JS picks challenger in GOP primary

Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial endorses Jim Burkee, a 40-year-old college professor who began his campaign as a political science experiment:

Jim Sensenbrenner has the support of the party apparatus in the 5th Congressional District. He consistently earns high ratings from taxpayer rights groups and conservative organizations. He has a strong sense of constituent service. He’s tough. He’s outspoken.

But Sensenbrenner too often has been a roadblock in Congress, even to the point of splitting his own party over illegal immigration because he couldn’t find it in himself to compromise...

Sensenbrenner, though solidly conservative, did little to advance Republican priorities while entrusted with the powerful chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee. Instead, he alienated an entire voting bloc — Latinos — with his dogmatism on the immigration issue.

His extreme stance on illegal immigration helped inflame the public, split his party and poisoned the atmosphere in Congress for reform. Sensenbrenner authored an enforcement-only measure that would have made felons of undocumented immigrants, split up families and built a 700-mile border fence.

At least Burkee will have something nice for his scrapbook.

Is Sensenbrenner's son a leaker?

Was it Jim Sensenbrenner's son who leaked the Canadian memo awhile back that caused Barack Obama some problems over his stance on NAFTA?

Dan Bice asks the question in the Journal Sentinel "Dogged" blog.

Young Sensenbrenner indignantly denies it.

And at this point it doesn't much matter.

More intriguing are questions of how and why he got the job in the Canadian embassy in Washington in the first place. The Toronto Star reports:

The ambassador, Michael Wilson, didn't want him there.

The diplomatic corps on Pennsylvania Ave. didn't want him there and ultimately were so distrustful of the son of a right-wing Republican congressman, they muttered that they wanted his door left open so they could hear who he was talking to.

But officials in Stephen Harper's office wanted him there and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day particularly wanted him there, based on Sensenbrenner's long links, dating back to school days, with the former Reform party, the precursor of today's government in Ottawa.

It wasn't the first time a partisan posting trumped diplomacy at a Canadian mission, but his appointment was rare in that he seemed to work under the radar, having won the post by telling his buddies in Ottawa that he could do a better lobbying job of Congress than the diplomats already there.

When the Toronto Star first looked into Sensenbrenner's short-lived, no-bid contract last year, he had not registered as an agent for a foreign government, even though he won plaudits for opening some Republican doors on Capitol Hill.

But here's the strangest part of the story:

The push to get him on the payroll came particularly from Day, sources said, when he took over the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative file, the name given to the Republican move to require all Canadians crossing the U.S. land border to carry passports or secure driver's licences.[Canada opposed that move.]

His father also stood as an impediment to everything the embassy staff was fighting for.

Jim Sensenbrenner, chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee before Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, is a hawk on immigration and authored the Enhanced Border Security Act of 2002. He was also the man who introduced the U.S. Patriot Act.

Young (27) Sensenbrenner's name is Frank, named for the great-grandfather who was president and CEO of Kimberly Clark and who invented Kotex. F. James Sensenbrenner's first name is also Frank, as is his cousin's, F. Joseph Sensenbrenner, onetime Madison mayor. (What you can learn on this blog is endless, although perhaps useless.)

'Could I see your papers, Mr. Sensenbrenner?'

50-minute trip for immigration know-it-alls
Staten Island ferry enlightens

By Thomas V. DiBacco

NEW YORK - This month marks the anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in New York's Harbor, an event that will go unheralded in large part because the monument is taken for granted today. But it wasn't always that way. When the statue, officially called Liberty Enlightening the World, was dedicated on a raw, rainy late October day in 1886, it brought to New York the president of the United States, Grover Cleveland, who formally accepted the belated Bicentennial gift from France, the nation's closest ally during the American Revolution.

"We will not forget," he said, "that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected."

Ironically, none of the speeches on that historic day interpreted the gift in reference to immigration, but because of its proximity to Ellis Island, where some 12 million arriving immigrants were processed from 1892 to 1954, the monument became the gold standard for open-door policies.

The statue is still relevant because of the current debate over immigration policy -- at least that's the thought I had as my wife and I took our first trip last week on the Staten Island ferry for a close-up look at her Lady and nearby Ellis Island. That ferry ride should be required of all the presidential candidates, as well as members of Congress, and know-it-all news pundits like Fox TV's Bill O'Reilly and CNN's Lou Dobbs, crusaders against life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for illegal immigrants. It's only a 50-minute round trip, with 104 boat trips daily, and unlike so many other things in this world, it's absolutely free of charge.

The most impressive aspect of the water journey is how blessedly quiet it is, save for the sound of the ferry's motors. To be sure, on every trip hundreds of people board the ferry (an average of 625), including a good number of commuters who live on Staten Island. Tourists from numerous countries take silent, digital pictures, as do American visitors. But it's the gaze of everyone on the skyline that speaks, reflecting the mind's difficult downloading of the overwhelming majesty of the site and perhaps the harboring of thoughts about what earlier huddled masses underwent to get to this country.

For me, the journey rekindled the stories from my grandfather and father, both immigrants from Italy, about their struggle and survival in a nation so foreign to their native villages.

Even without knowing much about the history of immigration to the United States, looking at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island has a way of lowering the emotional barometer about policy today. For both monuments attest to the hard fact that immigrants came, were processed and, for the most part, became Americans in the best sense of that term.

In all candor and as a professor of American history, I don't have an easy answer to dealing with illegal immigration today from south of our borders. But what immigration history has taught me is that extreme penalties and restrictions don't work.

For most of American history, there were no federal rules, and immigrants flowed easily into the various states. When the federal government did intervene, after the Supreme Court in 1875 opined that regulation was a federal responsibility, national laws reflected prevailing public prejudices: first, restrictions against the Chinese and Japanese, then against southern and eastern Europeans. At the height of anti-immigration restriction laws in the 1920s, the supreme irony is that the pecking order of acceptability was in stark contrast to today's: Then, Latin Americans were warmly accepted, even encouraged.

But what is clear is that it's virtually impossible for anyone today to verify that their first ancestors to America carrying their surname were legal immigrants. States accepting immigrants kept some records but not systematically. Ellis Island authorities, which rejected only 2 percent of arrivals (on health grounds or the view they might become public charges), lost records in fires. So the whole notion that the immigration process in the old days resulted in a proper entry may well be nothing more than legal fiction for many immigrants. As for the federal laws, they were often conflicting and confusing: Restrictions based upon race, place of birth, sex and residence were officially eliminated in 1968, but the long-standing, sort-of affirmative-action policy of encouraging Canadians and Latin Americans was set aside in 1976.

Non-extreme ways to deal with illegal immigration would accept the view that policy should not be retroactive -- that is, it should not penalize already settled, working immigrants. And the idea of a required national identity card for all Americans is a lot of hooey, wrought with bureaucratic ballooning and invasion of privacy. Nor should policy concentrate on building a border wall that defies economic common sense and smacks of a Berlin-wall era. And if states, such as New York, choose to permit illegal immigrants to apply for drivers licenses (under the reasonable assumption such individuals, like any other New Yorker, would be easier to track), that's really their business.

As for the extremists like Dobbs, O'Reilly and U.S. Rep. James F. Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, who see prison or deportation as a proper treatment for undocumented immigrants, I'd recommend more than a trip on the Staten Island ferry. I'd like to see their papers -- that is, proof positive that their ancestors entered the country legally.

Thomas V. DiBacco is a professor emeritus at American University in Washington, D.C. He wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel.

Holding the hard line on immigration

Let you think that Fat Jim has moved even slightly on his hard-line anti-immigrant stance, check the Oconomowoc Focus story this week about his talk to local Kiwanians. Some highlights:

"They (illegal immigrants) distort the economy, they take away jobs from the communities, and many times they are paid cash," he said, meaning that often they do not pay taxes for the society they live in...

and

... the Senate's version of the bill ... allows current illegal immigrants, who have lived in the U.S. for five years, to gain U.S. citizenship by paying fines and back taxes for only three of the previous five years.

Sensenbrenner said that is basically giving criminals amnesty.

"By giving illegal immigrants amnesty, not only do you get U.S. citizenship for breaking the law, but you get a lot of money taken away from others."

If U.S. citizens were to only pay limited back taxes, they would be considered lawbreakers and prosecuted, he said.

"Amnesty will never be accepted by the American public," he stated.

Meanwhile, Latino evangelicals are about to abandon the GOP over the issue, The Christian Post reports:

[Rev. Samuel] Rodriguez [president of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference]. and others like him, are now questioning whether they can label the GOP party as the “party of Jeff Sessions, Tom Tancredo and James Sensenbrenner” who were strong opponents of the immigration bill, or the party of George W. Bush and John McCain who are both strongly in favor of the bill.

Spirit of Sensenbrenner lives on in new Senate immigration bill

a “regressive, anti-due process, enforcement proposal that would criminalize 12 million hard-working men and women in one fell swoop.”

That's how the American Immigrant Lawyers Assn. characterizes a new endorcement-only immigration bill introduced in the US Senate.

It's described as very similar to a House-passed bill from last spring, which prompted huge demonstrations across the country. That bill, lest we forget, was known as the Sensenbrenner Bill, in "honor" of its chief sponsor.

Sensenbrenner at least has been consistently wrong. Most disappointing about the Senate bill is that three Repubs who previously supported a reasonable compromise bill -- including won't-be-president John McCain -- now are pandering to the right as sponsors of the new bill.

The Austin American-Statesman has more on its immigration blog.

Gentleman Jim drafting new immigration bill

The biggest issue in Wales, Wisconsin is illegal immigration? Hard to believe, but that's what the Waukesha paper reports.

If that's not scary enough, consider this:

A federal immigration reform measure died in the U.S. Senate last week but Sensenbrenner said that isn’t the end the debate. He said he will soon introduce an immigration reform bill that will include discussion on illegal immigrants.

Sensenbrenner declined to offer specifics on the bill, noting he was still writing it.

Can't wait for those specifics. A longer, higher fence? Round 'em all up and deport 'em? Shoot illegals on sight? Or something tougher?

Missing the point

Today's news release:

In response to the immigration agreement reached by the White House and Senate earlier today, Menomonee Falls Representative Jim Sensenbrenner made the following comments:

"This proposal is nothing but a massive amnesty bill that provides expedited visas for millions of illegal immigrants. This "get-out-of-jail-free" card cannot be described as a comprehensive immigration agreement. The American economy, and the American people, are not prepared to handle such a huge and immediate influx of people in the workforce.

Psssst! Jimbo! They're already here.