Illegals get the Senate Amnesty bill.

Immigration: Michelle Malkin has the roundup as I am just too tired to point out what an idiotic and mindnumbing bill this has turned out to be, even the illegals supporters are unhappy.

The Senate agreement on immigration, hailed on Thursday by both Republicans and Democrats as a breakthrough, would closely mimic the 1986 overhaul of US immigration laws that has been criticised by both sides for exacerbating the problem of illegal immigration in the US. Under the agreement, the US government would be forced to distinguish between illegal immigrants who have lived in the country for more than five years, and those here more recently. Immigrants in the US for at least five years would be eligible for permanent residency and citizenship; those in the US from two to five years could seek temporary worker status and could still be eligible for permanent residence; and those who entered the country after January 7 2004 would face deportation. That effort – to discriminate between illegal immigrants seen as having deep roots in the US and more recent arrivals – was at the heart of the 1986 act, which critics say contributed to the number of illegal immigrants growing from 3m to close to 12m over the next two decades. The 1986 bill similarly offered permanent residence to any illegal immigrant who had been in the US more than five years, while threatening to deport the rest. “This proposal is a throwback to the 1986 law,” said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, now with the Migration Policy Institute. She argues that the distinction proved extremely difficult to enforce, and that most of the more-recent illegal immigrants simply remained underground. With four times as many illegal immigrants as in 1986, it would now require even greater bureaucratic and police resources to identify those eligible to stay, while deporting or denying work to those who do not qualify. Immigration advocates criticised the compromise as “completely unworkable”. “Immigrants with less than five years of residency would never choose to participate in a programme that provides no guarantees and thus would be driven even further underground and hyper-exploited,” said Jaime Contreras, president of the National Capital Immigration Coalition in Washington Opponents of amnesty for current illegal immigrants also criticised the compromise, saying it would still allow most of them to remain in the country. “The differences are minor and cosmetic and are designed to snooker a few extra Republicans,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.