Thread: Sen. Robert Byrd Dies - Stalwart Against Amnesty

Sen. Robert Byrd Dies - Stalwart Against Amnesty

Monday, June 28, 2010, 10:49 AM EDT - posted on NumbersUSA

Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) passed away early this morning at the age of 92. He was the longest-serving member in Congress, spending more than 50 years in the Senate and six more in the House of Representatives. Sen. Byrd has a career Immigration-Reduction grade of a B+, which is the highest grade among current Democratic Senators. His high mark also ranks him fourth overall among all Democratic Senators - current and former - graded by NumbersUSA.

Sen. Byrd was one of the biggest opponents to the Pro-Amnesty movement. He delivered several fiery speeches on the floor of the Senate condemning Amnesty and its potential negative impacts on the United States. He once called Amnesty "sheer lunacy" and voted against every Amnesty vote graded by NumbersUSA since 1989.

In March 2002, Sen. Byrd delivered a moving speech opposing an extension to the 245(i) Amnesty just months after the 9/11 attacks and after learning that several of the 9/11 attackers were in the United States on expired visas.

Supporters of the House-passed extension of the so-called Section 245(i) provision were quick to claim that it is not an amnesty. The issue, they argue, is where you fill out your paper work--here or abroad. That is nonsense-- N-O-N-S-E-N-S-E, nonsense. Section 245(i)--amnesty is amnesty--pure and simple.

The section 245(i) provision, which expired last April, allows undocumented immigrants to seek permanent residency without leaving the United States, if--if--they pay a $1,000 fee and have a close relative or employer sponsor them. Without the provision, these immigrants would be forced to leave the country, and under tougher illegal immigration reforms passed in 1996, be barred from reentering for up to 10 years.

If waiving tougher penalties for illegal aliens is not a form of amnesty, then I don't know what is. . .

(T)he American people and the Congress cannot be expected to have confidence in our efforts to secure our borders, if they see the administration advocating legislation that seems to fly in the face of tighter border security. The administration must explain why, on the same day that the Homeland Security Director would issue an elevated state of alert, the White House would push through the House an amnesty for illegal aliens that would weaken our visa screening processes. Doesn't make much sense, does it? The right hand seems not to know what the left hand is doing.

It is lunacy--sheer lunacy--that the President would request, and the House would pass, such an amnesty at this time. That point seems obvious to the American people, if not to the administration.

In 2006 just before the larger Amnesty pushes, Sen. Byrd spoke out again against Amnesty, opposing an amendment to a border security bill. The amendment would have opened the door for a mass Amnesty for the more than 12 million illegal aliens living in the United States at the time.

I oppose this amnesty proposal – absolutely and unequivocally. I urge the Senate to pass a clean border security bill like the House did – without amnesty, without a guest-worker program, and without an increase in the annual allotment of permanent immigrant visas.

For more than four years, the nation has wondered how 19 terrorists managed to penetrate our border defenses to carry out the September 11 attacks. It chills the blood to think of those terrorists crossing our borders not once, but several times in the months before the attack – easily outsmarting our border security checks to plot their dastardly scheme. They walked among us as tourists, students, and business travelers. Three of them even stayed in the United States as illegal aliens. . .

Meanwhile, the immigrant population continues to surge. The Center for Immigration Studies calculates that 1.5 million immigrants are settling both legally and illegally in the United States each year. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that immigration will be a major cause of the population of the United States increasing to 400 million people in less than 50 years. . .

Immigration enforcement in the United States remains decidedly, half-hearted. We are pulling our punches. Tougher border security mandates are signed into law, but then not fully funded. Statutory deadlines are set, but then indefinitely postponed. Undocumented aliens are denied Social Security cards, but then issued drivers licenses and taxpayer identification numbers. Employers are warned not to hire illegal labor, but then allowed to sponsor, without penalty, their illegal workforce for legal status. Funds are not requested to perform even the barest level of work site enforcement. We send troops abroad ostensibly so that we don’t have to fight terrorists on American streets, but then we turn a blind-eye to millions of unauthorized, undocumented, unchecked aliens – any one of whom could be a potential terrorist. . .

Amnesties are the dark and sinister underbelly of our immigration process. They tarnish the magnanimous promise of a better life enshrined on the base of the Statue of Liberty. They minimize the struggle of all those who dutifully followed the rules to come to this country, and of all those who are still waiting abroad to immigrate legally. Amnesties undermine that great egalitarian and American principle that the law should apply equally and fairly to everyone. Amnesties perniciously decree that the law shall apply to some, but not to all.

Amnesties can be dangerous, dangerous proposals. Amnesties open routes to legal status for aliens hoping to circumvent the regular security checks. By allowing illegal aliens to adjust their status in the country, we allow them to bypass State Department checks normally done overseas through the visa and consular process. One need only look to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, where one of the terrorist leaders had legalized his status through an amnesty, to clearly see the dangers of these kinds of proposals. . .

President Reagan signed his amnesty proposal into law in 1986. At the time, I supported amnesty based on the same promises we hear today – that legalizing undocumented workers and increasing enforcement would stem the flow of illegal immigration. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work today. The 1986 amnesty failed miserably. After 1986, illegal immigrant population tripled from 2.7 million aliens, to 4 million aliens in 1996, to 8 million aliens in 2000, to an estimated 12 million illegal aliens today. . .

Our nation’s experience shows that amnesties do not work. They are dangerous proposals that reward and encourage illegal immigration. Our experience shows that we cannot play games with our border security or American lives could be lost. . .

Sen. Byrd didn't just oppose Amnesties for illegal aliens; he also opposed high levels of immigration. In 2001, ironically less than a week before the 9/11 attacks, Sen. Byrd delivered a speech on the Senate floor that not only talked about the negative impacts of Amnesties, but also highlighted the impacts of high immigration levels and challenged the political and economic motives behind immigration policy.

Population growth will also continue to cause more and more land to be developed. Both past experience and common sense strongly suggest that population growth of this kind has important implications for the preservation of farm land, open space, and the overall quality of life throughout our country. A nation simply cannot add nearly 120 million people to its population without having to develop a great deal of undeveloped land.

There are also environmental concerns that must be considered. A growing nation requires increasing amounts of energy and greater recovery of natural resources, which results in larger output of pollution in our streams and greater accumulations of solid waste in our landfills.

Our resources, as never before, are limited. For all the talk we have heard in recent months from the administration about liberalizing our immigration laws, the President has not made any suggestions--I haven't heard them if he has made any--about how to pay for the additional infrastructure investments that will be required.

Just look around you. The infrastructure is being asked to bear far more than the traffic will bear. Look at our schools. Look at our hospitals. Look at our welfare programs.

Does the Administration want to increase taxes to support these newcomers? We have been cutting taxes. How much of our limited resources is the administration willing to sacrifice? At what price are we willing to accept all of these new immigrants?

These are the questions that our immigration policy needs to address if we are to offer a higher standard of living and a better life to the immigrants that our nation accepts. Instead, the American public is witnessing an immigration debate unfold that threatens to move this nation's immigration laws in exactly the wrong direction. . .

Both political parties--Republican and Democrat--support broader immigration rules.

But no one is talking about the additional costs to the American taxpayers. Not one is talking about the strain on our natural and financial resources.

Building a political base is no reason to encourage illegal immigration, nor is building up union membership, nor is importing cheaper labor to replace U.S. workers. We must not glibly rush forward on immigration policy without adequate thought about unintended consequences, tangential ramifications or adequate public education and debate. Whether this rush to loosen our enforcement of immigration laws is due to jockeying for political advantage as cynics might contend, or simply an outgrowth of commendable altruistic urges on the part of our nation's political system, we need to step back, slow down and take a serious look at our immigration policies. . .

View Sen. Byrd's Immigration-Reduction Report Card
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/my/co ... rd/CAREER/

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/ ... nesty.html

What sickens me actually is that Byrd has been ill for quite some time, and the demo's just rubber stamped his vote as their own, in his absence.

Term limits !!!!! We should be fighting for term limits with every breath we take. Until we have term limits, we are completely doomed.