Analyst's note: Absolutely must read. Thought you'd like to know. Congress Votes Today on Millions of 10-Year Work Permits for Illegal Aliens Have you had enough yet?
"The nation’s unemployment rate stands at 9.8 percent, a post–World War II record 19th month that unemployment has been over 9 percent. President Barack Obama is the largest tax hike in American history. So what do Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) have Congress voting on today? Amnesty. Specifically, the House and Senate will be voting on the fourth and fifth versions of the DREAM Act, which would legalize anywhere between 300,000 and 2.1 million illegal immigrants.
Supporters of the DREAM Act claim the bill would provide citizenship only to children who go to college or join the military. But all any version of the legislation requires is that an applicant attend any college for just two years. And if President Obama wants to reward non-citizen service members with citizenship, he already has the power to do so. The Secretary of Defense already has the authority under 10 U.S.C. § 504 (b) to enlist illegal immigrants in the military if “such enlistment is vital to the national interest,” and 8 U.S.C. § 1440 allows such immigrants to become naturalized U.S. citizens, with their applications handled at accelerated rates. The military component of the DREAM Act is a complete red herring.
Neither of these bills has gone through their respective committees, and only one has been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, they are chock full of loopholes designed by open border advocates to make an even wider amnesty possible.
One bill would even grant Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano the power to waive the college and military requirements if the illegal immigrant can demonstrate “compelling circumstances” and the immigrant’s removal would cause a hardship to the them, their spouse, their parents, or their children. When exactly would removal from this country not cause a hardship? What other loopholes are in these bills? As Speaker Pelosi might say: “You have to pass this amnesty so that you can find out what is in it.”
The DREAM Acts are also an invitation for fraud. All of the bills would make it illegal for any information in an amnesty application to be used to initiate removal proceedings against an applicant. Law enforcement agencies would be forced to prove that any information they used to find, detain, and try to remove an illegal immigrant was already in their files before an application was received or was not derived from the application. If an illegal immigrant lies about his age to qualify for the program, and the lie is never detected, he gets amnesty. And if the lie is found out, no worries—law enforcement is forbidden from using that lie against him.
The real goal of the DREAM Act is to make it even harder for our nation’s law enforcement agencies to enforce any immigration laws. And Congress is not the only forum where amnesty advocates are working to undermine the rule of law today. Right across the street from the Capitol, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments over an Arizona immigration enforcement law. This is not a hearing on the controversial SB 1070 law that passed earlier this year. This case, supported by the usual amnesty suspects (La Raza, the SEIU, the Chamber of Commerce, etc.), challenges Arizona’s 2007 E-Verify law, which penalizes employers who do not verify the legal status of their employees. This challenge by amnesty advocates to even common-sense immigration enforcement measures should send a clear measure to anyone wavering on the DREAM Act: Any enforcement mechanisms that DREAM Act supporters agree to today will be immediately challenged in court tomorrow. Enforcement is fickle; amnesty is forever.
Our country does need immigration reform. We need smarter border security, stronger interior enforcement, and a more efficient naturalization system. But amnesty plans like the DREAM Act undermine real reform. The DREAM Act encourages people to ignore our borders, undermines our law enforcement across the country, and makes fools of law-abiding immigrants who play by the rules."
Now for a more insight into this abortion. This time from Dr. Roy Beck, NumbersUSA
"When the House and Senate (presumably) vote this afternoon, I think it is important to frame the issue in terms of giving out millions of additional 10-year work permits.
You see, even people who don't qualify in the first place or who do qualify for the provisional amnesty but never meet the educational criteria later -- all of them can get a 10-year work permit from the start.
Here's the way it would work under the latest DREAM amnesty bill introduced in the Senate (and coming up for a vote today):
THE 10-YEAR WORK PERMITS FOR PEOPLE WHO DO NOT QUALIFY
1. Application: The DREAM amnesty begins with illegal aliens filling out applications. They merely have to claim -- not provide evidence -- that they meet criteria of having been brought to the U.S. before age 16 and being under the age of 30 at time of enactment and being present in the U.S. at least 5 years before enactment of the amnesty, among other criteria.
2. Work Permits Given: Once they allege these minimal criteria, the illegal aliens are given "conditional lawful permanent resident status" and are given a 10-year work permit to compete directly with the 22 million Americans who want a full-time job but can't find one.
Estimates suggest that up to 2 million illegal aliens could legitimately qualify for the opening application, and perhaps a couple million more might be or look young enough to fraudulently apply.
Those millions would immediately be able to legally compete for any U.S. job.
3. Ten Years of Work Before Education Required: Despite all the talk about how this amnesty is just for people who go to college or serve in the military, the illegal aliens don't have to do much of anything in that regard to have the legal right to work for 10 years.
Everybody who applies and gets the work permits has 10 years to complete two years of college or two years of military. Ten Years!
By the way, despite the fact that some media outlets have taken to referring to the potential recipients of the amnesty as "the best and the brightest" and "stars," illegal aliens can get the 10-year work permit merely by completing a GED and enrolling in a single course in a community college or trade school.
4. When 10 Years Are Up, What's The Chance of Anybody Being Asked to Leave? At the end of 10 years, illegal aliens who have not compiled two years of college or military would finally lose the right to compete legally with unemployed Americans for a job.
But they also would have sunk 10 more years of roots into their communities, building up an even bigger claim that it would be a hardship to be forced to leave this country. In addition, their advocates in the open-borders groups can say that they aren't really illegal aliens since they have just spent 10 years living and working as legal residents.
Fortunately for them, the DREAM amnesty allows those who fail to meet any of the criteria after 10 years to file a claim of hardship. The US Citizenship & Immigration Services agency is given the right to issue waivers and allow these illegal aliens to stay. By the way, they can get a waiver if the hardship is to them, or if it would be to a spouse, one of their children or one of their parents.
In the end, it is not only the 2 million potential qualified opening applicants but millions of potential fraudulant applicants who will get 10 years of legal competition against unemployed Americans. The only way the frauds can lose their work permit is if the government brings individualized cases to prove that they lied on the applications. Want to guess how many of the millions of fraud cases the government would have time to investigate and prosecute -- one by one?
Are any of the pro-DREAM amnesty supporters thinking about that?
Aside from all the issues of rewarding or encouraging law-breaking, there is the question about why this Lame Duck Congress at this time of 9.8% unemployment would feel the need to greatly increase the job competition for unemployed Americans.
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA
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