Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

May 21, 2007

Senate Support Shaky for Shamnesty Bill

According to the Washington Times, only 17 senators officially approve of what amounts to an amnesty bill for illegal aliens. The bill is scheduled to hit the Senate floor today for discussion, and was written in secret by a dozen senators in cahoots with the Bush administration. Is this the way we want our government to be run?

N.Z. Bear has an anotated copy of the bill online for you to see for yourself.

Sen. Arlen Specter (RINO-PA) claims this bill is the best they could do.

"It will treat the 12 million undocumented immigrants in a constructive way. It is not amnesty. They'll have to pay a fine. They'll have to earn their way to citizenship," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "It's better than what we have now."

Not amnesty? Letting the pass go by paying $200 is not amnesty? And how exactly is the government going to enforce this fine? The same way they've been enforcing our immigration law over the last twenty years or so? Do they really expect illegals, who are flouting the current laws, to whip out their wallets and fork over thousands of dollars in order to start on the path to citizenship? If they were so inclined, they would have gone the legal route in the first place. This will not clean up our illegal alien problem, but will make it worse. The whole deal reeks.

Voters are not pleased, most notably the Republican base. A couple of Republicans were booed by their constituents over the weekend. Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia were both booed at their state Republican conventions because of the their support for the bill. Heh.

Don Surber doubts the bill will survive the week. I hope he's right. We call it illegal immigration for a reason: it's against the law.