The Senate agreement so far (draft) as of May 18– Highlights

1) Grants blanket amnesty to all illegal aliens who have not been convicted of a felony or three or more misdemeanors
(Sec. Chertoff guestimates that about 15% will be disqualified as serious criminals!);

2) Says that a massive, new “guest worker” program and the blanket amnesty will begin once the President tells Congress that five meaningless triggers have been met.

The triggers are:

1) Customs and Border Protection must have hired (not trained or deployed) a total of 18,000 Border Patrol agents (or 4,000 more than we now have);

2) DHS must have built 200 miles of vehicle barriers, 370 miles of fencing, and 70 ground-based radar and camera towers along the southern land border of the United States, and have deployed 4 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and supporting systems (the law you passed last year requires twice this amount of fencing);

3) DHS must continue doing what it already claims to be doing now and detaining removable aliens caught entering illegally and it must have the detention beds to continue to do so;

4) DHS must have the “tools” to prevent illegals from getting jobs, including ID standards and a work eligibility verification system (note that it doesn’t actually have to be using the tools, it just has to have them);

5) DHS must be “processing and adjudicating in a timely manner” amnesty applications (even though the amnesty is not supposed to begin until the triggers are met).

So the triggers do NOT require that DHS have operational control of the border; they do NOT require that DHS comply with the law and build the all of the fence; they do NOT require that DHS implement the exit system that would allow us to know if “guest workers” actually leave, even though it has been in the law since 1996; they do NOT require work site enforcement; they do NOT require that DHS increase its apprehension rate or its alien absconder removal rate. In fact, the substantive thing the triggers really require is that DHS be rapidly processing amnesty applications!

3) Increases legal immigration levels by at least 50 percent over the next decade by granting green cards to all of the extended relatives who are on the State Department’s waiting list for the chain migration categories (adult married and unmarried children of citizens, plus their families; siblings of adult US citizens, plus their families; and adult unmarried children of permanent residents, plus their families), before it eventually eliminates these categories (see Dr. Gingrey’s bill, HR 938, for the right way to end chain migration). Moreover, by giving green cards to millions of additional relatives, the bill ensures that legal immigration will continue to grow in the foreseeable future as this larger pool of permanent residents brings in new spouses, which would become an unlimited category under this bill.

4) Relies on the Administration to implement the enforcement provisions in the bill, even though it clearly has been unwilling to implement current law.