Bush's amnesty carrot and stick - bogus `enforcement' funding and political arm twisting

The pressure inWashington continues to mount as President Bush continues the push for his amnesty bill.

After a lot of presidential arm twisting, the senate got back together to try and get the bill passed before the July 4th recess. The so-called ` bipartisan negotiators' thrashed things out and got the hundreds of possible amendments down to a package of 11 amendments from Republicans and another 11 from Democrats and then presented the mess to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.)...who then said that he would allow the bill to come to the floor for discussion.

One key item the president used to try and get the senate toroll over was a new plan to devote $4.4 billion to bolstering border surveillance and enforcement, and preventing illegal immigrants from being hired in workplace.

Sounds peachy, until you realize that the$4.4 billion is supposedly going to come from fines and `penalties' collected from illegal aliens by the legislation. And you realize that realistically collecting the money is a giant paperwork, data and manpower problem, evasion will be epidemic and the `penalty' part of the legislation is likely to be successfully challenged legally under the equal protection provision of the Constitution.

Translation? Like the money Congress allocated last year for the border fence thatnever got spent since it essentially never got built, it's just words on paper that no one will bother paying attention to.

Meanwhile, the amnesty will be permanent and irremovable.

I mean, if the Bush Administration was really serious about fixing the border, they would've allocated this money and expedited the construction a long time ago.

Not only that, but there's absolutely no reason to marry an immigration issue with a national security issue...unless your trying to push one item through by scamming legislators and the public with a promise to deal with the other.

Listen to the president talking to the Associated Builders and Contractors yesterday, a group of employers who break the law regularly by hiring large numbers of illegals to circumvent having to pay union wages: "We're going to show the American people that the promises in this bill will be kept."

With all respect, Mr. President, my mother didn't raise any dumb children.And I don't trust you on this issue in the least.

Fix the border first and show us how serious you are about this national security issue - and then we'll address the problem of the illegal aliens already in the country.