Deceit on the Hill

If Congress polls lower in popularity than even the drain-circling President Bush, perhaps it has something to do with the crap legislators like to bury deep in the fine print of bills, hoping no one will see it until it has been passed into law. A perfect example comes from a bill passed by the Senate, which would, among other things, exempt employers who have employed illegal aliens in the past from paying any penalty for breaking the law.

Among those who will be cleared of past crimes under the Senate's proposed immigration-reform bill would be the businesses that have employed the estimated 10 million illegal aliens eligible for citizenship and that provided the very "magnet" that drew them here in the first place.

Buried in the more than 600 pages of legislation is a section titled "Employer Protections," which states: "Employers of aliens applying for adjustment of status under this section shall not be subject to civil and criminal tax liability relating directly to the employment of such alien."

Supporters of the legislation insist that such provisions do not amount to "amnesty."

"The legislation we are considering today is not amnesty," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said last week. "That is a pejorative term, really a smear term used to denigrate the efforts at comprehensive immigration reform. This is not amnesty because amnesty means a pardon of those who have broken the law."

Mr. Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, and others argue that the bill is not amnesty for illegal aliens because they will have to pay $2,000 in fines before they gain citizenship.

The law does not, however, provide for such fines against employers who have broken the law by hiring the illegals.

So let’s see, illegal aliens get off with a small fine (instead of being deported) and employers who broke the law (thus encouraging more illegal aliens to run across the border) get no fine at all. But that’s not amnesty. No. And the sun isn’t hot.

Anyone who thinks that any of those millions of illegal aliens will ever pay a dollar in fines should also line up to buy timeshares in Tierra del Fuego. Not a chance. In the event tha such ruinous legislation is ever passed, the ink will not be dry on the president’s signature before Latino groups are holding press conferences complaining." The fines will be denounced as … you can see it coming … a racist measure meant to stop poor brown people from becoming legal. The Democrats will froth at the mouth and hold up shining examples of "good" illegals who want to be citizens but can’t afford to pay the fines on their meager wages. Then Congress, which showed no backbone defending the border, will quickly come up with a "program" to help the illegals who cannot afford to pay the fines (just about all of them, I imagine). In short, the fines will disappear and the amnesty will be complete.

Not every Senator is willing to cave into the immigration lobby. Traditional Democrats, the sort that remember (in one case, personally) the Democrat Party of Jack Kennedy, voiced opposition on moral grounds.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, vehemently opposes "this effort to waive the rules for lawbreakers and to legalize the unlawful actions of undocumented workers and the businesses that illegally employ them."

Amnesties, he said, "are the dark underbelly of our immigration process."

"They tarnish the magnanimous promise enshrined on the base of the Statue of Liberty," Mr. Byrd said last week on the Senate floor. "Amnesties undermine that great egalitarian and American principle that the law should apply equally and should apply fairly to everyone."

Try telling that to the likes of Senator Edward Kennedy, who never been an amnesty for illegal aliens that he didn’t like, and whose 1965 immigration bill will be eventually recalled as the greatest disaster in US history.

But the fun is only beginning…

While most of the focus thus far has been on the "amnesty" granted to illegal aliens, opponents only now are discovering the broad range of crimes that will be forgiven under the legislation.

Lawyers for the Senate Judiciary Committee have scoured the bill and come up with a list of 31 crimes relating to illegal immigration that would be wiped clean.

One wonders how many other hidden gems the lobbyists, Latino activists and open border crowd have buried in the Senate bills. Such is the legislation conservatives can expect from a GOP-controlled Senate.