"The two spoke separately to some 700 Hispanics attending the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference. It's the first of three such appearances each is scheduled to make to Hispanic organizations in less than a month, underscoring the importance of the nation's fastest-growing minority group.

Both McCain and Obama were warmly received at NALEO; the crowd gave each standing ovations and cheered loudly. When McCain spoke, the audience shouted down anti-war protesters who interrupted the Republican's speech four times. The audience chanted Obama's name when the Democrat entered later. As he took the stage, Obama said "Si, se puede!" -- his 'yes we can' campaign slogan in Spanish -- and the crowed echoed him."

Rep. Whip Roy Blunt just put out a press release talking up the Republcian Housing proposals in comparison to what the Dems have on the floor.

But check out this little piece of information at the end of the release:

“NOTE: Embedded in the text of the Democrats’ housing legislation is an order that would divert $35 million of taxpayer resources to “legal organizations with experience in foreclosure law” – that is, trial lawyers. The creation of that slush fund comes on top of another curious section of the bill, directing the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to make a grant to the Raza Development Fund -- an account associated with the National Council of La Raza, a left-leaning advocacy firm.” 

April 1 is a critical day for immigration policy. Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) begins accepting new H1-B visa petitions for the next fiscal year.

Created in 1990, H1-B visas allow companies to sponsor highly educated foreigners -- architects, doctors, engineers, scientists among them -- to work in the United States for at least three years. The H1-B program, which accounts for nearly all skilled immigrants admitted to work here each year, is capped annually at 65,000 for people with a bachelor's degree or higher, plus an additional 20,000 for those with a master's degree or higher.

Is this enough supply to meet market demand? Not even close. Last year, by the afternoon of the first day petitions were accepted, more than 150,000 had been filed. So USCIS rejected all petitions received after close of business the next day, and then allocated the 85,000 visas via random lottery. USCIS is forecasting a similar crush today for 2009 petitions.

Why in the world are we using a random lottery to allocate an incredibly valuable asset?  Why aren't these visas auctioned off, like any other government license on a valuable commodity?  If we want to rationally allocate these visas where they produce the most benefit, shouldn't they be auctioned?

-Obama says the US should "require undocumented workers who are provided a pathway to citizenship to not only learn English, pay back taxes and pay a significant fine, but also they should be going to the back of the line so they are not getting citizenship before those who have applied legally."

-Obama says it's important to decrease the backlog of applicants and lower application fees because "we keep on increasing the fees so if you've got a hardworking immigrant family, they've got to hire a laywer,  they’ve got to pay thousands of dollars in fees and they just can’t afford it and it’s discriminatory."

-Obama says "something we can do immediately that think is very important is pass the DREAM Act, which allows children who no fault of their own are here, but have essentially grown up as Americans, allow them the opportunity for higher education. I do not want two classes of citizens in this country."

One poll finding this week that shook Democrats came in a survey conducted by Democracy Corps, a consortium organized by party consultants Stan Greenberg, Al Quinlan and James Carville. It asked voters to pick two from a list of seven problems that explain "why the country is going in the wrong direction." 

The survey found that among independent voters, 40 percent -- by far the largest group -- picked this option: "Our borders have been left unprotected and illegal immigration is growing."

I have argued for a long time that the problem both parties face is not the regularization of the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens inside the U.S., but seriousness about border security.  Neither party is serious about the border, and both parties pay a price for this fecklessness.

Contrast the desultory progress on the 370 miles of border fence authorized in 2006 (of which less than 75 new miles have been built, and most of that not the double-fencing that most Americans expect) with the urgent effort to reconstruct Minnesota's collapsed bridge.  I am in the Twin Cities this morning, and the front page story in the Pioneer Press is headlined "Feds earmark an additional $123.5 million for 35W span."  A related story on the rebuilding effort begins:

Rest is for those with time to spare, and Peter Sanderson doesn't have any.

The project manager on the Interstate 35W bridge rebuilding project said there won't be much downtime if the Minneapolis span is to be up and running by Christmas 2008. For the foreseeable future, crews will spend 20 hours a day, six days a week on the job, and rest only on Sunday.

"We're very confident that we can meet the timeline of December 24," Sanderson told reporters Thursday at a kickoff event to highlight the start of the reconstruction.

The 35W bridge matters to people, so work is underway, on a schedule, with designs in place a goal to be reached.

Compare that with Secretary Chertoff's recent progress report on the border fencing given on my show: Few details, no urgency, no promises beyond the most general, and that undermined by a caution about Congressional funding.

The good news is that both of the serious GOP candidates are committed to the border fencing, and the issue will be a feature of the 2008 race. Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are both smart enough to detail their plans for border security again and again, and those plans include the fence. 

Democrats would be wise to listen to Dionne and get behind the fence, pushing the funding through in this Congress along with demands for rapid completion of construction according to a detailed schedule.  The Pelosi-Reid Democrats will never do that, and Hillary will try and avoid the issue. 

The GOP should talk about the fence at every opportunity, and it would be a very good thing if the Bush Administration would give them something to talk about.

HH: Okay, last couple of questions about immigration reform. I opposed the bill that was out last year, but I do believe in regularization following the Border security coming along. Do you see a possibility of getting the fence to the point that it persuades people like me that it makes sense, changing it, the draft law to the point that it doesn’t treat Mexicans and Central Americans the same way it treats Middle Easterners, and then trying to get something done in 2008 that is comprehensive, but maybe not as ambitious as last year’s bill? 

MC: I do see a possibility off that, Hugh. I think that we need to obviously establish our credibility with the public, and we need to continue to move forward on the enforcement piece. And one of the reasons I’ve been out very aggressively banging the drum on moving forward with all these elements of enforcement, and frankly kind of putting a spotlight on the efforts being made to prevent us from enforcing is because I think if we can get the enforcement piece right, then we can come back with a plan that’s comprehensive. It may be a little less ambitious than this year’s plan, but at least it would give us a good down payment on getting where we need to get to cure this problem once and for all.  

HH: As a matter of constructive criticism, would you understand how not knowing the number of double miles of fencing might lead people to conclude that it’s going to be another bump and run in the night, and that we really can’t trust the administration to give us the facts? 

MC: Well, I think we can certainly provide numbers like that. What I want to say to you, though, is I want to look at fencing not as if it a kind of a symbolic icon that has a value in and of itself. It’s a very useful tool, but it’s part of a package of tools. So we may very well decide that the right way to spend the money that we have is to put more single fencing along more border, as opposed to building double fencing where we don’t think we need it.

HH: Oh, I agree with that, but the transparency, I think, has been what has been lacking, the sort of easy access to the government’s thinking process, and then stories like the virtual fence not working in Lockheed, or is it Boeing running around being very upset with their implementation. Is that getting fixed, Mr. Secretary? 

MC: Well, we are, and I’ll tell you my attitude to Boeing is, and I told the CEO straight out. I said look, I know the individual pieces work, but your obligation is to give us a system that works as an integrated whole, in the demanding operational environment of the desert. And I’m going to be a tough consumer here on behalf of the taxpayer. So until I’m satisfied that this works properly, I’m not accepting it. And we’re going to begin that acceptance testing in the next week or so. We’re going to give it 20-30 days, make sure we’re really happy with it, and if and only if we are happy are we going to accept it.  

Volunteers, anyone? That's the report from Jerry Seper and Stephen Dinan this morning in the Washington Times.

The U.S. Border Patrol is asking for volunteers among its agents to help build fences on the U.S.-Mexico border, even as President Bush is withdrawing half the National Guard troops he sent there last year to build fences.

A memo circulated last week to Border Patrol sector chiefs said fence-building efforts on the Southwest border were going to fall short of Mr. Bush's goal of finishing 70 miles in fiscal 2007, which ends Sept. 30, "so the Border Patrol is now going back into the fence-building business."

This is precisely why the blowback at the Senate's comprehensive bill a couple of months ago was as high as it was. People simply don't trust the government to keep its word, especially when it comes to enforcing immigration. 700 miles of fencing was passed by Congress and signed by the President at the end of last year. Seven months later, the Kennedy-McCain compromise immigration bill failed largely because it did not have enough border security first enforcement, and it had too many loopholes in national security when it came to granting probationary visas to people coming here from countries of special interest to the State Department.

Once the bill was killed off, the Republicans, especially in the Senate, were left with how to reconnect with their estranged base that felt as if the Senate was trying to ram the legislation through. Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, the chief negotiator for the Republican side when it came to crafting the Ted Kennedy lead balloon of a bill, took an enormous amount of heat from the conservative base by promising that the proposed comprehensive bill would guarantee that 371 miles of fencing would be completed during the first 18 months after signing the bill, on the way to the full 700 miles. In fact, Senator Kyl also claimed that the fencing was currently being constructed, and would continue on that same pace to 371 miles regardless of whether the bill passed or not, as was repeated by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.

Now that the bill has no chance of passing, it seems that there's not quite as much of a push to get the fence done at the clip being touted during the debate earlier this summer.

Read more at Radioblogger.com

Posted by Generalissimo

It has not been a good week for Barack Obama. The first term Senator of Illinois and chief thorn in the side of Hillary Clinton on her ascendance to the presidency tripped on a YouTube question in the Democratic debate a couple of nights ago by declaring that no dictator is above meeting with, regardless of the situation, raising the eyebrows of even some of the Beltway punditry. He tripped again today.

Obama found himself in the usually mundane role of Senate chair this afternoon while the Republicans used procedure to tie the Democrats in knots once again. And when put in the position to make a ruling, he gave the Democrats a short-term win, but a long-term loss on the immigration debate. He very well have given critics of his presidential campaign more fodder.

Feckless majority leader Harry Reid had a homeland security appropriations bill on the floor for debate, and thought the day was going to go rather smoothly, until the Republicans showed him up once again by offering an amendment to tie border security elements of the immigration bill to it.

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