Crossing the Rubio-con

I listened to Senator Marco Rubio on Fox News Sunday today pitching the new immigration bill that is being brought forward by the “Gang of Eight” in the Senate.  And what he was saying sounds reasonable (see: Fox News Story) except for three glaring problems:

1) Marco Rubio has previously stated that, in order to get the American people to buy into this bill, there needs to be extensive Senate hearings over the summer … vetting all the provisions therein.  The Senate has to date scheduled only one such hearing.  This is an obvious travesty and a dissing of the American people. Marco Rubio needs to live up to his previous commitments on this matter (see: Mr. Pushy).

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2) Most of the provisions of this bill rely on the Obama (and later) administrations to enforce its terms.  We have had a twenty-five year history of non- and lax enforcement of existing immigration statutes.  Why should anyone believe that this pattern is going to change with a more rigorous set of requirements, fines, taxes, and penalties?  Janet Napolitano has proven herself to be utterly untrustworthy in such matters.  I don’t expect things to change with a new law.

 3) As I have previously stated I also don’t feel that many “illegal immigrants” will come forward to sign up for this program (again see: Mr. Pushy).  Any of them with criminal backgrounds, suspect work records, or other documentation problems will just stay in the shadows.  Why give the feds any visibility into your existence when you can continue to take advantage of the status quo under which many of them are thriving?

Please, can our Congress be realistic and deal effectively with such obvious and serious concerns? Else we will find that the illegal immigration problem will continue to fester and spiral out of control.  And … please Marco Rubio … cross back over that northern Italian river ... and fix these three problems first.

Afterward: Valid points critical of the foreshortened hearings on the Gang of Eight's immigration bill ... see: Powerline Blog