CPAC's 2014 Amnesty Panel

Article author: 
Jon Feere
Article publisher: 
Center for Immigration Studies
Article date: 
7 March 2014
Article category: 
National News
Medium
Article Body: 

Nearly every speaker at the first day of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) avoided any discussion of immigration or amnesty, a sign that Republican politicians are starting to understand that conservative voters have very little interest in doubling legal immigration and amnestying illegal aliens.

...only one speaker spent any time on immigration policy: Donald Trump. He came out strong on sovereignty and garnered strong applause for noting "we're either a country, or we're not; we either have borders or we don't." Trump also noted that amnesty is a benefit for the Democratic Party, while calling out Rubio:

When you let the 11 million — which will grow to 30 million people — in, I don't care who stands up, whether it's Marco Rubio, and talks about letting everybody in, you won't get one vote. Every one of those votes goes to the Democrats. You have to do what's right; it's not about the votes necessarily. But of those 11 million potential voters which will go to 30 million in a not too long future, you will not get any of those votes no matter what you do, no matter how nice you are, no matter how soft you are, no matter how many times you say 'rip down the fence and let everybody in' you're not going to get the votes. So with immigration, you better be smart and you better be tough, and they're taking your jobs, and you better be careful. You better be careful.

...One panel topic was immigration and titled "Can there be meaningful immigration reform without citizenship?" Unfortunately the panel was largely slanted in favor of amnesty and high levels of immigration, something that conservatives should be wary about according to the polls and data compiled in a new report from Eagle Forum...

The panel was made up of five people, four of whom are advocates of mass immigration and amnesty, or as they called it "comprehensive reform" for "the undocumented"...

The first speaker was Helen Krieble, a billionaire heiress who operates a massive equestrian center in Colorado. According to the Rocky Mountain News, Krieble complained that she was "struggling to find American-born workers willing to fill entry-level jobs" and decided to push for more foreign labor, creating a proposal she calls the "Red Card Solution". The plan is even highlighted at the top of her horse park website. Her plan — which she has pushed unsuccessfully for years — would legalize illegal aliens but not allow them to obtain citizenship. It is a guestworker program that would arguably create indentured servants who are tied to their jobs, or as Mark Krikorian has called it, "a Saudi-style labor-importation system".

She attempts to sell it as free-market solution that would take government out of the equation, but doesn't seem to understand that it would take American voters out of the equation as well. By electing representatives to decide how much and what type of immigration we should have have, Americans maintain control of sovereignty. The Red Card solution would put businesses who don't want to hire American citizens into the position of deciding who gets to enter the country. And the costs of this cheap labor would inevitably be passed on to the taxpayer. Like all temporary non-citizen workers, these workers would have children who would be considered U.S. citizens and these children would eventually be able to grant citizenship to their parents because of existing immigration law. If a guestworker ditches his job and becomes an illegal alien, it is unlikely he'll ever be deported, particularly if he has a U.S. citizen child. On top of this, guestworker programs always lead to more illegal immigration because they send the message around the world that the United States is granting legal status to anyone who manages to sneak into the country...