http://rds.yahoo.com/S=53720272/K=Illegal+immigrant+crimes/v=2/SID=e/l=NSR/R=5/;_ylt=A9htfMTTHRdFkIAAXBnQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTBjZGM1ZGE1BHBvcwM1BHNlYwNzcg--/SIG=12sh6hug7/EXP=1159229267/*-http%3A//feeds.sfgate.com/~r/sfgate/rss/feeds/news/~3/26104320/article.cgi
(09-23) 04:00 PDT Washington -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert stood before the cameras Thursday placing big red check marks on a list of nine border-enforcement bills that have passed the House -- including a 700- mile, double-layer fence ridiculed by critics all year but headed for the Senate floor next week.
At least for now, House Republican leaders have succeeded in their take-no-prisoners approach to immigration despite nationwide protests by Latinos last spring and White House warnings that they are endangering their party's future.
Refusing to compromise with the Senate and their own president to widen paths to legal entry and give the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country now an avenue to citizenship, Hastert and other House GOP leaders have successfully framed that approach as amnesty.
The House has prevailed "because that's where the country is," said Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River (Sacramento County). "This is a situation where members in both the House and the Senate have listened to the folks back home."
Critics conceded a setback but argued that it would be temporary. They said enforcement alone won't stop illegal immigration but will alienate Latino voters, the nation's fastest-growing voter bloc. They said it will turn Republicans into a minority party, much as when former Gov. Pete Wilson won re-election in 1994 on an anti-immigrant platform that ultimately helped make California a Democratic-majority state.
"There are very serious political implications to what they are doing today," said Cecilia Munoz, chief lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza. "If 40 percent of my community supported Bush in the 2004 elections, it's very hard to imagine in this environment that proportion of Latinos voting for candidates from a party which continues to insult them."
For now, however, the political tide clearly favors enforcement first, legalization later.
2006-09-24
13:16:31
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