OPINION:
The struggle over the future of the nation begins tonight. The Republican Party, finally getting what it wished for, to be the effective counterbalance to the president’s statist agenda, must be ready. Mr. Obama is expected to announce in a nationally televised speech that he will issue an executive order to prevent the deportation of 5 million illegal immigrants and to reward their law-breaking with work permits. The next morning he will use a high school in Las Vegas, teeming with illegal schoolchildren, as the backdrop to argue that “no papers” is no problem as long as he is in the White House.
For six years the president has held Congress, the U.S. business community and the American people hostage to partisan whim, demanding that “reform” must include amnesty and a “path to citizenship.” He hopes to lock in Democratic rule by changing the makeup of the population in key states. Republicans must make it clear that they want to solve real problems and not use those problems for partisan and ideological advantage.
The correct immigration policy would reflect the needs of America first. Such a policy would admit the talented, the hard working and the law-abiding, who want not just to work here but to become Americans in the way others before them embraced the language, the law, the customs and the history of the greatest nation on earth.
In an essay elsewhere on these pages, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, exposes the true aim of the Democrats’ immigration strategy, to rely on the “stupidity of the American voter,” as Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, said of how Mr. Obama won passage of his health care “reform.” The “stupid Americans” must not be fooled again, writes Mr. Gingrich. “After the experiences of Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and the ’stimulus,’ the American people don’t trust Congress to write a ’comprehensive’ bill and they don’t trust the administration to implement it.”
“Comprehensive” is Capitol Hill code for packing legislation with extraneous measures that could never become law standing alone. Mr. Gingrich urges Republicans to enact clear measures to tackle each of the elements of illegal immigration that bedevil the United States. We agree.
First, respect for national borders must be restored. The president ignored the Constitution to welcome the Latin American under class with his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Illegals have consequently overflowed refugee centers. Republicans should work with Democrats who are not beholden to the immigration lobby to enact legislation to give the president the authority to halt the tsunami trespassing the border, and dare him not to use it.
The new Republican majorities should enact an extension of the H1B visa program, which enables employers to bring skilled workers into the country for a specific term. Those who violate terms of their visas should be promptly deported. Only then can lawmakers turn their attention to the difficult task of deciding what to do about the 11 million illegals already here.
Orderly immigration bills may not make it past the president’s desk, but would make it clear who is looking out for America. Withholding the money to implement Mr. Obama’s amnesty can slow the presidential rush to injustice.
We are a nation of immigrants, but not illegal immigrants. Republicans have an responsibility to present common-sense alternatives to Mr. Obama’s nonsensical amnesty. The president will strike first. The Republicans must be ready to respond.
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