Claim: It is not amnesty to give temporary legal status to illegal aliens is not amnesty. Amnesty is permanent status.
Correction: Webster's defines amnesty as "a general pardon of offenses against a government." By this definition, any way you slice it, legal status for illegals is a pardon of offenses. The definition says nothing about the duration of the pardon In point of fact, however, this amnesty goes far beyond pardon to reward the offense. The violator not only pays no penalty, but is allowed to keep reaping the benefits of his presence here. Rewarding bad behavior simply encourages more of it. Perfect evidences are the surges of more illegal immigration after each of the amnesties during the past 19 years.

Claim: It won't be amnesty if it's "earned legalization," that is the person receiving it will have to prove good character while continuing to work and perhaps pay a fine of $1,000, or so.
Correction: People who have broken our laws have already proven their character, and letting them continue doing what they're already doing is hardly a penalty. A fine of $1,000 is a meaningless slap on the wrist, a price much less than illegals often pay smugglers to enter our country in the first place. This piddling sum would show the world how little we value our laws, our country and our citizenship. Yes, citizenship-because many or most of the guest workers would remain and eventually become citizens. Read on.

Claim: We will let legalized aliens stay as guest workers and fill jobs for fixed terms, then they will have to go home.
Correction: The assurance amnestied guest workers will go home is totally unfounded. One reason is that when the time comes for them to return, immigration advocates will say they have become part of their communities, it would be "inhumane" to make them return. This often has happened in the past when the time came for foreigners given temporary residence to go back. Further complicating matters is the misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment which gives citizenship to anyone born on your soil. Guest worker parents of citizen children born here, would claim the right to remain with their children.

To get an idea of how a guest worker program might work, we might examine the existing H1-B program which admits foreigners to take U.S. jobs, commonly in high-tech. Supposedly, the program protects the opportunities and wages of U.S. workers (it doesn't), and supposedly the foreign workers are here temporarily, whereas in fact, a majority figure some way to remain permanently.

Even if we decided to make guest workers go back, we don't have the means to do it. Presently, we have only 2,000 federal immigration officers to police our entire interior. Presently this undermanned force cannot locate the 400,000 foreigners served deportation notices, including 80,000 convicted of serious crimes. The Bush administration does not propose to add more federal in significant numbers, nor does it support legislation to encourage state and local police to assist enforcement. These positions reveal the administration's utter insincerity in claiming that guest workers will go home.

Claim: We desperately need foreign workers.
Correction: Why do we need them when we have an unemployment rate significantly higher that the official rate of 5.5 percent when you add in people who have quit looking for work and the under-employed? Despite talk of economic recovery in recent years, we have lost a net total of more than one million private sector jobs since 2001. Even in agriculture - which allegedly requires illegal aliens - we have too many workers looking for work. In California, between two and three workers now compete for each of the state's 400,000 to 500,000 seasonal farm jobs. Given these realities, it seems incredible that the Bush administration and others now only want to give amnesty to resident illegal aliens, but also invite more guest workers from abroad on top of that!

One curious thing. Even if we really need foreign workers, this implies no need to reward any of the ones now working here illegally. We could simply require all guest workers to apply from abroad and enter legally. So why do pro-amnesty politicians always try to link our alleged for workers with our alleged need for amnesty?

Claim: Between 8 million and 12 million illegal aliens live in the U.S. We simply do not have the resources or the will to round up and deport that many people.
Correction: We don't have to deport them all. If we begin strict enforcement efforts that make unlawful residence difficult, many illegals-over a period of time-will return home on their own, thus deporting themselves. When illegal immigration spiraled out of control in the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration moved swiftly and resolutely to deal with the problem. The Immigration and Naturalization Service apprehended 80,000 illegals in Texas and estimated that between 500,000 and 700,000 left on their own then they saw that enforcement had teeth. For more than a decade afterwards, illegal sharply subsided.

Why does our government refuse to act decisively now, instead of toying with amnesty and guest worker plans? Simply put, many of our leaders care more about their own selfish interests, specifically those related to cheap labor and cheap votes, than they do about anything else.