Does chutzpah translate into Spanish?
It's a reasonable question after the joint statement House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) issued last week about the impasse blocking congressional action on legislation to overhaul the immigration laws.
Frist and Hastert blamed Democrats for one of the most controversial ideas in the debate: the provision in the legislation the House of Representatives passed in December designating the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in America as felons. The Republican National Committee plans to run Spanish-language radio ads echoing that charge.
The proposal to designate illegal immigrants as criminals, more than anything else, has ignited the nationwide wave of protests against the House bill. To attribute the idea to Democrats, Frist, Hastert and the RNC have to join the story on the last page -- and then misrepresent the evidence to boot. In fact, from the start of the recent debate, Republicans have driven the notion of imposing criminal penalties on illegal immigrants. Although President Bush has never acknowledged paternity, the idea's fathers include his administration.
Let's start with the law as it stands today. It is a crime to cross the border without authorization. But "unlawful presence" in the United States isn't a crime; it's a civil violation of immigration laws. In practice, when illegal immigrants are found in the U.S., the government almost always deports them through civil proceedings rather than attempting an expensive criminal prosecution for the border crossing, which is often difficult to prove.
There's a glitch in the law, though, that affects immigrants who initially arrive through valid visas rather than a dash across the desert. Remember: Unlawful presence is a civil, not criminal, violation. That means it is not a crime to stay in the U.S. after your visa expires. If people overstay their visa, all the government can do is send them home.
That strikes some administration officials and GOP lawmakers as unfair. Because it is a crime to enter the U.S. without authorization, some believe people who overstay a visa should face a criminal penalty.
So as House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) prepared his border security bill last year, the Justice Department asked him to include a provision making unlawful presence in the U.S. a crime. Sensenbrenner, on the House floor in December, said the idea came from the Bush administration, and an administration official last week, speaking anonymously, confirmed his account.
