by Newt Gingrich
The announcement last week that the White House and a group of senators have reached an agreement on "comprehensive immigration reform" should have the same effect that the word "iceberg" had on the passengers and crew of the Titanic.
This proposed agreement is a disaster of the first order, and it will severely cripple America for the foreseeable future.
You can tell how bad this bill is by the Senate Democratic leadership's announced goal of trying to pass it before the Memorial Day weekend.
Remember, this bill has not yet been finished. Senators and their staffs were still negotiating over the weekend and many key items were still in confusion. So here's what we have to do:
TODAY'S ACTION ITEM:
CALL YOUR SENATORS AND LET THEM KNOW HOW ANGRY YOU WILL BE IF THEY PASS A BILL BEFORE IT HAS BEEN PRINTED AND PUT ON THE INTERNET AND EXPOSED FOR THE COUNTRY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND.
75 Reasons to Oppose the New Immigration Bill
When the FBI arrested six terrorists in New Jersey two weeks ago it turned out that three of them had been in the U.S. illegally for at least TWENTY years.
These three had crossed our unprotected border and had been living in New Jersey.
But here's the even more outrageous part: The police had filed 75 (SEVENTY-FIVE!) charges against them, including drug possession and possession of drug paraphernalia.
In 75 interactions, the police never once learned that these three people were here illegally.
The government failed twice: First, by failing to secure the border, and second, by failing to determine that these people were here illegally. The result was that more than five years after 9/11 we were saved from a mass killing at Fort Dix only because of the patriotism and courage of a clerk at an electronics store.
Compare the 75 charges made against the would-be Fort Dix terrorists with how we rounded up German spies in World War II. In June 1942, it took a total of 15 days to track down and arrest eight German spies who landed in Florida and New York from submarines. We executed six of them and gave one life in prison and the other thirty years. We were serious about winning that war). Go here for a more detailed comparison and a list of the 75 charges against the Fort Dix terrorists.
Faced with this level of failure of bureaucracy, how could anyone believe for a minute that this new immigration bill will work? The fact is it can't and it won't. It will rely on the same failed bureaucracy and produce more years of failure.
We Have Been Here Before
In 1986, I voted for the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill. We were promised that in return for amnesty for far fewer than three million illegal immigrants we would get:
Control of the border;
Enforcement of laws requiring employers to know someone is here legally before hiring them; and
No more amnesty and no more tolerance of illegality
The government broke its word on every one of those provisions.
We eventually amnestied three million people who had broken the law, and we sent a signal to the world that it is okay to break the law and come to America.
Now, 20 years later, we are told to trust Washington while we amnesty 12 to 20 million more people who have broken the law.
A Tax Amnesty Too?
When its supporters refer to the new immigration bill as "comprehensive," they must mean comprehensively outrageous.
The Boston Globe reported this weekend that the new bill will not require illegal workers to pay back taxes.
If this is true, the bill is an assault on every law-abiding, patriotic American who has been obeying the law, working legally and paying his taxes.
Every taxpaying American should insist that any bill involving any condition for illegal workers having any future in America should require them to do three things when it comes to taxes: 1) Admit how long they've been here (under threat of immediate deportation if they lie); 2) admit whom they worked for (who, after all, had also been breaking the law and avoiding paying taxes); and 3) pay any back taxes and penalties they owe.
There Is a Way to Deal With Illegal Immigration -- This is Not It
I have written extensively about good solutions for our current immigration mess in Winning the Future and elsewhere. Click here for more information.
Dr. Jerry Falwell and Liberty University
It was a great honor to have been invited by Dr. Jerry Falwell to give the commencement address at Liberty University last weekend.
Like all his friends and admirers, I was shocked and deeply saddened last week by his death. I found myself facing a three-part challenge: Giving the 3,300 graduates at Liberty University a charge for their future while also bearing witness to the great work of Dr. Falwell and actually giving the message of "Rediscovering God in America" which he had personally asked me to address.
You can read my commencement address at newt.org.
On a personal note, let me add that being in the robing room putting on our graduation gowns and watching Dr. Falwell's younger son Jonathan (who will be the pastor at Thomas Road Baptist Church) drape the chancellor's medallion on his older brother Jerry, Jr., (who will be the new head of Liberty University) was a moment of passing the torch and seeing new lights emerge which I will always treasure.
Undermining America's Young Men and Women in Uniform
No one should doubt how much damage the Democrats are doing to America and to our young men and women in uniform with their political maneuvering in Congress.
In Atlanta Friday night, a doctor in the National Guard who had just come home from serving in Mosul briefed me on the damage he had seen to American morale and the confusion among young soldiers as the Democrats continue to play games with the supplemental appropriations and talk about legislating defeat in the war our troops are trying every day to win.
How would you like to be risking your life on the point in Iraq knowing some politician back home was undermining everything you are trying to do?
Call your House and Senate members and tell them to quit undermining our troops in the middle of a war and get the money to the troops without any more games or delays.
(I discussed Iraq with Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd on NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday. You can watch it here.)
The Sixth of June and FDR's National Prayer for D-Day
I hope you will join me in a new project to get as many radio stations as possible to play President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's national prayer from D-Day, June 6, 1944, on its anniversary, June 6, 2007.
This prayer is a beautiful and powerful appeal to God on behalf of young Americans who were landing in Normandy to liberate Europe from the Nazi totalitarian evil that had overwhelmed it. It was truly a crusade for freedom and civilization.
In this prayer, on nationwide radio on June 6, 1944 -- as the Greatest Generation launched its mightiest battle of the Second World War -- Roosevelt demonstrated that he knew how our faith bound us together as a country and he urged the American people to a rededication of their faith, not through a "single day of special prayer" but that "our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer."
Given the efforts of the secular radicals to drive prayer and God out of public life, I believe creating an annual tradition of playing FDR's D-Day prayer will have a powerful effect:
It will remind people that it is correct to identify evil as evil and to seek to defeat it.
It will remind people that President Roosevelt saw Word War II in religious terms as a conflict between pagan tyranny and our "Christian civilization" (as he termed it).
It will remind people that the proper goal for America when facing evil and confronting enemies is to win.
It might help liberal Democrats to learn that their favorite 20th Century President was proudly in favor of helping Americans in uniform and praying publicly.
If you have never heard the FDR D-Day prayer, listen to it online at newt.org.
Call your favorite radio stations and shows and urge them to play this prayer on June 6. It will be good for all Americans to hear it, especially when we consider our own young Americans -- our sons and daughters, our neighbors -- in harm's way around the world today.
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