May 13, 2005

Why the Kennedy-McCain mass amnesty is important

It probably doesn't stand much of a chance of passing, but it's important for two reasons:

1. We probably didn't need any more data points, but it will make sure that the American public never takes the phrase "President McCain" seriously.

2. It reveals the base corruption of our elites, and just how far out of touch they are.

On a related note, Mark Krikorian of CIS discusses the bill in "Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me":

The essence of the bill is the same as the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act: amnesty up front for millions of illegal aliens in exchange for paltry promises of future enforcement - promises that will quickly be abandoned...

The enforcement sections of the bill are laughably thin, making the amnesty-in-exchange-for-enforcement claim even less plausible than it would be otherwise. The part on border security is almost a parody of a Washington cop-out: It orders up yet another "National Strategy for Border Security" (how about picking one of the previous strategies and just enforcing it?), plus an advisory committee, two coordination plans, and various other reports and programs and multilateral partnerships...

And the interior enforcement provisions seem intended to actually hobble enforcement. Though the law provides for a system to verify employment eligibility, it instructs the Social Security administration to reinvent the wheel rather than simply expand on the successful pilot system the immigration service has been developing for over a decade. The job of auditing firms for compliance with the immigration law would also be taken away from immigration agents, and given instead to the Labor Department, perhaps the only agency even less capable of doing its job. And the bill specifically says that it does not give state and local cops any new authority to enforce immigration law...

Previous coverage in McCain, Kennedy introduce Open Borders, Open Wallets bill.

Posted to Immigration2005a at May 13, 2005 10:32 AM

Comments

So I guess McCain and Colin Powell can form a club then.

Posted by: x at May 13, 2005 02:53 PM