Inaction Saves The Day

The Senate's ability to produce a great deal of sound and furry while actually doing nothing may have saved us from a truly horrible piece of legislation.

Just how bad is the McCain/Keennedy compromise bill?

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of the bill in the first 5 years will be a minimum of $2 Billion. This estimate does not include the number of formerly illegal immigrants who will become eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit. If you are not aware of it, Earned Income Tax Credit pays a refund to people who don't earn enough money to actually pay taxes.

The average payment under this program is $2,400. Lets say half of the current illegal immigrant population would qualify. That's six million people getting an average payment of $2,400. Do the math. It's a ton of money. ($14,400,000,000)

HT: Mark Levin

And if the cost is not bad enough, consider these gems hidden in back pages. (From Kris Kobach, NY Post, via Overlawyered)

Like that surprise hidden on page 302 - which would replace the country's entire bench of experienced immigration judges with pro-immigration advocates.

With a few exceptions, today's immigration judges (who serve for life) are dedicated to enforcing the law, and they do a difficult job well. This bill forces all immigration judges to step down after serving seven years - and restricts replacements to attorneys with at least five years' experience practicing immigration law.

Virtually the only lawyers who'll meet that requirement are attorneys who represent aliens in the immigration courts - who tend to be some of the nation's most liberal lawyers, and who are certainly unlikely as a class to be fond of enforcing immigration laws.

The second hidden problem with the bill comes from Dick Durbin who added a last minute amendment called the DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act is a nightmare. It repeals a 1996 law that prohibits state universities from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens. The principle, of course, is that no illegal alien should be entitled to receive a taxpayer-subsidized benefit that out-of-state U.S. citizens can't get. But the committee's bill allows illegals to be treated better than those U.S. citizens on tuition.

The bill also gives an amnesty to the nine states (including New York) that have been flouting the '96 law, two of which (California and Kansas) are now facing lawsuits.

I guess this sort of means that immigration reform is going to do nothing to stop illegal immigration and that members of the Judiciary Committee is well aware of that fact. I mean why bother allow states to offer illegals in-state tuition if you're not going to allow illegal immigration?

As for letting the nine states out of their lawsuits, I guess if we are going to give foreign nationals amnesty for violating our immigration laws we might as well do the same for a few state governments.

The Senate leadership can put out all the spin it wants that this bill was killed by procedural politics, but the bottom line is that it is a piece of crap and it well deserved to be flushed.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 03:01 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment