As People Read Amnesty Bill, Scales Fall from Their Eyes

During the three months that led up to the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act midnight drop, patriotic Americans wondered just how bad the bill might be.

Briefly, S. 744 will grant instant amnesty to most 11 million illegal aliens living in the United States and increase legal immigration by up to 100 percent. The non-immigrant worker H-1B cap would be increased from 65,000 annually to 110,000, not counting the 20,000 issued to university graduate students who can then apply for a green card. A crucially important fine print American job destruction benefit: spouses of H-1B visa holders will also receive legal work authorization, thus inflating the official count of new workers

For the so-called extraordinarily talented, the O visa will continue to be available in unlimited numbers and is renewable from year to year. Although the language governing the O states that it’s designed for aliens with special skills in arts, sciences, athletics, education or business, it has also been issued to former Playboy Playmates and exotic dancers, aka strippers.

University of California Davis Professor Norm Matloff broke down the few pluses and the many minuses in S. 744 as it pertains to the tech industry. Read Norm’s complete analysis here which makes the excellent but little discussed point, at least on Capitol Hill, that importing foreign-born workers ultimately drives American students away from tech careers.  

As bad as the legal immigration increases are, they had been anticipated. But S. 744 contains a provision that even the most skeptical couldn’t have predicted. Deported adult aliens who lived in the United States before 2012 and have American citizen children stateside will be allowed to apply to return. The Gang of Eight argues that welcoming back deported parents should be viewed as consistent with America’s  family values tradition. [Bill Offers Deported Illegals a Pathway to Citizenship, by Steven Dinan, Washington Times, April 17, 2013]

Through his spokeman Alex Conant, Senator Marco Rubio said in support of his provision that:

     “The compromise we reached allows only those deported for non-criminal reasons to apply for legal status and only if they are being reunified with children already legally in the U.S. Sen. Rubio just personally concluded that giving parents a chance to reunite with their children was the right thing to do.”

In other words, Rubio who passionately argues that his bill is more about enforcement than amnesty proposes to undo earlier enforcement by granting amnesty to deportees.

U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) sees through Rubio’s duplicity. Said Smith about S. 744:

      "[It]offers amnesty to far more illegal immigrants than we thought. In addition to most of the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country, the bill offers to legalize the relatives of illegal immigrants outside the U.S. and even others who have already been deported back home. So current immigration laws are shredded.”

For the Gang, the inevitable bad news happened.

Forced by self-imposed time constraints, the Gang released its bill albeit in the 2:30 A.M.darkness. Once people read it, suddenly the Gang's amnesty case became tougher to make.