The Immigration Conflagration Is Not Yet Extinguished
by Newt Gingrich
HumanEvents.com

When Washington quit work last week, it looked as though the disastrous Bush-McCain-Kennedy immigration bill was dead.

As I write this, however, it is now clear that the Bush Administration is determined to force it through with raw power, despite the fact that a large and increasingly vocal majority of Americans oppose it.

Every recent survey has indicated that the American people think it is better to drop this bill and start over. But the power brokers and special interests in Washington feel otherwise.

The White House press statement Sunday trumpeted: “This Bill Is Alive and Well”

The President is apparently going to go to lunch with the Republican senators on Tuesday.

Here are a few talking points you should share with your senator TODAY — before the lunch with the President.

The Proposed Bill Is Based on a Fantasy and Could Never Be Effectively Implemented: It is outrageous when the federal government is so incompetent it has to suspend passport requirements for Mexico and Canada while at the same time suggesting it will be able to process a “Z” visa for 12 million-plus illegal immigrants in one day. Tell your senator that only a Washington power structure totally out of touch with reality could propose that.
As my good friend Linda E. wrote me:

“While American citizens are waiting up to three months or longer for the federal government to process their passports, illegal aliens could get a ‘Z’ visa within 24 hours under the hopefully dead Amnesty Bill. Outrageous!!! The system is beyond broken when we cannot prioritize the needs of citizens before the desires of non-citizen lawbreakers.”

The Attempt to Blackmail the American People by Threatening to Refuse to Enforce the Law Without a New Bill Is Disgraceful: A number of powerful figures in the Bush Administration and in the Senate have been saying that if we do not agree to pass this destructive bill, they will never enforce the law. Tell your senator that this is an extraordinary effort to blackmail the American people by having officials state that they will fail to perform their sworn duty, and we won’t stand for it.

Americans Do Not Change Our Values to Fit Government Failures: When Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said that we had to “bow to the reality” of millions of people being here illegally, he illustrated the difference between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan as President.
Carter kept trying to convince us to accept malaise as the best we could do and to lower our expectations. Reagan told us we had every right to dream great dreams because we were Americans. Tell your senator that Secretary Chertoff needs to get off the Carter failure team and join the Reagan success team. That goes for everyone else in Washington who is trying to tell us we have no choice except to “bow to” illegality.

Why Should Any American Believe That This Government Will Keep Its Word and Do Better This Time? We now hear from the President that we have failed to control the border and failed to enforce the law on employers, and therefore, we need a new law to replace the law we have been failing to enforce. But we have been here before. The Simpson-Mazzoli immigration law passed 20 years ago promised the same things. Click here for a set of quotes from those politicians who promised to fix the border 20 years ago and see how familiar their enforcement promises sound today.

And this raises another question: Who has been running the government for the last six years? Why do we think anything will change and that the law will now suddenly be enforced? Over the last six years, the three recently arrested New Jersey terrorists who had been here illegally for 23 years had a total of 75 charges by the local police, and yet not once was our immigration enforcement infrastructure able to identify that they were here illegally. And now we are told that with the new comprehensive immigration bill, we will start to enforce the law against those have come here illegally after Jan. 1, 2007.

But ask this simple question: Under the proposed law, will local, state and federal officials really try to distinguish between those who came to the U.S. illegally prior to Jan. 1, 2007 (eligible under the proposed law for amnesty), and those who have arrived here illegally — or those who overstay their visas — after Jan. 1, 2007 (not eligible for the proposed amnesty)? The case of the 75 prior interactions with police of the Fort Dix terrorists demonstrates that we currently are incapable of identifying people here illegally, even if their names are in the judicial system. If 12 to 20 million are amnestied, who is seriously going to try and distinguish between the old illegal and the new illegal?

Another sign that enforcement promises may be as empty today as they turned out to be 20 years ago is that Arizona Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano just reported that the administration’s budget cuts National Guard work at the border, even though the program is hopelessly behind in meeting its goals.

Tell your senator that this is a good time to remember the Reagan rule of “trust but verify.” Show us the controlled border, show us the law enforced on American employers, show us the shift back to English as the official language of government and show us the end of sanctuary cities that refuse to identify those here illegally (by the way the Senate bill actually codifies the right of cities and counties to give sanctuary to illegal terrorists), then we will begin to think about a new bill.

This Is a Fight for America’s Future: Your senator needs to understand that this is the key fight over America’s future and returning to a law-abiding, effectively enforced, serious government worthy of the American people. Let them know they can be with the vast majority of Americans and kill the bill or they can side with the special interests and try to ram through this extraordinarily destructive bill. Either way, tell them you will remember them and how they vote.

Read more here.