Oh, How they Play with Amnesty Numbers

Illegal aliens, politics, comments, rants, etc..

2007/6/25

Oh, How they Play with Amnesty Numbers

@ 03:48 PM (10 months, 25 days ago)

This just makes for some fun reading in seeing how the politicians try so hard to BS the people.

Let’s start with the bill’s pretense that the government can conduct background checks on some 12-million amnesty applicants — within the 24-hour turnaround time guaranteed for each applicant. This is the same federal bureaucracy that can’t meet a three-month deadline for processing passports for its own citizens. The Senate bill would have us believe that the government’s already-overworked immigration processors would be able to review and clear 12 million applications in a year’s time — that’s 48,000 every workday !

Funny numbers aren’t always so funny. After the Heritage Foundation reported that the amnesty bill would cost the country $2.6 trillion, the White House issued a report from its Council of Economic Advisers claiming that modern immigration is a net economic boost “in the long run.” What’s the long run to them? Only 300 years! (A somewhat longer time than what Heritage considered.) To reach their Pollyanna conclusion, the CEA had to intermix the benefits of legal immigration to offset the detrimental impact of illegal immigration.

Trying to make us think that they’re serious about scofflaws, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency last week reported progress in tracking down the 630,000 illegals who remain in this country despite court orders requiring them to leave. It’s a huge number, ICE admitted, but don’t fret. The agency has the situation in hand because (drum roll please) its beefed-up enforcement effort has reduced the number of absconders at-large by 500 in the last couple of months. Only 625,500 to go! At a rate of 500 each month, they’ll finish the job in only 105 years more!

Amnesty supporters claim the bill will solve the problem of illegal immigration. But the numbers don’t back them up. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will reduce the flow of illegal immigrants by only a quarter, at best. Moreover, the CBO analysis found the bill’s guest-worker program would quickly attract another one million illegal aliens within a decade — half of them right away.