Give Me Your Tired, You’re Poor

Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free

 

12 - 20 million illegal aliens are estimated to be living in the United States. President Bush and most of Washington when speaking of illegal aliens will only admit that there are 12 million and Bush seems to prefer the PC term of either, migrant workers, or illegal migrant workers, who come here to do the jobs that Americans will not do.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that publishes research on domestic, economic, foreign and defense policy that is based in Washington DC, put the actual number closer to 20 million.

The Heritage Foundation also estimated that the cost of the new Immigration Bill to American citizens would be approximately $2.5 trillion over 20 years. I only mentioned the cost to tax payers, because every politician in Washington that is in favor of the Immigration Bill has been unable to say how much the Bill will actually cost when they are asked. The Heritage Foundation’s estimate may be wrong, but it is the only cost figure that anyone has placed on the Immigration Bill at this time.

Our country is built on immigration, legal immigration, the Statue of Liberty a national symbol of freedom, which stands on Liberty Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor, has been greeting immigrants that have wished to make a better life here in the United States.

There is a plaque on the Liberty statues that reads:

“Give me your tired, your poor 

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Well, it may be time for a change, Lady Liberty needs a new home, I’m thinking somewhere down San Diego way. After all, our government wants to reward those that enter our country illegally, and ignore those that go through the proper channels of immigration.

The new Immigration Bill has more than 1,000 pages, and very few in Washington have read the entire bill. I am sure that there are plenty of items that are buried in this bill, that if it ever does make it to either floor of Congress, most will not know what they are voting for, which if you think about it, it is standard operating procedures in Washington. I say this because the Patriot Act comes to mind, and almost every politician in Washington admitted that they had not read everything in the Act.

 

Key Points

So since I have limited space to write, and because not all is known about the Immigration bill, I will try and hit the high points as well as the low points that are known.

Top of the list is Amnesty; Bush says it’s not amnesty, but a rose by any other name and all that mumbo jumbo still smells the same.

In a Rasmussen poll from last week, 72 percent of Americans said they want our borders secured before anything is given away to those that are here illegally.

But this is a comprehensive Immigration bill (Bush loves to say the word comprehensive); He says this bill secures our borders while allowing those that are here illegally to come out into the open.

Last October, Congress, a Republican controlled Congress, passed a bill to build 854 miles of fence along our southern border. Fast forward eight months to the here and now, and we find that our government managed to build only TWO miles, of the 854 miles that last October’s bill called for.

But fear not, this new bill, is a Comprehensive, Immigration bill, and border fence is part of the plan.

I feel better already.

Our southern border is more than 2,000 miles, and last October’s bill fell far short of securing all the holes that we have. The new comprehensive immigration bill calls for building a fence along 370 miles of the more than 2,000-mile border.

Yes, this new comprehensive Immigration bill, over rides last October’s bill that called for 854 miles, and has condensed the fence to 370 miles.

Am I the only one who thinks that securing our border is not what President Bush has in mind when he says comprehensive?

Also included in the new comprehensive immigration bill are 18,000 additional border agents, and a new employer ID card verification system.

At the moment 16,000 employers have signed up to use the verification system, but detractors say it has an error rate of about 11 percent.

The comprehensive Immigration bill does call for 18,000 border agents, but they just have to be hired. They don't actually have to be trained. And the employment verification system first has to have all the tools in place, but even then, employers don't have to use those tools before the amnesty program begins.

For Amnesty, each illegal must pay $5,000 fine over a period of time (Who is going to keep track of their payments?), must return to their home country within eight years before they can apply for their green card, and are required to learn English, but not until they have been here for at least nine years.

 

If some of this is puzzling, or is not making much sense, then you are not alone.

The bill also has lots of loopholes and waivers. For example, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff can approve a waiver to allow illegal aliens to bring in additional family members for humanitarian purposes or to ensure family unity.

The National Border Patrol Council, which represents our Border Patrol agents, said "As long as any people or contraband can enter our country illegally, our borders are not secure at all."

The AFL-CIO is saying, "All workers will suffer because employers will have available a ready pool of labor they can exploit to drive down wages, benefits, health and safety protections, and other workplace standards."

Even illegal aliens are questioning the comprehensive Immigration bill. They are saying that if they must return to their home country first, before they can apply for their green cards, will their jobs still be here when they come back?  

House minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) called the comprehensive Immigration bill, “A piece of Sh*t.”

At last some common sense, and from a Republican no less.

There are many, many other parts to the comprehensive immigration bill that will be coming out over the next week or two, but I would like to say that as a Democrat, I find myself agreeing with the majority of Americans (both republican and democrat) who want our borders secured, before any amnesty or whatever Bush wants to call it happens.

The 12 to 20 million illegal aliens that are here will more than likely never see amnesty as long as Congress and President Bush ignore the American people’s wishes of securing our borders.

Bush and some of the 2008 republican hopefuls for President keep saying that if we leave Iraq, the terrorists will follow us home. So it makes sense to anyone who does NOT work in Washington to secure our borders first.

Common sense in Washington, it’s happened before, maybe it will happen again.

 

David Phillips is the publisher and editor of the online political magazine

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