http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opin ... equal.html

EQUAL TIME: Amnesty only draws more illegal entrants

By DAN STEIN
Published on: 01/02/07

The new 110th Congress is about to subject America to yet another hard sell on the merits of amnesty for illegal aliens. With each repeated and failed pitch for this cure-all, the flaws become more apparent and the outcomes obvious.

Amnesty violates basic principles of fairness, promises to be enormously expensive, does nothing to stem the flow of still more illegal immigration.
(ENLARGE)
Dan Stein is president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington.


Granting amnesty to people who entered the country illegally is an affront to millions of people all across the world who have waited, often for years, to come to the United States legally. This fairness principle is rooted in the beliefs of groups such as "You Don't Speak For Me," a growing movement of legal Hispanic Americans proud of their new citizenship and angry with those who cheat the system.

The cost of administering legalization programs involving millions of applicants would be staggering. If the Department of Homeland Security were to actually conduct thorough background investigations to weed out fraudulent claims and potential terrorists, the process could take decades to complete. In the absence of a credible verification system, millions of applications will get rubber stamp approvals and little scrutiny.

Granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens will result in still more illegal immigration. After all, we are in this mess because the last amnesty in 1986 had little regard for future consequences. Millions more people will be encouraged to come here illegally in the expectation that some future Congress and president will opt to make the problem go away with the stroke of a pen in a Rose Garden ceremony. Amnesty is a self-propagating phenomenon.

Finally, employers who prefer to hire illegal aliens because their status limits their bargaining power, will simply begin hiring the next wave of illegal entrants. So long as there is no enforcement of laws barring them from employing illegal aliens, there is no incentive for these employers to deal with millions of newly empowered amnesty recipients when there is a fresh crop of illegal aliens ready to take their place.

Most Americans are viscerally opposed to amnesty for illegal aliens, or turning them into guest workers, because it rewards people who have broken the law. And the overwhelming majority of the public also opposes the idea because they plainly see it for what it is: a massive labor subsidy program that they are paying for over and over again in many ways.