President Bush and a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators announced Thursday they’ve come up with a compromise package of immigration reforms, but Congressman Steve King says it’s an outrage.
"They’re making everybody that’s in the country illegal legal. they’re doing it with one stroke, potentially, of the president’s pen — which I believe he’ll sign," King says. "The rest of the stuff is bells and whistles."
King also objects to the provision which he says will "race through" the backlog of reunification requests on the part of people who’re living here now and have filed the paperwork to bring their family to the U.S.
"This is a broad stroke, massive amnesty and it’s going to bring in more people than they tried to legalize last year with the Senate bill," King says. The U.S. Senate passed an immigration-related measure last year which stalled in the House.
King says the senators who crafted this latest attempt at immigration reform need to wear a scarlet "A" on their chests, because it’ll provide amnesty for people who King contends should be sent back to their home country because they entered the U.S. illegally. "We’ll do everything we can to stop it," King says.
King predicts the Senate "will be scrambling" to try to pass the bill before Memorial Day so they can "run for the hills" and toss the issue over to the House for debate.
King, a Republican from Kiron, has long criticized any attempt to allow illegal immigrants a faster "path" to citizenship than is given those who come into the country legally.