If It's Not Amnesty Then What is It?

The Washington Times has a couple of great articles today on the illegal alien issue. One details the fact that employers who have hired illegal aliens will be essentially given a clean slate. The other focuses on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the challenges they will face on implementing the legislation.

Per the first article:

Among those who will be cleared of past crimes under the Senate's proposed immigration-reform bill would be the businesses that have employed the estimated 10 million illegal aliens eligible for citizenship and that provided the very "magnet" that drew them here in the first place. Buried in the more than 600 pages of legislation is a section titled "Employer Protections," which states: "Employers of aliens applying for adjustment of status under this section shall not be subject to civil and criminal tax liability relating directly to the employment of such alien."

Further into the article:

"The legislation we are considering today is not amnesty," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said last week. "That is a pejorative term, really a smear term used to denigrate the efforts at comprehensive immigration reform. This is not amnesty because amnesty means a pardon of those who have broken the law."

I've often said that politicians, especially at the federal level, are simply not in touch with reality. They are so caught up in "politics" and focusing on what the media is saying about them that they often aren't able to get anything productive done. This isn't just confined to one party either; Republicans and Democrats are both guilty. This is another example. If you don't consider wiping the slate clean for employers who have illegally employed undocumented workers amnesty, then what exactly do you consider amnesty?

If this legislation were to be passed, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) would be responsible for straightening out the estimated 10 million illegal, undocumented aliens in this country. They would be charged with determining whether they were short- or long-term immigrants and all of this will need to be backed up with some kind of documentation. Oh yeah did I mention they want the 10 million people taken care of in 90 days? What this will amount to is what we saw in wake of Katrina with thousands of people receiving money and aid that they didn't need because they weren't truly affected by the hurricane. Long-term workers would essentially be put on the path to eventually gain citizenship. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that none of these illegals will claim short-term status and they will all be able to get away with it because the "documentation" element of this whole thing is shaky at best. How do you legitimize something with documentation on undocumented workers? This legislation simply creates a slippery slope that we are not currently prepared to face. I am convinced that there has to be a better way to deal with this. What we're looking at now amounts to a big mess.