To the editor:
The comprehensive immigration bill now being floated in Congress portends disastrous results. This proposed bill allows the up to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. to be offered an eventual path to citizenship. Granted, these individuals will have to pay a $5,000 fine, will have to learn English to some level of competency, and will have to leave the U.S. to formally apply for readmission to the U.S. – which will be guaranteed if they have no certified mental illness or arrest record.
These illegal entrants will be allowed to cut into the line of people desiring legal entrance into the U.S. ahead of the many who have played by the rules and are waiting in their homelands for the legal process to play out. This is grossly unfair. The U.S. has among the world’s most liberal and generous immigration policies; those who desire to come here should play by the rules.
If this bill becomes law, the floodgates of illegal immigrants will open wide and we will be swamped with more people assuming that if they can get here and hide successfully, they, too, will be given amnesty down the road. This will make a mockery of our immigration system. We had an amnesty situation in 1984 when Ronald Reagan was President when we had a believed three million illegal immigrants. Immediately after that bill passed, our borders were breached by hordes of new illegals crossing the border. If history is a barometer – and it usually is – we’ll have a massive new crossing of millions more illegal immigrants into our country and we’ll be faced with an even bigger problem.
This kind of bill favors big businesses that salivate over the many low wage workers generating greater corporate profits. It also benefits the Democratic Party as they believe most of the people once they gain citizenship will likely register as Democrats. With this obvious pandering to big business and politics this bill shows itself to be flagrant, it stretches the imagination that most American citizens can’t see through it. If U.S. citizens raise their voices loud enough, this bill should die; however, a silent or passive citizenry will likely facilitate passage of the bill.
I hope sanity, social conscience, and logic reigns and this bill fails to become law, but I’m not sure, in this highly charged political atmosphere, that this will prevail. If this bill passes, U.S. border states will suffer an inundation of added illegal immigrants and their costs in social and medical services and crime costs will skyrocket. Let’s hope the bill stalls due to political bickering or fails.
Ken Petress
Presque Isle
