Posted by
Bruce Armstrong on Friday, June 08, 2007 9:57:47 AM
I was attending my niece's high school graduation last night and so missed the second cloture vote on the disaster known as the Kennedy-McCain immigration bill. Luckily, the vote was 45-50 against cloture - not quite as good as the first vote, but still a significant defeat for Kennedy, McCain, Harry Reid and the President.
Both for the sake of national security and rational immigration reform, the first issue addressed HAS to be border security. The current proposals all have the horse before the cart - addressing the legalization of those already illegally in this country, with little or no real emphasis on securing our borders and preventing (or at least greatly reducing) illegal border crossings.
I liken illegal immigration to a broken pipe in your bathroom first. If you wake up early one morning to the sound of running water, and find your bathroom flooded, you don't run down to Home Depot to pick out new floor tile and paint and carpet for the hallway. Instead, you first STOP THE FLOW of water by closing a valve or turning the water off at the main. Second, you CLEAN UP THE SPILL - mop up the bathroom floor, dry out the carpet, clean up the mess under the bathroom sink. Third, you FIX THE PIPE - repair or replace the leaking pipe or joint. Then and ONLY then, do you worry about fixing up the bathroom.
The Kennedy-McCain bill skipped stopping the flow, cleaning up the mess, or fixing the problem and went right to the last step. If you did that in your bathroom, you'd be putting down new floor tile and repainting the walls even as more water continued to flood in. Immigration "reform" is pointless if we don't secure the border and prevent the post-reform flood of illegals that will surely occur just as it did after the 1986 "reform."