Thread: Mesage from America: Immigration Reform, NOT AMNESTY

Message from America: Immigration Reform, Not Amnesty

Posted by Bobby Eberle
April 10, 2007 at 7:14 am


The latest round in the push for immigration “reform” has begun. With President Bush’s speech on Monday, you will again be hearing how the only way to fix illegal immigration is to have “comprehensive” reform. Wrong! We need to address the problems at hand — mainly security at our borders — and then move on to the next set of issues. “Comprehensive” reform is simply code for “if you want your border security, you have to have a heaping helping of amnesty.” That is not the answer.

As the president noted in his speech in Yuma, Arizona, there is a “perception that America was not serious about enforcing our immigration laws and that they could be broken without consequence.”


Perception? Perception?!?!? It’s more than a perception, it’s a fact. And no amount of reform will be possible unless the White House takes the problem seriously. Launching sting operations against employers and arresting illegal aliens make great headlines. But arrests are irrelevant unless they are followed by trials, convictions, and deportations. What good is an arrest if the illegal alien is released and told to report back in a week for trial? That person — someone who has broken the law — is as good as gone.

As noted in Bush renews call for immigration overhaul, White House officials say that President Bush will again push for “a temporary-worker program to address labor shortages.” While the president tries to generate excitement for the plan, many immigration reformists dismissed the speech as “nothing new.”

According to a story at CNSNews.com, “One immigration reform group called his plan the ’same old illegal alien amnesty and guest worker program.’”

“There was absolutely nothing new in President Bush’s speech,” said (Federation for American Immigration Reform) FAIR President Dan Stein in a news release. “It was filled with familiar promises of future enforcement, all of which have been repeatedly broken by this and past administrations.”

According to FAIR, the president’s case for a massive new guest worker program and illegal alien amnesty are based on “misleading half-truths.”

As noted in the Washington Times, former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore said the president is promoting “amnesty lite.”

“That is just not acceptable and places an unfair burden on the American taxpayers and is an affront to the immigrants who came to this country legally,” he said.

Rep. John Shadegg, Arizona Republican, who joined Mr. Bush yesterday, said a bill that allows a new pathway to citizenship “can’t win the votes of a significant number, much less a majority, of congressional Republicans and cannot pass Congress.”

The key issues that should be addressed first are real border security and a program for tracking future workers coming from Mexico. Combining this with an amnesty plan only bogs down the debate and is not in line with conservative principles. We need to stand FOR border security and enforcement of current laws and AGAINST amnesty. No amount of “reform” will ever work if the White House refuses to have the political backbone to enforce current immigration laws.


http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/?p=434

No amount of “reform” will ever work if the White House refuses to have the political backbone to enforce current immigration laws.

Backbone is the key word here and this president is sadly lacking any semblance of a spine.