The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Build a Path to Citizenship’

Posted on | July 17, 2021 | Comments Off on ‘Build a Path to Citizenship’

Quietly, proceeding by stealthy cat-like steps, the open-borders lobby has decided that permanent legal status for illegal aliens is something that Congress must cram into the “reconciliation” legislation:

Sen. Alex Padilla, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s immigration panel, said Tuesday it was his “understanding and expectation” that a pathway to permanent status for undocumented immigrants would be included in Democrats’ budget reconciliation package.
“I do think it could be a matter of just a couple of months, if all the necessary steps are taken,” the California Democrat said regarding a timeline to green light relief for millions of undocumented immigrants, including those brought to the U.S. as children.
“And thus far, my understanding and expectation is that immigration is included in that reconciliation package,” he said in a call with reporters and advocates. “It seems pretty optimistic and ambitious, and it is, but it’s also very realistic. We just need a few important things to fall in place.”
Padilla also said he believes the White House supports efforts to establish a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants through reconciliation.
“Are they aware of my interest and my request? Absolutely. And I haven’t been told no,” he said. “I believe the White House is supportive of both an ambitious infrastructure package, and as substantive immigration reform as you can achieve in any way possible.”
Advocates have called on Democrats to include immigration provisions in a budget reconciliation package, which would include trillions of dollars for party priorities such as child care and climate change, in acknowledgment that a standalone immigration bill would be unlikely to garner the Republican votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.

In other words, because amnesty for illegal aliens cannot be passed as stand-alone legislation — with both sides having a chance to debate and vote on it directly — they’re going to ram it through by the dishonest process of “reconciliation,” cramming it into a multi-trillion-dollar budget deal that everybody can be made to feel obligated to vote for.

By the way, nobody ever elected Alex Padilla to the Senate. He was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the seat vacated when Kamala Harris became vice president. So an unelected Senator is advocating the use of anti-democratic processes to give amnesty to illegal aliens.

And all of this was planned in advance — not kidding, not a conspiracy theory. Since at least May, the open-borders lobby has been running advertisements with titles like, “Build a path to citizenship for immigrant essential workers so recovery includes everyone!”

Whatever it is, this is certainly no accident. Look at how many results you get if you Google the phrase “build a path to citizenship.”

As my brother Kirby pointed out this morning, however, there already is “a path to citizenship” for immigrants, a path that begins by following U.S. law, applying for a visa, and coming here legally. But this is not what the open-borders lobby wants. What they want to do is to reward millions of law-breaking foreigners who have no legal right to be in this country at all, and who therefore should be deported. The same people who claim that “Our Democracy” is threatened by people suspicious of election fraud are not willing to go through the normal democratic process of passing legislation — committee hearings, a debate directly on the issue, ending in an up-or-down roll-call vote — on a matter of great importance to the future of our country. Why is this so?

To understand what is wrong with America’s immigration system, the best place to start is by reading Peter Brimelow’s 1995 book, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, which points to the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, as the root of our current problem. Ted Kennedy was the leading advocate for passage of this measure in the Senate, at a time when Democrats had a 66-seat filibuster-proof Senate majority.

Buried in the details of that legislation were “family reunification” measures which were supported by many Democrats of immigrant ancestry — Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, etc. — who seemed to believe that these provisions would mainly be used by their constituents to bring over Uncle Guido or Cousin Greta from the Old Country. What happened instead, of course, was that “family reunification” became the machinery of what is called “chain migration” — just get one member of your family into the country, and then everybody can come. And then there was the matter of “refugee” status which has been used, for example, to give Salvadorans preference over Mexicans, and to give Somalis preference over Cubans. Every effort to “reform” the 1965 immigration law has been hijacked by liberals (and/or Big Business interests who see immigrants as a source of cheap labor) and the fundamental flaws of the legislation have never been fixed, mainly because the open-borders lobby has a habit of screaming “RAAAAACIST!” at anyone who raises the subject of whether the American people actually want the kind of wholesale demographic transition that our broken immigration system is producing.




 

Category: Immigration

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