RIGONOMICS:The bill that wouldn’t die

Last week I thought we were safe. The U.S. Senate had gone home and pulled the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 off the senate floor to go where all dead bills go. Then on Thursday, like Frankenstein, Senate Bill 1348 came back to life.

A lot of people have very different opinions of this immigration bill. They should, since it has 281 sections. The problem for most people is not necessarily the wording in the bill, though some sections would make you wonder if this bill was written by senators from the U.S. One opinion that does seems universal is that when it really comes down to it, no one thinks the Feds can implement it. No matter how much tough language the Senate puts in about strengthening the border with beefed-up border patrols or electronic surveillance equipment, no one believes it. No matter how much it talks about verifications and doing background checks, no one believes it. In fact, most average Americans have evidence to the contrary that the federal government cannot handle any program of this size and complexity. Government agencies make the cable companies look good.

Example: This week, the government admitted it was unable to process passports to legal U.S. citizens even though it had two years to prepare for the increased need based on the 2005 Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which required U.S. passports for travel between the U.S. and Mexico, Canada or the Caribbean. By Friday, the State Department was so overwhelmed with passport applications that the U.S. House Rules Committee voted to prohibit the implementation of the travel initiative. This was just for processing passports to existing U.S. citizens.

Let’s look at what the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 asks to implement. First, this bill would require that Homeland Security process an estimated 12 million immigrants who can “establish that the alien was in this country for 5 years prior to April 5th 2006 and was not legally present in the United States on April 5th 2006 or their visa expired and therefore were not legally in this country … for purposes of this subparagraph, an alien who has violated any conditions of his or her visa shall be considered not to be legally present in the United States.” The only way you can stay in this country is to admit you were here illegally. The immigrant would have to produce “conclusive documents” showing employment, pay stubs, etc., and if they can’t, then they can offer — and this is a tough one — “sworn affidavits from nonrelatives who have direct knowledge of the alien’s work.” This will help those people out of work making fake green cards. Now they can make “sworn affidavits.”

Second, the department has to set up an Automated Biometric Fingerprint Identification System (IDENT) and have all the immigrants fingerprinted. I am sure all the illegal immigrants who have committed crimes will be first in line.

After that, the IRS has to provide proof that the immigrant has either paid their taxes or doesn’t owe any. This from a department that can’t even answer its phones. With a backlog of 12 million, I am sure they will do a full audit. My guess is they will just require another “sworn affidavit” stating that the immigrant did not make enough money to pay taxes.

Let’s be honest — nobody believes that this bill would ever really be enforced. Business leaders want cheap labor; taxpayers pick up the cost of education, health care and uninsured drivers; and liberal politicians — well, they just want votes. In fact, if we gave liberals everything they wanted except “the path to citizenship,” then this bill would be dead faster that you can say “amnesty.”

I agree that 12 million illegal immigrants in this country is a big problem and that the Feds need to do something. But to simply change the law and, presto, all 12 million become legal is not the way to solve a problem. This problem didn’t happen overnight, and it won’t be fixed overnight. In fact, the status quo is better than this bill.