That bipartisan immigration “reform” bill, crafted during secret negotiations led by President Bush, Sen. Edward Kennedy and Sen. John McCain, combines a Republican desire for cheap labor with a Democratic vision of cheap votes. The result is a stubborn refusal to halt illegal immigration, one of the most serious problems facing the United States. By granting legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, this legislative chimera would make securing our borders even harder than it is now.
The Senate plan hinges on issuing three categories of renewable Z visas for skilled temporary and agricultural workers (and in many case their families as well), with provisions that would supposedly prevent document fraud. But the new visa program would be run by the same bureaucracy that has proven incapable of enforcing existing immigration laws. And if it’s impossible now to “round’emup and deport all 12 million of them” — as we incessantly hear — why should anybody believe the immigration bureaucrats will be able to find the millions of illegals to make sure they jump through all the new hoops?
The Senate bill essentially offers amnesty for illegal workers who show up to pay a $5,000 fee, promise to learn English, go back to visit their home countries, and then wait up to 13 years here for a green card. However, the real risk of being sent home is extremely low; only a fraction, for example, of the 600,000 illegals who are convicted felons being held in state and federal prisons will ever be deported. Even with generous incentives, many illegals will find it easier simply to maintain the status quo.
Although the bill reduces the government’s current emphasis on reuniting families here — rather than in their country of origin — 60 percent of future immigration would still be based on familial ties. For each job American taxpayers supposedly refuse to do, they often get a whole extended immigrant family to support in return. The bill would limit green card eligibility to spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, but, with millions offered an easy “pathway to citizenship,” the flood of newcomers to this country will continue unabated.
The amnesty provisions are supposed to kick in only after the federal government beefs up border security and adopts an employer-verification system, two essential steps it has repeatedly failed to take even as unchecked illegal immigration drains our resources, depresses wages of our own citizens, overwhelms the safety net and threatens our national security. By rewarding illegal entry with a visa and eventual citizenship, this bill is an affront to the millions of legal immigrants who show enough respect for American values to stand in line and wait their turn. Few immigrants will be stupid enough to do so in the future.
Television and radio personality Frosty Wooldridge summed it up exactly: “No borders, no order, no nation.” Our future as a sovereign nation is what’s really at stake in the immigration debate, but too many Washington politicians would rather trade security for cheap labor and cheap votes. Call it a cave-in, a sell-out or mere perfidy; it will be a national disaster for this proposal to become law.
