Amnesties Undermine Immigration Laws

Portland Tribune ^ | January 1, 2015 | Elizabeth Van Staaveren

[OddLane]

Editor’s note: This guest column is in response to Lewis & Clark history professor Elliott Young’s Dec. 11 My View column, “President Obama got it half right on immigration.”

“Our immigration system is broken” ... we hear this line repeatedly, and it’s usually cited as a reason for granting amnesty to undocumented immigrants.

Rarely do we hear discussion of what broke our immigration system, but that’s a very important point to consider before attempting to “fix” the system.

Lax to no enforcement of current immigration laws is why we now have 11 million or more undocumented immigrants in the country, with politicians and open-borders advocates crying that our immigration system is broken and urging amnesties as a remedy. If the immigration laws had been adequately enforced over recent decades, we wouldn’t have a problem of illegal immigration or any arguments about amnesties.

Congress was persuaded in 1986 to grant a general amnesty. Proponents claimed it would be a one-time-only measure and that, henceforth, border security would prevent further undocumented immigration. However, enforcement promises were forgotten, and six more major amnesties followed, the last one in 2000. At least these were amnesties passed by Congress in its constitutional role as lawmakers.

[Ben Ficklin]

I'm sorry that you don't like my post. It is a stilted example, but the concept is valid.

All of you that support an "enforcement only" method of solving the illegal immigration problem, will be disappointed, because that method is so costly, it will never be implemented.

[LucianOfSamasota]

Who is WEB?

[Starboard]

If the immigration laws had been adequately enforced over recent decades, we wouldn’t have a problem of illegal immigration

***********
BINGO!

A country without borders is not really a country. It is like a house with no doors.

[Starboard]

learned helplessness and the complete fragmentation

*********
Its a long slide down the slippery slope of progressivism. And we have been conditioned by our “leaders” and the media to accept this gradual decline so that we barely notice it. Liberalism is a hideously destructive ideology.

[raybbr]

So am I. I told that to WEB’s uncle and the look on his face was one of shear horror.

Sorry, I meant GWB's uncle. Auto correct strikes again...

[chesley]

I listened to it live that day. Thought it made sense at the time.

I'm surprised. I was in high school at the time, and I knew it was a lie. It was just too obvious

[OddLane]

This is a country, not a hotel.

-John Derbyshire

[OddLane]

With all due respect, this is the intellectually laziest justification I've come across.

The reason deportations are not occurring has nothing to do with the cost, which-as I've already explained-is negligible compared to a policy of open borders in perpetuity.

[Pelham]

We’ve already tried your method. It’s how we got into the mess that we are in.

Your method is why California is unrecognizable as an American state and went from being Reagan Country to a third world bastion of the far left.

The GOP establishment does exactly what you advocate- it rewards foreign nationals who illegally enter the United States with defacto amnesty because it refuses to deport them.

They get to stay here on a defacto amnesty. And after enough time passes the Democratic party and their GOP collaborators give them citizenship.

I never voted to give away my country’s culture. And I don’t know anyone else who did except those who reward and enable mass illegal immigration.

[Ben Ficklin]

You can use Rector and Redwine as your authority but neither of them have any credibility. Heritage had to disavow Redwine because of his past.

Rector lost all his credibility long ago. Plus, Rector, in his job at Heritage, is required to make competing and contradicting arguments.

Sometimes he has to write a paper in which he makes the case against illegals. At other times he has to make the argument against illegals becoming guest workers and sometimes against illegals being put onto the path.

When he does this he has to contradict himself.

Like I said, you can use them as your authority to justify your position, but don't try to use them beyond that.

Once again, it comes back to cost. But you, or Rector, or Heritage, or FAIR, or anybody else are never able(or willing) to actually furnish a cost of how much would have to be spent for border enforcement, interior enforcement, and workplace enforcement. How many more border patrol agents, ICE agents, or auditors do you need?

Nor have you ever been able explain how removing these 30 or 11 million producers and consumers from the economy would affect GDP. What happens when you remove 10% of the labor force in TX, CA, and NV? What happens to the real estate industry or auto industry? The peach pickin industry? The tortilla industry?

This is why you will never win your argument where it matters(congress). Sure, you enjoy hanging around the chat rooms, but reality is not determined by what happens in a chat room.

[Vaduz]

The sooner the better.

[Vaduz]

They sell us out for their own greed money and power a formula for a bad future.
We need statesmen not pimps.