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But bringing the subject back to current U.S. immigration issues ...
The Kennedy/McCain bill adopted by the Senate Judiciary Committee looks to be the most liberal position that is going to be on the table ... with a final bill likely more conservative. Not only does the Senate bill have to be reconciled with the draconian House bill, but it's rumored that Senator Frist will introduce a conservative immigration bill in the Senate, trying to get ahead of consideration of the Kennedy/McCain bill.
Seeing that Kennedy/McCain already contains some pretty tough stuff, I think the massive protests should continue unabated for the foreseeable future. While the bill purports to provide some means for illegals to eventually become citizens, the devil is in the details. The immigrant must be employed as a "guest worker" for six consecutive years to be eligible for a green card, but any fraud committed in gaining such employment bars citizenship. As I understand it, minor fraud committed by both employee and employer is common when hiring illegals (the boss providing the false social security numbers for the employee to use in his job application, for example).
I'm sure there are other details requiring quite a bit of study to comprehend and take stock of. So I can hardly expect everyone protesting to be 100% clear on the issues. A schoolteacher friend of mine tells me that most of the kids in his classes who participated in yesterday's walk-out had only the most vague idea of the issues at hand.
Nonetheless, if the eventual bill is likely to be even more draconian than Kennedy/McCain, I hope there are more protests and more walk-outs, and even French-style striking society to its knees for a while until our legislators get the message that fair immigration overhaul is the only kind that will be tolerated.
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