In the mean time, why not enforce the laws that are already on the books?
Wow! And the reason this is not done NOW is?
>>In the mean time, why not enforce the laws that are already on the books?<<
I have tried to find something good in this bill, and have concluded that almost all of it is flawed. For those of you (including Goober Graham) who say, “If you don’t like this bill, what is your proposal”:
Strip out all the amnesty (Z Visa) and guest worker provisions and vote on those issues as a separate bill.
Leave in the bill: More border agents, border monitoring equipment. Leave the harsher penalties for employers and continued work on encrypted tamper-resistant (”tamper-proof” sounds a little optimistic) documents and employment verification systems, to be deployed when and if they make sense.
I’ll bet the amnesty portion would be easily defeated (or at least the public would be overwhelmingly opposed), and the bill with the enforcement would have a good chance of passing, although Bush might veto it because it didn’t include amnesty.
If Bush signed the new enforcement bill and there was no doubt that employer penalties worked exceptionally well, after a few years, introduce the amnesty again. But we might find that the illegals were going home.
If Bush vetoed the new enforcement bill and congress could not override, see if the public was sufficiently infuriated to elect a sane president and congress.
“In the mean time, why not enforce the laws that are already on the books?”
That is what Bill Bennett was proposing. Secure the borders and start deporting illegals that are located through traffic stops, arrests, etc. Over time, many will have been deported and won’t be able to come back in. A crackdown on employers who hire illegals will dry up the jobs for illegals. It won’t take care of most of them, but it will send the criminals and those who won’t work back home. We don’t need new legislation for this. Just enforcing the existing laws will work.