Note to movement Republicans re illegal immigration (another way of saying the preceding post)

In many mainstream media comment threads, Republican partisans try to change the topic from illegal immigration to the Democratic Party, blaming the latter entirely for the former, along with rank and file Democrats, all of whom are described as lib-er-uls (apparently the worst thing you can call someone).

This is beyond stupid. Don't you realize that about half of registered Democrats are on your side of the immigration issue--and that much of the Republican leadership is against you?

We'll all get farther in our efforts to stop illegal immigration--and to NOT give amnesty to those already here--if we make it a bipartisan groundswell. Only grassroots efforts will get us what we want, since both parties are terrified of losing Latino votes.

If you just take this issue as an opportunity to talk about how Obama is a foreign Muslim terrorist so-shul-ist yada yada, you push away all the Democrats who, like me, are on the same page as you about illegal immigration.

And you're nuts if you think the Republican leadership is with you, no matter what they say. Talk is cheap. I judge what the Republican Party is willing to do to stop illegal immigration by what it actually did do from 2000 to 2006, the six year period when it controlled all three branches of government.

And what they did do in that period is....talk. Some sporadic fence building, a few symbolic prosecutions of businesses--and the biggest wave of illegal immigration into this country in United States history.

That's what the Republicans did for us.

I'm not saying the Democratic leadership is any better. You'd better believe they're trolling for Latino votes for all it's worth.

However, Obama does seem to be making vigorous efforts to grab illegal immigrants who are felons, and they have increased border efforts, though not remotely enough.

Nearly all of us Democrats disagree with you about health care reform and Wall Street reform. I can't paper that over, hold hands and sing kumbaya with y'all.

But we can work together on this issue. And those of us who live in the territory of La Reconquista are especially likely to agree with you, because we've seen it firsthand, and we know from personal experience that virtually every word in every pro-amnesty article is outrageous propaganda.

Now here's the hardest part: the need to adopt a universal biometric ID system, which both liberals and right wingers oppose almost hysterically.

I don't propose giving up any of my privacy lightly. But nothing less will really deal with this crisis, and you surely must agree that it is a crisis.

Because regardless of what we do at the border, that won't help with the illegals already here, however many there are--10 million? 20 million? 30 million? No one knows, but we do know there are A LOT, and they're concentrated here in the Southwest, such that many outside the war zone don't fully realize how dire it is here.

Moreover, large number of illegals come here on visas and then let the visa expire. Border patrols won't nab these either.

And this is the only way to shut up the anencephalic Al Sharpton school of political screamers constantly accusing everyone opposing illegal immigration of racism.

A biometric universal ID can be used to efficiently screen every single person whenever they interact with any government agency, from schools to hospitals to polling places to the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, plus private employers.

You don't even need a card (that can be lost or faked). For example, Fujitsu makes a palm scanner that instantly reads the pattern of veins inside your palm. Can't fake that!

Every cop car can have a scanner, linked to the database with wifi.

It will catch anyone of any race or nationality, any way they turn.

This is the only way we can discover and control who's in this country, and catch all those who are here illegally. And palm vein patterns don't depend on skin color.

Regardless of your party, please join me in advocating this. It can build a virtual wall throughout our country, not just at the border.

And remember--there's not a prayer of it happening unless it's a grassroots bipartisan effort. Neither party in Washington is going to stick their necks out on this one.

Richard A. Clarke says biometric ID a necessity

"In the absence of a secure border and verifiable biometric identification systems, preventing terrorists from getting in to this country and setting up sleeper cells here is almost impossible. Maybe we will get serious after the next attack. "

--from a New York Times op-ed piece by Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, & author of “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.”