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Don't support amnesty bill for illegals
Sunday, July 09, 2006
By YEH LING-LING
Special to the Press-Register

If enacted, the amnesty bill passed by the U.S. Senate and promoted by President Bush will be economically and politically devastating to Americans.

According to the estimate of Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation, if the Senate's amnesty bill is enacted, it would add 66 million more legal immigrants to the United States over just the next 20 years. That is more than 13 times the current population of Alabama.

Rector's estimate does not include the current legal immigration of nearly 1 million people a year, nor does it include the number of children born here of current and future immigrants.

Newcomers vote, consume energy and need jobs, education, health care and many other costly services that will not be covered by the taxes most of them will pay. And indeed, most amnestied aliens and their relatives will not have to pay income taxes due to their low incomes and could, in fact, receive an earned-income tax credit of up to $4,400 a year.
The Senate bill would also lead to an explosion of illegal immigration and fraudulent amnesty applications.
If it becomes law, many foreign nationals will attempt to enter the United States illegally and claim that they have been here for more than five years. Many others could come as tourists and then claim they've been here for five years. They then could file amnesty applications using fraudulent identifications that they can buy here or in their home countries.

Once naturalized, they could bring in their extended families, including nephews and nieces and in-laws. All of these people, once naturalized, could also have their extended families "re-united" with them here.

In addition, the bill would allow "guest workers" to become U.S. citizens and bring in their own extended families. Americans should know that the proposed new "guest workers" visas -- initially capped at 200,000 a year but with the possibility of subsequent annual increases of 20 percent -- are not restricted to low-skilled workers.

Because 66 percent of the 12 million illegal aliens now in the United States came from Mexico, the political impact of another amnesty should not be ignored.

Mexico, while it does not tolerate illegal migration on its own soil, has actively encouraged illegal migration to the United States and vigorously opposed all U.S. efforts to secure our borders. In 1997, Ernest Zedillo, then president of Mexico, stated in Chicago: "I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders and that Mexican migrants are an important -- a very important -- part of it."
In 2001, U.S.-born Juan Hernandez, while serving in Mexican President Vicente Fox's cabinet, told ABC Nightline: "We are betting that the Mexican-American population in the United States ... will think Mexico first." Indeed, during recent massive demonstrations, many protesters waved Mexican flags and pressured the United States with demands identical to Mexico's.

In recent years, our national elections were very close. If millions of illegal-immigrant Mexicans become citizens who can vote in future U.S. elections, what would be the impact of another amnesty on national elections?

In 1995, Henry Cisneros, former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary, declared at a Hispanic conference in Southern California: "As goes the Latino population will go the state of California, and as goes the state of California will go the United States of America. My friends, the stakes are big. This is a fight worth making."

Indeed, Mexican population has exploded in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and other states far beyond the Southwest.

Although many Mexican-Americans are very patriotic, Mexico is undoubtedly using migration to influence American policies and future elections, and even hopes to use migration to extend the Mexican nation.

Since passage of the "comprehensive immigration reform" law of 1986, illegal immigration has exploded because most of the provisions in that bill meant to secure our borders have been ignored. Worse, this country has given all sorts of incentives for people to come or live here illegally.

The U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are automatically given U.S. citizenship.

As things stand, because of its porous borders, America cannot have homeland security.

That's why President Bush and Congress should first focus on securing America's borders, including steps to: build a border wall similar to Israel's, which has proven to be very effective; seriously enforce employer sanctions; make it illegal to grant benefits to illegal aliens; and deny automatic citizenship to children born here of illegal aliens.

Most illegal aliens will leave if they cannot survive economically.

Congress can re-assess the situation after three years. The United States is now the greatest debtor nation on Earth. We owe China $262 billion in national debt. We must not continue to massively export high-tech and manufacturing jobs and import professional and low-skilled workers.

Alabama's U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions should be commended for vigorously opposing the Senate amnesty bill. Now he also should advocate some sort of immigration moratorium so that we can develop an immigration policy that will not sink this nation economically or politically.