Guest Column
The Question of Insanity
By Tim Donnelly
Jun 27, 2007 - 9:50:15 PM

When I was an undergrad, I had this wonderful Italian professor who taught comparative literature. His favorite Italian word was, "insania", which he told us meant that the world was upside down.

Years later, at an AA meeting, I learned their definition:

"The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and hoping for a different outcome."

I think both definitions describe the current amnesty bill being shoved through Congress. There is one question I cannot get out of my mind, that when applied to this bill, is very revealing:

"Who is the constituency for this bill?"

With 80-95% of the electorate firmly, adamantly, overwhelmingly and vehemently against this bill, who is for it?

Obviously it serves the illegal alien population, and those who profit off of them. That would be the illegal employers, vote-hungry politicians, churches struggling for membership, and the so-called "pro-immigrant activists", who stand to gain immense profits and power by legalizing the millions of illegal aliens. By the way, you will note that these "pro-immigrant activists" have nothing to gain by helping legal immigrants with a myriad of problems as they navigate the actual immigration process, and so in the midst of the most significant debate on immigration reform in two decades, there is little or nothing in the bill to bring any sanity to our actual immigration process.

In the midst of this raging debate over giving illegal aliens and their supporters amnesty and whatever else they demand, we often hear pundits on both sides say, "we cannot deport 12 million illegal aliens", as if the government had a hard count. What we never hear is the heart-wrenching stories of LEGAL immigrants, who have minor paperwork violations who are deported every day. The story of a woman in California, who has lived here since she was one, and who at age 43 discovered that her father had mistakenly left her name off his application for citizenship, is facing deportation.

It is her story, and the stories of countless legal immigrants that should be heard on the floor of the Senate. Why is it, I would like to know, that we can deport "documented immigrants", but not those with fraudulent documents? And if we ever get around to deporting actual illegal aliens, why not start with the gang members to whom this bill would grant a "Z" Visa instead of deporting the wife a soldier who just died for his country in Iraq?

The Senate, which prides itself on being the most rational, on having a "cooling effect" on the hotheads in the house, is ramming a proposal that any fool can see will make the problem much, much worse. Apply the test of Alcoholics Anonymous (that wildly successful program that boasts an 80% success rate without taking a dime of government money) does it make any sense to try another amnesty when the last one resulted in 3 times as many people getting citizenship as were thought to be in the country illegally.
 
And you could reasonably argue that the failure of the last amnesty proposal, which offered mass legalization to 3 million illegals, and had "triggers" for border security and enforcement of our immigration laws, created the insane situation giving us twelve to twenty times the number of illegals we had in 1986.  Seems that someone forgot to pull the "triggers".

If this was an investment, we would be thrilled to have doubled our money 6, 10 or 20 times in only twenty years. That would have been a return for the record books, but this is a deficit, not a gain (if we compounded the number of illegal aliens at 15% a year for twenty years, we would only have 16 million here, and most experts think 20 million is a low estimate).

I have a parting thought for the Senate:

If you really want to have this critically important debate, then close your chambers for a month, rent a bus, and drive to Colorado, California and Arizona, and meet the "actual" constituents, with whose consent you govern. Hold town meetings with citizens only; no illegals, no activists from either side, no lobbyists. Just citizens. In California, if you gave at least one day’s notice, you could fill the Rose Bowl.

Put microphones in the aisles at every section, and just listen and take notes. You would find that the average American citizen is compassionate toward the immigrant who did everything right, but cannot seem to escape from the Byzantine maze that is our immigration system. You will also find that they used to feel that way toward illegal aliens, but lately that compassion has turned into resentment. You might learn of their burning anger toward you in the Senate who want to make this problem one hundred times worse for California, where you don’t live.

I am confident that someone might alert you to the fact that the Department of Health Services (DHS, not the Dept. of Homeland Security) is running ads specifically targeting illegal aliens who have not yet taken advantage of Medical for fear of being deported. You might hear the urgency and outrage from struggling working-poor citizens who resent paying more in taxes for healthcare for illegal aliens, while they themselves cannot afford insurance and do not qualify for Medical.

This is the constituency you need to sell, not the media, not the party leadership, and not the open-borders-labor-union-Catholic church-drug smuggler-business lobby.

The question is, "Do you have the courage to hear from those whose lives you will forever turn upside-down?"

Tim Donnelly
Twin Peaks, California