Sowell on Congress & Immigration

THOMAS SOWELL:

"Of all the insults to our intelligence in the current discussions of immigration legislation, the biggest insult is the claim that border control legislation and legislation on the illegal immigrants already in the country must go together.

Why? What will happen if they are done separately? And who will be worse off?

The claim that the two pieces of legislation must be passed at the same time has been repeated endlessly. But endless repetition is not a coherent argument.

At the heart of this issue is the question whether Congress and the Bush administration are serious about controlling the borders and about letting the number and kind of immigrants allowed into this country be decided in the United States, not in Mexico.

Whatever number and kind of immigrants the United States wants to admit into this country, that decision means nothing unless that limit is enforced at the borders. Nor is there any way to know in advance how effective any particular method of border control will turn out to be in practice.

The only way to know whether fences, national guardsmen or anything else will work is to wait and see before issuing blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, virtually guaranteeing that millions more will follow, as has happened in the past.

A Congressional package deal is not about border control. It is about trying to get the Hispanic vote without losing the votes of other Americans. It is about allowing politicians to vote on both sides of this issue to cover themselves politically."

Yes, this is right on the mark. Many of our fearless leaders in Washington are indeed trying to get the Hispanic vote while not losing the votes of Americans, and their strategy is to try to trick We The People. Shameful, eh? It is the responsibility of Congress and the national government in general to enforce our laws, to enforce our borders, to devote their attention to our security. They haven't been doing this, and instead of turning to the responsibility today and in a forthright manner, so many of them are trying to trick us.

I'm with Sowell:

"Some say that the Democrats would filibuster a bill that offered border control separately. Fine. Let them!

Let them show their true colors in an election year and then go face the voters in the fall.

Of course, those Republicans who are either weak-kneed or who share the Democrats' views would also lose the political cover of being able to vote on both sides of the immigration issue.

But the country would be better off not to commit itself to guaranteeing the permanence of millions of illegal aliens and all their descendants thereafter without getting anything more than pious hopes about controlling the border."

Make them vote yes or no on enforcing the border!!