Beware Republicans - Democrats Are Setting The Amnesty Trap

Nothing bristles dedicated conservatives like the word 'amnesty' tossed around while Congress debates immigration reform. While Hispanics like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz try to explain why our immigration laws don't work, the Democrats count on conservative pundits to point out that amnesty is letting millions of immigrants break laws that legal immigrants had to obey on the path to citizenship. They revel in the division among the Republicans who are too stupid to recognize the trap being set for them. As the Captain said in Cool Hand Luke, "What we got here is a failure to communicate."

Diehard constituents will lobby their representatives not to vote for immigration legislation that will give amnesty to millions and the Democrats will blame the bill's failure on the evil GOP. Republicans who try to discuss the issue rationally will be outed as RINOs or taking the party to the left. Eric Cantor's announcement that he is shifting his take on immigration reform has brought him the usual disdain and charges of betrayal to the cause.

In a televised debate with Walter Mondale, Ronald Reagan said, "I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally."

Reagan signed the 1986 Reform and Control Act which was largely unsuccessful because the strict sanctions on employers were stripped out of the bill for passage. In fact it was the amnesty for 3 million illegals that brought them out of the shadows to be identified.

Reagan was right and this is the historical aspect of amnesty that needs to be explored for any true reform and before we start preaching about 'breaking the laws' we need to examine if those laws are equitable and just. Even though I have a Hispanic background, I have always been for border security and legal immigration and against extending benefits to illegal immigrants who tax and exhaust the community resources that hard working Americans do not receive. Many Hispanics feel as I do especially those who have gone through the painstaking process of naturalization.

In the minds of many extreme right wingers, however, illegals are predominantly Mexicans who've brazenly crossed a porous border and end up committing crime only to be caught and sent back again and again. Historically, however, immigrants from all over the world have been coming here illegally since the country was founded and their offspring end up being more than solid citizens.

A law enforcement official once confided to me that his grandfather jumped ship in the harbor off a ship from Ireland. A very well-known and respected physician revealed to me that he and his family escaped from China and came here illegally.

Needless to say, I can not reveal their identities even though they are innocent of any wrongdoing and that is the point that Reagan made in that comment and what Rick Perry said doing the debate. The bristlers, however, viewed Perry as a bleeding heart unsuited to represent them last year. Is it any wonder that the more pragmatic Romney tanked with the Hispanic voters?

I can hear those angry voices railing that I'm leaning towards the left and this is exactly what the Democrats are banking on. Anyone daring to see illegals (I will not call them undocumented) as human beings will be vilified as a bleeding heart. I am well aware that it is harder to be sympathetic to immigrants that we read about in the news and I believe that I've discovered why.

I had a recent conversation with a young Jamaican woman who is a caregiver for an Alzheimer's victim and what she said was very illuminating. She said she does not consider children who have immigrant parents to be real Americans. I was stunned since all the immigrant parents of my generation wanted was for their children to be fully American.

This young woman explained that these children would be influenced by the culture of their parents and not "really be full Americans." In other words, I presume, thanks to multiculturalism, the new children of immigrants are not being assimilated into an American culture but are merely absorbing the benefits of this new country while retaining and maintaining the culture of the old. If there is to be any legitimate immigration reform standards have to be set that will stop multiculturalism in its track.

I met Ayaan Ali Hirsi at a Congress of Racial Equality Martin Luther King dinner a few years ago and she is still under a death threat from radical Islamists for fleeing and rejecting her Muslim roots in Somalia. What a profoundly brave woman she is. In her spellbinding keynote address she wisely said that all cultures are not equal. Her adopted nation, the Netherlands, is suffering a crucial identity crisis thanks to its naïve obeisance to multiculturalism. Can it happen here? Only if we forget our history and remember that this country is unlike any other. Our republic is based on a superb Constitution, not tribalism or class structure. Americans are held back from success only by their individual ambitions, not their origins. Those enamored of other cultures that they deem superior to our own should ask themselves why on earth the natives of those "wonderful" cultures risk their lives to leave and come here.

The Statue of Liberty's invite "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

was preceded by this line-"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" In other words, leave your Old Country behind.

Republicans need to stick together on this and make sure that any immigration reform bill includes border security, background checks, learning English, temporary work visas for low-skilled workers, an increase in visas for highly-skilled workers, and a way for illegal immigrants to earn legitimate citizenship but only after paying penalties and going to the back of the line behind legal immigrants. Make sure all new immigrants learn to accept our culture as their own

Let's face the fact that academia has became saturated with self-loathing American Marxists determined to erase the principles and values that made this country great. These militant multiculturalists are doing whatever they can to indoctrinate our children into belittling our American culture. The only alternative to this are private schools but without vouchers, who can afford them? There are so many issues that we need to work to repair and yet we are being sidetracked into reacting to words we don't agree with.

Amnesty, amnesty, amnesty, the trap has been cleverly laid for us and the question is will we fall for it again. Instead of uniting the troops, we are gearing up for a civil war. I urge all conservatives to rein in their cynicism, listen to Rubio, Cruz and the marvelous Susana Martinez, governor of New Mexico. These Hispanics are conservatives determined to break the stranglehold on minorities by the Democrat Party. That is a good thing.

If, however, you want to stubbornly cling to your xenophobia, deaf to rational options, then the trap has been sprung successfully once again.

Alicia Colon resides in New York City and can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com and at www.aliciacolon.com