Bryan Fischer
Rubio amnesty plan way worse than I thought
By Bryan Fischer
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
If the GOP grassroots is paying attention, Marco Rubio just kneecapped himself if he wants to be president in 2016.
His illegal alien amnesty plan turns out to be far worse than I thought. The bottom line is that if we implement the plan Rubio laid out last night to Sean Hannity, illegals will have no incentive to "come out of the shadows," as they say, and get in the immigration line. They'll like it much better right where they are.
Rubio himself told Hannity, "We have 11 million people that are undocumented...that by all accounts are going to be here the rest of their lives, with or without documents."
In other words, Rubio is telling illegals that no one is ever going to come after you, no one is ever going to hassle you, no one is ever going to direct you to leave. You can live here without documents for the rest of your natural life and nobody will ever bother you.
With that explicit promise, why would any illegal alien go through the time and trouble to register, get fingerprinted, pay back taxes, pay fines, and wait years and years and years before he can even apply for a green card? What possible incentive would he have?
If he stays right where he's at, he has no fingerprinting, no fines to pay, no taxes to pay, no background check to worry about. And even the Republicans are telling him he can enjoy America without any of those troublesome inconveniences until the day he dies.
Rubio explains the process illegals would have to go through:
"You have to come forward, you have to identify yourself, you're going to be fingerprinted, you're going to have a background check done, you're going to have to pay taxes and fines, and what you get is a non-immigrant visa, not a green card...You don't qualify for any federal benefits under that, you don't get federal benefits. During the same time, and they're going to have to stay in this process for a significant period of time, and while they're in that process, is when all this security stuff needs to happen. And after a number of years have gone by, and the security enforcement stuff is in place, then the second phase begins, which is we give people the opportunity to apply for a green card, the same way everybody else does. Not a special way, the same way, which means you'd have to stand in line, wait your turn, behind everyone who applied before you legally, and when your turn comes up, you have to qualify for the visa you're applying for. In that sense, we're giving people the opportunity to earn the chance to do this the way they should have done it to begin with." (Emphasis mine.)
Good grief. It's the same old bait and switch, song and dance that Reagan fell for: amnesty first, enforcement second. Under the Rubio plan, legalization is immediate with no border security standards that have to be met whatsoever. It's the same trap Reagan fell into in 1986. He granted immediate amnesty to 3 million illegals in exchange for promised border security. Amnesty was granted, the promised enforcement never came, and today the problem has quadrupled in size.
The solution that Rubio is offering is the same one that created the mess we're trying to clean up right now. It's impossible not to think of the reigning definition of insanity as you listen to Republicans gamely expect magical results to come from "solutions" that have never worked in the past and will never work in the future.
There is another fundamental flaw in Rubio's thinking. Illegals are not here for the citizenship, they are here for the benefits. The illegals who come here from Mexico come from a socialist state, where they are accustomed to thinking that it's the government's job to hand out goodies, and since America is richer than Mexico, they can get more goodies here, so here they come. They could care less about citizenship.
Analysis done by the Heritage Foundation indicates that while each illegal does contribute about $10,000 a year to the economy, he consumes about $32,000 in taxpayer funded benefits. The average illegal doesn't want the citizenship, he wants the 32 grand.
Now Rubio insists they won't be eligible for federal benefits once they come forward. Well, many of them are getting those benefits now. Why would they put that at risk when the promise of citizenship is light years away? Plus, I'd like to see just how far anybody gets trying to revoke benefits that people are already receiving. You think the Republicans are tagged as heartless and uncaring now, you ain't seen nothing yet. Rubio won't be able to stand up under that pressure, nor will the vast majority of Republicans. His words sound tough, but they are nothing more than an empty threat.
There is also a very real pragmatic problem here. Rubio insists that this is a tough policy because all 12-20 million illegals are going to be forced to go through a background check. Who exactly is going to conduct these background checks? Who has the time, energy and resources to suddenly and immediately to take on a task of this magnitude? Has anybody thought about that? Anybody??
Colorado was overwhelmed immediately after the election trying to handle 4000 gun permit requests which required background checks. It is ludicrous beyond belief to think that conducting a massive project like this is remotely doable at the federal level. There currently is a backlog of some 700,000 overdue immigration background checks right now sitting around in bureaucratic cubicles as we speak. Until somebody outlines some feasible mechanism by which this could even possibly be done, it's just bilge and bloviation.
When John McCain extols the Rubio plan as almost identical to the one Ted Kennedy proposed, the hair starts to stand up on the back of my neck. The more you look under the hood of this thing, the worse it looks. Let's send this junker to the scrap heap and start over.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
January 29, 2013
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
If the GOP grassroots is paying attention, Marco Rubio just kneecapped himself if he wants to be president in 2016.
His illegal alien amnesty plan turns out to be far worse than I thought. The bottom line is that if we implement the plan Rubio laid out last night to Sean Hannity, illegals will have no incentive to "come out of the shadows," as they say, and get in the immigration line. They'll like it much better right where they are.
Rubio himself told Hannity, "We have 11 million people that are undocumented...that by all accounts are going to be here the rest of their lives, with or without documents."
In other words, Rubio is telling illegals that no one is ever going to come after you, no one is ever going to hassle you, no one is ever going to direct you to leave. You can live here without documents for the rest of your natural life and nobody will ever bother you.
With that explicit promise, why would any illegal alien go through the time and trouble to register, get fingerprinted, pay back taxes, pay fines, and wait years and years and years before he can even apply for a green card? What possible incentive would he have?
If he stays right where he's at, he has no fingerprinting, no fines to pay, no taxes to pay, no background check to worry about. And even the Republicans are telling him he can enjoy America without any of those troublesome inconveniences until the day he dies.
Rubio explains the process illegals would have to go through:
"You have to come forward, you have to identify yourself, you're going to be fingerprinted, you're going to have a background check done, you're going to have to pay taxes and fines, and what you get is a non-immigrant visa, not a green card...You don't qualify for any federal benefits under that, you don't get federal benefits. During the same time, and they're going to have to stay in this process for a significant period of time, and while they're in that process, is when all this security stuff needs to happen. And after a number of years have gone by, and the security enforcement stuff is in place, then the second phase begins, which is we give people the opportunity to apply for a green card, the same way everybody else does. Not a special way, the same way, which means you'd have to stand in line, wait your turn, behind everyone who applied before you legally, and when your turn comes up, you have to qualify for the visa you're applying for. In that sense, we're giving people the opportunity to earn the chance to do this the way they should have done it to begin with." (Emphasis mine.)
Good grief. It's the same old bait and switch, song and dance that Reagan fell for: amnesty first, enforcement second. Under the Rubio plan, legalization is immediate with no border security standards that have to be met whatsoever. It's the same trap Reagan fell into in 1986. He granted immediate amnesty to 3 million illegals in exchange for promised border security. Amnesty was granted, the promised enforcement never came, and today the problem has quadrupled in size.
The solution that Rubio is offering is the same one that created the mess we're trying to clean up right now. It's impossible not to think of the reigning definition of insanity as you listen to Republicans gamely expect magical results to come from "solutions" that have never worked in the past and will never work in the future.
There is another fundamental flaw in Rubio's thinking. Illegals are not here for the citizenship, they are here for the benefits. The illegals who come here from Mexico come from a socialist state, where they are accustomed to thinking that it's the government's job to hand out goodies, and since America is richer than Mexico, they can get more goodies here, so here they come. They could care less about citizenship.
Analysis done by the Heritage Foundation indicates that while each illegal does contribute about $10,000 a year to the economy, he consumes about $32,000 in taxpayer funded benefits. The average illegal doesn't want the citizenship, he wants the 32 grand.
Now Rubio insists they won't be eligible for federal benefits once they come forward. Well, many of them are getting those benefits now. Why would they put that at risk when the promise of citizenship is light years away? Plus, I'd like to see just how far anybody gets trying to revoke benefits that people are already receiving. You think the Republicans are tagged as heartless and uncaring now, you ain't seen nothing yet. Rubio won't be able to stand up under that pressure, nor will the vast majority of Republicans. His words sound tough, but they are nothing more than an empty threat.
There is also a very real pragmatic problem here. Rubio insists that this is a tough policy because all 12-20 million illegals are going to be forced to go through a background check. Who exactly is going to conduct these background checks? Who has the time, energy and resources to suddenly and immediately to take on a task of this magnitude? Has anybody thought about that? Anybody??
Colorado was overwhelmed immediately after the election trying to handle 4000 gun permit requests which required background checks. It is ludicrous beyond belief to think that conducting a massive project like this is remotely doable at the federal level. There currently is a backlog of some 700,000 overdue immigration background checks right now sitting around in bureaucratic cubicles as we speak. Until somebody outlines some feasible mechanism by which this could even possibly be done, it's just bilge and bloviation.
When John McCain extols the Rubio plan as almost identical to the one Ted Kennedy proposed, the hair starts to stand up on the back of my neck. The more you look under the hood of this thing, the worse it looks. Let's send this junker to the scrap heap and start over.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
