Eric Cantor Says Republicans Are Mulling Legal Status for Some Undocumented Immigrants

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Thursday that the GOP is discussing whether and how to take up controversial legislation that would give some illegal immigrants legal status in the U.S. if they sign up for the U.S. Armed Forces.

The so-called ENLIST Act would create this pathway to legal status only for younger, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children by their parents before 2011. Under current law, only documented, legal immigrants such as those with a green card can join the military, along with U.S. citizens.

Eric Cantor military illegal immigration Jeff Denham legal status House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va. said the House is considering whether to move bill granting legal status to some illegal immigrants who join the military. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The idea has become highly divisive within the Republican party. This week, for example, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), tried to attach it to a military authorization bill. But he failed in the face of opposition from his Republican colleagues.

Despite the way the bill splits Republicans, Cantor said Thursday that he supports the idea, and that talks are ongoing about how it might advance.

“I am mindful and support the fact that if a kid who’s brought here by his or her parents unbeknownst to that child, has never lived anywhere else or remembers living anywhere else, and wants to serve in our military, should be able to do so,” Cantor said on the House floor. “And it’s my position that that child should have a path to citizenship after that service.”

It never stops there. Like Lays potato chips, they don't legalize just one (or whatever subset).

Supposedly there are 11 million illegal aliens. (I personally believe it's more like 30 million.)

So to the pro-amnesty people I propose the following deal: OK, you say there are 11 million. We agree to legalize 11 million, but anything over that, they get deported, and absolutely no more. (Of course such a deal wouldn't be enforced anyway, but let's just assume it would be, for the sake of discussion.)

They'd never take that deal, because they know it's more like 30 million, and they want to keep the floodgates open as well.

The treatment of children brought here by their parents years ago, legally still citizens of their home country though they might not even remember it, seems to me to be a matter that should be raised first by the people affected, not by the GOP leadership.

If there’s a strong contingent of Hispanic parents and their now-adult children who are seeking actual citizenship for those brought here as children, and they’re willing to serve in the military to achieve that citizenship, then let them speak, and lobby both public opinion and the legislature.

Have we seen that, or is this just the GOP leadership looking for a way to address a non-problem? How many of those now-adult citizens of another country are desperate to become U.S. citizens today? Where are they? Do they have any spokesmen? Those are the questions I would like to see answered first.

I would guess that their main concern is being able to continue living here under a legal status, rather than illegally, and that they are not so concerned with obtaining citizenship, but I could be wrong.

Also, it would seem more than a bit coercive to condition a green card upon their serving in the military especially when we have a volunteer military today. There are better ways to decide whether to give them green cards, and as for citizenship, they can get in line with everyone else who wants it, without being able to jump ahead just because they’ve lived here illegally for years.

There are very few situations in which criminals who cross our border illegally should be rewarded for their crimes. Any such situations are so rare and so few that they should not be addressed by federal law until:

First - our immigration system is fixed so that legal immigration will supply any labor needs that cannot be supplied by unemployed or involuntarily out of the workforce Americans;

Second - border security is fixed, after the legal immigration system has been corrected, so that additional illegals cannot enter our country, and enforcement laws against employers are revised to provide powerful disincentives that will effectively discourage the hiring of illegals in which the symbolic fines can be treated as a cost of doing business;

Third - ONLY after fixing legal immigration, border security, and employer enforcement, and verifying that those fixes are working, ONLY then can we talk about what to do about any criminals who entered our country illegally and have been here for years.

It's bad enough he wants to see us do the unthinkable, but the traitor won't even frame the discussion properly.

If the only problem these people are having is a lack of documents, why on earth would we be talking about making them them legal? Just document them and be done with it, right?

No?

Well, if pelosi-ugly Eric Cantor is desperate to make them legal, then wouldn't that imply that currently they're not? Let's see now, Eric, what do we call the state of not being legal? Hmm, I guess I'm just at a loss for for words.

Have we changed the english language so much that "legal" is the remedy of all problems.

Dear Congressman,
My nephew has a broken collar bone, and since that is a considerable burden to bear, I am writing on his behalf to petition you to grant him legal status. I know there's nothing unlawful about having a broken collar bone, but I admire your efforts to help all those immigrants by given them legal status--even though in your opinion they haven't done anything illegal either.

Also, my wife and I have a meager income. Now there's no crime in that, but it would still help us feel so much better if you guys would pass a bill that conveys legal status upon us, too. Oh and then there's my neighbor who turned his homework in late . . .

Well what did I expect? Cantor's just using typical Washington politispeech to deftly have it both ways. He gets to be the old softy who doesn't see anything wrong these people committing innocent "acts of love," while at the same time he basks in his glorious triumph of having delivered them from the misery of their illeg-er..I..mean..undocumented lives into the shining hope of now being legal.

But I digress. I really think we need to show "Republicans" we're serious. I think it would be a measured, reasonable and timely response for us to start mounting a national campaign to persuade their constituents to railroad Cantor and McConnell in November. One pelosi-ugly candidate from each chamber should be turned into a brutal example of how SICK we are of this! I yes, I realize the short term impact of that could prove somewhat costly, but in order to finally get this through their thick skulls we must turn to extremes.

The only reason Cantor wants to make a de facto abdication of his seat by supporting open-border amnesty is that some fat cats in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have arranged a glamorous retirement waiting for him and his family in Monaco. But, he only taps that gold after he passes his law to convert the criminals into cheap berry pickers and meat processors. If his constituents don't cast their votes for him in November, then Eric will be forced into early retirement--before his ship can ever come in. Then he'll be stuck in the work-a-day world of beltway lobbying, hoping to earn his one-way trip to an overseas paradise quick, before our once-mighty republic drowns in the crushing throngs of entitlement seekers flooding over her wide open borders.

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