Proof That The Amnesty Bill Is Wildly Unpopular Or Alternately, News That Obvious To Everyone But Republican Senators

One of the more bizarre claims of the open borders crowd is that the amnesty bill in the Senate is actually popular and that it’s only opposed by a small, but vocal minority.

Their evidence for this assertion is several polls that show that the majority of the American people are not opposed to a guest worker program or allowing illegal aliens to be legalized in some form or fashion. Although that may be case, after following this issue closely for years, I can tell you that there are two mitigating factors that need to be considered.

#1) The polls also show that Americans are ferociously opposed to illegal immigration and are demanding that the borders be secured so the flow of illegals can be stopped. There is an enormous amount of passion about this issue, while the support for amnesty is very lackluster.

#2) Most people think it’s impractical to round up all the illegals and are unaware that cracking down on businesses will make many of them self-deport. So, while a majority of Americans may be willing to tolerate amnesty for illegals, there is very little enthusiasm for it beyond the businessmen who want cheap labor, a few illegal alien advocacy groups, and some liberal political wonks who see the illegals as potential voters.

This is why the Senate immigration bill is incredibly unpopular and will remain so: the amnesty for illegal aliens is granted immediately via a temporary Z visa while we’re getting nothing but empty promises about security measures that will supposedly be carried out later by politicians who seem to be almost uniformly opposed to enforcing the current immigration laws we have in this country.

Because the politicians have played the voters for fools on immigration over and over again and because the voters know it, this issue has become particularly contentious. That’s especially true since the American people have come to realize, nearly 6 years after 9/11, that Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Harry Reid, George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Lindsey Graham, Ken Salazar, Jon Kyl, The Wall Street Journal, Linda Chavez, etc., would prefer to leave this country wide open on our Southern border, even if it leads to more terrorist attacks, than to enforce our laws and shut down the flood of illegals coming into this country.

As a result, the voters, particularly conservative voters, have made it perfectly clear, with every means at their disposal, that they despise this immigration bill. Just to name a few examples,

* According to Rasmussen polling, the best pollster in the business over the last two elections, the public opposes the Senate immigration bill 50% to 23%. Moreover, the public preferred no action over passing the bill by a margin of 49% to 32%.

* Survey USA showed that the public opposed the bill 46% to 36%.

* According to Pew Research Center, “41 percent of those who knew something about the bill oppose it, with just one-third favoring it.”

* According to the latest non-scientific survey of right-of-center bloggers that just came out today here on Right Wing News, the right side of the blogosphere was pleased that the bill didn’t pass by a 96% to 4% margin.

* This bill has produced a groundswell of “red-on-red” political attacks. Lindsey Graham and Saxby Chambliss were booed at their state political conventions for supporting the bill, Tom Tancredo vowed to campaign against pro-amnesty senators in 2008 (as did I), Republican activists tore up their party cards on TV, and conservative run anti-amnesty websites like Jon Kyl Is A Liar and Dump Lindsey Graham have popped up.

* The poll numbers of several politicians connected with this bill have plunged. Harry Reid’s approval/disapproval rating has dropped to 19%/45%. Mel Martinez’s approval rating has dropped from 48% to 37%. John McCain’s approval rating has plunged down to 11% in the latest Rasmussen 2008 poll and many pundits think the immigration bill has killed his chances of being President.

* Staggering numbers of phone calls, emails, and faxes were sent to senators opposing the bill. According to one Senate source I contacted, his boss received, “thousands and thousands of calls and the ratio was something like 95%-98% against the bill.” That sounds very plausible given that I had several commenters note that they called their senators and found that either their voice mailboxes were full or that they had received so many messages that they had simply disconnected their answering machines.

In other words, this issue has turned into a political tsunami that has the potential to sweep away any politician up for election in 2008 that supports it — and if any Republican senators believe that they can vote this bill through and the public will forget about it — well, they’re wrong about that.

If this bill were to pass, it would prompt another long, bruising fight in the House, numerous primary challenges for Republican senators, and a promise to oppose Z-Visas would become as much of a litmus test for a GOP candidate in 2008 as a pledge to oppose Roe v. Wade.

Long story short: in 2008, amnesty will turn out to be the third rail of politics — you touch it and politically, you die — at least in most cases. If the Senate bill passes, it will practically guarantee the Democrats another 3-4 seats in the Senate and it will lessen the chances that the GOP will win the presidency in 2008, even if we’re up against a pro-amnesty Democrat, because it will cause so much anger, frustration, and outrage at the Republican Party amongst conservatives (while the Democrats don’t have as much invested either way). This bill is political suicide and any Republican senator who votes for it is in essence, begging the voters to put him out of office in 2008.

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