urges: “The United States needs a fundamental overhaul of its immigration laws.”

U.S. Immigration Policy contends that America has reaped tremendous benefits from opening its doors to immigrants, as well as to students, skilled employees and others who may only live in the country for shorter periods of time. But it warns that “the continued inability of the United States to develop and enforce a workable system of immigration laws threatens to undermine these achievements.”

Directed by CFR Senior Fellow Edward Alden, the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S. Immigration Policy reflects the consensus of a bipartisan group of eminent leaders in the fields of immigration policy, homeland security, education, labor, business, academia and human rights. The group urges Congress and the Obama administration to move ahead with immigration reform legislation that achieves three critical goals:

* Reforms the legal immigration system so that it operates more efficiently, responds more accurately to labor market needs, and enhances U.S. competitiveness;
* Restores the integrity of immigration laws through an enforcement regime that strongly discourages employers and employees from operating outside that legal system, secures America’s borders, and levies significant penalties against those who violate the rules;
* Offers a fair, humane, and orderly way to allow many of the roughly twelve million migrants currently living illegally in the United States to earn the right to remain legally.

According to the report, the high level of illegal immigration in the country is increasingly damaging to U.S. national interests—”[it] diminishes respect for the law, creates potential security risks, weakens labor rights, strains U.S. relations with its Mexican neighbor, and unfairly burdens public education and social services in many states.”

But it contends that “no enforcement effort will succeed properly unless the legal channels for coming to the United States can be made to work better.” Therefore, “the U.S. government must invest in creating a working immigration system that alleviates long and counterproductive backlogs and delays, and ensures that whatever laws are enacted by Congress are enforced thoroughly and effectively.”

The Task Force lays out a series of concrete, realistic recommendations for legislation and administrative reforms that would be part of an immigration policy that better serves America’s national interests:

-Comprehensive immigration reform: A new effort to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill should be a first-tier priority for the Obama administration and Congress, and should be started without delay.

-Attracting skilled immigrants: The United States must tackle head-on the growing competition for skilled immigrants from other countries, and make the goal of attracting such immigrants a central component of its immigration policy. The report urges an end to the hard caps on employment-based immigrant visas and skilled work visas in favor of a more flexible system, the elimination of strict nationality quotas, and new opportunities for foreign students earning advanced degrees to remain in the United States after they graduate.

-National security: The Task Force calls for minimizing visa restrictions that impede scientific collaboration, noting that America’s long-term security depends on maintaining its place as a world leader in science and technology. The administration should also permit a broader effort by the U.S. military to recruit recent immigrants who are not yet citizens or green card holders, so as to bolster U.S. military capabilities.

-Employer enforcement: The Task Force supports a mandatory system for verifying those who are authorized to work in the United States, including a workable and reliable biometric verification system with secure documents. Tougher penalties should be levied against those who refuse to comply. It calls employer enforcement “the single most effective and humane enforcement tool available to discourage illegal migration.”

-Simplifying, streamlining, and investing in the immigration system: Congress and the Obama administration should establish a high-level independent commission to make recommendations for simplifying the administration and improving the transparency of U.S. immigration laws. The government must redouble its efforts to reduce backlogs and other unnecessary delays by investing in the personnel and technology necessary for handling visa and immigration applications efficiently.

-Improving America’s image abroad: The administration and Congress should launch a comprehensive review of the current security-related restrictions on travel to the United States, with an eye toward lifting restrictions that do not significantly reduce the risk of terrorists or criminals entering the country.

-Border enforcement: The report favors the full implementation of the Secure Border Initiative to gain greater operational control of the country’s borders. It also calls for the expansion of “smart border” initiatives that use information technologies and targeting tools to help distinguish individuals who may pose a security risk to the United States while facilitating easier entry by the vast majority of legitimate visitors and immigrants.

-State and local enforcement: State and local police forces can and should be used to augment federal immigration enforcement capabilities, as long as this does not interfere with their core mission of maintaining safety and security in the communities they serve.

-Earned legalization: The Task Force favors a policy of earned legalization, not amnesty, for many of the illegal immigrants currently living in the United States. The DREAM Act, reintroduced in the 111th Congress, provides the right model by requiring that young people without status who wish to remain in the United States must attend college or perform military service and demonstrate good moral character in order to earn their eligibility for permanent residence.

Upholding American values: The report identifies three areas that need immediate and serious review—incarceration policies, the severe penalties for minor immigration and criminal violations, and policies on refugees and asylees—and offers steps to address them, including:

* Expand the use of alternatives to detention, such as ankle bracelets or monitoring parolees.
* Allow greater discretion in implementing some of the penalties that were previously passed by Congress, such as the mandatory three, five, and ten year bars for many returning deportees.
* Create an office within the Department of Homeland Security that is responsible for refugee protection, and give greater priority for refugee issues throughout the Department of Homeland Security and in the White House.

The consensus on the bipartisan Task Force around these issues demonstrates that progress on immigration can be achieved. The report concludes that “the United States has the understanding, the capabilities, and the incentives to move forward and create a more intelligent, better functioning immigration system that will serve the country’s interests. It is time to get on with the job.”

For the full text of the report, visit: www.cfr.org/immigration_policy

TASK FORCE MEMBERS

Edward Alden, Council on Foreign Relations
Mary Boies, Boies & McInnis LLP
Robert C. Bonner, The Sentinel HS Group/Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Jeb Bush, Jeb Bush and Associates, LLC
Allan E. Goodman, Institute of International Education
Gordon H. Hanson, University of California, San Diego
Michael H. Jordan, MHJ Holdings Co.
Donald Kerwin, Migration Policy Institute
Richard D. Land, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
Elisa Massimino, Human Rights First
Thomas F. McLarty III, McLarty Associates
Eliseo Medina, Service Employees International Union
Steve Padilla, Aquarius Group Inc
Robert D. Putnam, Harvard University
Andrew D. Selee, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Margaret D. Stock, U.S. Army Reserve
Frances Fragos Townsend, Baker Botts, LLP
Kathleen Campbell Walker, Brown McCarroll, LLP
Raul H. Yzaguirre, Arizona State University

89 Thoughts to “Council on Foreign Relations Calls for Sweeping Immigration Reform”

  1. hello

    Touche Moon… however, I have sent you an article I did my own investigation on for some time, remember? So I’m not sure what you mean by “You are getting your information through filters”. What filters?

    It’s easy, want to see how corrupt the SEIU is and it’s connection to the Obama administration? There is a site called google, go on it and type in SEIU + corruption + Obama… you get over 82,000 hits. Not all of them good, take a look at a few and make up your own mind. Or, just watch TV, which ever you prefer.

  2. Rick Bentley

    not to take sides but that’s a great comeback there.

  3. Rick Bentley

    (by Moon-howler)

  4. hello

    Article I sent to you Moon since you seem to have forgotten…

    MSNBC, Legit News Channel or State Run Propaganda Machine?

    There is no question that MSNBC is a left leaning news channel, which there is nothing wrong with, but could accusations that they are nothing more than state run media be true?

    It’s no secret that GE, who owns NBC and MSNBC, received 140 billion in tax payer dollars. However, with bailout money there comes a price to pay, with the auto makers they had their advertising budget slashed, had to fire their CEO and had to restructure according to the Obama administrations demands which included favoring the UAW over preferred stock holders. With financial institutions, executive pay and bonus money is capped. So, what strings are attached to the GE bailout money? Not only did CEO Jeffrey Immelt not get fired he was named to President Obama’s new economic advisory board. One has to wonder if their ‘string’ isn’t favorable news coverage and promotion of Obama policy.

    Ratings for “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”, MSNBC’s 8 PM show, have dropped a staggering 42 percent between October and April of this year over all. With viewers in the key demographic of 25 to 54 years old Olbermann has lost 53 percent of his viewers. Rachel Maddow, who comes on after Olbermann, has lost an amazing 65 percent of her 25 to 54 year old viewers..

    However, while MSNBC’s ratings continue to dwindle Keith Olbermann’s pay went from 3 million a year to 7.5 million a year. It’s quite obvious that Mr. Olbermann isn’t getting a multi-million dollar pay raise due to good performance while his rating plunge, is his pay raise being paid by our tax dollars in return for his pro-Obama stance? GE also has a vested interest in seeing that Obama policies such as Cap and Trade, universal health care and other green policy get passed because the stand to make hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars in government contracts and associated products. Is this a conflict of interest? One has to wonder with one Obama official, Kareem Dale, publicly stating “at the White House, as we like to always say, we love MSNBC”.

    Kareem Dale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB7A8qrBH7Y
    Rachel Maddow ratings from premiere until now: http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/06/03/msnbcs-rachel-maddow-show-adults-25-54-tv-ratings-fall-nearly-65-from-premiere-month/19958
    Keith Olbermann ratings for this year alone: http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/06/02/coutdown-with-keith-olbermann-posts-lowest-ratings-of-the-year-in-may/19862
    Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of NBC Universal parent GE, named to Presidents economic advisory board despite GE needing and getting 140 billion in bailout money: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/173718-Immelt_Named_To_Obama_s_New_Economic_Advisory_Board.php

    So, MSNBC, Legit News Channel or State Run Propaganda Machine?

    [ED. Note: I believe Hello and I discussed the kidnappings in Phoenix and I told him I did not have time to research it. I offered to publish after approval from Alanna. I recall getting this piece in email but I do not agree to saying I would publish it as a thread. Sorry for any misunderstanding on my part. I don’t watch MSNBC and have no opinion one way or the other. I only watch Foxnews and CNN.]

  5. hello

    Now I’m in moderation? For what?

  6. hello

    Oops, it may just be due to the links I have in the article I sent to you… sorry about that.

  7. Slowpoke Rodriguez

    hello :
    For anyone else who is scratching their heads as to why the SEIU is part of this ‘council’: http://www.seiuexposed.com/crimecorruption.cfm

    Actually, ten minutes and “the google” will show even the simplest of minds that this “bipartisan” panel is very left leaning. All these innocuous-sounding “LLP”s and such have made all their donations to Democratic candidates. Go figure.

  8. Gainesville Resident

    ShellyB, if you are going to pick apart what I said: there IS one border in the continental USA. It surrounds the entire country for goodness sakes! Draw a line around the USA 48 states and you’ll see what I say. To say there are multiple borders is inaccurate, unless you toss in Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, etc. I’m very well aware we have seaports, a boundary with Canada, etc.

  9. Gainesville Resident

    I have to side with MH about what threads get posted here. antibvbl can pick and choose what it posts, and MH really has done a great job in broadening the subject matter on here. So what if she decided to post about Michael Jackson. I guess I don’t see the harm there. She put up plenty of posts on the immigration debate, so why not a departure from time to time to less serious stuff. Do some people just want to only talk about grim, depressing news like the economy, immigration, etc. all day? I don’t know about you – but it gets pretty depressing at times. As MH says (or implied) this blog can’t be one-stop shopping for every news item – as if it were the “CNN of blogs”. There’s a gazillion blogs out there – which must be discussing a lot of these other issues ad infinitum. Of course there’s always the option of starting one’s own blog too. Each time this comes up about why some non-immmigration related thread is put up – I have to just wonder what people really want to do. Cap & Trade is a good topic to discuss, but if MH doesn’t want to start a thread about it, there’s plenty of other blogs out there.

    Maybe I’m just in a grouchy mood tonight, for no particular reason other than tired of being in this dumpy town here in Georgia. Things are going well and I’m looking forward to getting out of here tomorrow night.

    Oh, and on the subject of news filtering – someone let me know a place where it isn’t filtered besides CSPAN. Every website/blog/TV channel/newspaper filters the news. The US gov’t filters it too – in every press conference by every administration. Your senators/congressmen filter it too. Not sure what point was being made there.

    Well, I think for some reason I’m in a grouchy mood tonight for no particular reason other than being stuck in a boring hotel room, so I think I’ll shut up now!

  10. Gainesville Resident

    Slowpoke, California’s in a mess financially and nearly bankrupt. They are doing whatever they can to try and cut costs, so it follows they might look at things like that to try and get things under control. I think this is a matter of the financial picture overriding any other concerns. They’re going to do anything they can to reign in costs on a whole bunch of areas. Their budget is a disaster and they are headed for a real financial crisis.

  11. ShellyB

    @Gainesville Resident
    Point taken, Gainesville.

    If anyone really wants to know why California is in such bad straights, watch the movie “Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room.” Enron was basically a gigantic Madoff ponzi scheme. They house of cards was falling though, even though they had one of their own inside the White House running interference. To keep the lie going they ripped off California with blackmail energy rates. Many people died in the rolling blackouts. Billions of dollars got siphoned out of a state budget that was doing fine before that. Then all that money went up in smoke along with all the pensions of the employees of the local energy companies Enron had bought.

  12. Rick Bentley

    I have to say also, the moderators do a great job of keeping dialogue going here.

  13. Gainesville Resident

    Actually, I have to agree with you ShellyB, that’s a great movie. The book is also really good, and goes into much greater detail. What a bunch of crooks those guys were. So is Madoff for that matter. But Enron had fun playing with the energy grid at California’s expense. The book is well worth reading – lots of stuff the movie doesn’t have time to explore.

  14. Moon-howler

    Rick, thanks. And we appreciate you all also.

    Gainesville thanks for your support.

    Someone tell me what happens when a state goes bankrupt. Seriously, I am asking a legitimate question here. It can’t print its own money. I understand it can’t pay its bills but what eventually happens? They already have huge tax rates out there. They just can’t tax the people to death.

  15. JustinT

    Regarding the proposed CIR measures, it sounds like the best approach to have a practical solution that respects our Constitution, doesn’t create a race war, and does not deprive our economy of needed labor.

    In looking at some of the other comments, it struck me how the Internet has really revolutionized the way people seek out “information.” M-H mentioned the many filters someone has to go through when they think they are doing “research.” People can find anything they want to find on the Internet. Many Americans are not sophisticated enough to accept basic equality is a reality not a slogan, but they are able to type in key words in a google search and then are expected to determine what is truth and what is fiction. Then they base their vote on some chain email that was debunked a year ago but no one told them. Kind of scary, no?

  16. Second-Alamo

    And electing a president based on what he says instead of what his accomplishments are isn’t scary?

  17. Moon-howler

    SA, isn’t that what happens every election where there is no incumbent?

  18. ShellyB

    That’s exactly right, M-H. In 2000, we elected W. based on his father’s accomplishments, and ignored what he himself had not accomplished. No need to ask if THAT was scary. The result was we were caught flat footed on the greatest terrorism attack in our nation’s history, and this fact became the false pretense for a disastrous foreign policy including trillions of dollars wasted on a war designed to profit a handful of private corporations. The result was the hiring of unqualified cronies to important positions like head of FEMA and the near obliteration of a major city. The result was a complete lack of oversight of our banking institutions and the near collapse of the global economy and a recession we have only just began to stabilize (we hope). Just to name a few results. There was also torture as a national policy, illegal domestic spying, Valerie Plame, corruption of the Justice Department, collapse of our auto industry, etc.

  19. An Ordinary Joe

    Actually in reading Second Alamo’s post, I think he or she was talking about the fact that President Obama did not have much of a record since he was running for President since he made his speech at the Democratic convention. Cosponsoring legislation is not much since it just takes a request to cosponsor.

    George W Bush was a governor and so was Clinton and Carter. Being a governor can give an idea of a person’s approach more than a community organizer and quiet first term senator.

    There isn’t a President that people couldn’t list a bunch of negatives about so to do so is really not helpful to any conversation. I seem to recall that shortly after the second President Bush took office, the economy which had been tanking at the end of President Clinton’s watch tanked badly. Most know that business cycles do not occur in months but in years and a President has to take the good with the bad. So people criticized Mr. Bush for an economy tanking 8 years ago as a result of the dot.com drop that occured under Mr. Clinton. Well, here we are again and since Mr. Bush was criticized for something not of his making, so too is Mr. Obama. It is the life of partisan politics.

    This is really for the first time I have ever heard a President being blamed for the “obilteration of a major city” due to an hurricane.[ED note: comment corrected to ‘hurricane’ per request of contributor. 3 following remarks deleted.] The response was awful but I don’t think the President has been given the authority by Congress to control the weather. By the way, some of the blame could have been levied on the city since they had been receiving money to maintain and improve the levees and it wasn’t used for that purpose. And the money had been given under previous administrations as well.

  20. ShellyB

    Yes, Joe, the hurricane itself was not Bush’s fault. Thanks for clearing that up. I think the reason that “Katrina” is one of the two or three disasters that will define the legacy of the Bush administration is that it demonstrated the cost we pay as Americans when we have a President who is not capable of taking charge in a time of crisis. The people surrounding Bush thought so little of his intelligence that they were not in the practice of giving him basic information, including things like “our nation is under attack” or “there is a really bad hurricane and Americans are dying.” There wasn’t a sense that this kind of information should be brought to the President, and that decisions should then flow from him. Instead, they only fed him information that would keep his moral up, and manipulate him into thinking he was making the decisions they wanted him to make. But he was never given the full plate of options. Only the ones they wanted him to think he was making.

    We can speculate about the motives of Cheney and company for keeping Bush in a bubble. We can also face the fact that few candidates for President, and really few adults who have at all been successful at any level of life, would allow the people around them to put them in such a bubble. Most people, I would venture, would insist on real information and real authority if their name was the one that was likely to go down as the worst President in American history. After I’ve said all this, I must say I don’t blame Bush. He is only as much a man as he is. I blame the system of partisan politics that caused so many Americans to vote for him simply because he had an R. by his name and because they were already used to the sound of “President Bush.”

  21. SlowpokeRodriguez

    @ShellyB
    Or, it shows that when you know for a week that a Cat5 hurricane is coming right for you….get out. It’s not rocket science.

  22. An Ordinary Joe

    “I blame the system of partisan politics that caused so many Americans to vote for him simply because he had an R. by his name and because they were already used to the sound of “President Bush.”

    Is the same true for people who voted for President Obama simply because he had a D. by his name? Sure there are people who vote that way. It is a shame that sometimes all that takes. Since I know that things said on the internet are often misunderstood, I am making the assumption that you do not think the democrats should be excluded from the club that votes party alone. I myself have never registered in a party and have voted for both parties over my lifetime if I believed in the person.

    But I think there are many other reasons for the election of President Bush including some very real parallels to the election of President Obama. One parallel was that people voted because the person was not associated with the sitting president. People voted against Vice President Gore in great numbers because of his association with President Clinton, just as people voted against Senator McCain because he was from the same party as President Bush. President Bush talked about his experience with bipartisanship–sound familar in the last election?

    I am not sure that President Bush will go down as the worst President in American History. History will tell us that.

    I have lived under 11 presidents so far and based on my memory, there are a few that could vie for that honor. And my history lessons from before my life tell me that there are quite a few that could also be in the group.

  23. Moon-howler

    Interesting Joe. We are close in presidents. High 5 and all that.

    I think we all have our favorites, living and dead. I would not even want to say who I thought was the worst. Different times/different seasons/different country needs.

  24. hello

    ShellyB, I read your comment and could help to make comparisons…

    “we elected W. based on his father’s accomplishments, and ignored what he himself had not accomplished. No need to ask if THAT was scary.”

    – We elected Obama based on… his speaking ability maybe?

    “disastrous foreign policy including trillions of dollars wasted on a war designed to profit a handful of private corporations”

    – What do you think stimulus and bailout money is doing? Billions of dollars going to a handful of banks and private corporations.

    “The result was the hiring of unqualified cronies to important positions like head of FEMA”

    – Kind of like appointing Jeffery Immelt to your economic advisory board (psst… his company needed over $140 billion in bailout money), or like firing a qualified Inspectors General overseeing bailout money for Amtrak and replacing him with an Amtrak HR VP who’s specialty is “diversity awareness”, or like appointing crooked union bosses from the SEIU to high ranking labor department positions…

    “The result was a complete lack of oversight of our banking institutions”

    – What do you think is going to happen to oversight of hundreds of billions of dollars now that Obama has gotten rid of at least 3 IG’s and replaced them with political donors with no experience?

    “There was also torture as a national policy, illegal domestic spying, Valerie Plame, corruption of the Justice Department, collapse of our auto industry, etc.”

    – Obama’s top legal advisor has come out and said that they can detain any and all at Gitmo indefinitely even if they are acquitted of their charges. Obama has kept the “illegal domestic spying”, give it some time, Government Motors will indeed collapse, again.

  25. hello

    Sorry ShellyB but one more example for your “The result was the hiring of unqualified cronies to important positions like head of FEMA”…

    It can be summed up in just 3 letters B-I-D-E-N.

  26. Emma

    Funny how that old saw about “illegal domestic spying” keeps getting trotted out, even though the Obama administration continues to utilize the same tactics, and they were started under Clinton.

  27. Moon-howler

    I can’t get myself all upset over illegal domestic spying. Emma, I think it was redefined under Bush. My biggest problem with that is I simply don’t care. If that is what it takes to prevent terrorism, go at it. Sigh, I am a bad American.

  28. ShellyB

    I guess it all depends on the lens you look through. Just goes to show it’s all about partisan politics. It’s always predictable who will defend the Bush administration as if it was the Second Coming, and who will usually complain about what happened during those eight tragic years. Maybe I’m just as partisan for thinking it was a tragedy. People will just have to make up their minds about Bush, if they have control of their minds.

    But making up your mind about Obama after six months is a bit silly. That only proves the point that it depends on the lens. After six months of Bush I was still hopeful. I was thinking “well, he’d not very bright, but he has an experienced VP.” That’s the difference between an open mind and a mind that has been invaded by the boob tube.

  29. Second-Alamo

    Why ShellyB, I didn’t know you had inside knowledge of the information that was given to then president Bush. Your office must have been very close to have overheard all the discussions with the president. Perhaps you can tell us more of the things that went on there, or are you just quoting the left’s accusations along with the rest of the media? As far as the economy under Bush, don’t forget about the impact of 9-11 at the time. My 401K took a nose dive then also.

  30. An Ordinary Joe

    Did I say something bad about President Obama? I didn’t think I did since I am not quick to judge people’s intentions just their deeds.

  31. Witness Too

    If anyone cares to understand the “Illegal Domestic Spying” situation, here it is: the Bush administration secretly implemented spying programs that violated the privacy of Americans, apparently more than one, immediately following the 9/11 attacks. In 2006, the wiretapping program came to light. In 2008, Congress retroactively made the wiretapping program legal. This does not mean that the government is tapping your phones under the Obama administration; it means that if they do tap you phones, they are doing so under a legal framework that requires a proper warrant.

    @Emma

  32. Witness Too

    ** I meant more than one illegal domestic spying program; NOT more than one American!

  33. Moon-howler

    Who is sponsoring any sweeping reform? Are there any bills out there being discussed or are health care and energy taking up all the time now?

  34. Emma

    And why do you suppose that happened, Witness? It allowed the two-faced Democrats in Congress to continue to attack Bush while reserving these tactics for themselves. They knew freaking well they could not collect intelligence without them, and they also knew well that valuable intelligence had alredy been gathered. Two-faced hypocrites, every one of them.

  35. Emma

    And incidentally, Congress didn’t make the wiretapping legal. It was a decision by a special federal appeals court that backed the government’s authority to conduct this type of surveillance. It was based on a complaint by a telecommunications firm that the Bush administration in 2007 improperly demanded information on its clients, violating constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

    So a COURT upheld the wiretapping, giving the hypocritical Democrats the ability to continue to use the tactic while still attacking the Bush administration’s use of it. And so very many liberals continue to follow their party line in attacking Bush over something that Obama is freely using. The truth hurts, doesn’t it?

  36. michael

    If you had two choices, one where you know bad people are using cell phones as a technology to implement efficient organized crime, terrorism and dangerous gang activity, and you could listen to their conversations about how they are planning to commit crimes agaist the citizens who are victims of these organized criminal activities…

    And the other where you do not have a technology to listen to bad people, and must “guess” at what they are up to next, usually after they have committed a crime, and there are sufficient victims and witnesses that have not been bough of by the crime syndicates that infiltrate impoverished communities

    Which of the two systems would you want protecting you from very bad people in the world” Your only cost and risk is an “agent” of the law possibly randomly listening to a portion of your call after a keyword in a search list alerted that law enforcement agent to a possible conversation about violent activity or crimes in progress.

    Are we so paranoide that some might bust your door down in the middle of the night because your son was talking to a friend about buying drugs somewhere, that we don’t ever want anyone committing a crime, to be caught “before” the act”?

  37. michael

    By the way, the report above …is a progressive political sell out of America to the highest bidder, and a stark lesson in what happens to a nation that does not follow its own laws and chooses to inflict misery on the majority of the nation’s population, simply because a minority of the population in the nation feels sorry for “illegal” immigrants and generally for “minority groups” in America, regardless of what the law actually says and ignores the reality of its fairness to all people equally regardless of race, gender, religion or ethnicity.

    We have this weird form of “progressive” racism emerging in America that seeks group entitlement at the expense of “individual rights” of all Americans equally.

  38. Pat

    Based upon the number of hostages taken in the past in foreign countries on trumped up charges, Americans know that looting of their country by illegal immigrants, or others, isn’t an acceptable method of doing business. Outsourcing is one thing; looting America is another.

    America must take this as seriously as any other nation would in the same situation – or we will not have a country left to call home.

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