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“This is a conservative bill. What people haven’t appreciated fully yet — and I think they will when they step back and actually see the language — is that Kyl won some big concessions on this for some areas of real concern,” Flake told the Tribune.

Really? I doubt that a truly conservative bill would include language like the following:

ALIENS ASSOCIATED WITH CRIMINAL GANGS - Unless the Secretary of Homeland Security or the Attorney General waives the application of this subparagraph, any alien who a consular officer, the Attorney General, or the Secretary of Homeland Security knows or has reason to believe has participated in a criminal gang (as defined in section 101(a)(52)), knowing or having reason to know that such participation promoted, furthered, aided, or supported the illegal activity of the criminal gang, is inadmissible.

ALIENS ASSOCIATED WITH CRIMINAL GANGS- Any alien, in or admitted to the United States, who at any time has participated in a criminal gang (as defined in section 101(a)(52)), knowing or having reason to know that such participation will promote, further, aid, or support the illegal activity of the criminal gang is deportable. The Secretary of Homeland Security or the Attorney General may in his discretion waive this subparagraph.

There are 63 other instances of the occurrences of the word "waive" in the copy of the bill I took these from.

A law can require 15 years of very rigorous hoop-jumping but how many will actually jump through those hoops if Congress gives the Secretary of the agency that administers the law the ability to exempt people from having to jump through one or more of them. Or to declare people who are, by definition, ineligible to be eligible.

Same problem with narcotics. The bill talks big but limits its scope of concern to those who have actually been caught taking drugs over the border AND who have been convicted in a US court.

The existing provision used to keep out many Eurotrash types simply disappears. That's the one about "Have you used a controlled substance" (asked in a variety of ways). Notice that it's the individual's USE of drugs that keeps him or her out now. Under the new bill every swinging doper or stoner gains admittance as long as he or she has never been convicted of violating US drug importation laws.

At this point I'm convinced a bunch of narcotrafficantes participated in writing this law and that Kennedy knew it.