Posted on 04/04/2002 11:19:05 AM PST by xsysmgr
The House of Representatives has done one of the stupidest things it could do for purely political reasons. Just before recess, it voted to grant amnesty to many of the nine-odd million illegal aliens who reside here, willfully and lawlessly.
The legislation the House passed, known as Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, will let perhaps hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens pay a $1,000 fee and remain in the United States while they wait for their green card — a symbol of legalization, a ticket to U.S. citizenship, plus the right to bring a lengthy chain of relatives, from parents to grown children and their families, ad infinitum.
Under a procedure requiring a two-thirds vote, the House by one vote, 275-137, passed the amnesty. Why would those who are supposed to represent the American people and make the laws that govern them reward lawbreakers for gaming the system?
Because our esteemed, winsome, but in the case of immigration issues wrong chief executive was traveling to Mexico and wanted a plum to hand the president of Mexico. Mexico! That Third World nation on our southern border. That pipeline of corruption, drugs, illegal aliens, and crime into our nation.
The president of Mexico is pressing the American president on behalf of the interests of his country and his countrymen, and the U.S. president risks putting the interests of Mexico and Mexicans ahead of the best interests of Americans.
Section 245(i) amnesty was covered in the fig leaf of border security. However, the border security and immigration system improvements in the bill passed the House overwhelmingly in December. They await Senate action. There's no need for passing them again.
This 245(i) amnesty window will remain open through Nov. 30, 2002. At least this time the 245(i) amnesty supporters try to preclude the rush of sham marriages that happened last time this amnesty option was extended. To beat the qualification deadline when 245(i) expired April 30, 2001, hundreds of illegal aliens grabbed any willing U.S. citizen and headed for the altar. The new extension will require illegals to have been married to a U.S. citizen or have secured an employer sponsor by August 15, 2001.
Who might enter into a fraudulent marriage? Jessica Yolanda Fortune of Lexington, N.C., who was convicted last fall, did. Her "husband," Chawki Youssef Hammoud's, and Fortune's 1994 sham marriage allowed Hammoud to get a green card. It also gave him and a cell of Middle Easterners the opportunity to give the terrorist group Hezbollah money and military equipment, according to the Associated Press.
Zuhaier Ben Mohammed Rouissi, picked up on immigration-related marriage-fraud charges in October in Canton, Ohio, faces up to five years and a $250,000 fine in the post-Sept. 11 sweep.
The last 245(i) extension, in the so-called LIFE Act of 1998, added 400,000 aliens to the Immigration and Naturalization Service's backlog, which now stands at four million.
One of the ludicrous arguments now being advanced by open-borders advocates and amnesty apologists is that 245(i) will get the illegal aliens who qualify out of the underworld and into the light. We'll know who they are now, identify them and get these aliens into the legal immigration system, they claim. They have the chutzpah to claim that the INS — that most maligned of federal bureaucracies, and at least partially deservedly so — would get to these lawbreakers' files in less than several years. But 245(i) amnesty allows certain illegal aliens to jump the line in front of millions of legal immigrants who abide by the law.
How sound is this faith in the INS? A recent General Accounting Office report found that "[t]he INS does not know the extent of the immigration benefit fraud problem." GAO called the immigration benefit fraud occurring under INS's nose "pervasive and significant." In some visa application categories, the report cited a 90-percent fraud rate!
With the recent revelation of 114,000 illegal alien Middle Easterners loose in the United States, House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner did not overstate the case when he told Human Events, "Based on this report, I'm not confident that the INS isn't giving green cards to al Qaeda operatives."
Ironically, House passage came as the Florida flight school where two of the Sept. 11 terrorists trained for their flight of death finally received the INS paperwork approving their student visas.
If there's one thing we should have learned from past amnesties, it's that amnesties beget amnesties. Each previous amnesty, whether broad or limited, has encouraged more illegal immigration. Would-be illegal aliens make the rational decision to defy American laws and wait it out. If they wait long enough, put down roots and don't get caught, they reason, American politicians will give them an amnesty.
Senate Democrats, wanting to outpander Republicans, support permanent extension of 245(i). Thanks to the fact that patriotic grassroots groups are telling the truth about this sham, at least our politicians will all be on record as to whether they stand with America or Mexico, for or against the rule of law, in favor of or in opposition to national sovereignty.
— Edwards is an adjunct fellow with the Hudson Institute, former senior congressional aide to a member of the House Immigration Subcommittee, and co-author of The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform.
The U.S. under Jimmy Carter has already set a precedence on doing so having already accepted Cuba's nutcases and detainees once upon a time...
It's all-ee, all-ee in free time not only for whomever have been here already, but for those aliens who can manage to get here in time before the deadline.
How many more loopholes would you like?
Does every illegal alien need to be eligible for it to be an amnesty? NO.
It's not a blanket amnesty, it's an amnesty for those eligible.
Read the law, not the propaganda the INS post on their site.
The $1,000.00 is not a fee or a fine, it a sum and it is not a penalty. Read the law.
There is no stretching of the truth. Many undesirable illegal aliens will be able to take advantage of this, including terrorist. While the majority of the illegal aliens may be harmless, remember it only took a few terrorist to bring down the World Trade Center.
Also, for every one of the illegal aliens that is approved under 245(i), one legal alien in that country gets bumped back a year on his or her legal visa. Is that fair?
In Mexico, the current wait for a visa is about 9 years. So, for every Mexican illegal that is approved under 245(i), 9 legal Mexican aliens, have an extra year to wait. Is that fair?
There is allot that goes on behind the curtain that is not seen by the public.
245(i) is amnesty and it is bad.
It's not only bad, it insults the intelligence of American citizens, AND still and all rewards alien violators of sovereign U.S. law.
BTW, if ANYONE should know truth about this situation, it is you, M.I.
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