Tancredo warned there were significant immigration ramifications to this bill. What is interesting is that this bill like the Singapore Chile Free Trade act had significant provisions for facilitating expansion of immigration.
In both cases, had the members of the Immigration Reform Caucus opposed these bills, neither one could have passed.
Most members of the Immigration Reform Caucus appear to have voted for CAFTA—the exceptions are noted below.
Perhaps the immigration reform caucus should change its name to "Immigration Reform unless major donors want otherwise" Caucus? There is something really, really sick in the US political system when it consistently delivers policies the American people don't want. Fixes might include :
1) Serious campaign finance reform-public funding of all national elections-with funds disbursed by a pool of selected by random from voters.
2) Proportional Representation(preferably a system like Single Transferrable Vote that takes power out of the hands of party bosses).
Unfortunately, at the moment, voters have the choice between facilitating illegal immigration by voting for Democrats or facilitating massive expansion of Guest Worker Visas by voting for Republicans.
The basic problem is that conservative based immigration reform simply can't oppose the interest of the wealthy. Ultimately, immigration reform is a form of containment of concentration of wealth in the US. To solve this problem, we'll either need to destroy one of the major political parties along the lines feared by James Carville ,completely rebuild one of the major political parties-or wait until the system collapses completely.
Immigration Reform Caucus Votes on CAFTA
Voted Against Both CAFTA and the Singapore Chile Free Trade/Guest worker proposal. Duncan Hunter (Calif.), Virgil H. Goode Jr. (Va.), Walter B. Jones Jr. (N.C.), Charles Whitlow Norwood Jr. (Ga.), Tom Tancredo (Colo.),
Voted only against the Singapore Chile Free Trade/Guest worker proposal. Todd Akin (R-MO) Robert Aderholt (R-AL) J. Gresham Barrett (R-SC) John Culberson (R-TX) JoAnn Davis (R-VA) Nathan Deal (R-GA) Jim Duncan (R-TN) Joel Hefley (R-CO) Robin Hayes (R-NC) Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) Donald Manzullo (R-IL) Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) John Shadegg (R-AZ) Zach Wamp (R-TN)
Voted only against CAFTA Butch Otter (R-ID) Michael Simpson (R-ID) Gil Gutknecht (R-MN) Barbara Cubin(R-WY)
