The American Spectator

For those of us out here who really do have a moderate position on immigration, who really do seek a reasoned approach that in the long run allows for some form of “guest workers,” the immigration bill being considered by the Senate is more and more of an affront the more and more its details become clear. It is an affront because it appears to have been written in bad faith, by illegitimate procedures, with all sorts of smoke screens meant to snooker us into believing the bill is moderate and balanced.

In fact, the bill is a radical and dangerous attempt to open the floodgates.

It must be stopped.

That’s the only conclusion one can reach after re-reading, closely, the report called “20 Loopholes in the Senate Immigration Bill,” released on June 4 by Alabama’s Sen. Jeff Sessions. (Of the 20, only one minor “loophole” has since been improved by amendment.)

p>For “Loophole 1,” Sessions has identified the provision which, all along, has been the single biggest stumbling block to people of good will who wish to take this bill seriously. It is the now-infamous allowance for “probationary benefits,” which effectively makes every other law-and-order provision in the bill utterly worthless. Allow me to quote Sessions’ entire paragraph: br> /p>

Amnesty benefits do not wait for the “enforcement trigger.” After filing an application and waiting 24 hours, illegal aliens will receive full “probationary benefits,” complete with the ability to legally live and work in the U.S., travel outside of the U.S. and return, and their own social security card. Astonishingly, if the trigger is never met and amnesty applications are therefore never “approved,” the probationary benefits granted to the illegal alien population never expire, and the new social security cards issued to the illegal alien population are not revoked. [See pp. 1, 290-291, & 315.]

br> Even worse is the combination of that loophole with “Loophole 5 — Completion of Background Checks Not Required For Probationary Legal Status.” Again, I quote: br>

Legal status must be granted to illegal aliens 24 hours after they file an application, even if the aliens have not yet “passed all appropriate background checks.” (Last year’s bill gave DHS 90 days to check an alien’s background before any status was granted.)… [See pp. 290.].

As Sessions then comments, on the contrary, “No legal status should [my emphasis] be given to any illegal alien until all appropriate background checks are complete.”

As long as the probationary visa provisions remain in the bill, all reasonable people ought to consider this bill poisonous. No matter how one slices it, this is complete amnesty, pure and simple, with no enforcement, no respect for the law, no guarantee of safety, no requirement to learn English, no reliable insistence that businesses hire only legal visitors, no protection against Social Security and welfare fraud that could cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the next several decades.