Guy Benson @ Hot Air:
Last week, I reported the following:
One of the lingering questions I’ve harbored about the forthcoming “Gang of Eight” immigration bargain (the Tuesday roll-out of which was appropriately postponed due to the events in Boston) is how long the “open enrollment” period for amnesty would be. Surely the bill includes a finite time box, rather than unleashing an ongoing, open-ended new policy, right? Right. “There’s a cut-off after one year,” a GOP source familiar with the plan tells me.The federal government would begin accepting applications for provisional legal status “after the first two security triggers are met, and [the government] begins the application process.”
But Byron York’s review of the legislative language reveals that the 365-day “open enrollment” period isn’t quite as airtight as it may seem:
The bill’s supporters point out that the Gang of Eight would limit the period of time in which illegal immigrants can apply for a blue card. That’s true; the bill specifies that applications have to be filed in the year after the last of the rules enforcing the new immigration law have gone into effect. But the bill also gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the discretion to extend that period by another year and a half if she or he determines that “additional time is required” for the applications. The extension can also be granted for any other “good cause.”
Given the nation’s ongoing Obamacare “train wreck” experience and Napolitano’s political leanings, does a single person doubt that she’d exercise her prerogative and conclude that “additional time is required” to process applications, if given the chance? Hell, she might even be right on the merits. Remember, this bill would require the federal government to revamp its entry/exit program (even though this has been mandated and ignored for years), administer and enforce E-Verify from coast-to-coast, and consider millions upon millions of applications for legal residency from illegal immigrants. That last bit alone would require untold manpower and resources. Per York’s reporting, numerous loopholes exist in the law, including one that would allow illegal immigrants who’ve worked extensively in the agricultural industry to be placed on a faster track to citizenship.
Gang of 8: “Trust us.”
No, I don’t think so. I can accept the freshmen Senators being naively suckered into this by the Dems, but not McCain and Graham which lead me to consider that those two RINOs are either expecting to get some kind of legacy of credit in the history books, or they are really closet Democrats.
The insane part of this is that current US citizens are suffering from unemployment and the 8 Bozos and everyone else in the progressive clown car know full well that amnesty and a guest worker program for illegals will only make it worse.
Rubio is not being naively sucked into this train wreck. He owns the amnesty deception as much as McCain and Graham. He is an Obama Republican, more affectionately called RINO.