Today: Four things we learned from the Senate Committee hearings this week


The Senate Judiciary Committee held two hearings earlier this week in advance of marking up the Gang of Eight's comprehensive amnesty bill. The first was a nearly 8-hour long marathon with a parade of witnesses from Big Business to Big Labor to Special Interest groups with just a few witnesses sprinkled in to testify about the need for more interior enforcement, better border security, and the huge fiscal drain that an amnesty would have on the nation's future.

The following day, the Committee brought in DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Here's what we learned. . .

NUMBER ONE

Every part of the bill was written as though America is facing a severe labor shortage crisis. Monday's hearing featured one industry spokesperson after another who testified that Americans from high-school drop outs to the laid off engineer were either too lazy or too uneducated to fill U.S. labor needs at the wages being offered. The only guarantees in the bill concern large increases in the pool of available foreign workers, including millions of illegal workers who receive amnesty.

NUMBER TWO

The legalization comes first. There are no hard enforcement triggers for the initial amnesty (legalization + work permits). Chris Crane, ICE Officer and President of the National ICE Council testified to that on Monday. No one disputed that point and it has been reported in the press.

NUMBER THREE

Sen. Schumer and company called Sen. Rubio's bluff: Back in January, Rubio promised, "If, in fact, this bill does not have real triggers in there...if there is not language in this bill that guarantees that nothing else will happen unless these enforcement mechanisms are in place, I won't support it."

Since the bill has been available to read, Rubio has issued repeated statements that are contradicted by his own legislation and by Schumer.

NUMBER FOUR

No one seems capable of explaining what will happen to future illegal aliens if the bill passes (see Roy's blog).

The bill excludes post-December 31, 2011 illegal aliens. What happens to them? The bill also calls for expanded guest worker programs. What happens to the guest workers who don't go home when their work visa e xpires?

Will the administration ramp up interior enforcement to detect and remove illegal aliens not covered by the bill? Or will the administration adopt the "attrition through enforcement" approach both the White House and Gang of Eight have decried? Or will the bill preserve the status quo immigration enforcement that gives "prosecutorial discretion" to non-violent aliens unlawfully residing and working in the country, thus building up a new illegal population to be amnestied at a later date? The bill doesn't say. The bill's authors won't say.

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/