Actually it is you who are distorting the facts. The question you list is completely consistent with the Bush/Senate plan. Criminality other than immigration status is an exclusionary, and the Z-Visa is a path to citizenship. A number of years is ambiguous but that's a general measure of sentiment. The specifics are what the bill provides. Now using your logic of criminality, just because someone has a blog in english doesn't mean they actually use honest facts. But then dishonesty has long been the hallmark of demagouges.

Those provisional Z-visas would be "awarded" within 24-hours of application. What they would basically do is allow the illegal alien to do what they broke the law for: stay in the US and work. Meanwhile the bureaucracy in charge of investigating these 12-20+ million illegal aliens is so incompetent and/or burdened that they are YEARS behind on the work to allow LEGAL applicants in. How can they possibly sort out years of lies, fraud, distortions, multiple identities, and general criminal behavior in 24-hours? There is no way that this "investigation" could be anything other than a rubber stamp. The Senate may just as well have repealed gravity for all the real effect it would have. The more people know about this bill, the less they seem to like it. I strongly doubt that most people saying Yes on Q50 understand this.

I guess Sen. Cornyn is lying too. Not that Senators don't lie: http://www.davickservices.com/senate_votes_terrorist_amnesty.htm _Washington DC - In one of the crucial tests of the Senate immigration bill, 51 senators voted to grant amnesty to illegal alien terrorists and criminals. By a 46-51 vote, the Senate rejected an amendment offered by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) that would have barred illegal aliens who have been determined to have committed terrorist acts, or who have been convicted of a variety of criminal offenses, including gang activity, from eligibility for the proposed Z visa amnesty that would allow them to remain in this country indefinitely._ _Under the plan being debated in the Senate, S. 1348, illegal aliens would receive Z visas that would permit them to live and work in the U.S. and ultimately to citizenship. The Cornyn amendment sought to exclude individuals who have been convicted of offenses including failure to register as a sex offender, alien smuggling while using a firearm, or document and identity fraud. The amendment would also have prevented people who have committed terrorist acts from qualifying for the Z visas._ _"The defeat of this amendment demonstrates just how determined the Senate leadership is to pass a massive illegal alien amnesty," said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "They will let nothing upset their delicate compromise between all of the special interests that are seeking new benefits from the immigration system. Their determination to satisfy the desires of the illegal alien and the cheap labor lobbies is so fierce that they are not even willing to prevent terrorists and criminals from gaining legal status."_ (...) I do have one problem with the article quoted above:I wasn't aware that "gang activity" (as something apart from assault, murder, illegal drug sales. etc.) was a crime.

Re those 24 hour "background checks" for provisional Z visas: http://www.icirr.org/stories/unrealistic.htm (...) _But the agency responsible for conducting immigration background checks, the Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Homeland Security Department, is already dealing with a large backlog of immigration applications requiring background checks. As of last June, the agency had reduced what had been a backlog of 3.8 million immigration applications to 1.2 million. But the agency is dependent on the FBI for criminal checks. During the background checks, names and frequently fingerprints are checked against information in criminal and sometimes intelligence databases maintained by U.S. agencies. According to a November report by the Government Accountability Office, the FBI can sometimes take months to complete a background check, especially if an immigration applicant's name "matches the name or alias of someone with a criminal history." Adding 12 million applications to the backlog could create a bureaucratic nightmare._ (...) AND http://www.heritage.org/Research/Immigration/wm1468.cfm (...) _Hobbled Background Checks: The bill would make it extremely difficult for the federal government to prevent criminals and terrorists from obtaining legal status. Under Section 601(h)(1), the bill would allow the government only one business day to conduct a background check to determine whether an applicant is a criminal or terrorist. Unless the government can find a reason not to grant it by the end of the next business day after the alien applies, the alien receives a probationary Z visa (good from the time of approval until six months after the date Z visas begin to be approved, however long that may be) that lets him roam throughout the country and seek employment legally. The problem is that there is no single, readily searchable database of all of the dangerous people in the world. While the federal government does have computer databases of known criminals and terrorists, these databases are far from comprehensive. Much of this kind of information exists in paper records that cannot be searched within 24 hours. Other information is maintained by foreign governments. The need for effective background checks is real. During the 1986 amnesty, the United States granted legal status to Mahmoud "The Red" Abouhalima, who fraudulently sought and obtained the amnesty intended for seasonal agricultural workers (even though he was actually employed as a cab driver in New York City). But his real work was in the field of terrorism. He went on to become a ringleader in the 1993 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center. Using his new legal status after the amnesty, he was able to travel abroad for terrorist training._ (...)

"Actually it is you who are distorting the facts. The question you list is completely consistent with the Bush/Senate plan. Criminality other than immigration status is an exclusionary, and the Z-Visa is a path to citizenship. A number of years is ambiguous but that's a general measure of sentiment. The specifics are what the bill provides. " where "clean record" means they could be gang members, deportation absconders, and petty criminals; where 'learning English' means "not learning English in any way shape or form for at least 10 years (viz Sessions loophole)", after all we are talking about mostly uneducated people, many of whom are not literate in their own language ... while "number of years means, actually, 0.5 years, and 'some' means "PRACTICALLY EVERY ONE OF THE 12 MILLION, AND THEIR FAMILIES TOO". How about a simple question: "Of the 12 million illegal aliens and the 20 million of their families still in the home country, how many should be given a path to citizenship? Should this be limited to English-speakers? To High school graduates? To those with jobs that make over twice poverty wage? To non-criminals? Should we limit amnesty so any one country can only have 15% or less of the amnesty slots?"

Or a more simple question: "Of the 12 million illegal aliens in this coutnry today, do you think an amnesty, ie path to citizenship, should be given to: 1) None of them 2) A small number of them 3) Some of them 4) Most of them 5) All of them ?" The Senate bill is between 4 and 5, it's an "almost every single one of them" approach. I believe most Americans, when asked the 'pollaganda' question, are answering what they think is a #2 question, imagining the hurdle to be reasonably high because of the phrasing. If 63% approve of #2 or #3, then 37% are in category #1, and likely only a minority approve of #4 or #5. THIS IS WHY THE SENATE BILL IS REJECTED BY 2 TO 1. BY 2 TO 1 WE DONT WANT AMNESTY FOR ALL 12 MILLION AND WE DONT WANT THE BAIT-AND-SWITCH.