By Chuck Bates

Well we are finally at the point where the President of the United States brought the immigration issue to a national address to the people during prime time. He waxed eloquently about the need for a nation of immigrants while attempting to please the American citizens with a plan for troops on the border. But what did he really say and what can we expect from Washington on this matter?

Last month we briefly discussed the economic costs of the current illegal immigrant population in this country. Public welfare systems, hospitals and school districts are at a breaking point due to the burden of illegals. The public outcry has come across party lines with most polls indicating that 65%-75% of the American people want order brought to the chaos at the border. Unfortunately Washington seems to be utterly missing the will of the people; or are they ignoring it?

The US House of Representatives passed an immigration reform bill on December 16th, 2005. While it was not a perfect bill it at the very least addressed the immediate problem; border security. Since 9/11 we have daily been bombarded with this War on Terror and the need for Homeland Security, but the borders, particularly the border with Mexico has gone largely unguarded with a mass of humanity in the millions crossing into the US illegally every year.

The House bill provided funding and a federal mandate to secure the border first by adding thousands of agents to the Border Patrol and begin work on a 2,000 mile fence between the US and Mexico. Secondly the measure provided for the enforcement of current laws with regard to employers hiring illegals. It instituted heavy fines for those employers knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. Finally, the bill did note that once the borders were secure then, and only then, would the Congress consider changing the immigration laws with respect to increasing the caps on the number of foreigners who could apply for legal citizenship each year. This is common sense. When a surgeon is dealing with a patient who is bleeding to death, he doesn’t run tests; he takes care of the immediate problem and stops the bleeding to save the patient.

The House of Lords, otherwise known as the United States Senate, seems to be completely out of touch with the will of the people. Following the President’s address in May the Senate immediately took up an immigration bill authored by none other than Ted Kennedy! Try and follow this if you can, Ted Kennedy actually has the Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist along with Republicans Martinez of Florida and Hagel of Nebraska carrying his bill for him. Some Republican politicians believe that somehow rewarding folks for breaking your immigration laws will in the end earn you their votes. However they may have horribly miscalculated. It is anticipated that for every vote the Republicans lose from the base of the party over this issue, it will take at least ten immigrant votes to regain the original loss. Essentially expect that the vast majority of illegals to vote Democrat similar to the ratios in the African-American community. Meanwhile, we the people of these United States get to foot the bill of unmitigated immigration. Here is where the real costs of immigration come into play.

Under the original Senate plan the annual caps would be extended each year the cap was met and would automatically increase by 20% per year. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has completed an analysis of the bill and the sheer numbers of potential ‘legal’ immigration under the bill are staggering. Mr. Rector, along with Sen. Jeff Sessions revealed the bill would expand immigration over the next twenty years allowing between 100 and 217.1 million new immigrants into the United States! On the high end that is equal to 66% of the current population of the country!

Should the Congress pass a measure closely resembling the current proposal get ready for life to change completely in the U.S. Frankly, these numbers of immigrants cannot be assimilated in such a short period of time and as noted last month could mean the end of the Republic as we know it.

By Jonathan Lindberg

Is it just me, or does politics these days seem more like a really bad play with an ending predictable and contrived, and a cast of players that already know their parts and no matter how hard they try they cannot seem to break away from the already approved script?

Since the middle of last year, the race in Tennessee for the United States Senate has been divided by campaign advisors and consultants into three separate seasons. The first season, fundraising and grassroots, lasted all of last year and into April. During this time, both Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary were the most active communicators. Using constant emails and endless trips from one end of the state to the other, their hope was to define Bob Corker as a moderate, pushing him as close to the center as possible. The tactics seemed effective, as Corker barely peaked over 10% in any poll West of Chattanooga.

The second season of this race is the one we find ourselves in now, the one-man-media-machine, that being Bob Corker. If any headline has come out of this race so far, it is this: Bob Corker is a fundraising machine (showing no disparity between money from Democrats or Republicans). With a four-to-one advantage in funds, Corker has the luxury of running an endless string of mostly-unopposed ads in every market across the state with the hopes of defining himself as a conservative. The question remains, will the efforts of Bryant and Hilleary to paint Corker as a moderate-in-conservative-clothing stick? So far, Corker is out of single-digits and rising in the polls.

The last part of the race should take place sometime July, when all three campaigns are able to unleash television and radio ads and this race turns into a media war. Here is where things get ugly. With little money to spend and no time to lose, both Bryant and Hilleary will most likely skip right to attacks-ads, once again trying to define Corker and undo his media barrage, pushing him back to the center.

So where does all that leave us? It leaves me feeling sick. Not so much at the outcome, all three seem to be fine men. But rather at the process that is being used to achieve this outcome. How we feel about a particular candidate is now defined by thirty-seconds of manufactured gravy coming through our television screens. What’s missing is real dialogue, an ongoing debate among the candidates over issues, not personality, over the things that matter most. Both Bryant and Hilleary seem open to this. Corker on the other hand, refuses to talk issues with his opponents, declining invitation after invitation.

I am proud to say that the Main Street Journal hosted the only real debate of this race. This race really needed a dozen other debates just like it. And though Bob Corker did not participate, and both Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary sounded more like old friends rather than campaign opponents, the thought that for one night, this campaign was not about who-did-what twenty-five years ago or how much money one person raised in such-and-such quarter, but rather, it was about the issues that mattered most, to every person sitting in that room. And after all, isn’t that what a three-legged race like this is really all about?