Amnesty by Any Other Name is Still Amnesty

Mark Krikorian a contributor to National Review Online and is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies covers the media's and proponents of amnesty for illegal immigrants claiming the use of the word "amnesty" is misleading or misinformed.

Krikorian believes the word "amnesty" leaves a bad taste in the mouths of most Americans due to "the legalization portions of 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act" which were referred to by both opponents and proponents as "amnesty."

National Council of La Raza in 2001, through the use of focus groups discovered the American public held the word in somewhat low regard. This lead the president of the group to advise Mexican president Vicente Fox never to use the word "amnesty," but to use "regularization" or "legalization" in its stead. "Other euphemisms that have been developed are "normalization," "permanence," "earned adjustment," and "phased-in access to earned regularization."

"Other amnesty supporters peddle the opposite story line — it's not amnesty because the illegals will pay their debt to society for breaking the law. For instance, Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute, the unofficial chief spokesman for the McCain-Kennedy amnesty, recently said on TV that "I don't think if I had to go to the police station in my town and say, 'I committed a crime, I'm willing to come forward and tell you so, authorities, give you my name and my number and my address, pay a fine, be under official supervision for 11 years until I could get on to the right side of the law,' I wouldn't consider that an amnesty." Except that since the illegal alien keeps what he broke the law to get in the first place — the ability to live and work here permanently — Jacoby's analogy applied to, say, a bank robber would mean that after turning himself in he'd get to keep the money he stole."

Amnesty phased-in access to earned regularization earned adjustment permanence normalization regularization
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