Amnesty's Back?

Michelle Malkin has the scoop and so does GOP USA. The new round of funding for Iraq is loaded with pork. There's no surprise there. That appears to be the standard operating procedure for the Congress (no matter who is in charge). What's new is that there are multiple amendments snuck into the bill that will grant amnesty to millions of illegals.

This time, the Senate is hiding the amnesty legislation inside the Iraq War Supplemental Appropriations Bill. That's right... the legislation focused on paying for our troops who are in harms way is also the means by which senators are trying to give illegal aliens a free pass. This is wrong, and we should once again let Congress know how we feel.


As noted in the story Senate loads war funding bill with domestic programs, the bill has become a hodge podge of numerous additions for pet projects and more spending. One rider presented by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Larry Craig (R-ID) "would allow almost 1.4 million immigrant farm workers to stay in the United States for up to five years." Another provision by Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) would "extend an expired program to allow seasonal workers to return to the country using H-2B visas."

To top it off, the amendments were snuck into the bill late at night.

There were no hearings on it and nobody had any idea that this was about to happen," Sessions said from his Capitol Hill office.

His staff had a late night analyzing the 101-page provision that would allow certain agricultural workers to stay in the country legally, and when Sessions came to work the next day, he was back in fiery form as lead critic of any new program that doesn't cut down on the number of border crossers.

"I was a bit surprised, I gotta tell you, because my impression was they didn't want to talk about immigration in an election year," he said. He already was fielding calls from national conservative commentators who wanted him to appear on their programs, and he was more than willing.

At issue was an amendment giving temporary legal status to those who can prove they've been working on U.S. farms in the past two years, pay a fine, and continue to work at least 100 days a year over the next five years.

Of course, it should surprise no one that amnesty is being snuck through the back door when no one is looking. The public at large has wholeheartedly rejected the idea every single time. Thus, these amendments were stucking a war funding bill late at night. What is even more shocking is that a Republican, Larry Craig (yes the same one), is one of the point people on one of these amnesty amendments.

Last week I layed out my 2008 Republican playbook for victory. and one of the things I called for was a strong commitment to border security. Let's just call this a step in the wrong direction on that matter for the Republicans.