Only a few of the significant problems with the amnesty bill ( More to come)
“All background checks on those applying for amnesty must be completed within 24 hours, although there is no justification why and plenty of reason to suggest that complete background checks can’t be done so quickly.” (Bill Tucker on Lou Dobbs, CNN, April 22, 2007)
“Gang members would be given amnesty if they renounce their gang membership. If an illegal alien is arrested in an enforcement raid and might be eligible for amnesty, the government must provide help in applying for the Z visa and release the illegal alien.” (Bill Tucker on Lou Dobbs, CNN, April 22, 2007)
The bill would decrease the length of the border fence to be built from approximately 854 miles authorized in 2006 to approximately 200 miles. (Bill Tucker on Lou Dobbs, CNN, April 22, 2007)
Under the bill anyone who absconds after being ordered deported will be eligible for amnesty. If they follow the law and follow a judge’s deportation order, they will not be elegible for amnesty – so they would not follow the law and leave. (Bill Tucker on Lou Dobbs, CNN, April 22, 2007)
Illegal aliens are already faced with a $5,000 fine (19 USC 1459 and 19 USC 1433), but this fine is not enforced. The $5,000 fine stipulated in the amnesty bill is simply a service charge to gain dual citizenship (Mexico already gives emigrants dual citizenship).
The Z (amnesty) visa could be extended indefinitely for the life of the holder. It is not temporary.
“If passed, this bill will make taxpayers pay the legal bills for illegal aliens seeking amnesty….” – Ken Boehm, Chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), May 22, 2007.
H1B visas will be doubled from 85,000 to 160,000, thereby displacing nearly 80,000 American high tech workers annually.
Under the amnesty, illegal aliens would not have to pay back taxes. But they would be eligible for earned income tax credit. (Lou Dobbs, CNN, May 23, 2007)
Once granted amnesty, illegal aliens would not have to learn English for seven years. (Lou Dobbs, CNN, May 23, 2007)
The amnesty specifies a “point system” for future legal entry into the U.S. However, this will not fully take effect for eight years. (Lou Dobbs, CNN, May 23, 2007)
“Section 413 promises U.S. help in getting financial services to Mexico’s poor and under-served populations, expanding effort to reduce the transaction costs of remittance flows, helping the Mexican government to strengthen education and job training, and increasing health care access for the poor in Mexico.” (Christine Romans on Lou Dobbs, CNN, April 22, 2007) “…we have truly entered a bizarre place, where the president of the United States, President George W. Bush, is representing the interests of Mexican citizens in this country, and Congress, our Senate, is attempting to impose a law that is appropriately the purview of the Mexican legislature.” Lou Dobbs, CNN, April 22, 2007)
“Section 413 asks the U.S. Congress to ramp up the six-year-old bilateral Partnership for Prosperity and highlights the broader North American Security and Prosperity Partnership.” (Christine Romans on Lou Dobbs, CNN, April 22, 2007)
Over the next 13 years alone, it would increase the current number of legal foreign-born green card holders from about 25 million (who arrived over 75 years) to around 50 million. (NumbersUSA.com)
Robert Rector, Heritage Foundation, just estimated that this particular amnesty will cost the American taxpayers 2.3 tp 2.5 trillion—that’s right trillion—dollars!
“…The White House misleads with its claims that the amnesty recipients won’t get welfare benefits. For the first decade or so they are in the United States, the adults can’t get means-tested welfare benefits but their children could. And after that first decade, the adults get to partake of the welfare state as well. For the next 40 years, notes Mr. Rector, they are eligible “for every single type” of these welfare benefits.”
“So the bottom line is that each of these households receives about $30,000 in government benefits, pays about $10,000 in taxes, at a net cost of around $19,000 per year [after rounding]. That’s the equivalent of buying each of these households an automobile and every year of their lives as long as they’re in the United States.” (The immigration time-bomb Washington Times editorial, May 23, 2007)
Interesting articles on the amnesty bill
Latino Groups Play Key Role on Hill [1] – Virtual Veto Power in Immigration Debate, By Krissah Williams and Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, May 16, 2007
“…After laboring in obscurity for decades, groups such as the National Council of La Raza [THE RACE], the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the National Immigration Forum are virtually being granted veto power over perhaps the biggest domestic issue coming before Congress this year….”
Bush removes provision requiring back taxes from illegal immigrants [2][invaders], by Michael Kranish, Boston Globe, May 19, 2007
…”The Bush administration insisted on a little-noticed change in the bipartisan Senate immigration bill that would enable 12 million [illegal aliens… criminals] to avoid paying back taxes or associated fines to the IRS, officials said. — An independent analyst estimated the decision could cost the IRS tens of billions of dollars…”
PREMEDITATED MERGER [3]– North America ‘partnership’ fast-tracked in border bill – Calls for speedier regional economic integration between U.S., Mexico World Net Daily, May 20, 2007
“The controversial “Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007,” which would grant millions of illegal aliens the right to stay in the U.S. under certain conditions, contains provisions for the acceleration of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, a plan for North American economic and defense integration, WND has learned.
The bill, as worked out by Senate and White House negotiators, cites the SPP agreement signed by President Bush and his counterparts in Mexico and Canada March 23, 2005 an agreement that has been criticized as a blueprint for building a European Union-style merger of the three countries of North America….
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., also was quick to label the bill ‘amnesty.’
The senator said it ‘rewards people who broke the law with permanent legal status and puts them ahead of millions of law-abiding immigrants waiting to come to America.’
‘I don’t care how you try to spin it, this is amnesty,’ DeMint said.
‘I hope we don’t take a thousand page bill written in secret and try to ram it through the Senate in a few days,” he added. “This is a very important issue for America and we need time to debate it.’
REWARDING LAWBREAKERS, [4] by Kris Kobach, New York Post, May 21, 2007
The immigration bill set to hit the Senate floor this week has over 300 pages – yet few people have seen the details. Proponents, led by Ted Kennedy, waited until the last minute to make the draft public – so most senators will be in the dark when they debate it.
But the text is now circulating on Capitol Hill, and the content is astonishing. Just when it is becoming clear that overwhelming majorities of Americans – of all parties and all races – say they want to see stronger enforcement of our laws, the bill would take the country full speed in the opposite direction.
As promised, the bill will legalize most of the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens now in the country via a new “Z visa.” Each would pay $3,000 – only slightly more than the going rate to be smuggled into America.
But provisions buried in the fine print are far more outrageous. Here’s a sampling:
1) To qualify for the Z-visa amnesty, an illegal alien need only have a job (or be the parent, spouse, or child of someone with a job) and come up with a scrap of paper suggesting he was in the country before Jan. 1 of this year. Any bank statement, pay stub, or similarly forgeable record will do.
Expect a mass influx unlike anything this country has seen before, once the 12-month period for accepting Z visa applications begins. These rules are an open invitation to sneak in and present a fraudulent piece of paper indicating that you were already here.
2) Supporters of the bill call the Z visa “temporary” – neglecting to mention that it can be renewed indefinitely until the visa holder dies. Thus, we have the country’s first permanent temporary visa. On top of that, it’s a super-visa – allowing the holder to work, attend college or do just about anything else.
Are you a law-abiding alien who’s interested in switching to this privileged status? Sorry. Only illegal aliens can qualify.
3) Many criminals and terrorists will find it easy to get a Z visa. The bill allows the government only one day to conduct a so-called “background check” on the applicant. If the (already overstretched) feds can’t find anything in that single day, the alien gets a probationary visa that lets him roam at will and seek employment legally.
Plainly, the bill’s authors don’t have a clue how the government maintains info on criminals and terrorists. It has no single, searchable database of all dangerous people. Much data exists only in paper records that can’t be searched in 24 hours. Other information is held by foreign governments.
In this real-world version of “24,” if the federal government fails to find the key facts soon enough, we all lose.
4) The bill effectively shuts down our immigration-court system. If an alien in the removal process is eligible for the Z visa, the immigration judge must close the proceedings and offer the alien the chance to apply for the amnesty. The wheels of justice won’t just turn slowly, they’ll go in reverse.
5) The bill transforms the federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from a law-enforcement agency into an amnesty-distribution center. If ICE officials apprehend an alien who appears eligible for the Z visa (in other words, just about any illegal alien), they can’t detain him. Instead, ICE must help him apply for the Z visa.
Rather than initiating removal proceedings, ICE will be initiating amnesty applications. It’s like turning the Drug Enforcement Agency into a needle-distribution network.
6) The bill even lets gang members get the amnesty. This comes at a time when violent international gangs have brought mayhem to our cities. More than 30,000 gang members operate in 33 states, trafficking in drugs, arms and people.
Deporting illegal-alien gang members has been a top ICE priority. This bill would end that: Under it, a gang member qualifies for the Z-visa privileges as long as he simply signs a “renunciation of gang affiliation.” He can keep his tattoos.
In Sen. Kennedy’s America, “immigration enforcement” will become an oxymoron. And – just like the last time we offered an amnesty, in 1986 – millions of new illegal aliens will flood the country to apply for the amnesty fraudulently.
This bill isn’t a “compromise” in any meaningful sense. It is a surrender.
Kris W. Kobach, a professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, served as counsel to the U.S. Attorney General, 2001-03. He was the attorney general’s chief adviser on immigration law.
____________