At Breitbart News’ “The Uninvited” Panel during CPAC last weekend, Rosemary Jenks, the director of government relations for Numbers USA, told the packed audience that Republicans have not thoroughly considered and discussed how giving amnesty to 11-12 million illegal immigrants would allow terrorists to receive brand new identities, cost the government $2.5 trillion dollars over their lifetime, and create more Democrats.
“The Uninvited” panel, in the spirit of the late Andrew Breitbart, ensured CPAC would have more–not less–voices, and Jenks offered up some truths that even Republicans want to conveniently ignore in their quest for “comprehensive immigration reform” that they think will magically convert Hispanics into Republicans.
Jenks told Breitbart News that the “divide between the opinions of the elite and those of the public are nowhere more divergent than on the issue of immigration, and the elites are well aware of this.”
“It is this understanding that forces bipartisan groups of elites–in the current case including both the Senate Gang of Eight and the House Gang of Eight–to negotiate ‘comprehensive immigration reform,’ or amnesty, in secret behind closed doors, in the hopes that they can ram it through Congress before the American people know what’s happening,” Jenks said.
Jenks said even some of the organizers of CPAC are among the elites who attempted to “restrict any discussion of immigration to a single one-sided panel of elite amnesty supporters” with hopes that “grassroots conservatives would go along quietly and not challenge the elites’ views.”
She said Breitbart News realized that “grassroots conservatives are rational, thinking people who deserve to hear both sides of issues that will affect every aspect of their lives and the future of our country.”
“The Uninvited Panel offered common-sense viewpoints that resonate with regular Americans, much to the dismay of the elites,” Jenks said.
On “The Uninvited” panel, Jenks said President Barack Obama’s immigration plan is just a “slightly more liberal twin” to the bipartisan immigration framework supported by Republican senators like John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), and Marco Rubio (FL). That framework, supported by the so-called “Gang of Eight,” would give legal status to illegal immigrants currently residing in the country.
Jenks said that Washington is run by special interests groups, and this is especially true when it comes to immigration.
“Big business interests seeking cheap labor and religious leaders seeking to fill the pews dominate the issue from the right, while ethnic advocacy groups seeking political clout, unions seeking more dues-paying members, and immigration lawyers seeking profits dominate from the left,” Jenks told Breitbart News. “Add to that misguided Republicans seeking a way to garner Hispanic votes and Democrats knowing full well that immigrants will vote overwhelmingly Democrat, and you have a situation where the only people not represented are the American people.”
Most importantly, she noted during her CPAC remarks that illegal immigrants who overstayed their visas were involved in acts of terror, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Brooklyn subway bomb plot. She said one terrorist applied for amnesty in 1986 after overstaying his tourist visa, and then promptly used his newfound green card to go to Afghanistan and get terrorist training.
Jenks, on the panel, said the current comprehensive immigration proposals do not have “have any means from preventing terrorists from getting amnesty” or “tracking people who overstay their visas.” As a result, she said the amnesty programs would essentially allow the United States government to potentially issue terrorists “an official brand new identity” because there is no process in place to check the validity of the identity illegal immigrants claim when getting official papers that confer legal status.
Jenks cited a Heritage Foundation study that found illegal immigrants cost the economy $55 billion a year in services. If these immigrants get amnesty, they will qualify legally for more services, costing taxpayers $75 billion a year. In addition, the lifetime cost of giving 11-12 million illegal immigrants amnesty would be $2.5 trillion, she said.
Lastly, Jenks noted that amnesty would just create more Democrats.
“Passing amnesty is not going to get Hispanics to vote Republican,” Jenks said, noting it would just increase the electoral advantage of Democrats, because illegal immigrants want more government services and favor liberal policies.
Jenks called for a mandatory e-verify system, entry and exit points at all ports, and an enforceable guest worker program only for agriculture after the ports were secured.
She said it is bogus that politicians claim immigrants need to be imported for non-agriculture jobs Americans supposedly “will not do” and said that America should “not be importing a peasant class” to do labor Americans have always done.
“It is not in our national interest to import poverty,” Jenks said, noting that legal immigration should also be reformed with a focus on the nuclear family, immigrants who bring skills that the country needs for its economy and America’s fair share of immigrants seeking asylum or that Americans want to take in for humanitarian reasons.
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