GOP Candidates and Amnesty

Though CAPS does not support or deny political candidates for president, we cannot ignore the fact that the Republican Presidential candidates have varying views on the immigration issue and that it is becoming the dominant issue in the debates. It is on these varying views that we wish to comment. And it is what the Congressional Democrats are not doing that becomes even more critical to the race.

On November 30^th in the Opinion Section of the Wall Street Journal a professor Peter Skerry of Boston College wrote an interesting article about Newt Gingrich’s new stand on providing amnesty to those illegal immigrants who have been here a long time and been productive citizens. “The Republicans are howling about 'amnesty' while the Democrats are sitting back and watching the infighting.”

Skerry maintains that if the Democrats retain the status quo on immigration, which is the do nothing, and change nothing, that the Democrats will certainly win.  Liberals understand that illegal aliens are not voters, but now that they are protesting loudly against immigration curbs, the Democrats are catering to them. The liberals treat the immigrants nicely but are not about to change the status quo. Thus, there is little or no enforcement of existing immigration laws.

Conservative Republicans, however, are having to pinpoint their position on immigration during every debate therefore are more susceptible to back lash from all the bleeding hearts who want to help the poor illegal aliens in the country. Conservatives who are pro immigration reform and amnesty are the Catholics (mostly Latino), the evangelists, corporate business men, farmers and now Mr. Gingrich who will grant legal status not citizenship.

Therefore Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann are all the bad guys to the huge immigrant population as they unilaterally all insist on securing the borders and forcing all businesses to use the E-verify system to check Social Security numbers of new hires. But there are differences to each candidates approach: whether or not they support tuition of illegal students, whether or not they will get rid of the birthright citizenship, the lottery visa, lower the number of legal workers.

Professor Skerry calls these extra Republican proposals draconian. He likes Gingrich's approach, but this is where he is wrong. There is no way that any agency or governmental department can track and deal with 11 to 20 million illegal immigrants in this country on an individual basis. This would cost trillions that the U.S. government with its present economic blues, does not have. We at CAPS believe that once the job market has dried up many immigrants will self deport and return to their native countries.  When this happens there will be time for a re-examination of how illegal immigrants can remain in the United States. We favor a return to their native country and then apply for legal entry to the U.S. paying the required fees and waiting in the legal line.