Washington, D.C. (January 25, 2021) – President Biden has pledged to allow all current and future illegal aliens to remain here forever, so long as they avoid a felony conviction (except one related to drunk driving, which he would ignore). The massive bill he proposes would actually repeal many long-standing measures to ensure compliance with immigration rules. The legislation also sets in motion a push to renege on the original grand bargain of 1986 and make it legal again to hire illegal aliens.
The radicalism of Biden’s approach is that it rejects both enforcement first and enforcement second in favor of enforcement never. To those who want assurances that the president will at least enforce immigration laws after an amnesty, the new administration’s answer is that of Judge Smails in Caddyshack: “You’ll get nothing, and like it.”
But the only way such an amnesty can work as policy — and be accepted as legitimate by the public — is if it addresses the reasons that such a large illegal population developed in the first place. Otherwise, today’s amnesty simply tees up tomorrow’s even bigger amnesty.
Past amnesty proposals have acknowledged the imperative of enforcement, in words if not in deeds. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which legalized about 3 million of the 5 million illegal aliens believed to be here at the time, was a grand bargain of amnesty in exchange for promises of future enforcement, specifically of the new ban on the hiring of illegal aliens. Those promises were not kept, and within a few years the continued non-enforcement of immigration law meant that all the amnestied illegal aliens were replaced by new ones.
The immigration bills pushed by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama also adopted this grand-bargain approach — amnesty for those already here in exchange for promises to enforce the law in the future.
This is why opposition to amnesty bills in Congress has centered on the demand for “enforcement first” instead of amnesty first. Bottom of Form
Such prerequisites would include mandatory use of the online E-Verify system to check the legal status of all new hires; a functioning entry-exit tracking system for foreign visitors, to ensure that they leave when they’re supposed to (most new illegal immigrants enter legally as visitors and then don’t leave); and full cooperation between federal immigration authorities and local law enforcement — i.e., an end to sanctuary cities.
The passage of the Biden immigration bill — even in a slimmed-down form — would merely guarantee continued illegal immigration in the future.
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