Eight members of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body have labored for months and delivered unto us — Bush’s amnesty plan. I can at least respect the Democrat members of this cabal — Schumer, Durbin, Menendez, and Bennet — because the Left has never hidden its disdain for America’s sovereignty. But the Republicans — McCain, Graham, Flake, and Rubio — want to achieve the Left’s objectives while appearing tough. McCain pushed amnesty for many years, then pretended to have a change of heart while running for president, and is now back where he’s always been. The Tampa Bay Times has traced Rubio’s own back-and-forth on the issue:
He was seen as a moderate during his time in the Florida Legislature, supporting a move to give in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. While he was speaker of the House, a number of bills calling for hard-hitting enforcement died. But as he ran for Senate in 2009 and 2010, rising with the tea party, he began to reflect the politics of the moment.
Rubio embraced the Arizona immigration law (after first criticizing it), opposed counting illegal immigrants in the census and came out against the Dream Act, which would have created a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants. He also said he opposed the 2007 comprehensive immigration reform effort, which McCain and Florida Sen. Mel Martinez helped craft.
We rightly never believed Obama’s claim to have been opposed to gay marriage before suddenly changing his mind. Why would we believe the same philosophical gymnastics from our own team?
As for the outline (it’s not a fully realized bill), it’s a “festival of legislative gimmickry” (in Mickey Kaus’s words) that represents the same tired package of immediate amnesty for all illegals plus huge increases in future immigration, all in exchange for promises of enforcement that should already be happening anyway. The most transparently ridiculous enforcement promise is this:
Our legislation will require the completion of an entry-exit system that tracks whether all persons entering the United States on temporary visas via airports and seaports have left the country as required by law.
As I’ve already noted, Congress required “the completion of an entry-exit system” in 1996 and it still hasn’t happened. But it gets worse; as this GAO report spells out (see Appendix II), Congress has required the completion of the system six times! Will the seventh time be the charm? And if, as we all know will happen, the entry-exit system still isn’t completed, will the “provisional” amnesty that illegal aliens received immediately upon applying be revoked? Of course not.
The illustrious predecessors of the Gang of Eight — Clay and Webster, Taft and LaFollette, Goldwater and McCarthy — must be cringing in shame at what scoundrels have succeeded them.