By Curt Smith
Messenger Post
Posted Jul 15, 2013 @ 12:39 PM

Four months ago, Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio said any immigration legislation must include true border security before a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens began. Last week he supported a Senate bill that treats border security like last week’s mashed potatoes.

Four months ago, Rubio insisted that he would oppose any bill that lacked an automatic trigger to show if true security had been achieved. No such trigger exists.

Rubio supported the legislation, anyway, breaking his word.

Four months ago, Rubio said not to let the Department of Homeland Security and other amnesty-friendly lobbies count when and how many illegal aliens enter, are hired by employers, and register for provisional citizenship status. Rubio said he was leery of granting federal power. Last week he couldn’t wait: Father Christmas, meet Uncle Sam.

Rubio, the marquee Republican in the Senate leadership’s “Gang of 8,” helped New York’s left-wing Charles Schumer pass the bill, 68-32. It would allow our 11 million to 15 million — no one knows — illegal aliens to apply for citizenship, change the legal immigration system to bring in more foreigners to do high-tech and low-skill work, and in what mimes lowest comedy, authorize $46 billion to “secure” our southwest border.

That, of course, is the problem — our southwest border, or more particularly, our border security: There isn’t any. It is a dilemma identical to 1986’s faced by President Reagan, who was told by U.S. Senate leaders that our border would be completely sealed if nearly 3 million Mexicans inside America were given amnesty. Amnesty occurred. Border security did not. “Reagan went to his grave feeling he was lied to,” a writer to the Gipper told me.

Showing it has learned nothing, Senate Republicans yearn to make the same mistake again. How many millions more by 2023 will demand unearned citizenship; burden our education, health, and jail care bill; and mock immigrants who stand in line, playing by the rules?

Any look at the 1,954-mile border between America and Mexico shows why the House of Representatives is now almost certain to kill this turkey. The Senate “border surge” added drones, helicopters, boats, and bells and whistles of surveillance technology. It added 20,000 border patrol agents to the 18,400 there. It will install at some point 350 miles of fencing to the 350 standing — 700 in all. What it won’t do is secure the border.

English, not mathematics, was my college major. However, kindergarten subtraction suggests that illegal aliens will now enter through the 1,254 miles left unfenced. Only a fence along the ENTIRE border will SECURE the border. Otherwise aliens will go where the fence is not — returning us to the same problem, only worse, time after time.

Only excuses, not reasons, oppose a 1,954-mile fence. Too costly, say liberal hypocrites not bothered by our $17 trillion national debt. Too unseemly, like the Berlin Wall, others bay. That was to keep people in. THIS wall would keep drugs, violence, and people taking U.S. jobs OUT. Others say it won’t work, hallucinating that the country which split the atom, stormed Normandy, and put a man on the moon can’t build a fence.

“It’s like Obamacare all over again,” says a Tea Party co-founder of Rubio’s folly.

“Massive bills with kickbacks and bailouts and no accountability.” A number of groups in Florida have launched “Kill the Bill” week. Even Sarah Palin grasps that it means amnesty, showing that even a broken watch tells the right time twice a day.

As anyone who reads this space knows, I write in sorrow about Rubio. I have written often of his mother, a maid, and his father, a bartender who arrived here from Cuba with less than $50 to his name — and of how he grasps the romance of America.

Rubio loves our story of opportunity and setback and obstacle and striving. America’s story also teaches the rule of law. Rubio deserves better Senate company than he has kept.

Curt Smith is the author of 15 books, former speechwriter to President George H.W. Bush, and Associated Press “Best in New York State” radio commentator. He is senior lecturer of English at the University of Rochester.

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