The Senate immigration bill: New gang, old deal
So the Gang of Eight can make the path to a green card and eventual citizenship as long and onerous as it wants. It can make applicants not only learn English but speak in an affected patrician accent. It can make them do handstands and cartwheels. All of that will be irrelevant to the lived reality of formerly illegal immigrants who can become legal once the Gang of Eight principles are written into law.
The Gang’s enforcement “triggers” affect only the path to citizenship. In principle, the enforcement provisions — requiring use of the E-Verify system for employers and establishing a system to monitor entries and exits from the country — are worthwhile. But only a naïf would have much confidence in their timely and effective implementation.
If we’ve established a bipartisan consensus on anything during the past 25 years, it is that immigration laws don’t matter. As Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies points out, Congress has already required the completion of an entry-exit system six times. To no avail. It passed a law in 2006 calling for the completion of a double-layer border fence. Also, to no avail.
Blowback
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Yep.
Timin203 on February 1, 2013 at 8:48 PM
E-Verify is essential, because with E-Verify many illegals would simply return home. But E-Verify needs to have already been in place for at least 5 years before we even consider amnensty. But then maybe we could actually consider it. But only then.
anotherJoe on February 1, 2013 at 9:04 PM
This is a cover for getting the mechanism in place to go Galt hunting. No way does the donkey party care about a bunch of illiterate laborers.
they need to make the John Galt dropouts into tax criminals. That gives the IRS authority to confiscate their wealth, as opposed to merely withholding money from their paychecks.
Redistribute the wealth is not possible until and unless the government has the legal authority to confiscate it as contraband. Tax evasion makes everything you own part of the booty. Most important is that making the Galt people into criminals provides the moral basis for one group of Americans to turn on their neighbors.
You won’t hear this on the lamestream media and you might hear one or two talkers on the right mention it. This is not a war of ideologies – it is a gang war between gangs. Our gang is a good gang but it doesn’t have the firepower of the bad gang.
platypus on February 1, 2013 at 9:15 PM