The Patriot Post:

Immigration Bait and Switch

A group of eight senators -- four Democrats and four Republicans -- announced Monday their outline for immigration reform. A bipartisan group of House members is likewise working on a deal. On Tuesday, apparently unable to find a microphone in Washington, Barack Obama took a $1.6 million flight (not including other expenses) to Las Vegas to make his own case before immediately returning to the capital.

Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Michael Bennet (D-CO), John McCain (R-AZ), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) released their Bipartisan Framework for Immigration Reform, which has four prongs: 1. A "tough but fair path to citizenship ... contingent upon securing our borders"; 2. reform the current legal immigration system; 3. expand and strengthen the employment verification system to prevent the hiring of illegal workers; 4. and improve the process for admitting future workers. At first read, it sounds reasonable.

The sudden push is thanks to the election. Republicans are facing the fact of once again losing the Hispanic vote in a blowout and are looking for love in all the wrong places. But merely signing on with Democrat legislation isn't going to win the Hispanic vote for the GOP -- not when so many Hispanics in this country are low-income workers who believe in big-government redistribution.

Of course, Democrats are always eager to pretend to make a deal, only to make it so "comprehensive" and unpalatable in the end that the GOP rejects it and, voila, Democrats can scare voters about racist Republicans all over again. They're already signaling to their base that talk of enforcement is just smoke and mirrors to pacify the GOP base. As Chuck Schumer said, "We are not using border security as a block to a path to citizenship. [The trigger] will not be a barrier to giving citizenship to the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in our country."


Charlie Brown, Lucy, football.

And we've seen this movie before. In the 1986 amnesty (and similar legislation passed in the 60's and 70's), enforcement was promised and never delivered. So here we are, 27 years later, hearing the same promises -- legal status first in exchange for promised (if that) enforcement later. Schumer admitted, "On Day One of our bill, the people without status who are not criminals or security risks will be able to live and work here legally." Once illegals obtain even provisional legal status, it's game over, and the idea of it being "contingent upon securing our borders" is just window dressing.

The proposal includes some positive enforcement provisions, including better tracking of people entering and exiting the country, which would indeed be an improvement. Eight years after the 9/11 Commission highlighted this dangerous gap in security, it's certainly about time. Restricting the soon-to-be lawful probationary immigrants from receiving federal benefits is also good -- at least in theory. But does anyone think that the same nation unable to keep them out in the first place will successfully keep them off the public dole?

Advocating for the bill in a Las Vegas Review-Journal op-ed, Marco Rubio wrote, "It's not a good idea to have millions of people permanently trapped in an immigration status that keeps them forever at a distance from our society." It would be positive if legal status leads to true assimilation instead of cultural segregation. He added, "[W]hat we have now is de facto amnesty." He is correct, but only because of a lack of enforcement, and it doesn't mean amnesty should become law.


We believe Rubio, a likely presidential contender in 2016, is attempting to negotiate in good faith, looking for a workable solution in a Democrat-controlled capital. He isn't naive or disingenuous, and he promised to oppose the bill if what Schumer says comes to pass. One of his fellow senators, Texas Republican Ted Cruz, said, "To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with Rule of Law and profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who waited years, if not decades, to come to America legally."   CONTINUED:  http://patriotpost.us/editions/16538