Plan targets criminal aliens

Los Angeles Daily News ^ | November 16, 2001 | Troy Anderson

[FITZ]

I know the amnesty in the 80's was awful. They weren't screened, many came over to get in on it who had never been in the US before, it got to be nothing but a joke. At first the illegals only needed some kind of proof they had actually been living in the US like utility bills, income tax statements, paycheck stubs. Sounds fair but it turns out many never paid income tax and were paid in cash and often illegally tap into the electricity to get it free. So later they came up with the idea that they only had to have a notarized letter written by anyone claiming they'd given them a job for 5 years. You'd get people you never met and 18 year olds asking you to write a letter saying you'd employed them for 5 years so they could get in on the amnesty. No surprise it turned out to be 3 times as many illegals as had been estimated.

[FITZ]

There are some illegals who are pretty good people as individuals, they have nice kids, go to church, work hard and seem to just be trying to have a nice enough life. But I know of one of the 80's amnestied who headed back to Mexico. She just jumped bail because they picked her up shoplifting and found too many IDs on her, from 4 different states, they did an investigation and found she was collecting welfare from 4 SW states.