Q&A Friday #44: Bush’s Shift On Illegal Immigration & Also, The Pence Plan

Question: “Do you think GWB has really come around in his thinking on immigration? Does he really believe in “enforcement first” or is he just blowing smoke? Is the Pence compromise nothing more than a sham, still more lipstick on a very ugly pig?” — Cartman

Answer: The only thing Bush did was take one step towards the House because he absolutely had no other choice but to do so if he’s going to get a bill passed.

The House has correctly figured out that doing what Bush wants on illegal immigration is the political equivalent of taking cyanide and there’s just no way they’re going to support the amnesty plan that Bush wants. So, if Bush wanted to get a bill through, he had no choice but to take a step towards them.

Has he “come around” on the subject? Absolutely not. George Bush has proven over and over and over again that he wants as many illegal immigrants pouring over the border as he can get — and while he’s a fine President in a lot of areas, I don’t trust him on illegal immigration one iota more than I’d trust Ted Kennedy.

As far as the Pence compromise goes, it’s a terrible idea that is significantly worse than what the Senate has come up with in many respects. In fact, the only reason people are paying any attention to it at all is because they haven’t looked at the details of the plan and they just figure that if Mike Pence came up with it, it must be good. Mike Pence is an excellent Congressman who has done a lot for the country, but he has gone way off the rails with this atrocious immigration plan. Take a look at some of the features:

— An unlimited number of guest workers would be allowed for the first three years. By the way, when I say unlimited, I mean unlimited. It is as many as businesses want to bring in and all of them will eventually be eligible to become US citizens.

— At the 3 year mark,

“The plan would cede congressional constitutional authority over immigration to a presidential appointee who could expand the number of immigrants by millions. The power to transform America irrevocably would be granted to a bureaucrat to be named later by a president to be elected later. How many voting, legalized immigrants does Pence think would be too many for a President Hillary?” — Congressman Steve King

— From Tom Tancredo:

“The Pence plan includes no prevailing wage standard for foreign workers—it simply relies on the good will of employers to “try to hire American workers” before offering jobs under the new foreign worker visa. In fact, almost all current visas require employers to offer the job to American workers before seeking foreign labor, but with no enforcement mechanism, the requirement is laughable.”

— It’s an amnesty plan that allows the illegal aliens that are already here to simply go to Mexico on vacation for a week, run through an “Ellis Island Center,” and come right back to the US.

— Here are a few more miscellaneous complaints from Mark Krikorian:

“There are plenty of other reasons to dismiss the Pence plan as unserious: by not calling for an end to automatic citizenship at birth, it makes the “temporary” claim meaningless; his gimmick of having the private sector screen the workers misses the point that they will still need to use (and receive security clearances for access to) the very same databases that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security use now; and to get “temporary” workers, employers will merely have to attest that they tried to hire Americans, rather than using objective measures to determine need, like rising wages or low unemployment in the specific occupation in question.”

As you can see, in many respects, Pence’s plan is MUCH WORSE than the McCain/Kennedy/Reid bill being touted by the Senate and hopefully people won’t get snookered by it just because Mike Pence has attached his name to this abomination.

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