The Republican billionaires are coming out of the woodwork to support amnesty. A couple of days ago it was Fox News' Rupert Murdoch, today it's casino magnate and major GOP funder Sheldon Adelson.

Adelson offers "Let’s Deal With Reality and Pass Immigration Reform" (link). I'll briefly describe how it misleads, what he's confused about, and some of the things he isn't mentioning.

Adelson - just like Murdoch - starts out with downplaying the results of the Eric Cantor loss to Dave Brat. Then:

While I do not practice or promote illegal behavior, the reality is that 11 million illegal immigrants are currently in this country. Let’s face it, the United States does not have a process - real or imaginable - to deport 11 million people from within our borders. Those who favor the deportation of every person here illegally must understand that this position simply is not realistic. There is no wave of a magic wand that could accomplish such a task. Nor should there be.

1. If Media Matters for America is to believed (check those footnotes!) Adelson does in fact have a history of illegal activity including money laundering: peekURL.com/zAr4swB

2. The rest of that paragraph is the deportations false choice: Adelson is pretending that we have to choose between mass deportations and some form of mass legalization. He's ignoring other options such as attrition.

Most of the immigrants who are here illegally came for the same reason as those who are here legally - a chance to make a better life for themselves and their families. They came heeding the famous words of poet Emma Lazarus that have welcomed generations of immigrants, including my parents, to the United States as they pass the Statue of Liberty and her golden torch: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free … Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.”

Adelson is engaging in the Lazarus fallacy; see the link. He's also mind-reading on the motivations of over 10 million people.

Poll after poll shows the majority of Americans support immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship.

Most immigration poll results are worth the PDFs they're written on. Many are conducted by advocacy organizations with a pre-defined goal of giving comfort and talking points to those like Adelson. If they reflected reality, then we'd already have immigration reform.

Let’s start by instituting a process in which all undocumented immigrants receive permits to legally work here. Let’s provide them with the opportunity to get driver’s licenses and bank accounts - simple things that we all take for granted. The immigrants here illegally need jobs, want to work and are willing to take on jobs that are not appealing to many Americans. Additionally, many of them are exploited because of their illegal status in this country.

1. About the only honest thing in his article is the word "start". Massive legalization would in fact just be a start. Before the ink was dry, the Democratic Party and the far-left would begin working to give citizenship to the newly-legalized. The same process used to push the GOP towards mass legalization would be employed to push them towards giving citizenship. The same groups that currently undercut immigration enforcement would push for citizenship and would welcome new illegal aliens coming here to take part in future amnesty. Those groups would obtain even more power than they have now, and would be even more effective at encouraging illegal immigration than they are now.

2. See immigration banks for attempts by banks and the Federal Reserve to profit from illegal immigration. What Adelson wants wouldn't penalize their past attempts to profit from illegal activity. Rather, it would reward that and encourage more of it.

3. 92 million Americans are out of the labor force and millions are unemployed. Instead of trying to get more of them working (even subsidizing them if necessary), Adelson trots out the jobs Americans wont do canard. Adelson isn't siding with unemployed Americans, he's siding with foreign citizens who'd take the jobs they could and should be doing.

Let’s also create a path to success for the 65,000 young people who graduate each year from high school and who, despite having been born in this country, find their path to college blocked by the “illegal immigrant” classification. We need more people in this country earning advanced degrees and putting that education to work here. As a businessman, I would certainly prefer that as opposed to educating them here and have them go somewhere else to compete against us.

1. Adelson is highly confused, but that should go without saying. Those born in the U.S. are, under current interpretation of the 14th Amendment, automatically citizens. The number he cites is of those who are illegal aliens: they were born outside the U.S. and came or were brought here illegally. If nothing else, Adelson not understanding that should undercut all the other things he says.

2. Giving college educations to illegal aliens will have a negative impact on Americans, keeping some out of college. See the DREAM Act page. Once again, Adelson sides with foreign citizens against the interests of American citizens.

3. Many businessmen are shortsighted, and the same is true of Adelson. Braindraining the world as Adelson wants will have highly negative impacts on the U.S. in the years and decades to come: regional instability, increased requirements for foreign aid, rising terrorism, and so on. See the skilled immigration page for more.

Next, we need to develop some type of offsetting payment that these former migrants can make as compensation for being here illegally. Payment could be monetary or through service to the local community or country.

As others have pointed out, many illegal aliens would be eligible for a tax refund. Perhaps Adelson has something in mind beyond that. If it's military service, that would move the U.S. closer to a more mercenary military: those who want to join to avail themselves of the benefits of becoming an American and not so much because they want to fight for the U.S. If he just means community service, the very far-left groups that Adelson would give more power to will make sure that those requirements are as weak as possible.

We also need more robust and effective measures to secure our borders and enforce our laws, so that we do not exacerbate the problem in the future.

1. See secure the border.

2. Once again, Adelson's mass legalization plan will give more power to the far-left. He'll give more power to the very people and groups that are currently attempting to undercut immigration enforcement. They will do after amnesty what they're doing now: work to undercut immigration enforcement.

Finally, with the exception of Native Americans, we are all immigrants or descendents of immigrants. Let us determine a long-term path to citizenship that is unambiguous. For us to do anything less would be a repudiation of the very foundation that has made America the world’s greatest melting pot.

1. See nation of immigrants and reconquista.

2. Adelson is admitting that the "start" above would just be a start: like the far-left and the Democrats, he'd support giving citizenship to the millions of illegal aliens who'd been legalized.

3. Not to repeat myself, but Adelson would give more power to the very people and groups that currently oppose the melting pot concept.

Let’s not pretend, either, that every person here illegally is some malicious character with no regard for our laws. For instance, I am familiar with a situation in which a father brought his children to the United States and stayed here on a recurring visa. After many years, the father remarried and a son, who is more than 18 years old, is now considered to be here illegally. This young man has lived nearly every day of his life in the United States, but he is haunted by the prospect of being sent to a country whose customs and cultures he does not understand and whose language he does not speak. There must be innumerable cases like his.

See PIIPP. The verbiage Adelson uses is very similar to that used in those cookie cutter articles (see the link). The goal of our policy should be to prevent such cases from recurring, yet Adelson's policies would encourage more people to bring their kids here illegally, leading to more such cases. If you're truly concerned about such cases, then I have some perhaps bad news for you: the only way to prevent such cases in the future is to strictly enforce our laws now. Anything other than that will only make the situation worse.

After a couple more paragraphs, Adelson writes:

If you are an American citizen, the chances are it’s because someone in your family came to the United States in pursuit of a better life for themselves and their descendants. Generations of immigrants came here and became productive and respected citizens, with many giving their lives to protect this country. Let’s reassure all of those who came before us and are now looking down from above that the principles undergirding America’s foundations live on. Let’s not close the door on those “yearning to breathe free.”

That, in addition to a repeat of the Lazarus fallacy, is an attempt at guilt called the immigration tradition fallacy, see the link.

Want to do something about this? Search Twitter for anyone promoting Adelson's plea, and then search for their followers and point out to them how the person promoting Adelson aren't credible.