Bush’s Attack
on Amnesty Opponents
Commentary by Chuck
Muth
When it
comes to dealing with the illegal immigration issue, President Bush and his
administration are their own worst enemies. On other issues, the president
is 
sugar
and spice when it comes to Democrat opponents. But when it comes to rule-of-law
conservative opposition to his “amnesty” proposal, the preferred method of
operation is akin to thwacking the hornet’s nest with a stick.
You may recall that when the Minutemen first
brought this issue to major public attention a few years ago with their
volunteer border patrols, President Bush called them “vigilantes.” And it’s
been pretty much all downhill from there, leading to his big May 29 speech on
the current immigration reform proposal at the Federal Law Enforcement Training
Center (FLETC) in Georgia.
The president began his remarks by
introducing two Hispanic members of his administration, Secretary of Commerce
Carlos Gutierrez and former Cabinet member Mel Martinez, now a U.S. Senator
from Florida. Both were born in Cuba. “I want to mention those two men because,
to me, they represent what the immigration debate is all about,” the president
said.
So right out of the chute the president
misrepresents the issue. I don’t believe Gutierrez and Martinez are ILLEGAL
immigrants. They and/or their families immigrated here LEGALLY. And it appears
both came here to escape the oppression of the Castro regime, not to simply get
a higher-paying job. So Gutierrez and Martinez are NOT what this immigration debate
is about.
The
issue is over those who BREAK the law to get here.
The president then recounted exactly what
the individuals training at FLETC were there for: “You’re going to safeguard
our ports of entry, you’ll investigate workplace immigration violations, and
you’ll arrest those breaking the law. We are a nation of laws, and we expect
people to keep the laws. And if they break the laws, there will be a consequence.”
Yes, and according to the president, that
consequence for some 10-12 million (and counting) illegal aliens who have
already broken the law is a path to citizenship.
And the president still doesn’t understand
why so many people are opposed to this?
The president then patted his own
administration on the back for how significantly it’s changed immigration
enforcement over the years. “One way to measure how things have changed is look
at the budget,” the president said. “We’ve doubled the funding for border
security since I took office.”
Yes, that’s one way to measure how things
have changed; usually the Democrats’ way. Simply throwing more money at a
problem doesn’t fix it. If it did, the public school system in this country
would be the envy of the world. It’s not. This type of “more money” mentality
is part of the reason why the president has lost so much of his fiscal conservative
base since taking office.
The president next insisted that his
administration has taken border security seriously. “As a matter of fact,” the
president said, “we take it so seriously that I asked the governors to put some
National Guard troops down there until our Border Patrol agents got trained.”
The president was dragged kicking and
screaming to put troops on the border. The governors of California, Arizona and
New Mexico took the lead in this regard because Washington and the Bush administration
refused to act. The Bush folks only finally and reluctantly took border
enforcement seriously because they were forced to. It’s rather disingenuous to
now try to take credit for that action.
Next the president took credit for ending what
became known as “catch-and-release,” the process whereby an illegal alien
was caught, arrested and then released with the understanding that the illegal
alien would return for a deportation hearing. “Well, the problem was the people
didn’t want to come back for their hearing,” Bush explained. “They generally
wanted to go to work and so they would just disappear.”
Good grief. According to this statement,
illegal aliens didn’t show up for their deportation hearings because they didn’t
want to lose time on their job, not because they didn’t want to be sent back
home. And he said it with a straight face. Talk about misrepresentation.
Nevertheless, the president took credit for
ending catch-and-release, saying, “It sends a strong signal to people: If you
come to the country, we will find you, and we’re going to send you home, so don’t
try to come in the first place.”
This is laughable. Remember the protests and
demonstrations all across the country by illegal aliens. It was on all the
networks. So it didn’t exactly require Dick Tracy to find people who have
entered this country illegally. They were giving media interviews, for crying
out loud! Now exactly how many of those folks 
were
on the receiving end of the president’s “strong signal” and were sent home?
I mean their home in their NATIVE country, not the one here.
The president next talked tough about
cracking down on businesses who hire illegal aliens – as though employers are
somehow responsible for doing one of the few constitutionally mandated jobs of
the federal government. “It’s against the law to hire somebody who is here illegally.
That’s the law,” the president declared. “And the message to employers, if you’re
hiring somebody here that you know is illegal, we’re going to - - there’s a
consequence to be paid. That’s what a nation that bases its system on rule of
law does.”
So a restaurant owner who only wants to hire
someone who will show up on time and wash the dishes is going to pay a criminal
price if the employee turns out to be an illegal alien who somehow slipped
past the president’s new-and-improved, tough-as-nails border security measures.
But what about the illegal alien who broke the law in the first place, putting
the poor restaurant owner in jeopardy? Why, he gets a path to citizenship!
What a deal.
The president next complimented ICE
(Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) for making “more than 3,000
arrests for immigration violations since the beginning of this fiscal year.”
Great, only 9,997,000 to
go give or take a few million. Not bad for 15,000 employees on a
bare-bones taxpayer-funded budget of just $4.2 billion. That would be one
arrest for every five employees at a cost of only $1.4 million per arrest. Yep,
we’re really getting our bang for our buck there, aren’t we?
OK, yes, that was two parts sarcasm mixed
with one part hyperbole on my part. But if the president’s gonna
do it, so am I.
Now we get to one of my favorite lines from
the president’s speech: “It’s important for our American citizens to understand
that the immigration system is in desperate need for comprehensive reform.”
No, Mr. President.
The American people understand this issue perfectly well. We do NOT need “comprehensive”
new immigration laws; we simply need to enforce the EXISTING laws.
We tried this “amnesty” thing some 20 years
ago. Gave just about everyone who was illegally in the
country a blanket get-out-of-jail-free card. Now, 20 non-enforcement
years later, you want the American people to believe that if we just give you
your guest-worker program – complete with a path to citizenship for people who
have entered the country illegally - then you’ll really, really, really start
enforcing the immigration laws of this nation.
Sorry, but in the immortal words of Chief
Engineer Montgomery Scott of the Starship Enterprise: “Fool me once, shame on
you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Or as The Who succinctly put it, “We won’t
get fooled again.”
And while we’re on the subject of trying to
fool most of the people some of the time, the president again reiterated what
is perhaps the biggest fraud of this entire illegal immigration debate; that
illegal aliens are doing “jobs Americans aren’t doing.” He repeated the claim multiple
times during the remainder of the speech.
“There are no such jobs,” pointed out economist
Thomas Sowell recently. “Even in the sector of the economy in which illegal
immigrants have the highest representation -- agriculture -- they are just
24 percent of the workers. Where did the other 76 percent come from, if these
are jobs that Americans won’t do?” So much for that argument.
It was at this point that the president
became down-right insulting.
First he praised senators “who put politics
aside and put courage first” in supporting his “comprehensive” bill. He
applauded them for doing “what’s right, not what’s comfortable” in the face of
criticism. Or put another way, those of us who don’t support his amnesty-by-another-name
proposal are cowards who are wrong and are simply playing politics.
The president next said, “A lot of Americans
are skeptical about immigration reform primarily because they don’t think the
government can fix the problems.” (Well, duh) “And my answer to the skeptics is
give us a chance to fix this problem.” The president
continued: “For decades we have not been in complete control of the borders and
many people have lost faith in our capacity to get control of the borders.
(Well, duh) I ask them to look at what’s taken place over the past years,
recent years.”
Ummm...they are,
Mr. President. The government has had over 20 years to fix this problem since
the last amnesty was sold to us. And you have presided over the last six. We
tend to think we’ve given y’all plenty of chances to fix this problem already.
Our patience has grown thin.
Next the president advised that his bill
would “promote tamper-resistant identification cards that some document forger
can’t foist off as a document for somebody to come and pick peaches here in
Georgia.” The president desperately wants us to believe this whole issue is
about nothing more than peach-picking in Georgia. Totally
disingenuous.
But this tamper-resistant ID card idea presents
a whole host of additional problems and new concerns for both American workers
and employers. Will you and I, American citizens, have to get one of these new
tamper-resistant ID cards in order to pick peaches in Georgia? I don’t know
about you, but I’m not good with that.
But if EVERY prospective peach-picker isn’t
required to present a tamper-resistant ID card, how’s an employer supposed
to know which applicants are 
legal
and which aren’t? And the first time an employer asks an American citizen
named Julio Valdez to present a tamper-resistant ID card, he opens himself
to a rash of lawsuits and EEOC complaints. So while this tamper-resistant
ID card sounds great on the surface, it’s a whole new nightmare (unless you’re
a lawyer or government bureaucrat) waiting to happen.
At this point, the president began singing
the praises of his proposed amnesty, errr...guest-worker
plan. “If you’re interested in securing the border, wouldn’t you rather have
Border Patrol agents chasing down terrorists and gun runners and dope runners
as opposed to people who are coming to do jobs Americans aren’t doing?”
What the president is saying here is that if
you oppose his “comprehensive” immigration reform proposal, then YOU’RE
responsible for terrorists, gun runners and drug dealers not being caught. But
the really outrageous thing about this statement is the fact that there are two
Border Patrol agents sitting in jail right now – Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean - for chasing down a notorious drug smuggler, shooting
him in the butt and capturing him. Funny how the
president failed to mention that. It’s totally disgraceful that he hasn’t
yet issued a pardon for these border patrol agents.
Time to talk about “amnesty.”
“Amnesty is forgiveness for being here without
any penalties, that’s what amnesty is,” the president explained. “I oppose it.
The authors, many of the authors of this bill oppose it. This bill is not an
amnesty bill. If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the
bill is an amnesty bill. It’s not an amnesty bill. That’s empty political
rhetoric, trying to frighten our fellow citizens.”
Talk about empty political rhetoric. Here we
go again with the ol’ Humpty Dumpty
routine: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean - nothing
more nor less.”
As the president explains, his “not amnesty”
bill will allow an illegal alien to apply for a “Z” visa. To get the “Z” visa,
which will enable him or her to continue working here, the illegal alien “must
admit they violated the law and pay a meaningful penalty, pass a strict
background check, hold a job, maintain a clean record, and eventually learn
English.” Then, if the illegal alien who broke the nation’s immigration laws to
get here wants to become an actual citizen, he or she “would first have to pay
an additional fine” and “return home to file an application for their green
card.”
Let’s put this in another perspective: If I
break into Sen. Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts home and move into one of his spare
bedrooms, as long as I pay a fine, pass a background check, keep a job, stay
out of trouble and speak drunkenese, I can continue
to live there.
And if I just pay a little bit more of a
fine, I can actually become a member of the Kennedy family, as long as I return
briefly to Nevada and fill out some paperwork. The fact that I broke the law by
breaking into his home in the first place doesn’t mean I have to move out. I’m forgiven, and won’t suffer any penalty other than having to
pay a little fine.
But that’s not amnesty, right?
Back to the president bashing opponents of
his “not amnesty” bill. “This reform is complex. There’s
a lot of emotions around this issue. Convictions run deep. Those determined to
find fault with this bill will always be able to look at a narrow slice of it and
find something they don’t like. If you want to kill the bill, if you don’t want
to do what’s right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it, you can use it to frighten people.”
Unbelievable.
According to the president, Americans whose “convictions
run deep” on this “complex” and “emotional” issue “don’t want to do what’s
right for America.” And the amnesty aspect of the proposal isn’t anything
major; heck, it’s only a “narrow slice” of the bill. And anyone who disagrees
is just trying to “frighten” people. Talk about how to win friends and
influence people.
Well, at least he didn’t call us all a bunch
of vigilantes this time. So I guess
that’s progress. But if I wasn’t offended by the bill itself before, I am
by the president’s insulting characterizations of opponents in this speech,
along with his mischaracterizations of the issue. And that’s enough for me
to conclude that this latest “comprehensive” reform scheme deserves a quick
and painful death. Hasta la vista, baby.
Chuck Muth is the
president and CEO of Citizen Outreach (www.citizenoutreach.com) which is a
limited-government public policy organization dedicated to putting
the “public” back in public policy. Founded in 1992, Citizen Outreach is a
non-profit, non-partisan organization which promotes greater citizen understanding
of, and participation in, public policy issues at the federal, state and local
levels. Aside from using traditional mass-communications tools, such as newspaper
ads, op/ed columns and radio and TV commercials they also produce a free e-newsletter
entitled News & Views and send out what they call “Brushfire Alerts” which make it quick and
easy for average citizens to participate in the political process. For more
information visit their website at www.citizenoutreach.com.
