Posted on 09/04/2002 12:51:48 PM PDT by Risa
Amnesty Programs For Illegal Aliens Drive "Legal" Immigration To Record Levels (Washington, D.C. September 3, 2002)
The new data reveal that some 215,000 illegal aliens living in the U.S. were granted legal status during FY 2001, driving "legal" immigration levels to 1,064,318 people admitted, representing a 65 percent increase in just two years.
"No matter how overcrowded many of our schools are becoming. No matter how many emergency rooms and public health care facilities have to be closed because of a dramatic rise in uninsured immigrants. No matter how it effects wages, jobs, affordable housing or the environment, there appears to be no limit to the willingness of our political leaders to pander to ethnic voting blocs and to cheap labor interests," stated Dan Stein, executive director of FAIR.
Even more startling is the revelation that an additional 970,000 adjustment cases are still pending.
Provisions in the law such as Section 245(i), which the Bush Administration and many in Congress are hoping to revive, have proven to be a massive and ongoing amnesty program for illegal aliens.
After the tragedy of last Sept. 11, how are Americans made more secure by massive amnesty programs that grant hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens legal status in our country with only the most cursory of background checks?"
How is the average American, who is not an immigrant or an employer of immigrants, better off as a result of a 65 percent increase in immigration levels?
"When it comes to immigration, the American public has been lied to more often than the shareholders of Enron," commented Stein. "We were told by the previous administration that immigration levels - already excessive in the eyes of most Americans - were likely to decline.
That assurance turned out to be untrue.
We were told that Section 245(i) would benefit only a small number of people who had fallen "out of status" because of bureaucratic delays in completing their paperwork.
It turns out that "small number," in FY 2001 alone, was actually equivalent to the population of Akron, Ohio, and that there are nearly another million such people in the pipeline.
"In light of the latest data, it is time for some explanations out of Washington," Stein continued. "The president and Congress need to explain to the American public why immigration levels of more than one million people a year, one-fifth of whom have broken our immigration laws, is beneficial to the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at fairus.org ...
If we cannot persuade President Bush of the enormous toll he extracts from the lives of the American people by his support of mass immigration, what is left to do?
The blame belongs more to the voters. They haven't made illegal immigration an election issue.
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