Monday, June 04, 2007

Amnesty

am·nes·ty /am-nuh-stee/ noun, plural -ties, verb, -tied, -ty·ing.
–noun

1. a general pardon for offenses, esp. political offenses, against a government, often granted before any trial or conviction.
2. Law. an act of forgiveness for past offenses, esp. to a class of persons as a whole.
3. a forgetting or overlooking of any past offense.

–verb (used with object)

4. to grant amnesty to; pardon.
The way I see it, people who are here illegally should have one of two options: pay for the crime or leave. Anything short of that seems to me to perfectly fit the definition of amnesty. So, whatever else the President may think this bill is, it is amnesty. This is not a difficult concept.

See, when people come to America, we expect it to be in order to become Americans. If they are only here for a visit, that is fine, too -- as long as they are here legally. If people are here illegally, then they might need amnesty. Unfortunately, that also involves jumping ahead of other people who are trying to do the right thing. Apparently our politicians could not care less about those who are trying to come into the country legally. This whole measure is drafted to cater to the 12 million illegal aliens that it is impossible to round up.

I'm done with the lot of them, except for my two Senators and my representative.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What we really need is enforcement of the current laws.

Pat's Rick© said...

Exactly, sir. Unless the executive has the will to enforce the borders, it's all just noise.

Hawkeye® said...

Rick,
Late to the party as usual... but what a GREAT point you make!

"when people come to America, we expect it to be in order to become Americans."

I never really thought about it quite that way (for some strange reason). So much of this debate has been couched in economic terms ("people doing jobs that Americans won't do"), that it is easy to entirely forget what immigration is really all about... people coming to the U.S.A. to become Americans.

My guess is that 90% or more of those who come here illegally (especially from Mexico), could care less about becoming Americans. For them, it's a simple matter of dollars and cents. "Show me the green!... and I don't mean lettuce".

Which reminds me of a joke. The Mexicans call us "gringos" because when they come here, our "green" then "goes" back to Mexico.

(:D) Best regards my friend...