posted October 24, 2010 - 4:57pm
History tells us Amnesty for illegal aliens is destined to fail.

Politicians in the United States seem incapable of learning from past mistakes. This is particularly sad considering there are many members of congress who were present for the Reagan Amnesty in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. This law gave permanent resident status to 2.7 million illegal aliens.

There is a plethora of evidence that the Immigration Reform and Control act was a complete failure. Amnesty did not reduce the number of illegal crossings; rather the number of illegal aliens entering the country immediately increased and that number remains high. A report released in October 2000 by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) concluded amnesties do not solve the illegal alien problem. *

This report showed that by the beginning of 1997 all those that had been given amnesty had been replaced by new undocumented workers. It also showed the number of illegal border crossings surging in the years shortly after the 1986 law, as many people came to join their newly legalized family members.

Amnesty means larger government and higher costs:

Politicians of both parties like Amnesty for different reasons, but it comes down to power. Republicans enjoy the increased campaign contributions that come from providing their corporate donors a large, lower paid workforce. Democrats benefit from the same donors and the anticipated increase in potential Democratic voters.

Amnesty would mean increasing the size of government due to the large number of government employees needed to process background and other types of checks on millions of applicants. The larger the government, the more power the politicians have to control that government.

There has been talk of a fee for those applying for Amnesty, but how high would it have to be to pay for the increased size of government, the number of new people eligible for government benefits, the increased initial number of deportations due to individuals not passing background tests and increased illegal immigration by individuals seeking amnesty?

The argument would be that these individual’s would now be paying taxes, but many of them already are, just under a fictitious or stolen identity or using a Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIT). This number is actually issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for individuals who do not have a social security number, but wish to pay taxes. The IRS issued 1.5 million ITIT numbers for individuals in 2006, and in 2004 the IRS received 7.9 million W-2’s with names that didn’t match the Social Security number. Most of the names and Social of those that that didn’t match were from California, Texas, and Illinois, states with large illegal immigrant populations. **

Amnesty rewards law breakers:

The biggest reason against Amnesty is that it simply encourages illegal behavior. While crossing the border without inspection is only a misdemeanor, it’s not the only law these individuals typically violate. I go into depth about this on my blog article “They are Called ILLEGAL aliens for a Reasonâ€