If Congress adopts the Bush plan and gives amnesty to illegal aliens, Senate Republicans will be asking President Cheney for a pardon.
Bush wants to grant illegal aliens amnesty while sounding like he's really cracking down on them. It tells you where Americans stand on illegal immigration that Bush has to pull the Democrat trick of hiding from the public what he really believes when it comes to immigration.
The "path to citizenship" that Bush and the Senate are trying to pawn off on Americans requires that illegals pay huge fines and back taxes, with "huge" being defined as a $2,000 fine and taxes for three of the last five years. Even with the special "Two Years Tax-Free" package for illegals, this is about as likely as me paying my dad back the money I "borrowed" from him when I was in college.
We're told illegal immigrants are dying to pay taxes if only they can become citizens. Oh by the way, they also will have a panoply of government benefits available to them if they become citizens — in fact, even if they get green cards. They're probably unaware of this and are just dying to send half their paychecks to the government just like us shiftless, lazy Americans.
Inasmuch as most of these low-skilled immigrant workers are in the 0 percent tax bracket, this should be a real boon for the U.S. Treasury. Indeed, the government may end up paying the illegals money: "Let's see, Juan. According to our records, you owe us 0 percent for the past three years, and because you qualify for the earned-income tax credit, we actually owe you! Are 20s OK?"
The Senate bill also forgives illegal aliens who have committed identity theft by stealing American Social Security numbers to get jobs.
So in addition to the Two Years Tax-Free plan for illegals, they get one free felony. Also, illegal immigrants from Mexico qualify for affirmative action, allowing them to get into U.S. colleges with lower grades and scores than Americans.
What's the process for losing your citizenship and becoming an illegal alien?
However hardworking illegal immigrants are when they come here, the moment they become citizens, they will be immediately demagogued by Democrats into viewing welfare as a universal human right, just as they now view living in America.
Of course illegal immigrants will "work for less." They don't have to pay taxes at all now, and under Bush's plan they will have to pay taxes for only — at most — three of the last five years. Not only that, but illegal aliens don't require their employers to comply with OSHA regulations, overtime and minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, disability laws, the Family and Medical Leave Act, a slew of oppressive environmental regulations, and 4 million other ways the government has developed to make it extremely expensive to hire legal employees.
Instead of creating a separate class of citizens who are immune from oppressive government rules, how about relieving all of us — even us shiftless Americans — from the cost of government?
I thought all these trade agreements the free-trade fetishists have pushed on us over the years already allowed corporations to take advantage of cheap labor in other countries — countries that don't have the panoply of oppressive government regulations that make it so expensive to hire American workers. Doesn't NAFTA already allow us to buy inexpensive goods made by Mexicans in Mexico?
In addition to discriminating against American citizens in favor of illegal immigrants, Bush wants to continue our immigration policy of massively discriminating against immigrants who live farther than walking distance from the United States. America's immigration laws are applied only to immigrants who are separated from the U.S. by an ocean. But if they live near the border and can run across it, they're in.
Even if one accepts Bush's theory that we need more immigrants to do the jobs that lazy, shiftless Americans won't do, isn't it possible that Korean immigrants, Italian immigrants or Indian immigrants would work hard too? But they can't run across the border to America, so they're out of luck. (Unless you are spokesmen for the Taliban, in which case there's a seat waiting for you at Yale.)
Since when did conservatives start encouraging people to walk more? What are we, a bunch of Al Gores now?
