Usually it’s good news when illegal immigrants and their supporters are unhappy with proposed legislation – that’s an indication that legislators might be on the right track.
Unfortunately I don’t think that’s the case with George Bush’s new plan, which centers around the nonsensical notion of illegals going home before re-applying for admittance into the U.S.
On a personal level I think it’s a great idea. Clearing the streets of America of every single illegal immigrant would be a wonderful beginning to real reform. Doing so, however, requires a political will unlike any that exists in America today. It’s just not possible because Democrats, who benefit tremendously from the Latino vote, will never allow immigration laws to be enforced.
Neither will illegals return to their homelands to wait for months or years for the opportunity to pay thousands of dollars in fees to return. Why should they when they can simply stay in the U.S. virtually risk-free?
As much as it pains me personally, I believe that most of the illegals who are presently in the U.S. must be “grandfathered in” and given a short path to citizenship. They’re going to stay anyway because we don’t have to willpower to root them out. Why not acknowledge facts and make these people, most of whom are good and decent human beings, a real part of our society?
Bush’s notion of background checks, while likely to be inconclusive in many cases, is a good one and should be implemented as part of an “amnesty” program. Needless to say it should also be administered to all incoming immigrants, foreign employees, and students going forward.
But these checks are meaningless without border enforcement, something that’s been a joke under the Clinton and Bush administrations. In my opinion, these presidents’ failures to secure our borders is criminal. It’s imperative that we understand who is coming into our country and where they are and what they are doing while they’re here. Anything less is unacceptable.
There’s no use spending time and money designing and pushing legislation that’s not going to work. Bush’s original plan was far superior to this one and it seems to me that a Democratic Congress should be more amenable to that plan than the current one. Perhaps after it is rejected a more realistic and effective plan can be put forward in its place.
10,000 people marched against the plan in L.A. today. Many of these people were undoubtedly illegals themselves and many others are complicit in generating and sustaining illegal immigration. But if nothing else they demonstrated both an understanding of the American way of protesting a perceived injustice and their willingness to be part of our way of life.
That’s far more than I can say for certain other minority groups already in this country.
It’s the failure of the federal government that has allowed 10 million illegal immigrants to take up residence in this country. The feds need to stop bickering like spoiled children, step up with some good ideas, and solve the problem they created.
There’s no reason to expect these people to go home, not when Clinton, Bush, and their respective Congresses in effect invited them here. Bush and Pelosi just need to do the right thing so we can move on.
It’s what we do after today’s illegals are legitimized that matters. Here are some of my ideas.