NumbersUSA Condemns Senate-White House Immigration Agreement

 Instant Amnesty for Lawbreakers, Heartache for American Workers

WASHINGTON, DC – NumbersUSA decried the immigration deal announced by the Senate today.  The proposal would allow virtually all illegal aliens currently in the United States to remain and work in this country.  In addition, it would raise legal importation of foreign workers over its already peak historical level.  Over the next 13 years alone, it would increase the current number of foreign-born green card holders from about 25 million (who arrived over 75 years) to around 50 million. 

“The Senate negotiators would have us believe we can solve illegal immigration by rewarding it, and that we can deal with the American people’s sense of being overwhelmed by a 20-year flood of accelerated immigration by increasing the numbers still further,” said NumbersUSA Executive Director Roy Beck.  “These Senators have sold out the American public and the rule of law by agreeing to craft such a disastrous bill that gives illegal aliens exactly what they broke the law to obtain – permission to live and work in the United States.  Several of these negotiators ran for re-election on platforms promising not to legalize immigration lawbreakers or have promised constituents for months that they would never be part of this kind of amnesty.  Their betrayal of trust was made official when they stood at the press conference this afternoon announcing the amnesty.”

The proposal will bring about another flood of illegal immigration as it has the same basic elements of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act: enhanced enforcement, legal immigration increases, guestworkers, and amnesties.  Amnesty is the pardoning immigration lawbreakers and rewarding them with the objective of their crimes, be it jobs or green cards.  Even if they are required to pay fines or back taxes, learn English and civics, or even ”go to the back of the line” for their green cards, if the end result is legal permission to work or stay for any period of time in the United States, it is amnesty. 

“In 1986 Senator Kennedy said, ‘This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.1 to 1.3 million illegal aliens.  We will secure the borders henceforth.  We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this.’  If Senator Kennedy lied to us then, how can we trust him now?” said Beck. “Attrition through enforcement is the only fair and feasible way to deal with the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens currently in the United States.  This proposal guarantees only that the problem of illegal immigration will only grow exponentially as it did after the 1986 amnesty.”

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