Letters page
Oregon voters who are concerned about illegal immigration have a good reason to suspect the next round of “comprehensive immigration reform.” By remaining vague about its definition of the word, “reform,” the GOP wants to avoid alerting its voters in advance.
Senate Democrats did the same last year when they passed S. 744, a “comprehensive immigration reform” bill to legalize most illegal aliens and raise legal immigration levels. It awaits a House version for comparison and compromise.
Oregon Congressman Greg Walden has a good reason to tiptoe through this immigration minefield. He not only faces a primary challenge from an enforcement-minded candidate, Dennis Linthicum, but Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, (ALIPAC), has placed him on its list of 25 most concerning congressmen. Walden knows he needs to mute the leadership’s agenda until he returns to a sixth term in office.
Consider his remark about immigration legislation in Slate Magazine from Jan. 30:
“It’s probably months out. … Most of the primaries will have faded by then anyway. By the time you get to June most of them are behind you.”
What are Walden and the GOP planning? In January, Roll Call reported that Speaker John Boehner plans a “pathway to legalized status” for illegal aliens, but rejects Nancy Pelosi’s goal of “citizenship or nothing.”
Walden confirmed this much in Slate Magazine when he said, “What we need is a legal system that makes both the worker and the employer legal. It doesn’t mean that all the people who come here to work need to be citizens.”
He’s more open about the safer topic of improving the guest worker program, which currently ignores whether guest workers return home or stay to take American jobs in other areas.
Walden has not said how he’d deal with the millions of illegal aliens who never came as guest farm workers, but unfairly competed with entry-level Americans in restaurants, hotels, factories, warehouses, service jobs and construction.
However, the Republican establishment intends to pass several small legalization bills to prevent the national furor that S. 744 created. Currently, the House is trying to slip a trade of military service for citizenship into the Defense Authorization Act.
As tight-lipped as Walden has been, we can deduce that he agrees with the pro-legalization stance of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which he chairs. Recently the NRCC invited Condoleezza Rice to speak at its annual banquet, where she warned members not to oppose “immigration reform.”
The goals of the NRCC mesh with both Speaker Boehner, who supports legalization, and the RNC, which recently spent $10 million to promote “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Although Congress is supposed to represent citizens, it increasingly champions the illegal labor depressing wages in nonfarm jobs. Predictably, the U-6 unemployment rate tops 16 percent in Oregon, and the U.S. Department of Labor reports that our real wages have dropped 10 percent in the last four years. As a result, Americans who know they’re being marginalized like Ukrainians inside our country have an important stake in current legislation.
This primary, Oregonians must decide if Walden has been in the D.C. clubhouse long enough, a decision that would be easier if he revealed more about his definition of “immigration reform,” but as he said, the primary will be over by then.
In Sen. Jeff Merkley’s April 14 guest opinion, he commiserates with poorly paid workers and those unemployed, and advocates raising the federal minimum wage to help them.
He misreads the causes of falling wages and shrinking job opportunities for citizens and appears blind to his own complicity.
When the labor market is overcrowded with workers, their job opportunities diminish and wages decline.
In Congress, Sen. Merkley has voted repeatedly for measures that increase immigration and foreign worker employment by businesses in the U.S. Even more hurtful, he has opposed measures to control illegal immigration.
Such actions have caused large increases in numbers of available low-wage workers. Through employer fraud and abuse of visa programs, professional workers are also affected.
U.S. employers have had virtually unlimited access to illegal labor for many years. This began with farmers; then other industries, seeing that immigration laws are minimally enforced, realized they too could profit by using illegal labor.
Illegal aliens’ status makes them fear to complain about working conditions. Sometimes employers fail to pay the illegal aliens anything at all for work performed.
See Sen. Merkley’s immigration voting record on NumbersUSA’s website, where it’s graded “F.”
For decades, the Democratic Party has styled itself the champion of working Americans. Why, then, with countless of our fellow citizens still unemployed, do congressional Democrats - including all of Oregon's - seek to import millions more foreign workers?
...that bill and its Senate counterpart, S. 744, would "double the annual flow of guest workers to compete for jobs in every sector of the U.S. economy."
Among H.R. 15's co-sponsors are Oregon's Democratic Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader. Oregon's Democratic senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, voted for S. 744 last June.
Their support for these bills is mystifying...
The problem? The high-tech worker shortage is a myth..
One reason for the dearth of high-tech jobs for Americans: "High-tech industries," report Salzman et al, "are now using guest workers to fill two-thirds of new IT jobs...
..."Our wage per employee is 20 to 25 percent less than [the] U.S. wage for similar employee[s]."
Says the Federation for American Immigration Reform's Eric Ruark: "Companies are using guest worker visa programs not to supplement American workers but to supplant them."
H.R. 15 and S. 744 would amplify this injustice. Oregonians should contact the state's congressional Democrats and tell them to withdraw their support of these bills - and, instead, to champion the hiring of the unemployed and underemployed Americans to whom they owe their foremost responsibility.
Clarity is the winner in this week’s Oregon Supreme Court decision on a ballot title regarding driver cards for immigrants in the country without legal permission.
The court affirmed language from Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum that is clear about the effects of the ballot measure, defeating efforts to confuse voters.
The approved title, which is expected to appear on November ballots, says: “Provides Oregon resident ‘driver card’ without requiring proof of legal presence in the United States.”
Ballot titles are often disputed because of their huge impact; many voters never see any other description of the measure before casting their votes.
This story started with the 2013 Legislature approving Senate Bill 833 to grant four-year driver cards to residents who can’t prove they are here legally. Advocates said the law would encourage all residents to learn the rules of the road, get insurance and drive legally, helping them get to and from work and participate fully in the economy. The cards would have a label to distinguish them from regular licenses.
Opponents gathered signatures to suspend the measure and put it on the ballot.
But supporters of the driver cards were unhappy with the ballot title written by the attorney general, and tried to obscure it by passing House Bill 4054 during the 2014 legislative session. That bill would have removed reference to “legal presence” from the ballot title, stating the ballot measure: “establishes limited purpose, duration driver card for individuals who prove Oregon residency, meet driving requirements.”
Fortunately, the bill failed.
It was, however, one of the more visibly cynical efforts in the 2014 session. Leaving out a reference to legal residence clearly obscures the reason and effect of the measure. It appeared to be an ends-justify-the-means sort of maneuver.
Voters can’t express their views if they can’t tell what they are voting on. Obscuring their understanding is the opposite of what ballot titles should do.
That’s a principle all sides of the argument should share.
Members of the same family assigned different doctors. Four thousand pregnant undocumented immigrants mistakenly enrolled in OHP. It's so bad that the U.S. Government Accountability Office is auditing how $304 million federal dollars were spent on the Cover Oregon website, which has yet to enroll a single person online without assistance.
The constant barrage of such new reports illustrate the hubris of Alan Bates in believing that everyone should have the same government-designed health insurance regardless of age, sex, family medical history, occupation, risk or anything else that makes us individuals rather than interchangeable parts in his brave new world. Hold this man accountable for the mess he has created and replace him with Dave Dotterrer in November. — Sandy Abercrombie, Medford
Last year, concerned citizens gathered enough signatures to create Veto Referral No. 301, sending the new driver card bill for illegal immigrants, Senate Bill 833, to the voters to decide this year.
The original title of the referral said that SB 833 would give driver cards to people who couldn’t prove legal presence in the United States — a crucial point to many voters, and the only fact that driver card advocates wanted to hide.
Subsequently, on Feb. 27, a majority of the House gave itself permission under House Bill 4054, to re-write the title of Referral No. 301 to suit the purposes of driver card advocates.
The new title will promise a “limited purpose and duration driver card for individuals who prove Oregon residency and meet driving requirements.” A voter looking for a referral about illegal alien driver cards may not understand that this is it, or whether he should vote for or against it.
Representatives cite legal precedent for censoring the opposition’s title, but they should expect deep resentment from the thousands of Oregonians who followed every rule to remand the driver card law to the ballot with a title that voters will readily understand.
The intent behind such subversion and high-handedness undermines our system of government by and for the people even if the letter of the law permits it.
This cynical legislative ploy creates two casualties. One is our system, by passing a law in the middle of a contest to undermine and obfuscate a valid citizen referral.
Lawmakers may get their way by suppressing a popular appeal against a bad law, but at the cost of their credibility.
The other casualty is truth, by falsely declaring SB 833 will ensure illegal aliens will drive insured when SB 833 works on the honor system. Instead of being forced to carry irrevocable insurance in recognition of the fact the applicants are by definition lawbreakers, the drivers may cancel their policies after leaving the Department of Motor Vehicles, as they often did before 2008.
No one would know until they have an accident. The DMV doesn’t track dropped insurance policies, and SB 833 doesn’t require such scrutiny.
In addition, SB 833 protects foreign drug dealers by shielding them from the car searches that getting caught without a driver’s license would have triggered.
SB 833 also promises continued identity theft fraud, by allowing the flimsy Matricula Consular card as identification. Law enforcement has noted how frequently they acquire new ones with different names as the need arises. Does SB 833 make you feel safer now?
Our recourse against such outrageous laws will suffer unless the Senate defeats HB 4054. Our sore-loser representatives have already pushed a diversionary referral title closer to reality.
Local state Rep. Margaret Dougherty voted for both the driver card bill and the re-write bill. Sens. Richard Devlin and Ginny Burdick voted for the driver card too. I’m curious if they’ll also vote to censor their constituents’ opposition when HB 4054 goes to the Senate.
Citizens who value their right to be heard will be interested in their vote.
Lyneil Vandermolen is a Tualatin resident and vice president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform.
More than 70,000 Oregonians put down their signatures to require a vote on the November ballot to dispute the Legislature’s decision granting driver cards to those in Oregon illegally.
The Democratic legislative leaders have the audacity to pass a law specifically invalidating the ballot title as written by the state attorney general for the referendum from the citizens of Oregon.
The proposed wording for HB 4054 eliminates any reference to requiring proof of citizenship or legal residency. The intent is to divert the voter from what the driver card bill really does, to something that appears insignificant.
When lawmakers rewrite a ballot title to “spin” its wording to their favorable end, it distorts the measure’s purpose and attempts to manipulate the will of the voter.
I think it’s great Rep. Brad Witt, D-Clatskanie, consistently keeps us up to date on mostly his pet bills in the House, but when he votes in favor to grant special amenities to people illegally in our country and sees fit to stay silent on the subject, we need to ask him to explain his motivation for casting his votes in that manner.
After all, doesn’t he represent and work for us?
Dan Dorman
Scappoose
We should not be rewarding Alan Bates with another term of office but should hold him responsible as the primary proponent of the mess that is Cover Oregon.
According to The Oregonian, the following has occurred. Family members have been assigned to different providers. People mysteriously disappearing from provider membership rolls. Case workers denied access to correct errors that clients are reporting. An IT system that does not properly calculate the codes that determine federal matching funds. Four thousand illegal immigrants given full Oregon Health Plan coverage in violation of federal law.
No wonder the GAO is auditing us. Don't let Alan Bates shift the blame to the bureaucrats — they are just implementing the mess he designed and tells us is so wonderful. He should be voted out of office in November — sooner if he has a primary opponent.
Don Paul - Ashland
After reading the editorial in the March 2 Bulletin concerning the chicanery the Legislature was trying to pull off regarding the wording of the ballot measure rewarding illegal immigration with a driver’s license, I realized there may be a silver lining if voters approve the measure.
A few months ago I was waiting in line at the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles with all the documentation I could carry establishing the fact that I was born in this country. My intention was to renew my Oregon driver’s license after having lived out of state for a few years. As I was waiting I overheard the vocal exchange between an elderly gentleman and the DMV clerk. The elderly gentleman was trying to renew his driver’s license that he had held since before the clerk was born. The gentleman was telling the clerk that he did not have a birth certificate and had never had one.
He explained he was born in rural Montana and as far as he knew no birth certificate ever existed documenting his birth. Also, he did not have a passport, as the only time he left the country was to serve in the military.
Eventually he was sent on his way without a driver’s license, but with a laundry list of hoop jumping to see if he could prove if he was an American.
I suppose that if the measure passes, the elderly fellow could go into the DMV and announce he just sneaked across the border and be handed his driver’s license. Absent that, he may want to contract with the same folks that found Obama’s birth certificate.
John T. Parr
La Pine
The 2013 Legislature created a new driver card for only one reason — to grant driving privileges to Oregon residents unable to prove legal presence in the United States, thus hoping to reduce the number of Oregonians taking to the roads without being licensed and insured. There is only one difference between driver license and driver card requirements in Oregon — the need to prove legal residency in the U.S. in order to obtain a license.
So it should have come as no surprise when Attorney General Ellen Rosenbloom — a Democrat, by the way — adopted the following ballot title for a citizen referendum designed to overturn the authorizing legislation: “Provides Oregon resident ‘driver card’ without requiring proof of legal presence in the United States.” In our view, that summarizes the measure as succinctly as humanly possible.
Why, then, would the 2014 Legislature’s majority Democrats mount an effort to change that language, excluding the public along the way? There can really only be one reason — to deceive Oregon voters going to the polls in November and reduce chances for voter-repeal of the law.
Here’s their alternative language: “Establishes limited purpose, duration driver card for individuals who prove Oregon residency, meet driving requirements.”
It avoids the appearance of granting special privileges to people in the country illegally by simply eliminating all mention of immigration status from the ballot title. It ignores the fact that illegal residency is the only barrier to routine driver licensing. If you can fool enough people, you can move the electoral dial in your direction.
For good measure, Democrats rendered Supreme Court review moot and provided no other avenue of timely appeal. Don’t worry about the fact there is absolutely no precedent for legislative interference in the drafting of ballot titles for citizen initiatives or referendums, only for measures actually initiated by the Legislature itself.
Is there no limit to how far a group of partisans will go to game the system in hopes of rigging the outcome? If they were so sure about the righteousness of their original position, which enjoyed bipartisan support, why not take their chances in a fair election? Why not respect the separation of powers doctrine enshrined in both the state and federal constitutions and leave ballot titles to the non-partisan judicial sector?
The perpetrators of this fraud argue otherwise, but it rings utterly hollow. They clearly wanted to improve their electoral prospects.
To our moral arguments against this effort, let us add one that is utterly practical: Such tinkering is prone to backfire. Repeal advocates will be well-funded, and they won’t miss this opportunity to inject anti-government venom into the debate. Monkey with the ballot in such a cynical way and you surely pay a commensurate — if not disproportionate — electoral price.
The state’s largest newspaper blasted this move editorially, terming it a self-serving, misdirected and breathtakingly cynical abuse of process.
Amen. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. This is not the way to conduct the people’s business.
