Last year President Obama said the Senate amnesty/immigration-surge bill would “strengthen our borders, grow our economy, shrink our deficits.” It would have done no such thing, of course, but at least those claims were relevant to the debate.
But the claims have gotten increasingly implausible and even reckless. Luis Gutierrez last year said that people would lose limbs and women would be raped if the House didn’t pass the amnesty bill.
But the other day, Gang of Eight-ster Senator Dick Durbin made what is certainly the most ridiculous claim (so far): He said that the House GOP refusal to pass the bill contributed to the spread of Ebola:
Sen. Richard Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said that the immigration bill — which passed the Senate last year but has not been brought up for a vote in the House amid strong Republican resistance — contained measures requiring some doctors to remain in their home countries in Africa before they could be “recruited” to practice in the U.S.
Mr. Durbin suggested that, had the House GOP embraced the legislation, there would be more trained physicians in countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, where the Ebola outbreak now is spiraling out of control.
“We included in the immigration reform bill, which passed the United States Senate, a provision which provided, in one respect, if you are medically trained in Africa and promise to serve in Africa for a period of time before going anywhere else, we would honor that and respect that and not allow people to be recruited into the United States if they still had an obligation to their country,” he said at a Senate hearing on the Ebola outbreak Tuesday afternoon on Capitol Hill. “And secondly, that doctors in the United States would be able to serve in these crisis situations overseas without jeopardizing their immigration status. That passed the Senate. That was in the immigration reform bill. It was never called for consideration in the House of Representatives.”
This is rubbish on a variety of levels. The bill would have increased immigration of doctors from developing nations, by exempting them (and their families) from the numerical caps and increasing waivers for the requirement that foreign doctors on “cultural exchange” visas go home before trying to immigrate permanently. The problem that “America Is Stealing the World’s Doctors” would’ve gotten worse, not better, under Durbin’s appalling bill. And in any case, none of these provisions would have had any discernable impact, good or bad, for at least a few years.
More important is that the amnesty-pushers’ desperation is leading them to make fools of themselves. When amnesty-pushers claim that skeptics are responsible for rape and plague, we know we’re winning the argument.