Tea Party Express Leader is All Aboard Amnesty Train
By Gina Miller
RenewAmerica.com
Listen to an audio version of this column
Last week, Sal Russo, a co-founder of the Tea Party
Express, declared his support for amnesty for
illegal aliens in the United States. Naturally, he
doesn't call it amnesty in his column posted on
Wednesday at Roll Call, but instead uses RINO-speak
to say the same thing. Reading his article, you
might think it was written by a Democrat, if you
didn't know any better. He opens his column, "Conservatives
Need to Fix the Broken U.S. Immigration System,"
with this:
The U.S. immigration system is flawed and broken.
Conservatives should be at the forefront of reform
so the law reflects the just interests of the United
States, not misty-eyed ideals of some of the liberal
do-gooder reformers. What is good for America should
be the sole criteria for immigration reform.
Our laws today are unenforced and citizens and
companies who play by the rules are undermined by
bad actors who do not. This undermines our rule of
law and slows our economic growth. In today's global
economy, we cannot afford the status quo.
Congress must pass legislation that will fix our
broken system.
How sick are we of hearing that our immigration
system is "broken"? It's not broken! Our immigration
laws are not being enforced by Washington! Mr. Russo
agrees they're not being enforced, but then he turns
around and says we need more laws, because of
it. How does he imagine more laws will make the
federalistas follow the ones they currently won't?
It's the same reasoning employed by pushers of a
convention of the states to amend the Constitution:
since the crooks in Washington will not obey the
laws of the Constitution, let's pass more
laws, and surely they'll obey those. It's
ludicrous.
Mr. Russo goes on to repeat the "we need more worker
visas" sentiment. He says that there are not enough
people to pick the fruits and vegetables we grow in
the United States. Is it really because there are
not enough workers? Or is it because our bloated
welfare system does not encourage people to go out
and work, but instead to sit home and collect
taxpayer money handouts? How many more workers would
there be if we ejected the able bodies from the
welfare trough and forced them to work for a living?
He claims that if we do nothing now, then businesses
will be hurt. Yet, with our economy in the gutter
and unemployment in the sky, I truly don't see how
legalizing who-knows-how-many millions of criminal
aliens (many of whom will further drain our welfare
system) will help anything, much less businesses.
Near the end of his column, Mr. Russo does indeed
call for amnesty, but not "unbridled amnesty," as he
calls it:
Finally, we need to make the 11 million people
who are here illegally obey the law, pay taxes and
come out of the shadows. We have to get them right
by the law in exchange for legal status, but not
unbridled amnesty. This should include penalties,
background checks to root out criminals, and the
requirement that they learn English, understand the
Constitution and be committed to our basic freedoms.
We must ensure there is no special pathway to
citizenship that puts them in front of people who
waited in line.
These are the same vacuous arguments we heard back
in 2007 when the American people rose up with
intense outrage and helped kill the McCain-Kennedy
amnesty bill. I would advise Mr. Russo that since
2007 we have not changed our minds about amnesty for
illegal aliens. We are also sick of the empty
promise that the border will be secured before
anything else happens. We know that is not the case,
nor will it be the case, especially as long as
Barack Obama (or whatever his name is) remains in
the White House.
Mr. Russo's pro-amnesty position comes as no
surprise to those familiar with his history as a
consultant to establishment Republicans. In the
Conservative HQ column, "Exposing
Tea Party Express Co-Founder's Amnesty Ties,"
Chris Chmielenski of Numbers USA does just that as
he writes of Sal Russo:
In the 1980's,
he started a political consulting firm in California
where he helped his "close friend" Jack Kemp during
his 1988 presidential run.
That's the same Jack Kemp who advocated for both the
1986 and 2006 amnesty bills. It's the same Jack
Kemp who had
Cesar Conda, Marco Rubio's chief of staff, serve
on the board of his think tank, Empower America,
that employed Paul Ryan. If that's not enough,
Russo also consulted John McCain during his 2008
presidential run. Russo's open-borders, pro-amnesty
ties run far and wide.
Mr. Chmielenski also notes:
Another principle of the Tea Party Express is to
restore American prosperity, which to many Americans
likely means individual prosperity. But Russo joins
the business elites, the GOP establishment, the Gang
of Eight, Pres. Obama, and 99% of the Democrats in
Congress by calling for increases in foreign worker
visas. When scoring Schumer's amnesty bill, the
Congressional Budget Office found that its
increases in foreign worker visas combined with
amnesty would depress wages for American workers,
increase unemployment, and reduce GDP per capita
over time. Is that the kind of American prosperity
that the Tea Party Express and Russo stand for?
Not likely. Yet, the fact remains that a co-founder
of the Tea Party Express is an establishment
globalist who is an advocate for the poison pill of
amnesty. It's a shame that this man associates
himself with the Tea Party movement, because you
would be very hard-pressed to find anyone in the Tea
Party who approves of amnesty for illegal aliens.
Why? Because we already see the detrimental effects
of illegal immigration on our economy, schools,
hospitals, our crime and disease rates and more.
Amnesty would fix all that, how exactly?
No sane nation allows unfettered immigration. No
rational country just throws up its hands – and it
sovereignty – and tosses a blanket of "legality"
over border crashers, but that has effectively been
what the U.S. done for years, and the last thing we
need is amnesty, labeled as "immigration reform." We
need to stop this insanity by enforcing our laws,
securing our borders and slowly but surely expelling
those who are here illegally.
© Gina Miller