Fight Over Amnesty Looms on Capitol Hill

n response to growing public demands, the House of Representatives late last month passed legislation ostensibly designed to stem the flow of illegal immigration, but most of its provisions face an uncertain future, thanks to powerful commercial and left-wing pressure on the Senate and the White House.

The bill contains significant improvements in current immigration policy and enforcement, many of which were backed by Americans for Immigration Control and allied groups, including an end to the practice of letting non-Mexican illegal aliens go free when apprehended at the border, a practice derided by rank-and-file Border Patrol agents as "catch and release."

The bill eliminates the notorious visa lottery program that admits foreign populations at random. It also makes drunken driving a deportable offense, and authorizes construction of border fencing in parts of California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

In a major tightening of current loose policy, the bill would prohibit the attorney general from providing grant money to any federal, state, and local government agency or entity that provides sanctuary to illegal aliens.

The GOP leadership, worried that the bill's provisions will frighten away corporate support from the party, refused to allow a vote on a widely popular amendment to deny automatic citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil to illegal aliens. Known as "anchor babies," the automatic citizenship granted them usually means that the illegal parents will not be deported. As result, the U.S. is often the destination of choice for many pregnant Mexican women.

"It's an incredible magnet for illegal immigration," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-CO.

Border area hospitals report alarmingly high births to illegals. At just one hospital, Fort Worth's John Peter Smith Hospital in Texas, more than 73 percent of 5,775 deliveries in 2005 were the children of illegal aliens, said hospital spokeswoman Drenda Witt.

Officials at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas were quoted in the Dallas Morning News saying that about 80 percent of some 16,000 women who gave birth there qualified for taxpayer-supported Medicaid funding for illegal aliens.

The amendment to deny automatic citizenship was sponsored by Rep. Nathan Deal, R-GA, and had at least 80 cosponsors from 26 states, but was not brought up for a vote.

One major provision that could easily deter the hiring of illegal aliens was softened considerably, giving employers of illegals more time to evade the law. It would have required employers to check a national database to verify the Social Security numbers of prospective employees - thus preventing the use of fraudulent and stolen Social Security numbers. The bill passed by the House delays implementation of the national computer check for six years.
The White House issued a statement claiming to support the bill, but added that it remained "committed to comprehensive immigration reform, including a temporary worker program..."

President George Bush had recently visited the southwest U.S. to sell his guestworker/amnesty plan in a series of public appearances. Under his proposal, penalties for illegal entry would be waived and illegal aliens could apply for a three-year "guest worker" status and could reapply once.

The Bush proposal and several other similar guestworker/amnesty bills are slated for consideration by the Senate in February.

GOP strategists say they hope the Senate will adopt some form the guestworker/amnesty plan, and then merge it with it the House border security bill in a conference committee. That committee, which meets in secret, can then modify or soften the border security provisions just passed before sending the bill out for final passage. The House, which the White House fears will not pass a guestworker/amnesty plan alone, will then have to vote up-or-down on the entire package, which will likely contain at least some remaining border security improvements to lure House votes.

"There is widespread expectation that that is how it's going to play out," said Tamar Jacoby, a newconservative political theoretician who first developed the strategy of trying to sell the president's amnesty plan to the public as a border security issue.

Rep. Tancredo, head of the restrictionist 92-member Immigration Reform Caucus in the House, said the strategy is designed to get around him and his allied amnesty opponents.

"They're doing it this way because they know in the House they'll run into a buzz saw and maybe my name's on it," he said.

Immigration control lobbyists say they will fight against passage of any immigration bill that contains mass amnesty.

"Border security cannot work as long as there is a mass amnesty for illegals. That's the message we're taking to Congress. Americans have the right to safe and secure borders and an end to illegal immigration."