Hillary Clinton is promising to give illegals amnesty and billions of American tax dollars,

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said yesterday as president she would push an immigration bill with a path to legalization that unites families.

"We've got to deal with immigration to be sure that we're going to get back to doing what is right and smart in America," she told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

"Yes, we need to strengthen borders, everyone agrees with that," the New York Democrat said. "We have to, though, remain faithful to our condition as a beacon for people around the world seeking a better life."

...Mrs. Clinton did not commit to passing immigration reform in her first term, a priority for the group, which works to educate new Hispanic leaders. She also did not directly answer all of the questions posed at the start of the forum, including how she would address anti-immigrant sentiment.

She did say she would "cut the Latino dropout rate in half," spend $10 billion on universal pre-kindergarten and pass the Dream Act to give legal status to illegal aliens who go to college or join the military.

So Hillary wants to spend billions to send the children of illegal immigrants to American schools, provide a huge amnesty loophole that would allow millions of illegals to become citizens via the Dream ACT, and she wants to bring more illegals into the United States in the name of "uniting families."

Of course, the whole "uniting families" meme has always been a complete sham. You have illegals coming into the country illegally, often with the intention of having an anchor baby in this country, and then they have a kid.

Then, once the illegals are caught, they choose to abandon their child in the United States and everyone is supposed to feel sorry for them and clamor to reunite the family. Of course, the family could be "reunited" any time the parents liked if they wanted to take care of their children in their birth country, but nobody is supposed to mention that.

The big problem with this is that we're providing strong incentives for people to enter the United States illegally, have children, and leave those kids here in the US.

Consider this: if you live in a poor country and get pregnant, you can sneak across the border when you're pregnant and have a baby that immediately becomes an American citizen. Suddenly, you can make a better living in the United States living off the dole your child is eligible for than you can in your home country. Then, if you get caught, you can leave the baby here and use your child as a lever to try to get back into the United States.

Maybe Hillary Clinton thinks we should be encouraging that sort of behavior, but the sort of people who enter the country illegally and use their child as a meal ticket/pawn in a game of legal chess aren't the sort of people we should want as American citizens.

PS: Yes, I am sure there are some illegals who come to this country, get pregnant without planning to do so, care little for the government programs their children are eligible for, and then leave their child here after they get caught and sent home solely because they think their kid will have a better life in this country. However, given what we know about human nature, I'm also equally sure that percentage wise, people like that are very rare.

PS #2: The Bush Administration is doing something right on illegal immigration...

More of this, please:

1,300 immigrants deported by feds (Hawkins' Note: Actually, no immigrants have been deported. Illegal immigrants can no more accurately be called "immigrants" than burglars can be called "house guests.")

In what federal authorities are calling the largest sweep of criminal and fugitive immigrants, federal agents over the past two weeks have arrested more than 1,300 Southland immigrants in their homes, in jails and at work, officials announced Wednesday.

As part of a stepped-up national crackdown on illegal immigrants, five teams of Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents raided homes in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties from Sept. 19 through Tuesday.

...Immigrant-rights groups decried the raids for stirring fear in the community, noting that more than 100 of those arrested had no criminal or court record (Hawkins' Note: If you are an illegal alien, you are a criminal whether you have been to court or not. Also, let's hope it's stirring fear in the illegal immigrant community.)

...The crackdown is part of a national effort dubbed the Fugitive Operation Program targeting 597,000 immigrants who have been ordered by a judge to leave the country but still remain.

Already, agents said, that since October, they have reduced the number of immigrants evading deportation by 35,000, marking the first-ever decline in the immigrant backlog.

...The U.S. Attorney's Office is prosecuting about a dozen of those arrested in the two-week operation for re-entering the U.S. after being deported. Most of those suspects are facing three to five years in federal prison.

That last paragraph is my favorite one in the whole article. If you're deported, you re-enter the country, and we catch you, you go in the pokey for 3-5 years. Outstanding! The more people who hear about that in other countries, the better, because if they get deported once, they won't risk 5 years in the pen to come back.