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May 17, 2007

Even With The Lipstick - It's Amnesty

No matter how President Bush and the senate try to dress it up, the new and improved immigration deal is amnesty, pure and simple. There's no other way to honestly describe a bill that allows people that have broken our laws to stay in the country. Period.

John McCain, kiss my a**. Hell will freeze over before conservatives will back you.

Dean Barnett agrees - " ... this immigration bill is dreadful news for the McCain candidacy":

McCain has been a stalwart on Iraq; he's also been appropriately hawkish on the wider war, although I've yet to see any indications that he actually understands it. Although his position on coercive interrogation techniques is outside the party's mainstream, even McCain's critics sense that he'll fight the war aggressively. This is all good, and his greatest asset as he seeks the Republican nomination.

But in order to get that nomination, the party faithful will have to overlook the many thumbs in the eye Senator McCain has delivered to conservatives over the past six years. For those of us with long memories, he doesn't really have a chance. But a lot of people are more forgiving types, so maybe he can be so strong on the war that Republican voters will essentially forget McCain/Feingold, McCain/Kennedy, the Abu Ghraib grandstanding, the Gang of 14, voting against the Bush tax cuts...You get the idea.

Today's events put the non-viability of the McCain candidacy into stark relief. McCain has committed so many offenses to conservatives over the past six years that he can't realistically hope to emerge from their shadow.

Republicans are hopping mad over the immigration deal that's been struck. Even as a relatively passive observer of the entire debate, I find this creature to be an abomination. The Counter Terrorism blog refers to it as a national security disaster. I would add that it's also a moral disaster. And John McCain, more than any other single senator, is responsible for it.

"I hope we don't take a thousand page bill written in secret and try to ram it through the Senate in a few days. This is a very important issue for America and we need time to debate it."

"But the little we do know about the bill is troubling. According to reports, the bill contains a new 'Z Visa' that allows those who entered our country illegally to stay here permanently without ever returning home. This rewards people who broke the law with permanent legal status, and puts them ahead of millions of law-abiding immigrants waiting to come to America. I don't care how you try to spin it, this is amnesty."

In short order, the system will be overwhelmed. Whatever minimal fraud detection and prevention safeguards might be erected won't last long in the face of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of applications and petitions to be adjudicated. What that means is the information provided on those applications and petitions, and whatever supporting documents they may have (if any), will essentially be taken at face value. Whatever the applicant alien tells the adjudicator will essentially be taken at face value. There will be little time or process available to verify anything, perhaps beyond running the applicant's name through a standard battery of computer databases (and, even that may become so time consuming some will slip through the cracks).

Hot Air - "I don't care how you try to spin it, this is amnesty":

Rich Lowry thinks the "triggers" are a scam from the word go, with amnesty granted immediately upon passage of the bill and the "Z visas," which are keed to the enforcement triggers, only relevant insofar as they allow the bearer to travel. But even if Lowry's wrong, what happens to the illegals who are here while the feds are working towards the triggers? Let's say they get bogged down and can't get them done for another decade. What's the status of the "undocumented" during that interim period?

Posted by Richard at May 17, 2007 5:58 PM