Jim Terry
Who are we?
By Jim Terry
The flood of radio propaganda sponsored by a group calling itself Americans for a Conservative Direction (ACD) brings to mind the Emerson quote, "The louder he proclaimed his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
The ads are loaded with emotional flap about a broken immigration system, promises of securing the border, and denying these lawbreakers federal welfare benefits. The reality, however, is: border security is not a priority for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democrats; and the Senate Judiciary Committee amended the immigration bill on May 20 to allow illegal aliens who obtain legal status to receive tax paid welfare benefits.
Marco Rubio, the poster boy for illegal immigrants, states in one ad, "What we have in place today is de facto amnesty."
Yes, Marco, we have amnesty because our government will not enforce the laws which congress has passed.
Many years ago our government initiated a "catch and release" policy. In July 2003, the Washington Times reported on a National Public Radio broadcast about a federal immigration court in Harlingen, Texas. As a result of the government's catch and release program, the NPR reported, "98 per cent of defendants never show up." The NPR piece goes on to lament that the judge cannot do anything about this because his court is "...a cog in the wheel of the government's "catch and release" policy where illegals are rubber-stamped into the country."
Last year we learned the Obama administration had ratcheted up the catch and release policy to include selective enforcement in prosecutions of illegal aliens. The late Tony Snow, the highly respected White House press secretary for George W. Bush, proclaimed in a Human Events article in 2007 that the last comprehensive immigration reform legislation, the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act was, "... a failure notably in terms of enforcement and punishment for lawbreakers."
That same article also quotes from an earlier piece in Human Events by Edwin Meese, Ronald Reagan's Attorney General, who wrote regarding Simpson- Mazzoli, "There was extensive document fraud and the number of people applying for amnesty far exceeded projections. And there was a failure of political will to enforce new laws against employers. After a brief slowdown, illegal immigration returned to high levels and continued unabated, forming the nucleus of today's large population of illegal aliens."
It is the failure of political will to enforce laws by our government that should give Americans cause to oppose the amnesty for illegal aliens legislation now being considered in the U.S. Senate.
The one ad produced by ACD, however, that speaks volumes of the problem, not only with immigration, but with everything coming from Washington, D.C. is the ad in which Representative Paul Ryan says regarding the current immigration system, "Right now, we encourage people to break the law and we punish people who follow the law."
By his use of the word 'we,' Ryan admits he is the problem. The word 'we' includes the speaker and others. I don't know who the others are that encourage people to break the law. It certainly is not Ryan's constituents nor most Americans. It is not conservatives. It is not I.
Ryan must be speaking of the political establishment in Washington- congress, the president, the federal courts and all the unnecessary bureaucrats who run our lives. And it is all of them who lack the political will to enforce our laws.
If the 'we' Ryan is speaking of is all of them, why should Americans believe he and they can or will fix the problem he and they created?
© Jim Terry
June 20, 2013
The flood of radio propaganda sponsored by a group calling itself Americans for a Conservative Direction (ACD) brings to mind the Emerson quote, "The louder he proclaimed his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
The ads are loaded with emotional flap about a broken immigration system, promises of securing the border, and denying these lawbreakers federal welfare benefits. The reality, however, is: border security is not a priority for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democrats; and the Senate Judiciary Committee amended the immigration bill on May 20 to allow illegal aliens who obtain legal status to receive tax paid welfare benefits.
Marco Rubio, the poster boy for illegal immigrants, states in one ad, "What we have in place today is de facto amnesty."
Yes, Marco, we have amnesty because our government will not enforce the laws which congress has passed.
Many years ago our government initiated a "catch and release" policy. In July 2003, the Washington Times reported on a National Public Radio broadcast about a federal immigration court in Harlingen, Texas. As a result of the government's catch and release program, the NPR reported, "98 per cent of defendants never show up." The NPR piece goes on to lament that the judge cannot do anything about this because his court is "...a cog in the wheel of the government's "catch and release" policy where illegals are rubber-stamped into the country."
Last year we learned the Obama administration had ratcheted up the catch and release policy to include selective enforcement in prosecutions of illegal aliens. The late Tony Snow, the highly respected White House press secretary for George W. Bush, proclaimed in a Human Events article in 2007 that the last comprehensive immigration reform legislation, the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act was, "... a failure notably in terms of enforcement and punishment for lawbreakers."
That same article also quotes from an earlier piece in Human Events by Edwin Meese, Ronald Reagan's Attorney General, who wrote regarding Simpson- Mazzoli, "There was extensive document fraud and the number of people applying for amnesty far exceeded projections. And there was a failure of political will to enforce new laws against employers. After a brief slowdown, illegal immigration returned to high levels and continued unabated, forming the nucleus of today's large population of illegal aliens."
It is the failure of political will to enforce laws by our government that should give Americans cause to oppose the amnesty for illegal aliens legislation now being considered in the U.S. Senate.
The one ad produced by ACD, however, that speaks volumes of the problem, not only with immigration, but with everything coming from Washington, D.C. is the ad in which Representative Paul Ryan says regarding the current immigration system, "Right now, we encourage people to break the law and we punish people who follow the law."
By his use of the word 'we,' Ryan admits he is the problem. The word 'we' includes the speaker and others. I don't know who the others are that encourage people to break the law. It certainly is not Ryan's constituents nor most Americans. It is not conservatives. It is not I.
Ryan must be speaking of the political establishment in Washington- congress, the president, the federal courts and all the unnecessary bureaucrats who run our lives. And it is all of them who lack the political will to enforce our laws.
If the 'we' Ryan is speaking of is all of them, why should Americans believe he and they can or will fix the problem he and they created?
© Jim Terry
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