EckerNet.Com

The rift with the Republican Party continues as those that continue to insist that our laws be enforced clash with the Republicans who apparently feel as if you get away with it for a few years, we should just let it slide. Each side is proposing a bill. The anti-illegal immigration crowd has Bill Frists bill and the \”undocumented workers\” crowd has their bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee.

When you really boil it down the differences come down to what to do with the illegals who are already in the country. President Bush wants a comprehensive bill that covers both enforcement and a guest worker program. The pro-enforcement crowd wants to deal with stopping the hordes of immigrants flowing over our borders before anything else.

Why the difference? Well to be quite blunt, a guest worker program doesn\’t accomplish anything until we stop the flow across the border. My understanding is that one of the draws the guest worker program is know who we have here in the country and what they are doing. Well, how does that work if there are still hordes coming across? Nevermind, that a giant amnesty program like that (and yes that\’s what it is…don\’t try to bullshit me) would only encourage more illegals to cross the border.

Remember, Reagan tried this back in 1986 and it did nothing to stop the flow of illegals. We were promised then that we would be granting amnesty AND controlling the flow. However, we only granted amnesty and did nothing to control the flow. Now we\’re right back where we were before. Why should we do the same thing again and expect different results?

What the pro-enforcement crowd wants is to stop the flow of illegals first. THEN we\’ll deal with the ones we already have. The hole must be patched before the ship sinks. And we\’ve been promised that something would be done about our border problems too many times to take it on faith again. This is why many of us are opposed to the plan that includes a guest worker program. Let\’s secure our border now before things get worse.

[Tomorrow, I\’ll hopefully discuss the issue of dealing with the immigrants already in the country. Although, tomorrow is my Senate District Convention so if anything interesting comes out of that….well.]