Why Comprehensive Immigration Reform Is (Sh)Amnesty

In both 2006 & 2007, the Democrats & some Republicans in the Senate tried & failed to get what they called "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" pushed through. Supporters of the legislation claimed that it was not amnesty because it imposed penalties on illegal immigrants. These "penalties" included:

1) Paying a fine for being in the country illegally.
2) Learning English.
3) Going to the back of the citizenship line.

I'll take these points apart one at a time in order to demonstrate how Comprehensive Immigration Reform was in fact, an amnesty plan:

1) How many illegal immigrants are there in the United States? The standard answer to that question is 12 to 20 million. I've heard numbers ranging from 8 to 30 million, but I'll stick with the 12 to 20 million here. That's quite a wide range, isn't it? By my math, that's a difference of 8 million people (roughly equivalent to the population of New York City). So the question then becomes, how can our government - as dysfunctional as it is - be sure that all of the fine money has been collected when it's not even sure about the number of people that it should collect this money from? Are you telling me that illegals who slip through the cracks will voluntarily pay the fine? How do the supporters of Comprehensive Immigration Reform propose to collect the fine money from all of the Latin American gang members who have flooded into our country? Would they even be eligible Comprehensive Immigration Reform? If not, what's the process for determining who's a gang member & who isn't?

2) In August of 2000, President Clinton issued an executive order - 13166 - that turned our government into a multilingual service provider. In a nutshell, anyone who isn't proficient in English can receive taxpayer-funded services in whatever language they speak. If someone who doesn't speak English wants to see a doctor, that doctor is required by law to provide a translator or some sort of translation service. Have you ever heard of Parkland Hospital in Dallas, TX? It's the place where JFK died after being shot be Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963. A significant number of illegal immigrants give birth in this hospital now. And guess what? Most of them don't speak English!!! Parkland Hospital is used a training facility for University of Texas Southwestern medical students. In addition to the extremely difficult curriculum, these students are now required to learn Spanish!!! The hospital is also offering extra pay to staff members who learn Spanish.
Signs are posted all over the place in both English & Spanish. My local cable company runs commercials offering programming in many different languages. There are about 20 Spanish-language radio station in Los Angeles. Whenever I use a taxi service, I hear nothing but Spanish on the driver's dispatch radio. So the question then becomes, what incentive is there for illegals - & legal immigrants for that matter - to learn English when everything is already being handed to them in their own languages? Does the Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation override Bill Clinton's executive order? I believe it takes a president to revoke a previous president's executive order. And I don't see Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama doing that. What would John McCain do? If the English-language provision of this legislation is going to work, E.O. 13166 must go.

3) Illegal immigrants are already enjoying many of the benefits of living in America. They receive taxpayer-funded benefits while paying very little or nothing themselves. Some members of our government are more concerned with looking out for their interests than those of actual American citizens. So these people are hardly going to the back of any citizenship line. Illegal immigrants are forming a second line, right along side the first line of legal immigrants (you know, the people who followed the rules & waited a long time in their own countries to come here). And if I'm an illegal immigrant standing on that second line, & I look over at the legal immigrants standing on the first line, I'm going to get a wicked little smile on my face & I'll also have a one-word thought going through my head: SUCKERS!!!!

During one of the Republican presidential debates that took place a few months ago, the subject of illegal immigration came up. John McCain - who co-sponsored the so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation with Ted Kennedy - responded to get-tough-on-illegals comments from Rudy Giuliani & Mitt Romney by saying that they are god's children. It was a truly wonderful message. The problem was, he was delivering it to the wrong audience. The American people don't need to hear that illegals are god's children. The governments of the countries that illegal immigrants come from need to hear that message. If John McCain is elected president, will he deliver it to these governments?