Boehner Speaks About Immigration Reform 

House Republicans are scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss their strategy for dealing with immigration reform. Yesterday Speaker John Boehner addressed the issue during a press conference. Speaker Boehner reiterated his position that the Senate bill is going nowhere in the House and that border security is his first priority. Here are his remarks: 
 

• "I've made it clear, and I'll make it clear again: the House is not going to take up the Senate bill. The House is going to do its own job in developing an immigration bill. 

  "It's real clear from everything that I've seen and read over the past couple weeks that the American people expect that we'll have strong border security in place before we begin the process of legalizing and fixing our legal immigration system.…

  "We have a broken immigration system, we have undocumented workers here in record numbers. We just can't turn a blind eye to this problem and think it's going to go away."

It is good that Speaker Boehner is holding firm. Fox News reports that the House Judiciary Committee "has adopted a piecemeal approach, approving a series of bills, none with a path to citizenship that Obama and Democrats are seeking." While there are plenty of chances for mischief in the legislative process, so far the House appears to be taking the right approach. 

But there also appears to be a consensus emerging on the right that a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants might be tolerable after the border is secured. It seems to me that this approach still amounts to a surrender on a fundamental principle -- the rule of law. 

We already have a legal process for immigrants to obtain citizenship. Shouldn't the conservative position be that if you violate that process, you cannot become a U.S. citizen? To do otherwise is to walk into the quagmire of what is often referred to as a "moral hazard" -- encouraging future bad behavior by rewarding it now. 

Many conservatives argue that the 1986 amnesty to address three million illegal immigrants created a moral hazard that led us to the point we are at today with at least three times that number now in the country. We are risking a similar perverse message in the current immigration debate. 

The loudest voices are the advocates for amnesty. But one group being left out is the millions of immigrants who came to the U.S. and, at great expense in time and money, followed the legal process. 

Many of them are seething at the idea that the process they followed could be short-circuited by illegal immigrants who broke the law. This is one reason why I think politicians embracing the Senate's bill are making a tremendous miscalculation. They risk offending many legal immigrants who might be inclined to vote for them. 

"Kill The Bill" 

Opposition to the Senate's amnesty legislation is growing. Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Rich Lowry of National Review have co-authored a column entitled "Kill The Bill." 

They zeroed in on a point I have made repeatedly in this report: Why would anyone trust this administration to enforce the border security aspects of any new law? 

After all, Obama is already refusing to enforce existing immigration laws. This administration routinely ignores laws it does not like. 

Such concerns were only underscored by Obama's actions last week in waiving Obamacare's employer mandate. Consider this excerpt from Kristol and Lowry: 
 

• "The bill's first fatal deficiency is that it doesn’t solve the illegal-immigration problem. The enforcement provisions are riddled with exceptions, loopholes, and waivers. Every indication is that they are for show and will be disregarded, just as prior notional requirements to build a fence or an entry/exit visa system have been -- and just as President Obama has recently announced he's ignoring aspects of Obamacare that are inconvenient to enforce on schedule. 

  "Why won't he waive a requirement for the use of E-Verify just as he's unilaterally delayed the employer mandate? The fact that the legalization of illegal immigrants comes first makes it all the more likely that enforcement provisions will be ignored the same way they were after passage of the 1986 amnesty."

What Would Jesus Do? 

Four religious groups -- Sojourners, National Association of Evangelicals, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission representing the Southern Baptist Convention, and the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference -- are up on Capitol Hill this week pushing amnesty under the guise of "compassion." Sojourners is a left-wing group, so I'm not surprised it is pushing a left-wing idea. 

But I believe my friends at the ERLC and the NAE are at risk of offending many of their own members. States with large concentrations of Southern Baptists and evangelicals have led the way in passing laws that do the most to combat illegal immigration. 

As for the "compassion" argument, the Gospel message is clear about what individual Christians and churches are supposed to do to help the poor, the dispossessed and the stranger. But just once I'd like to see groups that use faith to push a left-wing agenda include the taxpayer when they talk about compassion! 

Do we really think that Jesus wants to take another chunk out of the hide of a hard-working taxpayer making $40,000 a year who can barely pay his own mortgage, to aid someone who violated the law? That is a strange reading of Scripture in my view. 

Stand With Israel 

With all the news about growing turmoil in the Middle East, it is more important than ever for supporters of Israel to make our voices heard. That's why I hope you will make every effort to join me in our nation's capital for the Christians United for Israel Washington Summit!

Led by Pastor John Hagee, CUFI's Washington Summit will be held July 22-24. This year's Summit features an outstanding lineup of speakers, including:
 

• Rep. Michele Bachmann
  Glenn Beck
  House Majority Leader Eric Cantor
  Sen. Ted Cruz
  Gov. Mike Huckabee
  And many more!

I think it's so important to the future of America and Israel that you join us in Washington, D.C., I'll pay $100 towards the registration fee of the first 50 people who register. And I'll pay $50 towards the registration fee of the next 100 people who register! 

Call 1-877-706-2834 or click here to register today! You must enter the promo code "Gary100" when you register online or reference this special officer over the phone. 

I look forward to seeing you there!