Shamnesty: hijacking reform: though politicians are now paying lip service to "border security" and immigration reform, both major parties are pushing legislation that would only make things worse.

"April Fool!" Congress and the White House are playing some cruel prank, right? Surely, they can't be serious about granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and opening the border floodgates even wider than they already are to millions more aliens who will be instantly legalized as "guest workers." Unfortunately, this is no joke. It is for real, and it is deadly serious.

During the last week of March and first week of April, the U.S. Senate showed why, as the midterm elections approach, more and more Americans are in a "throw the bums out" mood. With hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens marching and demanding their "rights" in cities all across the nation, the Senate, rather than act on House legislation aimed at taking back our borders, voted instead--repeatedly--for amnesty and more open borders. The only problem was which version of amnesty to adopt. On Thursday, April 6, the Senate leadership on both sides of the aisle exultantly announced that they had finally worked out the ideal amnesty (which, of course, they insisted was not an amnesty): the "Hagel-Martinez Compromise." Named for Republican Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Mel Martinez of Florida, the amendment would have, in effect, given amnesty to virtually all of the estimated 12 million illegal aliens already here.

Fortunately, the consensus was short-lived. It fell apart before the end of the day. The next day, April 7, the Senate recessed for a two-week Easter break without passing an immigration bill. Much of the credit for the collapse of this dangerous "consensus" is due, no doubt, to the rising angry chorus from Middle America demanding an end to this sellout of our country. But that chorus will have to grow even louder to overcome the combined pressure for amnesty and open borders coming from the Bush White House, the Democrat Party, big labor, big business, big media, and liberal churches.

Every politician, from President Bush on down--Democrat, Republican, left, right, and center--is now paying obligatory lip service to "border security." Yet the political powers that be in both major political parties are pushing legislation that would dramatically compound our immigration crisis, invite a continuous rush of even more illegal aliens across our borders, and essentially render enforcement (at our borders and in our interior) null and void.

Polls by Gallup, Time magazine, Zogby, NBC, the Wall Street Journal, IQ Research, and others have consistently shown that voters unequivocally want to see our government take back control of our broken borders and our dysfunctional immigration system--for security, economic, social, and political reasons. An IQ Research poll in March reported that 92 percent of those surveyed thought border security should be the top priority of the politicians in Washington. Other polls have registered similar pro-enforcement responses in percentiles ranging in the 70s and 80s.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle are posturing and equivocating to mollify the voters. In a post-9/11 world, where, in the name of security against the threat of terrorism, we are daily bombarded with pronouncements of new policies that restrict and limit our rights as U.S. citizens, politicians know that they must at least appear to be tough regarding border security. The good news in all of this, of course, is that if even a fraction of that overwhelming majority of Americans can be informed and activated to vocally oppose this sellout, the politicians will scurry back to the correct side of the fence. With elections looming in November, they are more sensitive than usual and do not want to rile their voting constituents.

Pitfalls of Proposed Legislation

The Senate action got rolling on March 27 with the Judiciary Committee's 12-6 vote in favor of legislation sponsored by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), and John McCain (R-Ariz.), and broadly endorsed by President Bush, that places emphasis on amnesty and a misnamed "guest worker" program, while giving short shrift to enforcement.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) signaled that he was prepared to try to sell a variation of the Kennedy-McCain-Bush amnesty/guest-worker scheme to the full Senate. But first he had to feint to the right by striking a hard-line enforcement pose. "There are 3 million people every year coming across our borders illegally," Senator Frist told CNN. "We don't know who they are; we don't know what their intentions are. We absolutely must address it. I hope by Friday [April 7] that we will have a bill on the floor that is comprehensive."

Comprehensive. That's one of the code words sent down from the Bush White House to duck the enforcement issue. What it means is more lies and razzle-dazzle; more promises of future delivery on enforcement, in exchange for real, up front delivery on amnesty and guest-worker programs today.

Whatever bill comes out of the Senate after the Easter break, it will have to be reconciled with H.R. 4437, the House bill passed last December. Yielding to pressure from angry constituents and an aggressive campaign by Reps. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.), and other members of the House Immigration Caucus, the House version focuses entirely on enforcement issues and included no amnesty or guest-worker provisions. Known officially as The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, the House bill has been demonized as racist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant by the "immigrant rights" lobby.

From the vilification that has been heaped upon it, one might surmise that H.R. 4437 is a thoroughly draconian measure that would completely shut down the border and even stop all legal immigration. In truth, the House bill is far from adequate on the enforcement front and is only a good start at solving one of our nation's most urgent crises. The main features of the bill include making illegal entry into the U.S. a felony; increasing penalties for violent aliens, document fraud, and alien smuggling; authorizing the construction of 700 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border; eliminating the lottery that awards 50,000 annual immigration visas; and creating an instant verification computer system so that employers can check the legal status of employees.

Those are very modest proposals, not the hard-line extremist measures the bill's critics claim. For instance, the bill does not even end "birthright" citizenship, whereby an estimated 350,000 children born in this country to illegal aliens each year are automatically declared U.S. citizens.

The more "moderate" critics of H.R. 4437 insist that the House bill is impractical and unworkable because it offers no amnesty and no provision for allowing even more "temporary" workers into the country. Incredibly, the leading spokesman for these "moderates" is none other than Senator Ted Kennedy. Although for decades he has been one of the most extreme "open borders" advocates, the Bush White House's support for his position has transformed Kennedy into a instant centrist. As National Public Radio reporter Steve Inskeep noted in a March 27 interview with Kennedy, the White House is an important ally of the Kennedy-McCain position.

With the White House providing cover, Republicans in the House and Senate have been willing to buck their constituents. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a supposed conservative, was one of the four Republicans who enabled the Kennedy-McCain bill to pass in the Judiciary Committee. "It would be political suicide to ignore there's 11 million people, illegally undocumented, who are trying to work and add value to our country," he told Fox News. Like Graham, many other Republicans have adopted the Kennedy-McCain-Feinstein argument that this is such a "complicated" matter that it can't be addressed by a "simplistic" enforcement approach; a comprehensive approach is necessary.

Straight Talk vs. Double Talk

Contrast this Potomac double talk from the politicians with some Rio Grande straight talk from the Border Patrol agents, local law enforcement, and Minuteman volunteers who are manning our borders. On April 1, the Minuteman Project launched its spring initiative, a replay of its wildly successful effort in 2005 to help seal the most heavily overrun sections of the U.S.-Mexico border. Thousands of Minuteman volunteers showed up to establish a presence and serve as eyes and ears for the thinly-spread Border Patrol.

As expected, the leftists from the ACLU, La Raza, and other pro-immigration groups denounced the Minutemen as racist vigilantes. President Bush even joined in, hurling the "vigilante" label at peaceful U.S. citizens who were trying to do what he was refusing to do: protect our nation.

However, the Minuteman Project showed what can be done. Without resorting to any violence or confrontation, they virtually shut down the usual flood of alien-smuggling traffic along much of the U.S.-Mexican border. Peacefully, using binoculars, radios, and cell phones, they largely accomplished what the Kennedy-McCain-Bush crowd say can't be done: they brought security, law, and order to the border.

On April 4 of this year, the FOX News program Hannity & Colmes gave its viewers a break from the political blatherings from Washington to conduct a live interview from the Arizona-Mexico border with Chris Simcox, one of the founders of the Minuteman Project. Mr. Simcox told FOX viewers: "Since we began--we've been working 72 hours so far--[we've had] 308 sightings, 91 apprehensions, and six rescues. Our government should be ashamed."

Fox's Alan Colmes asked Simcox why he believed he had any authorization to be out there and suggested that it could lead to violence. "We always screen our volunteers, Alan, and you know that," Simcox replied. "We've been working out here for 4 1/2 years. There's never been one incident of any Minuteman or any citizen volunteers taking the law into their own hands. We are well-regulated, responsible, concerned citizens who are out here doing our duty to help with the Department of Homeland Security, doing the job that the president and the Congress won't do."

Colmes tried again: "But as we speak, you know, there's a lot of negotiating back and forth [in Congress], trying to figure out just what to do, on what scale to do it."

Simcox answered bluntly and to the point. "You know, we don't need negotiations, Alan. Come on. It's four and a half years past September 11. We keep negotiating. We keep having studies. We keep debating the issue while people are dying in the desert. American citizens are victims of the crime wave coming into this country. And as another news agency reported today, 300,000 people from the Middle East were apprehended coming into this country last year. This is a clear and present danger. It is the greatest threat to national security and public safety. The time for negotiating is over."

Mr. Simcox then pointed out that we don't need more legislation to secure our borders. The president has the authority now to assign U.S. Army and National Guard units to the U.S.-Mexico Border.

Sean Hannity asked Simcox if he agreed that the Kennedy-McCain bill in the Senate was really a disguised amnesty. "Well, we call it 'shamnesty,'" Simcox replied. "And Senators McCain and Kennedy and the rest of the Senate should be shamed out of office for refusing to enforce the laws of this nation. There's no place for any elected official in our government who refuses to enforce the law. It's nothing but amnesty. And, again, they've got the cart before the horse. You secure that border now, immediately. And, by the way, 7,000 volunteers are out here this month to help you do it. Enforce the laws, then we'll talk about a guest-worker program."

Retired Border Patrol Agent Robert Stille agrees with Simcox. Very few people can match the knowledge gained through 38 years of work experience that Mr. Stille brings to the immigration and border debate. He began with the Border Patrol in 1958 and retired in 1990, working many areas of our border, but spending most of his time in our busiest sectors of Southern California. In 1997, he went back to work for five years in the INS's citizenship program.

He sees in the current legislative debate a deja vu to 1986. "The amnesty of 1986 was an absolute debacle," be reminds us. "We were told that the bill was dead and would not be passed. Suddenly it came to life, Congress quickly passed it and President Reagan signed it. We, the INS, were completely unprepared for it. No regulations had been written as to how to administer the program. A crash program was undertaken and we were told that there would be one million illegals in the U.S. who would apply."

"Well, it turned out there were three million applicants," Mr. Stille recalled to THE NEW AMERICAN. "They came out of the woodwork everywhere, and they were not all Mexicans. They were from all over the world. There were students who were out of status, visitors who overstayed their visas and just stayed on, etc. There was a great deal of fraud involved in who was eligible, too."

Stille, like former Border Patrol Chief William King, whom we interviewed in January ("We Can Control Our Borders," January 23, 2006), sees the current proposals for amnesty and "guest workers" as certain to produce a far greater disaster than the 1986 amnesty. "I have heard from the agents that the illegals are streaming over the border right now in record numbers," he told us. "They believe that the big increase is due to the possible amnesty that may be offered. Just the suggestion that there may be one is a huge magnet."

"I hope they do not pass a guest-worker program, because it is only amnesty in disguise," Stille warns. "We were told in 1986 that the amnesty was a one-time end-all to the illegal alien problem. It just continued and the illegal entries and drugs increased in numbers. Then we were told that NAFTA was the end-all to the problem. There would be many jobs in Mexico and they would all stay home to work, we were told. The illegal immigration problem skyrocketed again to the proportions that we have today. Senator Kennedy and many of the other senators who are now calling for 'guest worker' [programs] are the very same ones who perpetrated these earlier frauds on us. We had better not be foolish enough to listen to them again. It's encouraging that all the polls show the American people firmly reject another amnesty. The trick for us is to make sure that they are not duped into accepting another one disguised as 'legalization,' 'guest worker,' etc., sweetened with promises of tougher enforcement."