In the name of National Security, Republicans led by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner of the 5th Congressional District in Wisconsin, have denied illegal immigrants the right to hold a Drivers License.

He claimed that this was in response to the 9/11 attacks. This was supposedly going to prevent a repeat of allowing illegal immigrants from obtaining drivers licenses which are commonly used by the U.S. Government as valid IDs.

However, the 9/11 hijackers weren't illegal immigrants, and they didn't use fraudulent Drivers Licenses. They got into the United States legally with valid Visas. 15 of the 19 were citizens of Saudi Arabia, and because of that fact, none of them had to undergo any security checks, either from the Saudi Arabian side or from the U.S. side. They also acquired legal Drivers Licenses. The rubber stamp treatment, that allowed these terrorists to get into the United States without any background checks, was a gift from the U.S. State Department. The officials of the U.S. State Department that allowed this to happen were long time bureaucrats who were put into the State Department during the Reagan / Bush years in the 1980s.

None of the 9/11 attackers came across the border with Mexico. They, like the terrorists who attempted to bomb L.A. Airport, came across the border with Canada, but you don't see any demands for building a wall on the Canadian border, do you?

What Sensenbrenner isn't telling you is that the loop hole that allowed these terrorists to get in from Saudi Arabia was never addressed in his “fix”, because illegal immigrants weren't responsible for the attacks on 9/11. It was the incompetence of bureaucrats, and the white glove policies of our politicians, who demanded that our border defenses be let down for all Saudi citizens, who allowed it to happen in the first place. And it is the incompetence of politicians like Sensenbrenner who continue to allow these loopholes to remain in place, while they go after minorities, covering up their racist agenda with fake national security claims.

During one of his Town Hall meetings in Shorewood last year, Representative Sensenbrenner told a female Hispanic constituent that her comments wouldn't be heard because she wasn't from the 5th CD, and he only allowed constituents from his Congressional District to speak or ask questions during his Town Hall meetings. The crowd shouted at him to demand that he allow her to speak. She responded to his assumption that she wasn't from his C.D., by saying that she lived in Waukesha, and that the two hundred Hispanics who were bused into the Shorewood Town Hall meeting were also from Waukesha, at which time, he meekly surrendered the floor to her. It is clear that Representative Sensenbrenner believes that the only people who live in his District are white.

A similar Drivers License measure was proposed for the Wisconsin State legislature, which Representative James Sensenbrenner very publicly supported. The measure made it illegal for illegal immigrants to acquire a valid Drivers License in Wisconsin.

Far from making our roads safer, what this measure does, is to eliminate any process for the Wisconsin DOT to identify who the illegal immigrant drivers are, where they live, and whether or not they actually are qualified to hold a drivers license. And, if you don't hold a valid drivers license, you can't get insurance. All this measure succeeded in doing, was to force illegal immigrants to use fake drivers licenses, where no testing of driving qualifications are ever done, and no accurate driver information is collected, and no insurance can be acquired by the driver.

What that policy creates is more unqualified drivers, more fake information that can't be tracked back to a responsible party, and more uninsured drivers on the road.

The burden of these additional expenses is just shifted from illegal immigrants who were paying their own way, onto Wisconsin taxpayers.

Now Representative Sensenbrenner is going after illegal immigrants that are specifically coming into the United States through Mexico.

Do we have a problem with illegal immigrants coming through our Mexican border? Absolutely.

Do we have a problem with not having enough border security on our border with Mexico? Absolutely.

Do we have a problem with not having enough money or resources for our border protection in the first place? You betcha. Talk to Congress and President Bush and tell him to stop spending all that money in Iraq, and start spending it to protect our borders here at home.

So how do you deal with the problem of illegal immigrants?

Representative James Sensenbrenner is taking the approach of blaming the immigrants. But the reason they are here in the first place is because politicians and employers in the United States are willing to turn a blind eye to illegal immigrants because they can use them like slave labor.

They don't have to provide them with benefits, or withhold taxes, or pay them anything near what they pay American workers. In fact, if they do hire them, American companies face only a minor slap on the wrist when they claim that they didn't know that the people they hired were illegal immigrants, and just turn around and hire more illegal immigrants even on the same day they were caught and had to release illegal immigrant workers from employment. And in many cases, these companies withhold part of immigrant pay as if it was a tax withholding, knowing full well that because the workers are illegal immigrants, they will never file for the tax returns, and the corporations or small businesses just pocket the difference.

When these slave laborers are being used and abused by their employers and seek health care, food or housing, they often can only get it from a Good Samaritan. Under Sensenbrenner's bill, any assistance in helping that illegal immigrant would be a felony. So much for Christian compassion and loving thy neighbor.

Illegal immigrants are tolerated because their employers benefit from slave labor. Increasing the fines to make it more expensive than hiring legal employees, and give jail time to the employers and you will see illegal immigrant jobs disappear, and less incentive for illegal immigration.

Make it possible for immigrants to apply for citizenship without making it a lifelong struggle to do so, and provide them with fair benefits, while they are working towards their citizenship, and you wouldn't have to pay for such high enforcement costs to track down illegal immigrants, because more would take the legal path.

Instead of attempting to institute fair, intelligent processes to truly secure our borders and protect American jobs, Republicans prefer to blame immigrants for the effects of outsourcing and the abuses of employers who have no integrity.

Republicans are now locking horns with other Republicans on the immigration issue, because one side is trying to eliminate the illegal immigration to keep their constituents happy, because Republicans spent so much time blaming illegal immigrants for taking away American jobs. (They seem to forget that those illegal immigrants are taking the low paying labor jobs, not the high paying, high tech jobs that Republicans have no problem outsourcing to India and Communist China. But you'll never hear them talking about doing anything to keep THOSE jobs here.) The Republicans on the other side, support farming, manufacturing and other low paying labor interests, to help their big money supporters, like Wal-Mart, who don't want the endless supply of cheap labor to stop. I’ll give you one guess as to which side is going to win this battle.

There is no good side for Republicans on this issue, because both sides are fighting this battle to support racist policies. One is trying to make illegal immigrants the scapegoat for the lack of decent jobs in the United States, and the other is supporting slave labor for big business.

Republicans complain about the cost of education for immigrants and prefer to keep immigrants in ghettos and on welfare, rather than providing them with educational opportunities so that they can improve their lives and pay their own way.

And in denying immigrants in crowded ghettos affordable healthcare, they are ignoring a major National Security problem. This is a health disaster waiting to happen because there aren't enough people in those crowded areas who have access to health care. So when serious outbreaks could and absolutely need to be stopped at an early stage, prohibiting healthcare treatment to them would increase the chances of an outbreak. This isn't an immigrant issue. Sensenbrenner's approach has the potential for allowing runaway pandemics to get a foothold in areas which are the most vulnerable and least prepared to deal with these outbreaks, and once that happens, it will affect even those who are the most affluent, regardless of where you live.

President Bush, Representative Sensenbrenner and the Republican Party have no problem with asking or even demanding that non-U.S. citizens don a uniform for Uncle Sam and fight or even die for a country that they aren't even allowed to have basic human rights in. Now Sensenbrenner and his racist supporters want to make it illegal for someone to offer them a helping hand. How compassionate.

They want your cheap labor, when it is convenient for them, and afterwards they would prefer to just ship you back over the border. They say they might allow you to apply for citizenship if you stand at the back of the line, but as an illegal immigrant, you would be a felon and therefore, won't have any right to vote. Some citizenship. They want you to fight their wars for them, even though you aren't a citizen, but if you even ask for a chance for an education, healthcare or citizenship? God forbid anyone actually offer fair treatment to someone who wants a chance at freedom and liberty here in the United States where God, Freedom and Liberty are always touted as the biggest principles behind Conservative values.

No, Jesus himself would be turned away by the self-righteous wing, because he would be seen as a dirty, long haired, bare-foot hippie who does nothing but preach sedition.