Redstate

What the White House Doesn't Want You to Know

By Bluey Posted in Featured Stories | Immigration — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The immigration bill is back on the Senate floor today. To help opponents of the legislation educate their senators about its disastrous consequences, I’m sharing this list of the bill’s Top 10 defects. You’re welcome to use it however you’d like -- share it with family, friends, co-workers, whoever.

1. It repeats the mistakes of the 1986 immigration law.

• Like the 1986 law, this immigration “reform” measure grants amnesty immediately while promising security and enforcement in the future.

• Actually, the old law was tougher. Back then, illegals had to show they had lived in the United States continuously for five years. The new bill would give amnesty to anyone who lived here for the last six months.

• This isn’t fair to those who have “played by the rules” to enter the country illegally. Nor is it fair to those who are currently waiting proper authorization to enter the country.

There are nine more defects on the jump. Read on ...

2. U.S. VISIT exit program is not included in the bill.

• The new immigration bill does not require a border “check in/check out” system that uses biometric proof of ID like fingerprints.

• This check-in/check-out system was first required by Congress in 1996. Its implementation date is well past due.

• Without the U.S. VISIT exit program, the United States cannot ensure that individuals do not overstay their visas.

3. It spends and shuffles money to no apparent purpose.

• To buy support for the amnesty provisions, bill backers sweetened the pot by adding $4.4 billion in new spending—purportedly for enforcement purposes.

• The need for such tremendous additional spending is unclear. Nearly all the money needed to fund the bill’s security features has already been appropriated.

• The extra money must be spent in five years—a hurry-up schedule that all but assures wastefulness.

• Despite the rhetoric, the funds aren’t restricted to security and enforcement uses. They can just as easily be spent on fast-tracking the amnesty bureaucracy required by the bill.

4. It provides precious little additional security.

• Except for a new worker verification program, the proposal essentially reauthorizes security resources and programs already been approved by Congress.

• The bill calls for “100% operational control” of the border, but there is no measurable definition of what that really means. One man’s “100% operational control” is another man’s leaking sieve.

• The bill’s original requirement that DHS get the border under control “within 18 months of enactment” has been changed to “as soon as practicable.”

5. It increases federal intrusion into the workplace.

• The bill requires employers to submit biometric, financial and other personal information about every employee to a new mega-database to be maintained by the Department of Homeland Security

• Every worker in the U.S.—all 130 million of us—will have to be certified by DHS as eligible to work.

• We will have to be DHS-recertified as eligible to work every time we change jobs.

• The new certification process—the Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS)—is based on the much more modest PILOT system, which has proved to be flawed and unreliable.

• It’s ridiculous to think that a program that doesn’t work well now will somehow work better when it’s radically expanded to encompass every employer and employee in America.

6. It makes the temporary worker program a mess.

• The bill’s numerous regulations on employers undermine labor market flexibility—the very thing needed to make the program economically viable.

• As a sop to unions, the bill requires employ¬ers to pay temporary guest workers the “prevailing competitive wage” – something that, in many areas, will be higher than the minimum wage offered citizens.

• The program is held hostage to amnesty. Legal temporary workers will not be allowed in until those currently in the country illegally are given amnesty..

• The program is too small and is, itself, temporary. It ends in five years, and is limited to 200,000 participants per year.

7. It will increase “chain migration.”

• Under this bill, the number of people entering via “chain migration” – the practice of immigrants bringing relative after relative into the country behind them – will triple until 2016.

• Though a merit system for immigrants begins immediately, it will not increase the percentage of high-skilled immigrants coming to the United States until 2016 – eight years after enactment.

• The merit system does not apply to Z visa holders.

8. The amnesty section creates a host of problems.

a) It gives a general grant of amnesty.

• An immigrant’s legal violations are waived up front, as a condition of eligibility.

• As in the 1986 legislation, various penalties and requirements do not mitigate the grant of amnesty.

• A “touchback” with a guaranteed re-entry does not mitigate amnesty.

b) The “temporary” Z-Visa may be renewed ad infinitum.

• Legal status is granted 180 days after enactment.

• There is no cap on the total number of people who can get Z visass.

c) The Z-Visa process is highly susceptible to fraud and abuse.

• People can apply for amnesty as long as 18 months after enactment. This long “grace period” will only encourage more people to cross the border illegally so they can “get in” on the amnesty.

• Amnesty is contingent on people presenting “documentation” showing they entered the country sometime before Jan. 1 of this year. But the documentation requirements are laughably lax (e.g., an affidavit signed by a non-family member). The result: new opportunities for criminals and terrorists to “get legal.”

• In the 1986 amnesty, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) discovered 398,000 cases of fraud. With so many more seeking amnesty this time, the number of fraudulent applications likely will be at least four times larger.

d) It gives the feds next to no time to screen visa applicants.

• Under Section 601(h)(1), the bill allows the government only 24 hours (one business day) to conduct a background check to determine whether an applicant for a probationary Z Visa is a criminal or terrorist.

• DHS can expect to receive, on average, 43,000 applications per day. Good luck with that.

e) It requires no health checks for visa applicants.

• Foreigners visiting our country on legal visas must first meet basic health standards. Yet the only health check required in the Senate bill is restricted to those applying for Legal Permanent Resident status—and they don’t have to undergo the check until eight years after enactment.

• This could allow someone carrying a highly dangerous and contagious disease – TB, bird flu, smallpox – into the country without any real record of where this person entered the United States, where he’s been since entering.

f) It makes gang members and absconders eligible for amnesty.

• Gang members can get amnesty. How? They must renounce their gang membership. [Section 601(g)(2)]

• Absconders—the 630,000+ illegals who have ignored deportation orders and remain in hiding—can gain amnesty by demonstrating that departure from the U.S. “would result in extreme hardship to the alien or the alien's spouse, parent or child.” Section 601(d)(1)(I)

g) It suspends immigration law enforcement.

• If a federal agent apprehends an alien who appears to be eligible for the Z visa (in other words, just about any illegal alien), the agent cannot keep him in custody. Instead, the alien must be released and allowed to apply for amnesty. [Sections 601(h)(1, 5)]

• Same for immigration judges. They must close any proceedings against aliens and offer them an opportunity to apply for amnesty if they are "prima facie eligible" for the Z visa. [Section 601(h)(6)]

• These provisions (and others) will create endless litigation – tying up a legal system that’s already swamped.

h) Illegal immigrants “skate” on back taxes.

• Last year’s bill required long-term illegal aliens to prove they had paid at least three of their last five years’ worth of taxes.

• This year’s Senate bill doesn’t payment of any back taxes owed.

i) It lets illegal immigrants get tax-subsidized college tuition rates.

• Section 616 allows all states to offer in-state tuition rates to any illegal alien who obtains the Z visa and attends college.

• It effectively repeals a 1996 federal law (8 U.S.C. § 1623) that prohibits states from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens unless the state also offers in-state tuition rates to all U.S. citizens. (Ten states are currently defying this federal law with seeming impunity.)

9. It doesn’t help immigrants assimilate into American culture.

• Z-visa holders need not learning English until they seek a second renewal of their visa—8 years after enactment.

• It creates a new bureaucracy, the “New Americans Integration Councils,” which stresses life-skills training (such as how to catch a bus) rather than civics education.

10. It imposes too great a burden on immigration officials.

• For example, it vastly expands the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services’ workload, but does little to increase the agency’s capacity to handle the task.