Immigration Shipwreck

On The Latest Non-Amnesty Amnesty Fiasco

On The Latest Non-Amnesty Amnesty Fiasco

Monday, May 21, 2007 6:22 PM

First off, ANYTHING (hic)(hic) Ted (hic)(hic) Kenn (hic)(hic) edy has anything to do with high (hic)(hic) ly suspect.

This is from Newt Gingrich in an email:

An Immigration Shipwreck in Sight

The announcement last week that the White House and a group of senators have reached an agreement on “comprehensive immigration reform” should have the same effect that the word “iceberg” had on the passengers and crew of the Titanic.

This proposed agreement is a disaster of the first order, and it would severely cripple America for the foreseeable future.

You can tell how bad this bill is by the Senate Democratic leadership’s announced goal of trying to pass it before the Memorial Day weekend.

Remember, this bill has not yet been finished. Senators and their staffs were still negotiating over the weekend and many key items were still in confusion. So here’s what we have to do:

TODAY’S ACTION ITEM:

CALL YOUR SENATORS AND LET THEM KNOW HOW ANGRY YOU WILL BE IF THEY PASS A BILL BEFORE IT HAS BEEN PRINTED AND PUT ON THE INTERNET AND EXPOSED FOR THE COUNTRY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND.

75 Reasons to Oppose the New Immigration Bill

When the FBI arrested six terrorists in New Jersey two weeks ago it turned out that three of them had been in the U.S. illegally for at least TWENTY years.

These three had crossed our unprotected border and had been living in New Jersey.

But here’s the even more outrageous part: The police had filed 75 (SEVENTY-FIVE!) charges against them, including drug possession and possession of drug paraphernalia.

In 75 interactions, the police never once learned that these three people were here illegally.

The government failed twice: First, by failing to secure the border, and second, by failing to determine that these people were here illegally. The result was that more than five years after 9/11 we were saved from a mass killing at Fort Dix only because of the patriotism and courage of a clerk at an electronics store.

Compare the 75 charges made against the would-be Fort Dix terrorists with how we rounded up German spies in World War II. In June 1942, it took a total of 15 days to track down and arrest eight German spies who landed in Florida and New York from submarines. We executed six of them and gave one life in prison and the other thirty years. We were serious about winning that war. Go here for a more detailed comparison and a list of the 75 charges against the Fort Dix terrorists.

Faced with this level of failure of bureaucracy, how could anyone believe for a minute that this new immigration bill will work? The fact is it can’t and it won’t. It will rely on the same failed bureaucracy and produce more years of failure.

We Have Been Here Before

In 1986, I voted for the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill. We were promised that in return for amnesty for far fewer than three million illegal immigrants we would get:

Control of the border;
Enforcement of laws requiring employers to know someone is here legally before hiring them; and
No more amnesty and no more tolerance of illegality
The government broke its word on every one of those provisions.

We eventually amnestied three million people who had broken the law, and we sent a signal to the world that it is okay to break the law and come to America.

Now, 20 years later, we are told to trust Washington while we amnesty 12 to 20 million more people who have broken the law.

A Tax Amnesty Too?

When its supporters refer to the new immigration bill as “comprehensive,” they must mean comprehensively outrageous.

The Boston Globe reported this weekend that the new bill will not require illegal workers to pay back taxes.

If this is true, the bill is an assault on every law-abiding, patriotic American who has been obeying the law, working legally and paying his taxes.

Every taxpaying American should insist that any bill involving any condition for illegal workers having any future in America should require them to do three things when it comes to taxes: 1) Admit how long they’ve been here (under threat of immediate deportation if they lie); 2) admit whom they worked for (who, after all, had also been breaking the law and avoiding paying taxes); and 3) pay any back taxes and penalties they owe.

There Is a Way to Deal With Illegal Immigration — This is Not It

I have written extensively about good solutions for our current immigration mess in Winning the Future and elsewhere.