Thomas Sowell Nails It---Again

Another great column on the shamnesty bill:

It sets up various programs and procedures -- but does not wait to see if they in fact reduce the flow of illegal immigrants before taking the irrevocable step of making American citizenship available to 12 million people who came here illegally.

This solves the problem of those illegal immigrants who want to get citizenship. The steps that they have to go through allow politicians to say that this is not amnesty because these are "tough" requirements.

But, whether these requirements are "tough" or not, and regardless of how they are enforced or not, there is nothing to say that the 12 million people here illegally have to start the process of becoming citizens.

Those who do not choose to become citizens -- which may well be the majority of illegal immigrants -- face no more prospect of being punished for the crime of entering the country illegally than they do now.

With the focus now shifted to the process of getting citizenship, those illegal immigrants who just want to stay and make some money without being bothered to become part of American society can be forgotten, along with their crime.

If 19 terrorists hadn't been able to get into this country, 9/11 never would have happened.

If our INS and law enforcement authorities had done their job and kicked these 19 murderous scumbags out of the country, the Twin Towers would stand tall today.

If our craven politicians and incompetent bureaucrats hadn't decided American lives were worth less than prospective illegal alien votes, 2,977 innocent Americans would be alive today who have been all but forgotten since their slaughter 5 years ago.