Amnesty is Not The Answer

House Immigration Bill Just as Bad

7/30/2013 - Phyllis Schlafly Eagle Forum

The Gang of Eight pro-amnesty Senators are trying to con the House of Representatives into passing parts of an anti-American amnesty bill so they can get a Chuck Schumer-dominated conference committee and bamboozle Representatives into going along with their sellout plans. The few pro-amnesty Republican Senators had Marco Rubio as the salesman for the unpopular amnesty bill, and the few pro-amnesty Republicans in the House have Paul Ryan to play the same un-Republican role.

The Gang of Eight patted itself on the back for successfully passing their bill in the Senate, but, funny thing, the bill was never forwarded to the House for action. The explanation for this irregular omission is fear that the House would "blue slip" the bill.

Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution gives the sole power to the House to originate all bills for raising revenue, known as the Origination Clause. If the Senate oversteps and includes a provision to raise some revenue (which it did in the Gang's amnesty bill), the House can reject the bill and send it back to the Senate for correction in what is known as a "blue slip" procedure.

The devious Ryan plan to circumvent this rule is for the House to pass five or six bills on various aspects of amnesty and then use that bunch of bills to call for a conference committee with the Senate. Ryan let the cat out of the bag when he told a constituent audience in Racine, Wis. on July 26 that his revised plan now calls for a House vote, not before the August recess as originally expected but in October.

There is no indication that the Ryan amnesty is any better for Americans than the Rubio amnesty. Amnesty is still a bad deal for all, whether it comes in one package or in six.

The former New York Lt. Gov., Dr. Betsy McCaughey, the only one known to have actually read the 1,200-page Senate bill, says that the bill's text is loaded with "slippery" words (such as "emergency," "comprehensive," "plan" and "reform") that create loopholes giving Barack Obama the opportunity to refuse to enforce any provisions he doesn't like, including border security that the public is demanding.

That's what Obama notoriously did to cancel provisions of other laws, notably Obamacare's date of enforcement and the effective Work Requirement in Welfare Reform. Obama also seems to think he can invent his own new laws never passed by Congress, such as the Dream Act and anti-coal regulations.

There are so many dangerous and costly provisions in Congress' amnesty plans that they are difficult even to itemize, but for starters take the foolishness that amnesty loosens the rules for asylum seekers. We should have learned some deadly lessons from the asylum seekers we have already welcomed who turned out to be terrorists, such as the first World Trade bombers in 1993 and the Boston Marathon bombers this year.

The new amnesty bill reduces the application to be an asylum seeker from the current one-year deadline to as many years as the immigrant wants and, incredibly, allows the U.S. Attorney General to pay the asylum seekers' legal fees. We should absolutely bar all entry from countries that routinely engage in terrorism.

Another highly dangerous and costly provision that should be decisively rejected is the politically motivated plan to outsource duties to community organizers and activists who will be paid by our taxpayers to help immigrants transition to American life and apply for government benefits. That's like pouring tax dollars into the Democratic voting machine to do phone banking and outreach to load new entrants permanently into the Democratic Party.

The amnesty bill even assigns some of these so-called non-profit, left-wing community groups the task of rewriting provisions for U.S. citizenship. This indicates how far the left-wing's "religion" of diversity is taking us: That duty certainly should be performed by Americans, not foreigners.

Here's a good question for a new Congressional hearing. Will the Internal Revenue Service do a thorough audit of these groups' tax-exempt status and demand answers to intrusive questions, as the IRS did with the Tea Parties?

Here's another good question to which we would like an answer in an open congressional hearing. How many young illegal aliens who cross our southern border illegally are valedictorians compared with those who are carrying illegal drugs? The left went into spasms of rage when Rep. Steve King suggested there might be more of the latter, so let's have an investigation to find out if King was correct.