The White House and the Senate aren’t serious about enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.
Consider …
Recently, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow compared the Senate bill on illegal immigration to a traffic law that allows a speeder to pay a fine and continue driving.
Plain and simple, the bill that 39 Democrats and 23 Republicans just voted to pass is amnesty for illegal immigrants already in this country.
If enacted by the House and Senate conference committee, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years. It would allow more than 66 million people to illegally immigrate to the United States in the next 20 years. This is almost one-fourth of the current population of the nation.
The “temporary” guest workers also would be eligible for citizenship. If by chance they overstayed their welcome, there’s little likelihood that they would be deported. If the Senate bill were to make it out of the conference committee, legislators would be sending the signal that our policymakers view deportation as draconian. Make no mistake about it, “temporary” workers would permanently change America.
Robert Rector, of the Heritage Foundation, thinks one result would be the largest expansion of the welfare state in 35 years. What Rector is not accounting for is the likely demographic shift in politics that most pundits think would benefit the Democratic Party.
Another possible outcome would be the increased balkanization of the United States as many of the poor and uneducated people that would migrate here would be slow to assimilate, both economically and culturally.
Amendments that were offered by conservatives in the Senate but were defeated included the following:
-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., wanted to deny illegal immigrants the earned-income tax credit. His argument was that it’s one thing to legalize them, but it’s another thing to subsidize illegal immigrants.
-Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., offered an amendment to require that enforcement be proven to have succeeded before the amnesty or guest-worker provisions could take effect.
Conservatives have argued that if the Senate were serious about securing the border they would consider following the strategy of attrition: stepping up the enforcement of immigration laws so as to shrink the illegal immigration population over time.
Standing for national sovereignty and in the way of the Senate amnesty bill is the leadership and conservatives in the House. House Majority Leader John Boehner was quoted as saying “that house negotiators will oppose troubling polices that encourage open borders and invite more illegal immigrants into our country.”
The lead negotiator from the House in the conference committee will be House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner. Sensenbrenner thinks that the words “path to citizenship” are buzz words for amnesty. When asked on “Meet the Press” whether he would accept any immigration law that would put immigrants on the path to citizenship, he answered with a flat “no.”
Some in the elite media tried to portray the House bill as strident and “racist.” Conservatives think this is a test for the House and an opportunity for the House to separate itself from the elite establishment that has become the Republican Party. If the House insists on no deal and no amnesty, then they will be siding with the overwhelming majority of Americans.
As I have written before, there is a disconnection between the elites in the Republican Party establishment and the grass roots.
Illegal immigration will be a defining issue in the upcoming election. Caving into Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Edward Kennedy’s, D-Mass., amnesty abomination would not only forfeit our national sovereignty and our culture, it might well cause Republicans to lose the House and possibly the Senate in November.
Marc Rotterman is a senior fellow of the John Locke Foundation and treasurer of the American Conservative Union.