At Accuracy in Academia’s Immigration Forum on Capitol Hill, Jessica Echard of Eagle Forum discussed guest worker programs. “Everyone has tried to distance themselves from the word amnesty,” she explained.
Amnesty would give illegal aliens in the United States immunity from U. S. immigration laws they are currently violating. The bill that passed the Senate would allow guest workers into the United States to work free of immigration restrictions that would otherwise be in place, supposedly for finite periods of time.
Echard gave the audience questions and “aspects we need to look at” when it comes to the different guest worker program proposals out there, including “Will people go home?”
She told the audience at AIA’s Conservative University forum that there will be a “massive increase in illegal immigrants” as a result of the recent bill passed in the Senate. The House bill emphasizes enforcement of U. S. immigration laws and border security. The Senate, meanwhile, passed a measure placing more emphasis on leniency towards illegal aliens already in the United States as well as their counterparts who have not yet illegally crossed north of the Mexican border.
Opposing such an approach is not a sign of bigotry, Echard points out, contrary to the image conveyed by proponents of such policies and in media reports on the debate over immigration reform. “Other immigrants applying for visas legally wait years to get into the United States,” Echard observes. “How is amnesty for those who come here illegally fair to those who try to do so legally?”
“My sister-in-law is trying to come here from Zimbabwe, a dictatorship run by Robert Mugabe,” AIA executive director Mal Kline revealed in remarks that followed Echard’s talk. “Interestingly, the only western media outlet Mugabe will allow to broadcast in Zimbabwe is CNN, so she got to see the immigration demonstrations in May.”
“She said to me, ‘Well, I see all these foreigners getting into your country. What is the status of my application?’”
“And I had to tell this woman, a mother and grandmother who has led a blameless life and who, with her master’s degree has a higher order skill set than any 12 illegals sneaking over the southern border picked at random, I had to tell her, ‘Well, the Department of Homeland Security says it will take 456 days to process your application because you are on a fast track.’”
Kline’s in-laws are people of color who can trace their ancestry back to Shaka, the last native ruler of what is now Zimbabwe before the British colonization. Mugabe, elected when Zimbabwe first achieved independence in 1980, has held onto his office for the past 26 years. Recently, his troops have bulldozed mosques, orphanages and churches.
Matthew Murphy is an intern for Accuracy in Academia.
