California congressman and Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter has issued a statement regarding the immigration reform proposal pending in the U.S. Senate:
I vow to oppose this legislation supported by Senators Edward Kennedy and John McCain. It provides a vast new immigration benefit to millions of illegal aliens who have broken our laws to live in the United States. I opposed the 1986 amnesty act because of this same reason. It proved to be the draw that we predicted it would be. I am deeply disappointed to see history repeating itself.
This package will confirm to the world that the U.S. does not really mean what it says when it comes to immigration enforcement. As a result of the citizenship benefit included in this legislation, despite the fine print, we will see a stampede across our borders.
This vast new amnesty and expansive guest worker program will surely be ridden with fraud and abuse, and ultimately lead to millions of public-assistance-dependent immigrants.
The Senate's decision to blatantly ignore the Secure Fence Act signed into law last year and only require construction of 370 miles of fence, as opposed to the 854 miles mandated by the law, is a dramatic failure of this legislation. The San Diego border fence has proven that fencing works. The time has come to quickly implement the Secure Fence Act, not retreat from its mandates.
I believe that this package will result in lower wages for America's already-struggling families by encouraging the importation of cheap foreign labor rather than investing, developing and growing a domestic workforce that will sustain our economy far into the future.
Amnesty is not the answer. Border enforcement must be first and it must be comprehensive. To do otherwise is to repeat the mistakes of the past. This Senate bill is bad for Americans, bad for our workers, bad for law enforcement and, most importantly, bad for national security. I will fight it.
As well he should. Fighting bad legislation is the only way to make it better.
Fence first!
And by that I mean the Republican Party should insist that Congress and the bureaucracy secure the border before they start talking about doing a thing to amnestitize the 12 million illegals who are already here.
Figthing McCain's amnesty plan is also good politics. While the American people want something done about illegal immigration, that doesn't mean they want anything done about it. What most Americans want, first and foremost is secure borders. Accomplish that first and I believe most Americans would accept a plan to "regularize" the 12 million or so illegals who are already here. But that is not what the proposed plan does. Not really. Oh, it purports to, but Congress also passed a law last year purporting to build more than 800 miles of border fence. Have you seen video from the construction site? No. Why? Because Congress played a trick on you. They didn't fund the fence. So there's no fence.
And the new immigration reform legislation doesn't fully fund the fence, either. In fact it funds less than half of it. In effect, Congress is asking you to trust it. But Congress and the federal bureaucracy has no credibility on this issue. None. Congress promised to secure the border back in the 1980s if we'd just accept amnesty for 3 million illegals. We did. They didn't.
And there's no guarantee they will this time.
Unless they amend the immigration bill to focus only on securing the border and installing an employer verification system that actually will prevent illegals from getting jobs. No "path to citizenship" provisions. It's not time for that.
Fence first!
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