Immigration Reform On Life Support
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Immigration, LegislationIf the guest worker program is only allowed to go on for 5 years, there’s really no point in passing this legislation.
The plan to overhaul the nation’s immigration system survived its most serious challenges yesterday, when the Senate defeated amendments to disqualify hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from legalization and to extend visas to hundreds of thousands more relatives of U.S. citizens and green-card holders.But just after midnight, the Senate approved by a single vote an amendment to shut down the bill’s proposed guest-worker program after five years. The 49 to 48 vote, coming just days after the Senate cut the size of the guest-worker program in half, could upset the delicate bipartisan balance behind the deal. [...]
Still, the bill took a decidedly conservative turn last night with the adoption of amendments that would at once declare English the national language and designate English the “common language” of the United States. The Senate also blocked the bill’s newly legalized undocumented workers from receiving the earned-income tax credit, while denying legalized undocumented workers any Social Security benefits they may have earned after overstaying their visa.
Something much, much better can be crafted in the future, free from all of this last minute cutting and pasting.
This bill needs to be euthanized.
Pull the plug.
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 and is filed under Immigration, Legislation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
