They will not, that is a given. President Bush will not sign an amnesty program, he could not have been more clear in the SOTU. I wish you would quit calling President Bush's proposals "amnesty." They are proposals, just that, and Tom DeLay will never let them see the light of day. Make of this what you want.
Thirteen thousand R voters of South Dakota, thought they were better off voting for Johnson against Thune, because they thought it better to have a majority in the Senate. Just like you, their thinking was flawed.
I call it what it is. I don't play Clintonian word games.
I am very familiar with the immigration laws and policies of this country. I have professional-level knowledge and experience with them. This is amnesty on the installment plan. Amnesty won't be immediate, but in time virtually every guest worker who desires a green card will get a green card. You can count on it.
Amnesty means pardoning unlawful activity and placing the wrongdoer on equal footing with a law-abiding person. With this in mind, pay close attention to this part of Bush's speech:
"Undocumented workers now here will be required to pay a one-time fee to register for the temporary worker program . . . . Some temporary workers will make the decision to pursue American citizenship. Those who make this choice will be allowed to apply in the normal way . . . . The citizenship line, however, is too long, and our current limits on legal immigration are too low. My administration will work with the Congress to increase the annual number of green cards that can lead to citizenship."
Did you catch the sleight-of-hand? It is this: by paying a nominal "fee" the illegal alien is pardoned and given the same status as the legal alien. Thus cleansed of wrongdoing, the illegal alien is allowed to stay legally in the country for three to six years. In the meantime, the administration promises to work hard to increase the annual number of green cards availale. For whom do you suppose this increased number of green cards is destined if not for the newly washed formerly illegal aliens?
That is amnesty, pure and simple.
Bush makes it sound as if we'll just roll these people out again after three or six years. That is a stinking pile of horse manure. Bush is smart enough to know better. Human beings are not mere commodities like train boxcars that roll into the nation and out again. People come into a country and establish roots. They marry, they give birth, they buy and sell homes and other property, they become involved in the community, they become poltically energized and focused on increasing their clout in society. As a fully legalized underclass, guest workers will start working immediately to use the legal process to increase political clout to force greater and more extensive concessions toward citizenship. They will aided and abetted in this by an activist judiciary.
If Bush's foolhardy plan is implemented, we will add the population equivalent of another state of Texas to our country--95 percent of them from Mexico. The stress on the social and political infrastructure will be immense. And it will all have been started by a supposedly innocuous plan to bring a few million illegal aliens out of the shadows.