Immigration Reform Next Debacle on the Horizon

Amnesty for those illegal immigrants among us, called undocumented workers by our political elite even if they do not work and are collecting welfare and other government benefits, disguised under the name of “Path to Citizenship” will be at the heart of the immigration legislation to be considered by the Congress and backed by the President, the Democrats and most of the Progressive Republicans, also referred to as RINOs. Their claim, false as it may be, will be that these undocumented workers are simply honest people here seeking to find a better life for their families and deserve our sympathy for the plight they might face in their homelands and only number a mere eleven million unfortunate souls living in the shadows. If the politicians were to be honest they would be talking about the twenty million plus illegals of which a sizeable percentage are unemployed and collecting government handouts, whose children are in the school systems, use our hospital emergency rooms and often are paid in cash and do not pay any taxes to offset the expenses incurred through their unlawful presence within our borders. We will be fed the line that they are mostly law abiding despite the fact that their very presence is violating our immigrations laws every day and they came into the United States surreptitiously going around the immigration laws and are now to be rewarded with being placed anywhere in the line for citizenship instead of being deported and made to go through the legal process. There will be examples paraded before the public chosen to bring forth torrents of sympathetic tears as we are told of their plight, their fears of discovery, the hardships they endured and a million other superfluous reasons that we should reward their illegal actions. The biggest lie we will be told has little to do with the individual illegal immigrants but will be a repeat of the lie which was used to sell amnesty as part of immigration reform last time, that the laws will be fully and meticulously enforced and the borders sealed so that we never have this problem again in the future. The last amnesty named the Immigration Reform and Control Act passed in 1986 permitted approximately 2.8 million illegal aliens to be admitted as legal immigrants into the United States. This too was proposed as the final, one time, never to be repeated act of grace and amnesty after which the Congress and the President were to get serious about enforcing the border. Somewhere the ball got dropped somewhere between the President signing the bill and the ink drying on the paper.

 

Once again the American people are being told false promises by politicians who do not truly represent the majority of the American people or of their own constituencies and are instead answering to either moneyed interests who find employing illegals as a money saving way of doing business or to party bosses who see these illegal aliens as future voters who will beck their party for office in future elections. Every promise that the supporters of the new euphemism for amnesty will use to sell this legislation is a reworking of the plain truth or a bald faced lie to disguise their real intentions and make the legislation appear humanitarian and respectable worthy of support by any good hearted American. Never mind that the act of entering the country broke the laws of the federal government and thus the laws of the land where they now claim their special need expecting all else to be forgotten or at least forgiven. The politicians will tell us that there will be a penalty to be paid, a fine to allow these people of honest intent to prove their promise to be good citizens and obey the laws but then the bill will have clauses allowing for the same political system to forgive the fine allowing a path around making any act of contrition thus relieving them of any debt paid to erase the stain of their illegal entry. There will be clauses which we will be informed demand and will force the politicians to address and secure the border though another vote made late some Friday afternoon or evening will relieve them of this burdensome obligation. After the failures from the rollout of Obamacare and the news that Obama lied and millions of people’s health insurance died we should be more wary of politicians bearing promises of rosy futures. Yet there will be sympathetic articles in the news and speeches crafted to pull at the American people’s heartstrings, something the world over know are some of the most giving owners of heartstrings the world over, and the result will be another twenty million legalized illegal entrants and a border no better secured going forward than the last time these very same promises were paraded before the American people. Last time it was 2,800,000 instantly legalized immigrants who had illegally entered the country and this time it will be probably 28,000,000 instantly legalized immigrants who had illegally entered the country. That is ten times the number last time so can we expect in 2040 we will have yet another serious discussion over what to do with the illegal immigrants who simply came here for a better life for their families, after all there are only around 280,000,000 of these wonderful people needing our sympathy. My only question is where does it end? Will it require the United States of America to collapse and no longer be the nation of hope for all the downtrodden of the world before we are no longer asked to forgive and forget all past illegal acts and embrace the lawbreakers because we are such soft hearts? That would be a horrible price and should that ever become reality, my bet is Americans fleeing into other countries in order to find a better life for their families will not be met by even the smallest glimpse of sympathy. No sir, they will be arrested, thrown into prison, mistreated and thrown back across the border to where they came from. Don’t believe me then just research the laws in Mexico for those entering illegally and think again.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Republicans and the Empty Promise Syndrome

First off we need to define the Empty Promise Syndrome, sometimes called the Wimpy argument quoting the Popeye cartoon character who was always offering to “Pay you next Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Those cartoons must have had many Republican politicians earning money on the side as extras on the set as Wimpy never seemed to have any shortage of hamburgers to gulp down. To trace the beginning of the Empty Promise Syndrome infecting Republican politicians we need to go all the way back to 1986 of the Reagan Presidency and the Immigration Reform Bill which legalized at a minimum the three-million illegal aliens residing throughout the United States while promising to address and provide for a system of border enforcement which would make the borders of the United States virtually impenetrable. Currently there exist an estimated eleven- million to possibly over eighteen-million illegal aliens, the euphemistically denoted undocumented workers, citizens without papers, undocumented aliens, and any other of a half dozen terms which dance around but would never use such a harsh and loaded term as illegal. Somehow the agreement to grant citizenship today and impose enforcement tomorrow never quite delivered when tomorrow rolled around, a lot like Wimpy who can never be found on Tuesdays. But there are so many other examples that we had best stick to the two latest in the series.

 

If we were to remember back to just before Thanksgiving and on close to Christmas and then New Years the news reports were all buzzing about some looming doomsday threat called the Fiscal Cliff. The Republicans demanded spending cuts which would be at least equal to any tax increases. They would have preferred, or so they claimed, to have far more of the deficit cut by spending cuts than relying on tax increases. President Obama was insistent that the deficit reduction be levied completely by increased taxes on the rich as they had to be made to pay their fair share. With what were defined in perfect threats from on high was this sequester which would cut spending severely without any concerns for what was necessity and what was less vital and would destroy uncountable programs for the poor, the elderly, the children, the ecology, the Earth, the whatever you cared about and especially the military while ending the great recovery we have been experiencing (though many myself included are loathe to see any solid signs of this recovery unless that is what higher grocery prices are now called). In the end, President Wimpy offered spending cuts by March 1 for taxes on the rich today and the Republicans gave Obama everything he requested and set a new sequester date to force spending cuts as promised.

 

Well, here we are fast approaching March 1 and President Obama is demanding changes in the code resulting in more tax revenue and attempting to reduce spending cuts in any programs or departments with possible exceptions of certain areas the President finds unnecessary such as the Military. It is likely that President Obama would gladly put off any spending cuts forever and simply rearrange the tax codes and eliminate deductable items or at least reduce them or cap them all in order to cut the deficit without cutting spending. Actually, the President has even proposed that his adjustments to tax deductions and the tax codes will produce so much deficit reduction that he will even be able to propose additional spending with the extra funds his accounting has predicted. If the Republicans allow the President to fiddle with the tax code and tax deductions in lieu of the spending cuts promised at the end of last year’s Fiscal Cliff negotiations, they will have forfeited the collateral supposedly granted them of tax increases on the wealthy then for spending cuts and only spending cuts now. This simply means that if the President insists on increasing tax revenues instead of more spending cuts the Republicans should stand loudly upon the promise by the President that this would be the time for spending cuts and only spending cuts. Force the argument to be either the President reaches an agreement on spending cuts or President Obama will be responsible for the sequestration cuts when they occur. Force the choice on President Obama and the Democrats by passing a spending cuts bill which delivers what was promised and announce that the House of Representatives has met their responsibility and produced legislation for rational and safe spending cuts to reduce the deficit and that it is now left to the Democrat controlled Senate and the President to meet their obligations and keep their promises. After all, it is not like the across the board cuts required by the sequestration alternative would actually be anywhere near as debilitating as has been expressed by the fear mongering going on in some of the media and the White House.

 

Then there is another repeat performance being played out in Congress and that is once again immigration reform. This is forming up to be a complete and exact repeat of what occurred during the second half of President Reagan’s time in the White House and many of the exact same players are simply dusting off their old scripts and adjusting a few numbers and going through the same motions using the same terms and offering the same old lies as promises. As the old adage says, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” There is absolutely no reason for the Republicans, and any Democrats who actually care about the rule of law and the safety of the United States, allowing any form of amnesty or forgiveness and allowances to remain inside the borders, let alone working, for the approximately eleven million illegal aliens until there exist in place solid and uncompromising enforcement procedures that include security controls, observation abilities, formidable border barrier systems, and every possible technique applied and utilized to prevent any further illegal infiltrations. There can be no allowance of we will secure the border next Tuesday for total amnesty, or whatever sly and misleading name it be given, today. That was the basic promise which was never intended to be kept in 1986 and will likely be the offer given once again with every single amount of deceit included today.

 

There is one large and very unfortunate problem with the above. The truth be told there are many Republican who desire the lie of enforcement later for allowance and a path to citizenship today as that way they can unfurl the banner of supporting a closed border while not actually getting a closed border. Both sides, the Democrats in order to gather more voters for their candidates and the Republicans to provide less expensive labor for certain industries and businesses, honestly work together to guarantee that those they allowed into the United States are rewarded every so many years with citizenship and at the same time keep the border porous letting in the next wave of voters and workers enter the United States illegally to the benefit of both sides coffers and votes for reelection. One should not be too surprised then when once again we will witness a deceitful front played by those for whom taking a strong stand against illegal immigration and its effects upon the United States once again feign disgust when their votes allowing for immediate forgiveness in any form for the illegal immigrants currently in the country allowing them to remain, keep their jobs, and eventually gain an easy path to full citizenship while enforcement of our laws and control of the border are put aside to be addressed later. Of course later never comes as it is always now and later is, well, later. Do not expect this round to result in anything which falls far from the indecency pulled over on the American people in 1986 when Reagan allowed amnesty on the promise of future enforcement. We are still waiting for that later enforcement and who knows which later will arrive first; the last one or the one we can expect in the near future when the grand immigration compromise is announced with great fanfare and applause all around. My bet is neither enforcement will materialize before the Congress and some future President assure us that these thirty-some-million undocumented citizens will be the last and by allowing them legalization and documentation it will facilitate their soon enforcing our laws and border, and then there will be three soon to come promises.

 

Beyond the Cusp