Seldom do I squawk about specific political issues, but every now and then elected representatives will do something so amazingly ridiculous and stupid that I can't restrain myself. Such is the case with the immigration bill the Senate passed Thursday.
The simple fact is that this bill does incomprehensible things like permit illegal aliens to receive Social Security benefits when they pay taxes through SSNs that they've stolen. It gives employers of illegal aliens shelter from prosecution when they've cheated on their taxes. The list goes on and on. The one conservative senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, published a list of these and other reasons for voting against the bill.
The bottom line is that the kinds of contests you find on cereal boxes and run on local radio stations' cheesy promos now have more stringent standards for entering--"must be a legal resident to enter"--than the United States Senate has for our national borders.
Here are a few of the Senate's conservative "posers" that are the chief culprits in this debacle: Brownback, DeWine, Frist, Graham, Hagel, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Voinovich, Warner.
6 comments:
Ben, I completely disagree with your assessment here. This is marginally good legislation--not perfect, but the best we can hope to get from the mix that makes up the senate.
The first rule of law is that the law has to be enforceable. The current system is broken and must be fixed, and we NEED the labor provided by such immigrants. Congress must change the law to a code which can be enforced. Every lawmaker I've heard has said the same thing--the country is unable to follow through with mass deportations of all illegals. The only other option is to figure a way to move them from illegal to legal.
This law should not even address whether or not illegals can get any kind of benefit. The number one priority is to keep more from coming in. We are putting the cart before the horse. Secure the borders - then we can talk about whether to give them free health care, social security, have the right to vote and benefit in a dozen other ways from living in the US.
You say we need the labor - do we need all of the other problems that 13 million illegals bring with them?
It's irrelevant whether we need the problems or not. We already have them here. What we must do is deal with it. Forcing them all to go home is not an option. Closing the borders is imperative, and the senate bill addresses it. But I don't see any benefit to waiting to address the problem of those already in the states illegally. They are here now. We must figure out a way to respond.
Wendy,
I agree with C.C. This is horrendous legislation that completely fails to deal with the central issue. Surely you can't possibly agree that illegals who steal SSNs should be entitled to SS benefits! Surely you don't agree that we should pass legislation that exempts from prosecution employers who hired illegals and cheated on their taxes.
The first priority is not to deal with the status of the existing illegals (regardless of what is the best way to do that), but to make sure that we stop the next wave. This legislation will do nothing but encourage them.
I don't think we SHOULD, but that's the reality of what's already happening. And every legislator on both sides of the argument say they are powerless to enforce in retrospect. So the only answer is to figure out a new and better way to deal with the issue. And the senate bill does includes stiff penalties for those who employ illegals.
Wendy,
All I can say is that the House members who voted for an immigration bill that does not include these provisions and the Senate members who voted against this one, most particularly Jim DeMint, clearly would take issue with your suggestion that they see no other way.
I don't profess to know the perfect solution, but clearly a law that rewards people who have stolen SSNs and cheated on their taxes is not a part of it.
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