Like some shambling undead Thing from a horror movie, the amnesty bill we all thought buried with a stake in its heart has been resurrected. Once again, it’s headed for the Senate floor�to wreak havoc. But this is the kind of summer sequel most people don’t want to see. Neither Democrats nor Republicans in Washington seem to understand — or care — how unhappy the American people are about this bill.

And we are unhappy about it. Many Americans are outraged by the idea of rewarding criminals by allowing them to keep what they took. While hundreds of thousands of people around the world patiently await permission to come to this country, or go home when their visas expire, illegals decided the rules didn’t apply to them. Allowing them to become permanent residents violates our sense of fair play almost as much as it violates our laws. We’re assured that they will be at the “back of the line” for citizenship… but that line�is supposed to form�on the other side of the border.

We’re unhappy about rewarding criminal behavior. We’re told that these illegals should be honored because they wanted to become Americans so badly that many of them risked death to come here. (We’ll just ignore the fact that money was probably the real motivation for most of them.) But becoming American must include showing some regard for American sovereignty, and American laws. Those who deliberately crossed our borders illegally or overstayed their visas did not show that respect. Many illegal immigrants falsify records and documents on a daily basis, supply false Social Security numbers to employers, and lie to obtain drivers’ licenses, credit cards and other documents. Moreover, those hundreds of thousands who marched protesting law enforcement waving Mexican flags and holding signs saying “This is our continent, not yours” didn’t appear to want to become Americans, did they? Why should we reward them for that?

We don’t like the idea of creating a huge permanent underclass of low-level workers, either. Once granted legal status, all those people doing “jobs Americans won’t do” won’t want to do them either — not at the low wages they’re currently paid. They’ll want better jobs, with better pay. Prices for agricultural products and construction�will rise as employers are forced to pay minimum wage, but that’s not the worst effect of a mass legalisation. Competition for available jobs in other areas will rise sharply. Competition for many blue-collar jobs will force wages to dip towards minimum wage level, creating a sharper division between blue-collar and white-collar workers, or lower class and middle class. Unemployment and entitlements�will rise, and taxes will follow.�Class warfare and envy politics fueled by racial divisions — the staples of Democratic campaigns — will escalate, granting the Democrats a huge vote windfall for many years to come. The fact that so many Republicans (including the President himself) are willing to sign the death warrant of their own party is amazing.

Many people are unhappy about this bill because of the way members of Congress and the President tried to shove it through the Senate quickly, without time for the bill to be amended before debate. The bill was introduced on Thursday 17 May, and a vote to open debate on the final version was scheduled for Monday 21 June. The bill was not even written in final form until that Sunday, and most Senators hadn’t even seen it by the time they were expected to vote, much less had time to draft amendments. Public outcry pushed back the vote to give Senators time to propose amendments and gauge public opinion. After the move for cloture — an attempt to bring the bill up for a vote –� failed, the bill was removed from the floor. But President Bush, when attacking opponents of the bill didn’t work, pushed his supporters in the Senate to bring it back after adding some money for border security — the security that was mandated in a bill last year, and about which nothing much was done.

But it’s still the same terrible bill, which grants a de facto amnesty to millions of criminal trespassers (no matter what its proponents want to call it), allowing them to stay as permanent residents and bring tens of millions of new immigrants into the country. Thanks to Liberal “multiculturalism,” many of those people will never integrate into American society. It’s like a home invasion on a massive scale,�while the government’s response is to tell us we just have to live with our new housemates. And the border fence that was mandated in the Secure Fence Act of 2006 is still not built, which means that in another decade or so, we’ll have to go through all of this again. Before we decide�what to do about�the estimated 12-20 million illegal immigrants in this country, we have got to ensure that it’s the last time we have to deal with the problem.

Back in 1986, we were told that we would�have real border security,�in exchange for�a one-time amnesty. Well, the politicians got their one-time amnesty. Now,�we want our security.

Joe Mariani is a computer consultant born and raised in New Jersey. He now lives in Pennsylvania, where the gun laws are less restrictive and taxes are lower. Joe always thought of himself as politically neutral until he saw how far left the left had really gone after 9/11. His essays and links to articles are available at http://www.guardianwatchblog.com/

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