Posted on 04/08/2005 6:17:32 AM PDT by SJackson
A new emergency Senate "agriculture" bill would grant blanket amnesty to millions of foreign lawbreakers.
More than 1,500 of our soldiers in Iraq have given their lives to ensure America’s safety. An emergency military spending bill to keep their comrades supplied with bullets and gasoline passed the House of Representatives last month with the addition of several important domestic security measures, including national standards for state driver’s licenses.
The Senate will debate the bill next week, and is considering an addition of its own: amnesty for illegal aliens.
I am not making this up. For several years now, Sen. Larry Craig has teamed up with Sen. Ted Kennedy to relentlessly push the AgJobs bill (the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act, currently S. 359), which would grant amnesty to most illegal alien farmworkers, and their families (plus admit many, many more through a harmful “temporary” worker program). Estimates are that as many as three million illegals could take advantage of this amnesty.
Sen. Craig has said he intends to offer his amnesty as an amendment when the military spending bill is considered next week on the Senate floor. His hope is that if his amnesty is added to the Senate version of the bill it will be too difficult for pro-borders Republicans in the House to kill it when the two bodies meet to reconcile the different versions of the bill.
There’s so much wrong with this it’s hard to know where to start. Firstly, regardless of the merits of bill, it’s simply irresponsible to hold up an emergency spending measure for an extensive debate on something as momentous as an illegal alien amnesty – and equally irresponsible to pass such an amnesty without extensive debate.
And there’s little merit to the Craig-Kennedy amnesty anyway. Supporters of the bill tell the soothing fairytale that this measure will help solve the illegal immigration problem, but this is a fairy tale we’ve heard before. Congress passed a “one-time-only” amnesty in 1986, and it supercharged illegal immigration, giving us an illegal population that is now twice as large as before the amnesty.
There was a farmworker component of that 1986 amnesty, too, which turned out to be possibly the most fraud-ridden government program in history. The story of that earlier amnesty would make you laugh if you weren’t crying. It became routine to hear applicants claiming to have harvested purple cotton, or dug cherries out of the ground, or picked watermelons from trees. But the political pressure to grant amnesty to as many people as possible was so intense, that only a handful of applications were rejected. In the end, the number of “farmworkers” legalized exceeded the total number of actual farmworkers in the whole country.
We would be guaranteed more of the same this time, because the Craig-Kennedy amnesty has even fewer safeguards than the 1986 amnesty.
And this isn’t just an abstract matter of following the rules. Among the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who were fraudulently legalized was one Mahmoud “The Red” Abouhalima, an Egyptian illegal alien cabbie in New York. It was only after he got his green card in the 1986 amnesty that he had the ability to travel to Afghanistan for terrorist training and then return to help plan the first World Trade Center attack, for which he is serving life in prison. Do we really want to find out what kinds of bad guys the next amnesty will legalize, enabling them to work and travel freely, preying on our society?
And, last but not least, the Craig-Kennedy amnesty would cost the Treasury billions. Illegal aliens get few public benefits on their own, but they do collect them on behalf of their U.S.-born citizen children, for a net cost to the federal government alone of $10 billion per year. When they get amnesty, their incomes (and thus tax payments) go up a little, but their use of government services balloons, because they are now eligible. Our estimate is that amnesty for all illegals would nearly triple the cost to Washington, to $29 billion per year.
The irony is exquisite. The same measure that would enable our soldiers to defend the borders of a newly free Iraq would also undermine our own borders. Mahmoud the Red is laughing from his prison cell.
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
Declaration of Independence
July 4, 1776
HOLDING OUR MILITARY BUDGET HOSTAGE!!!!!!
Those Turkeys!
Someone told me that Hayworth had just talked with Sean about this!
DO I HAVE THIS RIGHT??!!!
OUR MILITARY BUDGET held HOSTAGE for the sake of Illegal aliens?
Is this a way of undermining the Minutemen???!!!!
Very important report. How it got buried, I'll never know.
Look at this INSANITY! As I understand it, our military budget is being held hostage over some hispandering tripe.
I can't believe the eletism of these guys! Haven't they learned anything? In the wake of the Minutemen, we get this. Our defense bill held hostage: only if we grant amnesty to potential terrorists? Do I have this right?
Thank you for all your hard work. Gads! I better get like Ike and take up golf before... never mind. [In through the nose, out through the mouth.]
bump!
We really are plagued with "enemies, foreign and domestic."
"The irony is exquisite. The same measure that would enable our soldiers to defend the borders of a newly free Iraq would also undermine our own borders. Mahmoud the Red is laughing from his prison cell."
Yeah. Ironic. Let's get some hot pokers.
[in political sense]
As far as Iraq is concerned, I say "shut her down"...Bring our boys and girls home...If we can't defend our borders against illegals and criminals, we have no business being in Iraq or anywhere else...
Well, at least the senate has made it harder for them to file bankruptcy.
On top of that, Bush is sucking up to illegal aliens, some of whom could be terrorists for all we know, and he expects us to think he's taking the war on terror seriously? I still do, but it's not easy. FReegards....
"Well, at least the senate has made it harder for them to file bankruptcy."
I think they might want to air-drop credit cards for illegals along the border. Anything for a vote. "See! We love you to break the law!"
I'm all for a more expedient vetting process for more legal immigrant farmers. But for goodness sake, this terrorist risk has to stop!
bump
Carolyn
Related Washington Times report:
Senate panel OKs war spending(Amnesty watch)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1379506/posts
"...Instead, the Senate is bracing for a debate on amnesty for some illegal aliens in the United States as part of the [war related] spending bill, which is scheduled to begin next week..."
Here's a handy FReeper-engine to search this out:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?s=amnesty+ag&ok=Search&q=quick&m=all&o=time&SX=4257e4d45eff5f296eb9d7a7749982d63060617a
This is one of the better ideas to come across the Freeper forums. The only problem I see is that the new (almost) bankruptcy laws will make it much more difficult to discharge credit card debt and that just doesn't seem like a very fair way to treat illegals (oops, I mean our southern friends). I'll send your idea to the White House so Bush can push for an exemption for his favorite special interest group.
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