Schumer’s Amnesty Rat Race

Yesterday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) took the extraordinary step of writing a letter to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, asking her to delay implementation of Arizona’s new immigration law in order to give the Senate a chance to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The Governor’s quick reply: “No.” Sen. Schumer’s letter, combined with other actions by previously pro-amnesty Senators, shows that Schumer and his cronies are running scared because the American people are about to get the chance to see that Attrition Through Enforcement works.

A few months ago, life was pretty good for Sen. Schumer. He was working with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to craft a comprehensive amnesty bill and he was even holding immigration hearings stacked with pro-amnesty religious leaders.

Schumer was somehow able to put the amnesty failure of 2007 behind him. While the 2007 amnesty bill was not his bill (it belonged to President Bush, Sen. Kennedy, and Sen McCain), he was a major backer of the bill. He was even able to ignore the largest jobs depression since the Great Depression – overlooking the 15 million Americans without a job and the 10 million Americans looking for a full-time job as well as the tremendous numbers of young, minority Americans unable to find a job (40%, among some groups). Sen. Schumer was so caught up with the zeal of picking up the late Sen. Kennedy’s immigration mantle that he was able to ignore the plight of tens of millions of Americans who can not find jobs and have given up looking for a job. And then Arizona happened.

To say that Arizona’s immigration legislation has put a spanner in Schumer’s immigration works would be an understatement. Let me be clear: neither Sen. Schumer nor any other Member of Congress had the votes they needed lined up to force an amnesty bill through Congress this year. However, Arizona’s bill and the subsequent aftermath has forced Sen. Schumer, Sen. Graham, and even President Obama to start backpedaling real fast. 

Just this week Sen. Graham announced “comprehensive immigration reform” couldn’t pass this year and listed a dozen Senate Democrats he believes “don’t have the appetite” for amnesty (you can send them faxes of support if one is your Senator). Yesterday President Obama said “I want to begin work this year, and I want Democrats and Republicans to work with me — because we’ve got to stay true to who we are, a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants” The Arizona legislature’s passage of SB 1070, and the subsequent outpouring of support from every corner of our nation, has shown the American people and legislators in other states (legislators in several other states are in the process of proposing similar legislation) that it is possible to act at the state level. To borrow from Greek myth, Arizona has opened her box and Sen. Schumer is desperately trying to get it closed.

Sen. Schumer is running scared because Arizona’s law will give “Attrition Through Enforcement” a chance to work. For years, we’ve been hearing from certain pro-amnesty politicians that enforcement alone will not work and the only way to fix our immigration system is to reward illegal aliens with amnesty. Well, Arizona is going to act as a Petri dish for enforcement-over-amnesty policies. SB1070, combined with Arizona’s already existing law requiring all businesses in the state to use E-Verify will no doubt prove successful in causing illegal aliens to leave the state and opening up jobs for Arizonans. This would be incredibly damaging for Sen. Schumer and his amnesty cabal because they would lose what they believe to be their trump card. If Arizona’s experiment proves that yes, in fact, Attrition Through Enforcement does indeed work, then the amnesty gang in the Senate has a problem..

Since Arizona’s passage of SB 1070, various opinion polls have shown that people across this country support law and order over turning a blind eye to lawlessness. Two polls in particular have forced Sen. Graham to not only abandon amnesty, but to throw several Democratic swing-voters under, not just a bus, but a monster truck (and a really big monster truck at that). The first poll showed that more than 70% of Arizonans supported SB 1070 and the second poll showed that more than 60% of Americans supported the premise of SB 1070 – allowing state and local law enforcement officers to enforce immigration law. Even though Sen. Graham is not up for reelection until 2014, he is clearly worried that people in his own state share these feelings.

After reading this, you might ask, “What is this pompous, self-obsessed man trying to say?” The answer is: Sen. Schumer and his cronies are running scared because the American people are about to get the chance to see that Attrition Through Enforcement works. The amnesty ship is sinking and the rats are fleeing the ship – some more enthusiastically than others.

JOE JENKINS is a writer/researcher for NumbersUSA