Here’s a deal for Republican Rep. Maria Salazar: If her proposed immigration bill passes, she has to personally cover the cost for every illegal alien who doesn’t voluntarily pay the laughable $7,000 “restitution” she’s offering them in exchange for amnesty. Oh, and they all need to move to her district.
Salazar has been on cable news all week promoting her “Dignity Act,” which would give illegal aliens protection to stay in the United States if they, among other things, pay the paltry sum over the course of seven years. That’s how little Salazar thinks of her fellow Americans: Lawbreakers who barged into the country uninvited get to live with us in exchange for a few thousand dollars that there is no reason to believe a single one of them would ever pay.
Why would they? They’ve been living here all along with no penalty at all. But she expects them to pay something now? Salazar should go play in traffic.
At the risk of giving Salazar’s trash bill the dignity of considering it at all, it’s ridiculous to assume that people who break the law every single day by being here would instantly become sticklers for rules. Salazar either doesn’t know how this works or she doesn’t care.
All migrants who illegally enter the U.S. have a simple thought process: They know they’re not supposed to do it, but breaking the law and evading deportation is worth the risk. Each day they have that same thought.
Here’s what would happen if they were mandated to pay $7,000: Many of them, probably most, would continue to have that same thought. They wouldn’t pay, and it would be worth the risk.
And then what? The same thought process starts all over again. They’re here illegally, they know they shouldn’t be, and it’s worth the risk.
Salazar surely understands this, but like many Republicans before her, she wants to grant illegal aliens amnesty for any number of reasons, including that she simply believes Americans owe something to foreigners. That’s not me reading into her heart. She said so at a press conference promoting her bill on Thursday. “Some of the most shameful moments in our past as a country,” she said, “relates to how we have treated immigrants who are not criminals.”
Yes, she’s that terrible.
Also in her miserable proposal is a fake mandate that no illegal alien protected by it can receive federal benefits. Which is another way of saying: Illegal aliens protected by Salazar’s bill would get state benefits, and those states would be reimbursed by some massive future federal spending bill. That’s always how it goes.
It’s been less than one month since Congress passed and President Trump signed into law major legislation that intends to effectively seal shut the southern border to would-be unauthorized entrants and turbocharge deportation efforts. Did Salazar miss work that day? Because she’s acting like there’s a yearning among voters across the country to make sure illegal aliens get something nice.
She can toss her bill into the Rio Grande.
