Why It’s Amnesty
The president’s approach to immigration is hard to counter because:
1. It’s bad in so many ways that it’s hard to list all of them
2. It’s deceptive in so many ways that it’s exhausting to point out all of them
I’m going to take on just one deception today: “Amnesty.”
Bush defines “amnesty” as an “automatic path to citizenship” for illegal aliens. Because the illegal alien will be forced to cough up $2,000, pay his back-taxes, and learn English, he is not supposed to be getting “amnesty.”
Analogy: Suppose you steal a car. Now you keep the car for five years. At the end of that period, if you can prove that you stole the car, pay the license fees on the car, pay a fine, and demonstrate adequate driving skills, you can keep that car. Instead of going to jail. And that’s not supposed to be “amnesty.”
If you think that the car thief in the example above got amnesty, then the illegal aliens under Bush’s plan would be getting amnesty.
Is US citizenship worth as much as a car? Well, the Central American country of Belize charges $25,000 for citizenship. Surely US citizenship is worth more, perhaps as much as a Rolls Royce.
As for the jail part of the analogy, the penalty for violating America’s borders is up to six months in jail, under current law.
If Bush wants to argue that illegal aliens aren’t getting amnesty under his plan, then he’s effectively arguing that the car thief didn’t get amnesty in the scenario I describe above.
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