Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff
Working Americans may be too busy to take to the streets.
Nonetheless, Congress is beginning to get an earful from Americans who see the Senate immigration bill as a sellout - amnesty for illegal aliens and citizenship for sale, cheap.
And guess who gets stuck holding the bag: Estimates are that the bill will cost American taxpayers trillions to pave the way for more cheap legal labor from Mexico.
Many of the criticisms are probably even less printable than the profane assessment offered by House Minority Leader John Boehner - who is said to have compared the bill to excrement.
Otherwise popular senators such as South Carolina's Lindsey Graham and Georgia's Saxby Chambliss have been roundly booed at home for their support of the bill.
The Senate is getting it from all sides - including those both for and against amnesty.
This all begs the question: Why have a bill at all? Why not just enforce existing laws? Why not secure the border - stop the bleeding, in essence, before trying to decide on surgery?
The guest worker component, for instance, would allow in hundreds of thousands of unskilled nonagricultural workers a year - which labor leaders say would depress wages, and which would lead to an entire underclass of unassimilated working poor.
And consider this Heritage Foundation analysis of taxes paid and benefits received by low-skilled immigrant households in the United States in fiscal year 2004: Low-skilled immigrant households received an average of $30,160 in public benefits while paying only $10,573 in taxes. In other words, other American households supported them to the tune of nearly $20,000 each.
That means each low-skilled immigrant household receives $3 for each dollar it pays in taxes.
"Over the next 10 years," Heritage Foundation analysts Robert Rector and Christine Kim write, "the net cost (benefits minus taxes) to the taxpayer of low-skill immigrant households will approach $1 trillion."
Rector is quoted as adding, "this is the most expensive bill the U.S. taxpayer has ever seen."
But worst of all, as far as conservatives are concerned, is the bill's amnesty for illegal aliens. It rewards law-breaking and border-hopping, and is a slap in the face to all potential foreign visitors and immigrants who have queued up legally.
"The prospect of amnesty for illegal immigrants and their families outweighs any tough border initiative that may be in the bill, or the get-tough employment-enforcement provisions," says Brian Darling, director of U.S. Senate relations for the Heritage Foundation. "All that will matter, if the bill passes, is that President Bush and presidential wannabe John McCain enabled and are responsible for a historic giveaway - for a program that grants amnesty to millions of illegal aliens who are being rewarded for breaking the law.
"I can't imagine any self-respecting conservative in America who would not hold this against McCain, Bush, and any other politician who supports this terrible idea."
This is another ill-considered, unnecessary effort at "comprehensive" immigration reform.
How about let's start with securing the border?
