No Fence Required: Reason # 9,742 the Immigration Reform (Amnesty) Bill Should Fail

Since the Corker/Hoeven amendment was inserted into the amnesty bill on Friday, its corrupt and costly components have been slowly coming to light. Here are three more reasons the bill needs to fail.

First, from Breitbart, explicit evidence the much-ballyhooed fence in the Corker/Hoeven amendment is not required in the legislation:

Another loophole inserted into the new version of the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill allows Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (or any of her successors) to nix the construction of a required border security fence if she does not find it to be an “appropriate” use of resources.

The new version of the bill was introduced via a so-called “border surge” amendment from Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND), with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repackaging the whole bill into the amendment.

The practical implications are clear:

This could allow illegal aliens to be granted amnesty, or legalized “Registered Provisional Immigration (RPI)” status, once Secretary Napolitano submits a fencing (and border security) plan to Congress. However, this provision allows Napolitano to decide against building the fence after doing so, with no legal ramifications.

Here is the language in the bill itself, from National Support Team member Shonda Werry:

Just as disturbing is how few Senators actually know what’s in the bill for employment purposes. From The Weekly Standard:

On Tuesday afternoon, THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked five different U.S. Senators about this problem. These five senators, all Democrats, voted to cut off debate Monday night on the revised immigration bill, but none of them knew if the bill would create a financial incentive for some employers to hire amnestied immigrants instead of American citizens.

However, backers of the law are getting cover from a fairly prominent mainstream media source: Glenn Kessler at The Fact Checker. First, Kessler claims “there is little evidence” to support the idea that employers would have a large incentive to hire immigrants over American citizens because of Obamacare. This despite 5 Senators, including one of the key people in writing Obamacare, don’t know the answer…and Kessler’s several significant updates and qualifiers to his original “fact-check.”

More recently, Kessler claims Senators had plenty of time to read and understand the bill between the addition of the Corker/Hoeven amendment and the cloture vote on Monday. His declaration relies on a couple of very tenuous statements: First, because the Congressional Budget Office can assess legislation, Congress’s staffers be able to as well. Second, many of the staffers examined various components of the bill for weeks before it was introduced. Lastly, he says the Senate’s strongly worded Suggestions (AKA Rules) were followed to a “T” by those who say the bill is too complex to understand in three days – and by following the “rules,” they made things more complex.

Kessler forgets the difference between staffers and members. It doesn’t matter if staffers understand the bill. The problem is that Members of Congress, the people voting on bills, don’t. Finally, whether or not things were made more difficult by Senators opposed to amnesty is moot,  the complexity of the bill itself is unrelated to procedural posturing. .

So, in short:

1. The required border fence before legalization? Not required at all.
2. The bill is so complex at least 5 amnesty-supporting Senators don’t know the answer to a very important question about it.
3. Understanding the bill is exceedingly difficult – and Congress should not be passing bills it does not understand.

Keep up the fight, everyone. We can stop this disaster of a bill where it stands – just keeping calling your Senators with these facts, and tell your neighbors and friends to do the same.