Rules for Addressing Amnesty

Republicans are getting a lot of unsolicited advice about how to recover from last year's defeat, and most of it is either ignorant or coming from people who don't have Republican party victories in their game plan. One of the worst of these bits of advice is that Republicans should join a bipartisan push for immigration amnesty.

Amnesty advocates shrink from using the word amnesty and try hard to shroud their message in deceptive words. So let's understand their vocabulary: reform, comprehensive, earned legal status and path to citizenship are all code words for amnesty.

At the recent conservative jamboree called CPAC, several panels and even star banquet speaker former Florida Governor Jeb Bush tried hard to soften or disguise the fact that their proposals are really amnesty. But conservatives agree with Rep. Steve King of Iowa that the essence of amnesty is to "reward them with the objective of their crime" and agree with Ann Coulter who told CPAC that amnesty is "suicidal" for Republicans.

Promises by the amnesty advocates to secure the border after the illegals are granted residency, or even simultaneously, are unacceptable and unbelievable. In the famous words of Yogi Berra, an oral agreement is not worth the paper it is written on.

The American people want the U.S. government to obey and enforce existing laws. That starts with building a fence on our southern border, which was required by a 2006 federal law, and signed by President George W. Bush in a well-publicized photo op. Instead of building the fence that Congress ordered, the government spent nearly $2 billion building what was called a virtual fence. It didn't work, and now it is being dismantled at additional expense.

Here are the requirements that must be met before we start talking:

First, we want and expect a border fence to be built like the efficient, successful fence that protects the border near San Diego. That means a 12-foot-high double fence with a road in between.

Second, we want enforcement of the entry-exit system, whereby people admitted on visas are tracked to make sure they leave the U.S. when their temporary visit expires. That's another federal law that has never been enforced.

Third, we want a law that requires employers to use E-Verify for new and current employees. This is as simple as having retailers check your credit card when you make a purchase; just put your credit card or your Social Security number in a machine and you get an immediate answer as to whether it's valid.

Americans must provide their Social Security number when they apply for a job, and immigrants should not be exempt from laws the rest of us must obey.

This simple procedure would identify the illegals and thereby make many jobs available to unemployed Americans.

Fourth, eliminate all schemes for the admittance of guest workers, both the uneducated who take entry-level jobs away from our own high school dropouts and the H-1B and other special-purpose visas (a system rife with fraud) who take jobs away from our own college graduates because the big companies prefer to hire lower-paid foreigners.

Fifth, enforce cooperation between federal and state immigration authorities, so when a state picks up an illegal he can be immediately turned over to the feds. This cooperation should also eliminate the so-called Sanctuary Cities, where federal immigration law is ignored.

Sixth, reinstate the rule that was in effect for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came through Ellis Island. If they had a major disease or failed to provide proof that they would NOT become a public charge, they were sent back to their home country.

Seventh, develop a constructive plan to assimilate the legal immigrants who have come to our country over the last 25 years. This includes using the major way earlier immigrants were assimilated: having their children in public schools taught only in English, and abolishing the unpopular, expensive hiring of teachers of dozens of foreign languages to supervise immigrant kids speaking their native language year after year, never learning English.

Eighth, stop lying to Republicans, falsely telling them that amnesty is the key to increasing their Hispanic vote. There isn't a shred of evidence to support that notion, and there's plenty of evidence that amnesty delivers votes to Obama Democrats because, as reported by the Washington Post-Kaiser survey, 67 percent of Hispanics favor a "larger federal government with many services."

Ninth, stop peddling the false notion that amnesty is the "Christian" thing to do. Amnesty will betray Hispanics because it will open our borders to a flood of new illegals, increase the millions below the poverty line and make it impossible for legal or assimilated immigrants to achieve the American dream.

Phyllis Schlafly is a lawyer, conservative political analyst and author of 20 books. She is the co-author, with George Neumayr, of the New York Times Best-Seller titled "No Higher Power: Obama's War on Religious Freedom." She can be contacted by e-mail at phyllis@eagleforum.org. To find out more about Phyllis Schlafly and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Website at www.creators.com.

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